[MOD] Planet Roanoke, a/k/a all SMAC'ed up
- Thread starter Padmewan
- Start date
Alright - I posted the new zip on the dev page. I only did a few buttons, because frankly, I don't think they're very good 
It's much tougher than I thought to come up with buttons!
Anyway, that'll require a bit of XML work to implement those (and make sure there's no commas when you're doing button declarations), and if the compiler has any questions, you can get me on AIM at BrsDMB.
It's much tougher than I thought to come up with buttons!
Anyway, that'll require a bit of XML work to implement those (and make sure there's no commas when you're doing button declarations), and if the compiler has any questions, you can get me on AIM at BrsDMB.
I would be bowled over if you can do any of those units.
Does that mean that if I gave you schematics you can put something together? Because I would love to get the Lattice into 3D rather than the 2D cardboard cutouts that they (and the original wheat resource) are right now.
Does that mean that if I gave you schematics you can put something together? Because I would love to get the Lattice into 3D rather than the 2D cardboard cutouts that they (and the original wheat resource) are right now.
I've posted an experimental point release to the developer's forum that includes a new method of Terraforming. This new model terraforms in the background without player intervention. It essentially "reads" your improvement choices (and later on, your civics choices) and pushes terrain in the direction you want it to go. Hothouse and Aerator improvements lead to warmer tiles... Lattice and Energy to colder. (The logic behind the latter is that asborbing energy out of the tile makes it colder -- at least, it works for Lattice).
This is still a very immature implementation, and I think the tile swings are way too dramatic. Also, there's no accounting for lattitude (yet). Still, if you are adventurous, give it a whirl as I really want feedback... this has been my project for ~ 2 weeks now!
This is still a very immature implementation, and I think the tile swings are way too dramatic. Also, there's no accounting for lattitude (yet). Still, if you are adventurous, give it a whirl as I really want feedback... this has been my project for ~ 2 weeks now!
tdb said:
Well, as a general background I wanted the climate change model to be as simple as possible, but also intuitive. In this game, Lattice will be the premier source of energy. And Lattice = cold. Therefore, by that simple calculation, energy = cold.
This is kinda stupid, I know, but it's a first cut. My basic thought was that if human improvements were "capturing" energy (from the sun), then it was removing that energy from the local system. Again, I've raised the issue before about the difference between "energy" and "commerce," but for now this is OK.
(To play out the logic model, cities should generate heat based on their production. For now I'm using unhealthy faces as a standin for that...)
What I wanted to avoid was that the player would have to KNOW which improvements would terraform in which direction. I wanted the terraform model to take your choice and multiply them. Of course, I already broke this rule by giving the Aerator a special +5 heat bonus, but that's the only one (so far).
This would also make it possible for the AI to compete, because we don't have to teach it new rules.
See the Excel spreadsheet for more details. I'm hoping to update that to what the model actually is, but it's very close.
Re: Naming the terrain, I was actually thinking of being even more scientific:
< 200 Kelvin (freezing for CO2) = "snow" terrain
200-275 Kelvin (freezing for H2O) = "sand" terrain
275-300 Kelvin (temperate Earth) = "tundra" terrain
300-315 Kelvin (hot Earth) = "plains" terrain
> 315 Kelvin (hot hot hot) = ??? terrain
I'm seeing that maybe some finer gradation would help, maybe splitting the 200-275 range in half, or the 275-300 in order to slip in the "grass" terrain. But this is a start, and I'm open to ideas, suggestions, criticism. I am well aware that this model runs AGAINST the current political worries about global warming, as on Roanoke all the humans, at least initially, WANT the planet to warm up very dramatically. But, the question is will they be able to stop it?
Yeah, I've got a new proposal that has more gradations.
Very cold > Cold > Tundra > Temperate > Tropical > Hellish
Tundra is the new one, it will actually be WORSE than Cold (1 food, 0 minerals) but that's what you gotta get on the way up to Temperate. This will allow us more visual gradations -- this version is missing plains or tundra, i think.
Either that or Cold should be 0 food...
Very cold > Cold > Tundra > Temperate > Tropical > Hellish
Tundra is the new one, it will actually be WORSE than Cold (1 food, 0 minerals) but that's what you gotta get on the way up to Temperate. This will allow us more visual gradations -- this version is missing plains or tundra, i think.
Either that or Cold should be 0 food...
jenks
Prince
Padmewan said:
I also like tdb's 'Freezing' over 'Very Cold' as a cosmetic change
Could do that ... if hothouses are made buildable on Cold and Very Cold tiles ... this gives every player a more balanced starting location
Base Terrain
Freezing (0,0,0) > Cold (0,1,0) > Tundra (1,0,1) > Temperate (2,1,0) > Tropical (1,0,1) > Hellish (0,0,1)
?
jenks
Prince
16.1 points of feedback (?!) on playing v 0161
NICE UPDATES OVERALL !
alas didnt get much extensive testing on terraforming, though i noticed it! looked like it was working nice ... I had a cold go to temperate after about 15 turns of having a NH3 hothouse on it
anyone else got much feedback ?
am offski for a few days so cant help beyond that. l8rs peeps
...
... we any closer to moving to the Modpacks section yet ?
...
NICE UPDATES OVERALL !
alas didnt get much extensive testing on terraforming, though i noticed it! looked like it was working nice ... I had a cold go to temperate after about 15 turns of having a NH3 hothouse on it
anyone else got much feedback ?
am offski for a few days so cant help beyond that. l8rs peeps
...
... we any closer to moving to the Modpacks section yet ?
...
Nice - my only suggestion would be a recoloring. As is, it looks like the pyramids we're all familiar with, but I'm thinking a recolor to match it with the icon would make it look really kickass (and alien). If these things use .dds textures, I'd be happy to do this myself so you could focus your energies on turning out more models
Gerikes
User of Run-on Sentences.
Hey guys!
Let me just say that of all the up-and-coming mods on the board, yours is the one I look most forward to playing. I'm hoping that Civcraft will eventually get to the stages where the coding isn't as combersome and heavy duty. At that point, I was thinking of helping out with Roanoke, being such a fan of SMAC.
In the mean time, however, I was wondering if you had recieved a chance to check out some of the things being deveoped in the Sea Colonies thread, specifically some of the screenies in the page I've linked. This looks like pretty promising stuff, and I was wondering your plans to implement Sea Cities. I know that you guys are taking a Era-by-era approach, which is a good idea, but I didn't know if you had any long-term ideas floating around about changing the way that sea-cities work other than just being cities on the sea. Something that gives Sea-cities more of a threat that would make the person with a few of them more dangerous than a person with a few more cities, giving a greater need to actually use sea units. I think it would be neat to take a Civ/Smac-style game to the level where not only do you have 2-dimensions of units (melee/ranged/domain types on one dimension, technological advancement on the other), but also laying the groundwork for 2-dimensional cities. Instead of a city being only as good as the resources around it, perhaps a city on the sea has some sort of advantage right from the start.
What if a sea colony works exactly like a normal city, but has a distingushed advantage from the start, not unlike how a more advanced unit would have a distingushed advantage over the same style unit that is less technologically advanced with no promotions or experience. For example, what if every sea colony instantly gave a +25% bonus to project research due to the "improved research conditions". Also, what if sea cities could build buildings that regular cities couldn't (a "ping station" that reveals all sea-plots within a X by X distance from the sea colony).
Also, another reason I'm very enthusiastic about this project is that it seems to have more of a story-central theme. I feel that you have great ideas in mind to make the player try to "finish the story" rather than "beat the game". I feel that Civ and many of the mods for it look at victory conditions as ways to "beat the game", where a better idea would be to look for ways to "finish the story". The obvious ones are military conquest, and gripping the world under the rule of a single ruler. Another is diplomatic. Perhaps one could be based completely on the sea colonies, wheras sea colonies (either at their onset or after they build a certain special building) are so powerful that they drain resources very quickly, and only with a massive resource collection can you have multiple types of these super-sea colonies (for lack of a better description) operational. The result is perhaps one victory condition where you have X of these sea colonies operational for X turns, whereby you complete a [::insert some sci-fi project here::].
Well, just some ideas I wanted to throw out. Like I said, I'm very much looking forward to this project. Keep up the good work.
Let me just say that of all the up-and-coming mods on the board, yours is the one I look most forward to playing. I'm hoping that Civcraft will eventually get to the stages where the coding isn't as combersome and heavy duty. At that point, I was thinking of helping out with Roanoke, being such a fan of SMAC.
In the mean time, however, I was wondering if you had recieved a chance to check out some of the things being deveoped in the Sea Colonies thread, specifically some of the screenies in the page I've linked. This looks like pretty promising stuff, and I was wondering your plans to implement Sea Cities. I know that you guys are taking a Era-by-era approach, which is a good idea, but I didn't know if you had any long-term ideas floating around about changing the way that sea-cities work other than just being cities on the sea. Something that gives Sea-cities more of a threat that would make the person with a few of them more dangerous than a person with a few more cities, giving a greater need to actually use sea units. I think it would be neat to take a Civ/Smac-style game to the level where not only do you have 2-dimensions of units (melee/ranged/domain types on one dimension, technological advancement on the other), but also laying the groundwork for 2-dimensional cities. Instead of a city being only as good as the resources around it, perhaps a city on the sea has some sort of advantage right from the start.
What if a sea colony works exactly like a normal city, but has a distingushed advantage from the start, not unlike how a more advanced unit would have a distingushed advantage over the same style unit that is less technologically advanced with no promotions or experience. For example, what if every sea colony instantly gave a +25% bonus to project research due to the "improved research conditions". Also, what if sea cities could build buildings that regular cities couldn't (a "ping station" that reveals all sea-plots within a X by X distance from the sea colony).
Also, another reason I'm very enthusiastic about this project is that it seems to have more of a story-central theme. I feel that you have great ideas in mind to make the player try to "finish the story" rather than "beat the game". I feel that Civ and many of the mods for it look at victory conditions as ways to "beat the game", where a better idea would be to look for ways to "finish the story". The obvious ones are military conquest, and gripping the world under the rule of a single ruler. Another is diplomatic. Perhaps one could be based completely on the sea colonies, wheras sea colonies (either at their onset or after they build a certain special building) are so powerful that they drain resources very quickly, and only with a massive resource collection can you have multiple types of these super-sea colonies (for lack of a better description) operational. The result is perhaps one victory condition where you have X of these sea colonies operational for X turns, whereby you complete a [::insert some sci-fi project here::].
Well, just some ideas I wanted to throw out. Like I said, I'm very much looking forward to this project. Keep up the good work.
@ woodelf, let me send you some concept pictures for Lattice. My basic starting-point for them is with stalagmites, but stalagmites where energy plays the same role as water. I guess there are different ways then to think about this -- like maybe frozen lightening? What I'd sketched earlier was more like literal stalagmites.
@Gerikes -- thanks for coming by! Your mod is so hugely ambitious I can only stand back and admire
Re: Sea colonies, I don't know that we've conceptually figured out what the fibersea really is, yet. In my mind, the "ocean" is ripped-up crust that exposes the "wires" of the planet underneath the surface. So it's not actually liquid or "sea" -- instead, it's a dangerously high-energy field. A colony that formed there would probably be either like a data center (a section of "wire" that is controlled by a faction) or a physical presence that somehow survives on or in the wires.
One victory condition I've kicked around is the idea of controlling the planet. Maybe we can meld that with your idea of the sea-colony; establishing "bases" right in the "brain" of the planet would give you a shot at then "mind-controlling" the planet...
Please, if you have more ideas, keep them coming! I'll kick around more what super-colonies might mean in this game. (One idea I had earlier was the idea of a mobile city).
@Gerikes -- thanks for coming by! Your mod is so hugely ambitious I can only stand back and admire
Re: Sea colonies, I don't know that we've conceptually figured out what the fibersea really is, yet. In my mind, the "ocean" is ripped-up crust that exposes the "wires" of the planet underneath the surface. So it's not actually liquid or "sea" -- instead, it's a dangerously high-energy field. A colony that formed there would probably be either like a data center (a section of "wire" that is controlled by a faction) or a physical presence that somehow survives on or in the wires.
One victory condition I've kicked around is the idea of controlling the planet. Maybe we can meld that with your idea of the sea-colony; establishing "bases" right in the "brain" of the planet would give you a shot at then "mind-controlling" the planet...
Please, if you have more ideas, keep them coming! I'll kick around more what super-colonies might mean in this game. (One idea I had earlier was the idea of a mobile city).
