JBG said:
Well.... uh.... um.... what actually does need coding atm? What have you done so far?
Any progress on programming the two mega-improvements btw? (Biodome and Bunker)?
Woodelf, can you think of anything that needs coding?
Belizan, try looking back through the posts... But do tell me what you've got so far.
I'm doing the traits.xml at the same time as the leaders. Which reminds me,
Belizan, you CAN try your hand at the three civ. attributes (scientific, economic, independent) - see the Moon Bible (pg.4 right) for details. Essentially they're massive leader traity-type things that significantly alter how a civ plays the game, to help differentiate between the three groups of civs we have.
Hrmm, I guess I haven't been doing a very good job of communicating :/. Or you missed some of my posts
. I'll have to go back through the thread and cull out all the technical questions and issues that have been brought up and outline them in a single post. Unfortunately my sister is coming into town shortly for the weekend, so I probably won't get to it for a couple of days.
The long and the short of it is that a great deal of ideas have been bandied about, but very few have been explicitly accepted as being wanted in the mod. Of those which have, important information about how we want them to work has been left unspecified.
What I had hoped to receive were clear marching orders. Something like "I want a system which does X, Y or Z, or allows this or that to happen with the following rules". Like you wanted me to implement the rules to a board game. The turrets, for instance, were clear "enough" for me to code. They also serve as a good example. In our discussion on Turrets a number of diffferent systems were suggested. I asked about various ways to implement it and which features we wanted to use. I didn't get a response. So I implemented the ideas which seemed to have the most traction. The base "one turret per city", and the idea that they might auto-upgrade as new techs became available. But, even now, I'm not convinced we're going to use the auto-upgrading code. Yet, in writing that project, it took maybe half an hour to get the turrets building limited to one per city (including setting up the mod, etc.). It took me the rest of the day (6-8 hours) to work out all the bugs and figure out the APIs involved in handling programmatic upgrades. I don't want to see too many repetitions of the situation where I spend that sort of time to get something to work only to find out that upon consideration, we don't really want to use it.
Another one of my troubles is that coding isn't quite like XML modding. Slight changes in how you want things to work can invalidate all the code written, and the difficulty of implementing any one feature can vary dramatically based on seemingly minor details of functionality. Given the limitations in Civ4, some creativity is required to create some of the effects that we are looking for, and therein, some "hare-brained" schemes are suggested by me to implement some of these features. Such schemes often have various side effects which can render the entire feature undesirable. When I look to clarify a lot of these features I'm looking for some sort of validation that whatever hair-brained scheme I have to implementing it is going to be acceptable, and fits the desired effect within the mod, etc. Often times there are more then one way to skin the rabbit, and so I have a selection of schemes to choose from. Sometimes I just don't really understand what you are looking for at all. And of course, that we really want it.
So the pattern we've had is... Someone(s) suggests an idea and talk about it a little. Then I comment on what's hard or easy, different ways we could implement it, looking for feedback as to which way sounds good, or whether the implementation of the idea is sufficient to accomplish what you were looking for, but I don't get a response. So the idea sort of floats in limbo, in this state where I'm not sure what you want or which way to implement it you'd like, or even if the method of implementing it that I've suggested is sufficient for the effect you were looking for. (or even, in the case of some of the more "I wonder..." sort of ideas bandied about on this thread, if we even want it at all).
Anyway, I'll go through and resummarize/collate all the ideas in the thread to date when I get a chance in the next few days, and you can hopefully give me a thumbs up, thumbs down or more information on each as appropriate.
As for the state of things written specifically for the Moon mod, I have turret code, and 90% of the Domain_air unit airfield (I made a manned sentry tower improvement the other day as a proof of concept, I'd just have to change the sentry to be a carrier
). I also have the fuel mod, which implements a lot of fuel related things (refueling improvements, running out of fuel, crashing, using fuel to attack, etc.). However, the AI does not understand, nor can it be made to understand how to use fuel. Also, we can not make proper aircraft because of the way Civ4 has hardcoded domain movement (fueled units are limited to running either on land or at sea). I discussed at one point a rather complicated and involved "hack" to force the AI to seemingly obey the fuel restrictions on its units, but this should not be confused with the AI actually understanding that its units have limited range. It will simply be forced to exhibit behaviour that is approximately and roughly obeying the limitations presented by fuel. Modifying the AI to actually understand and take fuel range into consideration when it is making its plans is not possible so far as I can see at the moment. That would have to wait for the SDK.
