[RaRE] RaR Extended: a combined modmod for the RaR modification

[vetiarvind]

Hi Zorkz, this looks like a good feature (especially in huge and gigantic).
Also, I think I will work on creating a "grouping for trade routes" feature over the coming weeks or months. ( a few hours each week is all i can spare now )

 

[Nightinggale]

R&R 2.3 has been announced and it is intended to be a bugfix release. In order not to duplicate bugfixes, I think if RaRE should ever be anything serious, then we should wait for those bugfixes and then as soon as 2.3 is released, I will make a git clone of R&R's svn server. I have it now more or less ready to be uploaded, but starting without the bugfixes doesn't sound like such a great idea.

 

[raystuttgart]

Is this joint modmod project for RaR already started ?
(Because I thought it was just some idea sharing / brainstorming until now.)

If a really serious project would exist where several modders were joining forces to create a follow up for RaR, then we would not need to create RaR 2.3.
(All improvments, bugfixes, new features, ... could be developed in that follow up project.)

In fact, I only initiated talks about Release 2.3 with Schmiddie because I was convinced that such a project would not exist yet.
Thus I thought we (Schmiddie, myself and our partners) should try to tie up some lose ends again because nobody else would do it (in near future).

All I saw was several bugfixes and improvments spread around the community as attachments in posts or contained in several small modmods.
I thought it might be a good idea for community to once again bring together some of those in the mainmod.

But maybe I am just not informed enough anymore.

 

[Nightinggale]

RaR 2.3 is out and I updated my git clone accordingly to start RaRE. Or rather I tried to do so. For some mysterious reason the git-svn bridge is broken and I didn't fix that by updating. It doesn't look like a firewall problem either. Creating a brand new clone didn't work either as it just freezes when it tries to contact the server. No data transferred and no timeout. Quite odd.

I will not be able to make RaRE until I have figured out why my svn bridge broke

 

[Nightinggale]

Great news. While my git svn bridge is still broken and will not be repaired, nomatter what I update/install/uninstall/curse, I found a solution. For some reason it works on my laptop The problem is that it will now have to download everything all over and then order it in git and then I need to do stuff to it before I upload it. That will take some time, especially since my laptop is 10 years old and too slow for even 360p youtube. Luckily it's not doing anything else and it can work 24 hours a day until it's done.

 

[Commander Bello]

In the meantime it would be nice to provide us with some kind of manual of how to push/pull/dl/ul/compare things then.

At least myself isn't familiar with all this git-stuff.

 

[Nightinggale]

I have finally completed downloading RaR, clean it up (removing old DLLs and stuff), add git settings, project files and upload it. It can be downloaded here: https://sourceforge.net/p/religionandrevolutionextended/code/ci/master/tree/

I recommend that you sign up and log in before downloading as you can only upload later if you use the url with your login name in it. I recommend the git client smartGIT as it has proven to be the one causing the fewest problems for M:C users (we tried a few different ones).

The file layout is made to allow it to be dropped directly in MODS and it will be playable. Git will have a problem if it's in program files though. I use the one in My Games, but I don't have any strange characters in my username.

There is a project file for VS2010. You should be able to double click that one, compile and it should just work with no further setup.

M:C git guide: https://sourceforge.net/p/colonizationmodcollection/wiki/GIT/
Note that RaRE does not use submodules meaning all references to those can be ignored.

People wanting write access should give me their sourceforge login name. We also have other features on SF, such as a wiki and write access applies to those as well.

The version of RaR uploaded was the newest one yesterday. Schmiddie gave permission to include the post release bugfixes, but the stuff Barthoze made the last 24 hours didn't make it. I simply didn't want to start over after I got started with the move.

 

[Barthoze]

Just tell me at which revision you made the clone. Including my fixes will be easy.

 

[Nightinggale]

Just tell me at which revision you made the clone. Including my fixes will be easy.

I cloned rev 1017.

I'm a bit worried because it is now 48 hours since I announced the code to be available and yet nobody requested write access. I hope people will show up or RaRE will be short lived.

I have a plan for making a game option to switch between one and two plot city radius. Do anybody else have any plans for additions in the near future?

 

[Commander Bello]

I for my part haven't raised my hand yet since I have done so many changes in the past months that I am currently more or less clueless of how to make them available seperately. Not to mention that my code looks like a mess due to many temporary notes I have put in it.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

To be fair, 48 hours is not that long in terms of modding communities.

If you don't get any after 2 or 3 weekends, then you might be more justified in worrying.

 

[JosEPh_II]

As a Player of RaR I would hope to see continued work on RaRE. Hope it gets some "love"!

JosEPh

 

[vetiarvind]

Thanks for uploading this Nightinggale. Didn't think it would happen tbh. I'm not sure how much time I can spend on modding since RL is keeping my very busy, but I'd love to see where this goes and hopefully contribute something to it as well.

 

[raystuttgart]

First of all, sorry to get myself involved in this discussions.
(Since I won't participate in this project, that might not be necessary or even wanted.)

But I still kind of miss two aspects in this project that I consider essential to really build up a team.

1. What is your common vision ?
What are the big features / concepts all of you really want to create together ?

- Rebuilding / Improving Military System ?
- Adding a System of Techs and Civics similar to Civ4 ?
- Adding much more game options to allow better customized gameplay ?
- Adding more Civs ?
- Having more diversification between the Civs ?
...

2. What is your development strategy (and team philosophie) ?
How do you want to organize yourself ?

- Are you going to discuss all new ideas first before starting to implement ?
- Do changes or new features require consense or a majority vote or no agreement at all ?
- Are you planning to have some quality control mechanisms or is that not important to you ?
- Will you focus on creating functionality for other modders or creating complete features ?
...

--------

Or is this just about "Let's have a single repository where we can all just throw in our work and let's see what comes out of that." ?

Nobody is expecting modders to work like a professional development team.
But most basic aspects of team work are still essential if you want to ensure at least a bit of quality and efficiency.

Modding is a lot about personal taste of course.
But when working in a team you need to take care of more than that.

Of course working in a team is not necessarily easy at all times.
It requires a lot of time and effort to keep up the common vision and development strategy.

But real teams allow to create features with much higher quality and efficiency than any single modder ever could achieve.
(We all know that programming, graphics, balancing, texts, translations, testing, ... is a lot of work.)

I do wish this project good luck and really hope that you will succeed to form a real team.

Edit:

Basically I am still not sure what this project is supposed to be.

Is it about finding more efficient ways of code sharing between RaR modmodders ?
(Which could indeed support the development of all the otherwise independent modmods.)

Or is it really about creating a development team for a big common mod based on RaR ?
(Which could indeed result in new big, high quality features having great programming, great graphics, good balancing, good texts and also translations.)

 

[AbsintheRed]

I have been occupied the last few weeks, but I did make some minor improvements:

Spoiler :

- When moving a military unit on a plot occupied by a unit of another civ, you won't get the "do you want to declare war" popup anymore. That has always been annoying me greatly. Of course, the popup still appears when attempting to move into another player's territory.

- When a native brave survives a raid, he will now return to a nearby village. This prevents severely damaged braves from making pointless attacks the turn after their previous attack. It also means that braves cannot simply occupy an undefended city and raid it every turn.

- I wanted natives to be a little more expansive. To do this, I have made slight modifications to the AI to make them found settlements when they lose settlements by giving them up to colonial powers, and also when their population grows beyond a certain point.

Were these changes ever implemented in the latest RaR version? All these additions look very reasonable

 

[Commander Bello]

Well, as there seems to be a new final version of RaR at the horizon, I will wait until that one is released.

 

[Nightinggale]

Well, as there seems to be a new final version of RaR at the horizon, I will wait until that one is released.

I have been thinking the same thing. Once it's released I will update/replace the RaRE git repository. If I do that, I will likely have to delete all RaRE specific commits, which currently is... 0 (not counting adding project files and git settings).

 

[JosEPh_II]

So if I read this right RARE is on hold till RaR is finalized?

Thanks

JosEPh

 

[Commander Bello]

Can't speak for others, but as far as I am concerned, the answer is "yes".

 

[Nightinggale]

I updated RaRE to include RaR 2.4 files. This time the git-svn bridge worked perfectly and all I had to do was more or less pull svn updates, run script to clean out the DLL, merge into git changes and push.

I spent quite a while on tons of git-svn bridge issues when making the first upload and now I did everything in less than 10 minutes

I will repeat my previous post: anybody who wants to gain write access should give me his/her SF login name.