[Religion and Revolution]: Mod Development

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Guys, I have excellent news ! :woohoo:

The Merge with TAC 2.02d is DONE !!! :)
(Game working and first test did not show any problems.)

1. These features have been merged with TAC 2.02d :


2. I fixed some minor bugs of TAC 2.02d.
(Mostly wrong displayed Texts.)

3. I did some minor improvements to some of my old features.
(Really only small stuff.)

4. I ajdusted our maps / szenarios to include "Savannah".
(FaireWeather still needs to be done.)

5. I have added some graphical improvements to Interface.
(Some very chosen additions from melcher kürzer.)

6. I included our Soundtrack
(Music from Rene Orzmanczyk)

7. I included our new Screens (Starting and Loading)

8. I have tried to understand the changes koma did to AI.
(I only got a rough overview, but it looks really good.)

9. Updated Credits.

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This really was a massload of work. :whew:
(If I ever talk about doing something like that again, please shoot me ! :) )

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I will spend some hours tomorrow night to do thorough testing. :thumbsup:
(I am too tired now.)

If I don't find any bugs I will upload to SVN and create our workspace.

That is it for today.
I am totally wasted now. :sleep:
 
@team:

My christmas present for you might be a little late, but I have finished creating our Mod-Base. :)
(It has been uploaded to SVN. "work" has been renamed to "Religion_and_Revolution".)

See here for details.

If you are working on anything (features, graphics, texts, ...) for this project, please use it as base for your work.
(DLL-Sources are included of course.)

It would really be great if some teammembers would test (meaning to play) it. :thumbsup:
(I did detailled feature testing but I did not play a longer game.)

Please post anything that needs to be improved or fixed in this Thread:
Bugs and Todos for Release 1.
(Fixing any bugs and findings in our Mod-Base will be my priority one. ;))

In the next days I will also continue working on some of these:
 
I am already downloading now. But speeds are not very fast tonight. Good job and thanks for the present...
 
Good job and thanks for the present...

It would really be great, if you could play some longer games within the next weeks and give some feedback.
Hope you enjoy ! :)
 
Hi guys,

I think we have discussed that already somewhere, but I cannot find the posts. :dunno:

I would like to do the following changes:

Changes to Treasures and Criminals

1. Treasures cannot enter tiles with Goody Huts anymore.
2. Criminals cannot speak to Chief and cannot be trained by Natives anymore.
3. Criminals cannot be educated. (Schools)

Thus:

Criminals first have to get free (Learning By Doing-Feature), before they can become Specialists.
Treasures cannot be used to for collecting Goody Huts.

Feedback ? :)
 
I agree. These are good idea's.

But I got one request then. It would be nice to have a feature where when hoovering over your units you will see how many turns is left before "freedom/upgrade" is granted. I think this is included in Further Age of Discovery. There is already a similar effect when you hoover over colonists attending schools and on pioneers doing a job.
 
But I got one request then. It would be nice to have a feature where when hoovering over your units you will see how many turns is left before "freedom/upgrade" is granted.

Not possible. :)
The feature does not work like that.
It is random-based with growing chances.
 
Are we talking your version of this feature?

It is not my "version" of this feature.
I have programmed something totally different here on my own and never used anything of AoD for that.

I am talking about Learning by Doing (LbD), which is one of the most popular features of TAC. :)
(And yes, I have implemented that feature.)

I only ment that I really like that "information" and the way it is solved in Further Age of Discovery.

We simply have very different approach. ;)
As I said, displaying "rounds until" is not possible, because there are no "rounds until".
 
Great to see its progressing! I wish I could download it but I'm currently without Colonization :sad:, though I'll be back soon and give it a try.

BTW if you're looking for some good collections of colonial themed art in the public domain, here are a couple good links (searched for "colonial", may be more with other terms.)

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=history
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?word=col_id:182
http://dcl.umn.edu/search/search_results?search_string=colonial&per_page=60&page=1&
 
One short remark concernig "Criminals".

During Christmas I tested TAC 2.02d+Iso and found that Criminals can escape (according to LbD mechanics). During one of my test game a lot of Criminals escaped.

Here I see two weak moments.

1. Very easy to prevent the escape of Criminal by converting him .... (you probably don't belive me) .... in Missionare. :confused: More then strange solution. "Criminal" and "Missonary"? Maybe this feature remained from vanilla version. In such case it should be fixed.

2. What happens with escaped Criminals? At the moment they disappear from the game.
I guess it would be much more interesting if instead the escaped Criminal we will find a new enemy unit ("Bandit") near the players city. This "Bandit" can attack his former city, steal some goods from warehouse or create some disorder during a number of turns, but cannot destroy the city.

Not possible. :)
The feature does not work like that.
It is random-based with growing chances.

Could you, please, explain why random-based mechanics is used in LbD for education. I understand such random-based feature for canGetFree and canEscape but why you use it for canBecomeExpert? Thank you in advance.
 
During Christmas I tested TAC 2.02d+Iso and found that Criminals can escape (according to LbD mechanics). During one of my test game a lot of Criminals escaped.

I know, TAC balancing for "Escape" currently has pretty high values.
(I did not change balancing of TAC for RaR because I first wanted to get feedback.)

1. Very easy to prevent the escape of Criminal by converting him .... (you probably don't belive me) .... in Missionare. :confused: More then strange solution. "Criminal" and "Missonary"? Maybe this feature remained from vanilla version. In such case it should be fixed.

2 Aspects here:

A) Possibility "Criminal -> Missionary", that is Vanilla.

B) In the beginning I had implemented Criminals also escaping with Professions outside city (Pioneers, Soldiers, Missionaries, Scouts)
but TAC-Team did not like that, so it was removed.

2. What happens with escaped Criminals? At the moment they disappear from the game.
I guess it would be much more interesting if instead the escaped Criminal we will find a new enemy unit ("Bandit") near the players city. This "Bandit" can attack his former city, steal some goods from warehouse or create some disorder during a number of turns, but cannot destroy the city.

Fully agree, it is on our list but it is just not implemented yet. :)
I first wanted to have the according "Barbarian Civ".

Could you, please, explain why random-based mechanics is used in LbD for education.

It is not "random based" only !
It is "random based with growing chances" !

It is relatively complicated formulas but to make it easy:
The longer a Colonist works in a Profession, the higher his chances are to become Specialist.
(Of course, there are also several other factors.)

Reasons why I chose that approach:

It is not deterministic. I hate deterministic things like "Always after X rounds Y happens".
That is boring and not realistic.

There is no fun in things like that if you always know exactly what will happen when.
It is much more interesting if things are not always the same.

So with LbD the actual rounds when a Colonist becomes Specialist are always a little different.
But at some point (round Colonist is working) chances have become so high, that it is basically certain that he will become Specialist in the next few rounds.

Trust me on this:
I really put a lot of thought into that feature. :)

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Almost all of my features are somehow influenced by randoms which have many other factors influencing them.
(Factors influencing random base, growing chances, thresholds, min and max values, ....)

This is simply because this generates a much more interesting and realistic feeling than deterministic approaches.

If you always know exactly when something will happen, this is extremely boring !

I simply refuse to code boring deterministic approaches if I can do much more interesting and realistic feeling features !
(Although the math / formulas behind might be harder to understand for people not familiar with randoms.)
 
I was hoping others was concerned with this learn by doing too. I dont like it when it is random to be honest. It is a education system and should be solved the same way rest of education system is done i think.

Criminals. We have to be careful here because we need to make sure it is actually possible to use criminals for something otherwise people would just kill them of by disbanding them. I agree it would be strange for criminals to be good missionary. But I dont think it is a good option for them either since I beleave the chance of making a mission as a criminal is low? Atleast it fails alot for me.
 
It is a education system and should be solved the same way rest of education system is done i think.

Here I fully disagree. :)
It is not like the normal education system.

And again, it is not "simply random", there are formulas with growing chances behind.

Seriously "LbD" is one of my 3 absolute favourite featues.
I really ask kindly not to change the basic functionality of that feature. ;)
 
Ok. ;)

Just dont make it unrealistic with 500 turns or something like that. :) If that is the case then I dont see the point in even having units like that in the game.
 
It is not like the normal education system.

And again, it is not "simply random", there are formulas with growing chances behind.

Unfortunately, you are right when told "It is not like the normal education system".

Here my observations. I player 4 test games (TAC 2.02d+Iso), all of them were rather long in time and what I found?

During 4 games I had only ONE successful education! My colonist became Fisherman after about 50 turns. In other 3 games I had NOONE successfull education at all! One of games I continue only with one reason. I was going to see a transition of my colonists to professional. One of them worked as Farmer, another as a Fisherman; both practically from the beginning and of course, without any breaks. I run this game more 60 game's years and NOTHING happens! After a number of turns I stopped this game.

Let's calculate 60 years means that only grandchildren of my colonists probably could be professionals Farmer or Fisherman, if they will be lucky, of course.

Gomer_Pyle told about "500 turns or something like that", thus, I probably finished to early my tests. However, believe me this is not funny. I see no reasons to educate my colonists in my colony at such conditions. Much easier and faster just to send a colonist in a native village even on opposite side of the map and to get professional unit after some number of turns.

Now we can educate our colonist in native vilages, in our schools. It should be some advantages for home education through LbD system, but where they are? These advantages should be absolutely clear for usual players who will play "R&R" mod. Not only for developers.

Seriously "LbD" is one of my 3 absolute favourite featues.
I really ask kindly not to change the basic functionality of that feature. ;)

Probably "not to change the basic functionality of that feature" but a little bit improve it.

At the moment you have "random based with growing chances". Great, let's use this idea as a basis. However, let's add a limit ot turns where this feature will work "randomly with growing chances". Of course, in case of education. For instance, 20 game's turns. During these 20 turns we have the same situation as now: our colonist can be educated or can escape from education. However, after 20 turns should be 100% garantie that the education process will finish. Or our colonist became a professional or he escaped.

The education process could not continue forever. Extremely long education process, as you mentioned above, is much more "boring and not realistic" compare to "deterministic approaches".
 
Guys, what you are talking about is XML-Balancing of the feature. ;)

I totally not agree with the balancing of TAC 2.02d for this and other features.

We can simply change the balancing and not the implementation !
(GlobalDefinesAlt.xml)

Getting Expert (LbD) much too low chances in TAC.
Escaping (LbD) much too high chances in TAC.
Becoming Free Colonist (Lb) much too low chances in TAC.

As I said:

I did not change the balancing of TAC 2.02d because I wanted to get some feedback first. ;)
A little patience please. I cannot do 1000 things at the same time.
(I have just spent this morning fixing bugs.)

Not everything can be perfect at this stage, but we can improve step by step. :thumbsup:
 
@Team:

I have fixed a really serious bug in our mod.

Please get the newest version from SVN.
(Sources have been updated too, so please also get the new ones, if you are coding features.)
 
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