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darkonion · Jun 2, 2006

my ideas on how attacking should work:

1. units attack based on a formula because in SC i usually just have my men attack to an area... and let them go...

2. have units attack in full turn... make it so that they attack a single enemy for a full turn attacking as many times as their movement cost will allow them to...

3. units in a stack attack as if their were no other troops in their stack with them. i.e.- they just attack the unit best to attack, but without regards to whether they have allies in their group, based on this system of weights:

Spoiler Weights :

5. Defenders get the usual defence bonus for fortifying, but ranged units get a bonus on defence and a negative on attacking meanwhile close-combat units get a bonus on attacking and a negative on defence...

thats all i got... hope it helps...

oh yea... by the way... GREAT JOB GUYS!!!! i love the new graphics... and the ability to build buildings finally is WONDERFUL!!!! i cant imagine a great enough way to say congratulations... but oh-well... CONGRATS!!!! :goodjob:

Gerikes · Jun 2, 2006

darkonion said:
my ideas on how attacking should work:

1. units attack based on a formula because in SC i usually just have my men attack to an area... and let them go...

2. have units attack in full turn... make it so that they attack a single enemy for a full turn attacking as many times as their movement cost will allow them to...

3. units in a stack attack as if their were no other troops in their stack with them. i.e.- they just attack the unit best to attack, but without regards to whether they have allies in their group, based on this system of weights:

Spoiler Weights :

1. Type... Flying? Protoss(Sheilded)? Worker? Ranged? Close-Combat? Etc?
2. Movement points of opponent left for this turn... this is to allow for ur unit to attack the unit that will deal the least amount of damage...
3. Health/Sheilds/Armor... the unit able to be fastest killed...
4. Strength... the unit capeable to deal the least amount of damage...
5. Position/Traits... Fortified? Invisible? Enchanted? Etc?

5. Defenders get the usual defence bonus for fortifying, but ranged units get a bonus on defence and a negative on attacking meanwhile close-combat units get a bonus on attacking and a negative on defence...

thats all i got... hope it helps...

That's an interesting idea. Once again, I have to take my usual stance that not being allowed to select a particular unit would be greatly disadvantageous, but perhaps allowing for a system to let the units automatically attack based on some formula could work. I think both you and Killamike have giving me plenty of reasons to implement a "generic attack" utility.

One reason,however, for allowing units to have multiple attack moves as well as movement moves is to give a special strategic advantage/disadvantage to units with lower/higher cooldown times. By linking the attacks to the movement points, you would be giving a unit such as vulture a ton of attacks per turn, even though he only has an average cooldown time. Also, units that can get an upgrade to attack faster (the Zergling's Adrenal Glands or a marine /firebat using stim packs) can only get these advantages by upping their damage or upping their movement. While that's ok in the stim pack situation, upping a zergling movement points and damage per attack would be giving them more of an advantage then it should.

In the version that I'm (hopefully) releasing tonight, you'll see along with the "airstrike" that has been present, you can also use "airbomb" (obviously, these names will change before we release a final version

). Airbomb does the same thing, the difference being that all the units attacks are used up on the plot it's attacking. The should help get rid of the tedious "clicking five times to attack the same plot five times".

So how about this. Each unit has these modes of attack:

1.) One attack
2.) Full-turn attack
3.) Attack-until-destroyed Attack

By default, they select which style of attack to do (using hotkeys or buttons) and then click the plot. However, if they click the plot while holding down shift, then the "select an individual unit" appears, and that style of attack is aimed at that unit specifically.

The flowchart below does a better job explaining my idea. Note that "change to interface mode" means switching to show the cursor of your attack (similar to when you have selected a fighter or bomber in Civ4). The user has one of three possible attack styles, and one of two possible target-selection styles. It can be done so that by default, turn-attack is a right click (you don't need to use the hotkeys or select the "airstrike" button down below) as the default, and you can shift-right-click (or ctrl-right-click, since I think people coming from Civ4 might shift-right-click trying to look at the combat stats) and do your default attack but also be able to select the unit specifically if you want.

Killamike718 · Jun 2, 2006

That sounds great, but if by anychance we should try to find an interactive way of doing everything, it would be easier for the player, I nave nothing in mind but im jst seeing if anyone knows any good interactive ideas for selecting attack modes. Oh Gerikes, are we still going to do that Pie chooser? is it possible that we can make a Chooser in game? For some wierd reason, I would really like this feature. What would you need graphically from me?

Gerikes · Jun 2, 2006

Flapjacks up!

http://civ4-scmod.pbwiki.com/Files

Yeah, so I haven't really been updating the wiki, most of the time because when I eventually change something, later on I figure that there's a better way of doing it. So, until most things are set in stone, don't expect many changes. It does seem to be doing pretty well as a file storage facility, however

Anywho, here's the latest update.

Quick Changes:

1.) Bug fixes, including fixing crashes / misconstrued data on game save loads.

2.) "Air bomb" mode as well as "air strike". Air strike will only do one attack like normal, using air bomb the unit will waste all it's attacks on the unit until it's run out of attacks or the unit dies.

3.) Both air strike and air bomb work with group attacks.

4.) Disallowed units from entering plots with buildings on them (even friendly units, so that a person couldn't wall themselves in with buildings and use a supply depot as a "gate"). Units can still enter assimilators/extractors/refineries.

5.) Unit-buildings, when killed, will destroy the city as well.

6.) Fixed multiple cities have the same names, as well as how some help panes look

7.) The big change, added python scripts to determine advanced damage modifiers for units with special attacks. This includes concussive (or plasma), explosive, and splash damage modifiers. Note that this is not something I made up, these are actual modifiers that take place in Starcraft, for more stats on unit attacks and sizes visit the Starcraft Compendium Web Site).

Here is a brief overview with some examples:

Spoiler Attack Modifiers :

Here's the full changelog for this version:

Spoiler Changelog :

Gerikes · Jun 2, 2006

Killamike718 said:
That sounds great, but if by anychance we should try to find an interactive way of doing everything, it would be easier for the player, I nave nothing in mind but im jst seeing if anyone knows any good interactive ideas for selecting attack modes.

I'm not sure what you mean by "interactive". Like mouse gestures? haha, no thanks. Typically, I was thinking that all of them can be hotkeyed, as well as a button for each of the three styles, similar to how this release has a button for both air strike and air bomb. Those are the easiest to implement, and they offer both easy to learn (the buttons) and easy to be quick with (using hotkeys) modes of use.

Oh Gerikes, are we still going to do that Pie chooser? is it possible that we can make a Chooser in game? For some wierd reason, I would really like this feature. What would you need graphically from me?

The only thing we would need at minimum are the little 2D square picture that we will eventually make for each unit (such as the buttons you see when you want to train a unit, or the unit pictures in the selection group on the bottom of the screen). I was thinking of just taking those pictures and using them as the "pieces of pie."

Oh, and when I wrote "pop-up menu" in my diagram, I was insinuating the pie diagram.

Edit: Also, since I'm thinking about it anyway, anyone have any ideas on a weights system we'd like to use? I thank darkonion for putting in some input, and I'd like to hear others.

Basically, you're talking about a function that determines how much a unit would want to attack another. I'm using some math notation below, but if you're not good at math don't fret, I'll try to give what I'm thinking in sentence form as well.

1.) f = A + CA

f = final value, which will be compared against other units
A = How much damage attacking that unit will do. This makes sure that a unit that does 3 damage to one unit when it can be doing 9 damage to another unit in the same plot (due to modifiers) won't want to attack the same unit.
CA = Counterattack. That's how much damage that the unit in question can do to this unit. This would take into account not only the damage, but the total damage if the unit concentrated all it's attacks on it. So, if it's a marine that has 3 attacks at 6 damage, the value of CA would be 18 (so long as the marine would not have to move to attack this unit.

This means that a unit would want to attack another unit by combining how much it can hit it for to how much in danger it would be. By multiplying either A or CA by a constant (2, 3, etc.), we can make either factor be more important than the other.

Another one would be this:

2.) f = 1 / N

N = the number of attacks necessary to kill the unit. The less attacks needed to kill the unit, the larger (more attractive) f would become. This means that the unit will go after the weaker ones that can be killed more easily. It would target zerglings rather than ultralisks (unless the ultralisk is almost dead, and would be easier to kill than the zergling).

We could modify it further going:

3.) f = (1 / N) + CA

This is the same as before, only we've added to it whether or not we want to also check into the counterattack of the unit. Sure, we could go after easy to kill units, but if two units are equally easy to kill, this would tip the scales in favor of the unit that can do more damage.

So, using these as ideas of how I'm thinking, what factors could we put into it the weight system? Note that proximity of unit is not listed, since it's assumed the user picks a plot, and that all units are the same distance away. Here is my list:

1.) How much damage one attack to the unit will do (taking into account modifiers).
2.) How much damage the other unit can do back (either in one attack or in the next turn, also taking into account modifiers).
3.) How many attacks it would take to destroy the enemy unit.
4.) How much damage total will be done to the units in the plot (for units with splash attacks, they would not want to attack a unit with 1 HP left if they could use their full attack on a stronger unit and let the splash finnish off the weak, 1HP unit).
5.) Potential Damage. This is a toughy. A lurker, above-ground, cannot do ANY damage. However, if it's about to burrow, you might want to target it over a drone. Same with any spell-caster. High Templar can't do direct damage, but it CAN cast a very powerful storm. There are so many "potential" situations that it should deserve it's own subgroup.
6.) Disadvantageous Attacks. Attacking a worker you have parasited over a similar worker that you don't have parasited, or attacking a blinded overlrod over a non-blinded overlord.
7.) Detectors: If you have a bunch of cloaked wraiths, and they have a bunch of scouts and an observer, you might want to hit the observer rather than the scouts, because you might be able to keep your scouts from being detected after the observer is destroyed. This would be a very highly recognized strategy if there is only one form of detection available, but less-so if they have a ton of photon cannons or other detecting units.

While these don't have to be very great, as a simple function will do, the more time we spend on it now the less we'll have to spend worrying about AI, since the AI will probably use these very same factors in determining who to hit. The AI unit will work by finding not only the highest value for one plot, but also looking at every other plot and determining the highest value, then picking the plot and the unit to attack.

Killamike718 · Jun 4, 2006

WOW this sounds good! This basically Covers the foundation and more, When you get this done we might be able to play test! Im gonna start putting in other buildings and Is there anyway we can make the buildings as improvements bewcause improveimesnt are the only one that support animation, and until we figure out a way of allowing city buildings, there wont be any animations for buildings in use. If its possible, we can difinantally have buildings with animations as its reaserching techs or building units, but is it possible to make imporvements selectable? or even Useable?

Another thing i wanted to address was this cool dtuff i saw, Check these links out.
Depletion mod
Planets

For the second link, I have tons of ideas! We can have a world map for every planet we make like Char, Tarsonis, Aiur and so on, That way we can have planet selectable gameplay and tha will add Some really cool variety! We would have tons of mzerglings and Hydralisks attacking a planet and at the same time another planet would be under attack and so on. Can we possibly have this by any chance??? Ith would be cool.

Gerikes · Jun 5, 2006

Killamike718 said:
WOW this sounds good! This basically Covers the foundation and more, When you get this done we might be able to play test! Im gonna start putting in other buildings and Is there anyway we can make the buildings as improvements bewcause improveimesnt are the only one that support animation, and until we figure out a way of allowing city buildings, there wont be any animations for buildings in use. If its possible, we can definantally have buildings with animations as its reaserching techs or building units, but is it possible to make imporvements selectable? or even Useable?

Actually, you can take your pick as to how you want to use them. Right now, whenever there is a building on a plot, there is a city (with a building), an improvement, AND a unit on the plot that is individual to that Starcraft building. So, to make it the improvement, as long there is no (aka, "empty") building or unit art (currently there is no unit art, but for the building I'm sure that can't be that hard), it wouldn't be too hard to make them improvements instead. I'll see what I can do, but for now just pretend like animation is working and we'll figure something out later.

As for making improvements selectable, you wouldn't need to. As long as there is a city or unit on the plot (even if it is invisible to the user), you would be selecting the city or unit whenever you click on the improvement. The improvement animation style would have to be changed in response to any events that happen in the city or unit, which is probably just a matter of adding a few lines of python.

Killamike718 said:
Another thing i wanted to address was this cool dtuff i saw, Check these links out.
Depletion mod
Planets

For the second link, I have tons of ideas! We can have a world map for every planet we make like Char, Tarsonis, Aiur and so on, That way we can have planet selectable gameplay and tha will add Some really cool variety! We would have tons of mzerglings and Hydralisks attacking a planet and at the same time another planet would be under attack and so on. Can we possibly have this by any chance??? Ith would be cool.

For the first link, I'm glad someone else is doing it for Civ4, but I think that adding it when it's done to the current code base is something I could do more quickly if I put it in myself rather than trying to merge someone else's code. It's something I was planning on doing anyway, but just not now. It's not too tough a change for this mod, but for Civ4 it would affect a lot of other things that Starcraft wouldn't need to worry about.

As for the second one, it sounds like the sub-map idea being thrown around as in this thread. It's a pretty large project, and I'd like to see how other people do things before I try to add it into a project like SC that has such a long way to go on it's own before it's even what the original plans are.

---

For the pie-menu, that's what I've been messing around with slightly today, and there's a quick pic of a prototype attached. The units and pictures of course are fake, but it gives you an idea of what I'm thinking. When you use the alternative attack mode like I described above (the ability to select an individual target rather than letting the weight system pick it for you), this menu would pop up, and left-clicking one would select that unit as the unit to be attacked. Hovering over any of these unit portraits would give you their vital stats, similar to hovering over any plot would for the units in that plot. Right-clicking would cancel the attack.

There is a single problem with this approach... while the 8-sided shape would work if we go with the dropship-size plot limits (which would mean each plot would only allow at most 8 small units), what about air units? In Starcraft, there is no real limit for air units, so this 8-sided idea wouldn't work unless we also limited air units. I was thinking that for any plot, have the shown picture, but with only two pictures (one for land units, one for air units). When the ground units are selected, a new sub-menu opens (back the the Sims analogy, when you selected one pie-menu, a second pie-menu would open, this time surrounding the pie-slice that you just picked).

This still would leave, however, the more-than-eight-air-units. While it is possible to make the pictures smaller and put more of them in there, you could imagine those BGH no rush 20 minute matches where two friendly players have 18-some carriers each in the same spot attacking anything in sight.

To solve this, I would do the following:

Show only the first eight units that are there (perhaps the first window will always show the ground units, and only ground units, just to make things more clean). To advance to the next "window" of eight units, you can select the middle button, which would have some icon that would represent turning a page, like this.

There might also be ways to go up and down using the page up/page down or the scroll wheel. However, the visuals need to be determined first.

Killamike718 · Jun 5, 2006

Gerikes said:
Actually, you can take your pick as to how you want to use them. Right now, whenever there is a building on a plot, there is a city (with a building), an improvement, AND a unit on the plot that is individual to that Starcraft building. So, to make it the improvement, as long there is no (aka, "empty") building or unit art (currently there is no unit art, but for the building I'm sure that can't be that hard), it wouldn't be too hard to make them improvements instead. I'll see what I can do, but for now just pretend like animation is working and we'll figure something out later.

As for making improvements selectable, you wouldn't need to. As long as there is a city or unit on the plot (even if it is invisible to the user), you would be selecting the city or unit whenever you click on the improvement. The improvement animation style would have to be changed in response to any events that happen in the city or unit, which is probably just a matter of adding a few lines of python.

Then it sounds Set! Ill create the Buildings as improvements but first ill export them as buildings, and then ill play around with animation and see if Non skeletal animations would work on exporting into 3DS Max.

Gerikes said:
For the first link, I'm glad someone else is doing it for Civ4, but I think that adding it when it's done to the current code base is something I could do more quickly if I put it in myself rather than trying to merge someone else's code. It's something I was planning on doing anyway, but just not now. It's not too tough a change for this mod, but for Civ4 it would affect a lot of other things that Starcraft wouldn't need to worry about.

As for the second one, it sounds like the sub-map idea being thrown around as in this thread. It's a pretty large project, and I'd like to see how other people do things before I try to add it into a project like SC that has such a long way to go on it's own before it's even what the original plans are.

Ok soo well leave it for another day

killamike said:
For the pie-menu, that's what I've been messing around with slightly today, and there's a quick pic of a prototype attached. The units and pictures of course are fake, but it gives you an idea of what I'm thinking. When you use the alternative attack mode like I described above (the ability to select an individual target rather than letting the weight system pick it for you), this menu would pop up, and left-clicking one would select that unit as the unit to be attacked. Hovering over any of these unit portraits would give you their vital stats, similar to hovering over any plot would for the units in that plot. Right-clicking would cancel the attack.

There is a single problem with this approach... while the 8-sided shape would work if we go with the dropship-size plot limits (which would mean each plot would only allow at most 8 small units), what about air units? In Starcraft, there is no real limit for air units, so this 8-sided idea wouldn't work unless we also limited air units. I was thinking that for any plot, have the shown picture, but with only two pictures (one for land units, one for air units). When the ground units are selected, a new sub-menu opens (back the the Sims analogy, when you selected one pie-menu, a second pie-menu would open, this time surrounding the pie-slice that you just picked).

This still would leave, however, the more-than-eight-air-units. While it is possible to make the pictures smaller and put more of them in there, you could imagine those BGH no rush 20 minute matches where two friendly players have 18-some carriers each in the same spot attacking anything in sight.

To solve this, I would do the following:

Show only the first eight units that are there (perhaps the first window will always show the ground units, and only ground units, just to make things more clean). To advance to the next "window" of eight units, you can select the middle button, which would have some icon that would represent turning a page, like this.

There might also be ways to go up and down using the page up/page down or the scroll wheel. However, the visuals need to be determined first.

Like you said, we should have a Sub menu and that would probably solve the problem, if it can be done. Im geting some refreshing icons for the new prototype and currently transforming them to .DDS. A little reccomendation with the look, Can we have the unit picture instead of a Square to be a Circle. Like when theres a problem or new something, there is a circle with the picture of the event or enemy attacking, can we have that same circle look? To tell the Truth im very Impressed of how this turned out!! it looks pretty coool

. About the planes we might have to give them a limit unless theres a better way of doing it? But we might have to limit them to 8 and if this sub catigories thing works, than we can get some nice interactive thiing going!!

Edit: How are we going to have Building improvements work??? Like the nuclear silo and Factory shop. all that stuff.

Gerikes · Jun 5, 2006

Killamike718 said:
About the planes we might have to give them a limit unless theres a better way of doing it? But we might have to limit them to 8 and if this sub catigories thing works, than we can get some nice interactive thiing going!!

I just don't want to change gameplay so that the graphics look good. I'm gonna' plan on finding a way to allow unlimited air units, and if we decide for other reasons that having too many air units in one plot is annoying, we can always at least just use the page-scrolling function to go between the ground and air units.

Killamike718 said:
Edit: How are we going to have Building improvements work??? Like the nuclear silo and Factory shop. all that stuff.

I'm not sure about the Terran add-on,but they're not completely out of my head. They'll probably work similar to when a worker builds a building. The difference being it's the city that has the option. The city will check for minerals and gas, then check that the plot directly to it's right is empty (or, we can allow for units to be automatically moved out of the plot). Then, both the building and the add-on plot will be building that add-on, so that neither can be used in the mean-time. That's the general plan anyway, I'm sure at some point it will change when I take a look at what will have to be done, but I don't think it will be much of a problem.

I think my big worry now is how much of a problem it would be to get buildings that look as if they're being constructed. There would probably only need to be one model for the Zerg buildings, and the bigger zerg buildings can just be scaled larger. Same with Protoss buildings, but all the warp rifts can be exactly the same. Typically, Terran buildings under construction look slightly different when being built, but I think I could settle for one building model that changes sizes depending on the size of the size of the building being built (a larger one for a factory than a supply depot, for example). Perhaps a second model for add-ons.

Edit: I'm not sure if you're talking about a circular look or a round-edge look. The rounded-edge look can be done, now that you reminded me, and quite easily. I'm not sure about an exact circle though.

Killamike718 · Jun 5, 2006

Gerikes said:
I just don't want to change gameplay so that the graphics look good. I'm gonna' plan on finding a way to allow unlimited air units, and if we decide for other reasons that having too many air units in one plot is annoying, we can always at least just use the page-scrolling function to go between the ground and air units.

I'm not sure about the Terran add-on,but they're not completely out of my head. They'll probably work similar to when a worker builds a building. The difference being it's the city that has the option. The city will check for minerals and gas, then check that the plot directly to it's right is empty (or, we can allow for units to be automatically moved out of the plot). Then, both the building and the add-on plot will be building that add-on, so that neither can be used in the mean-time. That's the general plan anyway, I'm sure at some point it will change when I take a look at what will have to be done, but I don't think it will be much of a problem.

I think my big worry now is how much of a problem it would be to get buildings that look as if they're being constructed. There would probably only need to be one model for the Zerg buildings, and the bigger zerg buildings can just be scaled larger. Same with Protoss buildings, but all the warp rifts can be exactly the same. Typically, Terran buildings under construction look slightly different when being built, but I think I could settle for one building model that changes sizes depending on the size of the size of the building being built (a larger one for a factory than a supply depot, for example). Perhaps a second model for add-ons.

Well Animation for building Buildings(sounds wierd) is also a good advantage of haveing them as improvements because they have building animations for their building process. The animations is all on me and ill try to get the feel for everything and find out how the building of imporvements works Graphically.

On an Exicteing Note we have some file updates. Remember those ugly icons from the original Civ game, Well we have cool starcraft ones now, heres the attachment and its in .DDS format soo just have it in the XML and your set. Its not everything in starcraft, but its roughly 50% of everyhing. I cant believe its soo small but it loooks GREAT. Try it out.

Gerikes · Jun 5, 2006

Killamike718 said:
Well Animation for building Buildings(sounds wierd) is also a good advantage of haveing them as improvements because they have building animations for their building process. The animations is all on me and ill try to get the feel for everything and find out how the building of imporvements works Graphically.

On an Exicteing Note we have some file updates. Remember those ugly icons from the original Civ game, Well we have cool starcraft ones now, heres the attachment and its in .DDS format soo just have it in the XML and your set. Its not everything in starcraft, but its roughly 50% of everyhing. I cant believe its soo small but it loooks GREAT. Try it out.

They look good. The only problem is that I think along with the individual icons, they need to all be put on the atlas. I'm not sure if this has to be done, but I know that whenever I've wanted to change unit icons before I had to change the xml file to look at the atlas file which is typically in the same directory as the other files.

Gerikes · Jun 7, 2006

Just a little update.

The unit chooser is coming along. It's basically all implemented, I'm just gonna' tweak it a bit more so that hp / shield / magic bars are shown, and perhaps sort so that land units are always on the first page.

In the mean time, I have my doubts over if the screen will work in a multiplayer setting, so I'm hoping I could get a volunteer to help me try it out. Since this would be the first time I try any sort of multiplayer (besides hot-seat tests I've done), it may be something that has tons of complications to actually getting a game started, so I'd prefer being able to talk over an IM client like AIM or even in an irc room.

I was planning on trying to put Civ4 on another computer in my house, but I don't think any of the other computers would be able to handle it (one's got good specs, but no Video Accel, the other the reverse, but I don't feel like mixing and matching with the family puter

). So, hopefully I could get someone else to mess around with how it's going for a couple of hours in the next day or so. I guess you don't have to be part of SC project, although familiarity with what has been done so far would help.

Edit: I was able to get two computers up in my room, so I'm able to test just enough to know that I've got major sync issues with the screen. Back to the drawing board I guess. Probably not gonna' need testers for awhile after all, not sure how long.

P.S. Congrats on 10,000 views!

Edit 2: A couple of compiles, quick hacks, doc lookups, all-night fun and thanking my lucky stars I don't have anything to do tomorrow (correction: today), the attacks sync up when using the unit chooser, at least in turn-mode.

This is where I would say, "How should we go about this problem", but I realize it's tough to explain without the files, so fear not, they will soon be out.

Gerikes · Jun 8, 2006

As promised...

Pretty simple changelog here. Basically, just added the unit chooser pop-up, and got it to work for as much multiplayer as I could without changing the gameplay. That means that it will work for SP and any turn-based multiplayer, but simultaneuous play can have strange results. I don't think there would be any crashes, so lemme know if there are!

Files here

Spoiler Changelog :

'cuz I felt like it, I made a video showing off the goods:

http://civ4-scmod.pbwiki.com/f/UnitChooserDemo.avi

The battle looks like this:

2 Zealots, 1 Dragoon, 1 Reaver vs. 8 Zergling, 4 Hydralisks and 1 Ultralisk.

Unfortunately for the Zerg player, they made the mistake of putting all their eggs in one basket.

The protoss player uses the dragoon's turn-attack mode to attack one hydralisk, reducing it to 50 hitpoints. Then, it moves the two zealots closer, does a single attack with both zealots on one hydralisk, then repeats this on another hydralisk, reducing each to 48. Finally, it moves the zealots away. The reaver attacks the final hydralisk. The reaver does 100 damage, killing the final hydralisk. It also does 50 splash damage to all units in the same plot, meaning it will kill all the zergling (who all have only their max 35 hit points) and remaining hydralisks (since they were all reduced to 50 or less hit points prior to the Reaver attack). All that is left is the ultralisk, which still has 350 hit points, but should be killed in a few turns.

Some attack animations and unit icon changes would make this movie a bit more interesting, but hey, take what you can get!

Killamike718 · Jun 8, 2006

WOW nice update, ill start testing as soon as i fix my Playing Comp!! Looks awsome but the video doesnt work, It tells me i need a codec?? anyway ill try to fix my comp as soon as possible, Want to take this for a spin. I have the Day off today, soo I might get some work done on s0ome buildings, and I didnt understand the problem with the .DDS Icons, could you explain it to me again?

Gerikes · Jun 8, 2006

Killamike718 said:
WOW nice update, ill start testing as soon as i fix my Playing Comp!! Looks awsome but the video doesnt work, It tells me i need a codec?? anyway ill try to fix my comp as soon as possible, Want to take this for a spin. I have the Day off today, soo I might get some work done on s0ome buildings, and I didnt understand the problem with the .DDS Icons, could you explain it to me again?

Hmm, I think it uses MPEG4 codec, but don't worry about it if you can't get it to run.

The problem with the icons are something that others have been having. Along with the button files people typically have, there is also an atlas file for most buttons (that has all of the buttons wrapped in one file). However, it seems people have been having trouble using a changed atlas file. The main problem being that the little city window that shows what's being built always has a "!" instead of the graphic.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=173334

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=156760

I've taken a look at these threads and will try out their solutions to see if they work.

Edit: Ok, I figured it out. In order to avoid the "!" from showing up in the city window, the mod must be in the C:\Program..\Firaxis\Sid Meiers...\Civ4 directory, not the Custom directory in My Documents. Not terribly too bad, I'll just have to make a big notice in the readme.

I'll release the mod with the new unit pictures built in in a bit, it'll have the same version number.

Edit 2: New files are up!

Gerikes · Jun 13, 2006

Well, I've been happy enough with the progress to weigh in and call it v0.1. To celebrate the step up to the next semi-major version number, I've included two new maps, that are replicas of actual Starcraft maps (two of my favs):

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New Maps
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Challenger: A two-player map featuring unusual expansions. A little distance from the main base is a gas expansion, with the closest land-based mineral expansion being around a large turn that forces players to divert their forces early on to defend their expansion or to easily block reinforcements to their enemy's expansion by marching their forces straight up the middle. Each base has a near-by island expansion, and the map has two crucial middle islands that are up for grabs. Here's a pic of the original SC map: Challenger

Dire Straights: A four-player island map that was a ladder map. It was commonly seen as a FFA map, although non-ladder 2v2 games were also popular. With an expansion lying somewhat between each base, and two more larger expansions in the middle, expect to see the player who works their air and special units the best come out on top. Here's a pic of the original SC map: Dire Straight

If I can find a good way of getting screenshots of the actual Civ4 maps, I'll post them here. But for now, who cares, on to the files!

teh filez

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Easy-on-the-eyes version of the changes:
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1.) Obviously, new maps
2.) Implemented the final attack mode, "Destroy Mode". The unit will continuously attack the unit, moving towards them if needed, until the unit is dead. Helpful for attacking buildings that may take a few turns.
3.) Fixed a few bugs, including the Zerg Drone "arrow" picture not working.
4.) Made resource-collection a little bit more realistic and tweakable (see below).
5.) Made a few more help-text's look right, including showing the correct costs of buildings and build times for when a worker is about to build it.
6.) Implemented the shield and hit points bars in the plot list icons.

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New resource collection scheme
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The resource collection has changed a bit to try to get minerals to be mined a bit slower. First off, you can only put a max 3 units on a plot harvesting. Next, the farther away a resource is from the closest capital building (Command Center, Hatchery, Nexus), the less each harvester will harvest per turn.

The max minerals you can get per harvester per turn is 5, and that is any mineral resource that is one or two plots away (in a future update, I'm going to make it so you can't place your new capital buildings within only one plot of a resource spot). For every one plot futher away the resource lies, each harvester will be able to harvest at maximum one less. However, no matter how far away, a harvester will be able to harvest at least one mineral per turn.

For vespene gas, a similar idea applies, except you start with 8 units of vespene gas per harvester per turn, and will degrade by two units every plot farther away. At minimum, each harvester will be able to harvest 2 units of vespene gas per harvest.

It's a bit confusing, but I don't plan to make it final by any means. What I wanted was just some way to be able to easily change how fast minerals and gas can be harvested, since balancing that with how fast units can be produced and killed is tough. Since all of these tweaks are simple integer values that can be changed in the Civ4BonusInfos.xml files, it makes it very easy for anyone to experiment and possibly come up with a better scheme. If anyone's interested, I can give some brief documents about the tags added to the Civ4BonusInfos.xml.

For the player's sake, all you really need to know is this: the closer the resource is to your main building, the more you'll be able to harvest it per turn. So, load up the close ones with three each before you send workers to the far ones.

Spoiler Full Changelog :

But yeah, I'm happy with the results thus far, so I'd be willing to say we could start a new thread in the Modpacks forum, and hopefully start picking up some testers. Just tell me when you're going to do it so that I can make a second post, in case I want to keep something updated there to.

Edit: BTW, I was thinking that now that the unit-chooser is in place, it probably is a better idea for all Terran add-ons to be placed in the same tile as their other building. The only reason I wanted them in different tiles was to allow for enemy units to target the add-on (let's face it, you've stormed a guys base, ran past the defenses and had your whole army attack the nuke silo, didn't you?). However, if their on the same tile, the unit-chooser can be used to allow the user to select which one to attack. The question is how to get the add-on's graphic to appear on the same plot. In the case of the command center, for an add-on to work we would need to have the command center shrunk a ton, and probably slightly offset to leave room for it on the map. Ideas, comments?

Killamike718 · Jun 14, 2006

Nice job Gerikes!!! I sent you an email, check it out.

Gerikes · Jun 15, 2006

Couple of things:

First off, with Killa's blessing, I've created a thread in the Modpacks forum specifically for the Starcraft mod. Since I'm gonna' go with the fact that it shouldn't be called "Starcraft", I'm going with Civcraft: SC. Hope this is okay, I was pretty excited to put this up. Civcraft generally has been the "get away from using Starcraft" name, and since the Warcraft mod is also known as Civcraft, I was hoping to differentiate the two.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=174357

Second, I've re-released v0.1, with the only changes being all the references to "Starcraft" changed to "Civcraft: SC" or "CivcraftSC" (the second case being used if it was part of code or a python filename).

jptc · Jun 16, 2006

Gerikes · Jun 18, 2006

Mmmm, Zerglings.

This version was pretty much all about the zerg. I was tired of playing just as the terran and protoss. Lemme tell 'ya, it really adds to the game. I think once the race-specific ways to build buildings is up, things are really gonna' start falling into place.

le files

The rundown:

1.) Fixed some crash-causing bugs, and put some serious halts to the AI being able to do things that would cause those crashes.
2.) Zerg units now properly evolve (or "morph") from larva, rather than be built at the Hatchery itself.
3.) Larva is spawned every two turns at a hatchery, unless the hatchery is already at it's max of three turns.
4.) Morphs like Hydra->Lurker and Muta->Guardian or Muta->Devourer evolutions are supported.
5.) Right-clicking on a plot with enemies now does turn-attack plus moves towards the unit with it's remaining movement points. It's really just a hack, try to stick to the normal six attack buttons/hotkeys for now.

Spoiler Full Changelog :

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