Test of Time scenario creation problem

[Catfish]

My first new question: How does one disable the animated terrain sprites, like we disable the animated unit sprites?

Did you read this?

Did you read this?

I've also written a FAQ for ToT in case you have any other, um, frequently asked questions.

The short of it is that you're supposed to go to Graphic Options in the Game menu (Ctrl+P) and uncheck the Animated Terrain box. However, this doesn't work 100% as it should. There's a bug where a frame from the oil resource will remain visible. To completely eliminate interference from animated terrain I created a dummy resource.spr file (attached). It's basically an empty sprite file where all the pointers in the header reference a flag for zero animations. Place this file in your scenario directory and you won't have any problems with animated terrain. You can even leave animated terrain turned on and it still won't appear because the file will override the one in the Original directory.

Secondly, I noticed a difference between MGE terrain rules and ToT terrain rules? What is it?

There are 2 differences. Firstly, there's an extra column for ToT. That's for impassable terrain: it's either yes or no. Note that air units will automatically override the impassable terrain flag. Secondly, ToT may have up to 4 terrain sections, one for each possible map. These are labelled @TERRAIN, @TERRAIN1, @TERRAIN2 and @TERRAIN3.

 

[Fairline]

Yes, yes, but how do you disable animated terrain?

I'd encountered the leftover oil resource frame in Techumseh's Roman Civil War - I hadn't realised it was a more general bug..

 

[Boco]

Did you read this?
Note that air units will automatically override the impassable terrain flag.

I think that's 99% true. Ship units will not attack units in impassable terrain unless the impassable-terrain-flag is on. IIRC (and the memory is dim), the same is true for air units.

 

[Catfish]

Yes, yes, but how do you disable animated terrain?

I'd encountered the leftover oil resource frame in Techumseh's Roman Civil War - I hadn't realised it was a more general bug..

Yeah, I routinely copy the dummy file to the directory of any new scenario I install.

Ship units will not attack units in impassable terrain unless the impassable-terrain-flag is on.

Ships don't have the auto-override, so that's how it should be. The attack is not treated like a coastal bombardment if that's what you mean. If you make ocean impassable you'll find that ships can't move or attack into adjacent ocean squares either.

IIRC (and the memory is dim), the same is true for air units.

Air units can attack units in impassable terrain without having the impassable terrain override flag enabled, but AFAIK those controlled by the AI don't.

 

[CurtSibling]

This attack theory about the impassable terrain is true;
It happened a lot with the AI in the Bitterfrost playtests.

.

 

[Boco]

Now that I examine it, I see it fits with EA2, too. I just got over-cautious. When I fixed the ships to bombard impassable squares, I also 'fixed' the aircraft to do the same. Now I get to take it away from one AI air unit to keep it from attacking Bedouins in the desert!

 

[Catfish]

Now I get to take it away from one AI air unit to keep it from attacking Bedouins in the desert!

It's always good when you can take advantage of some game engine strangeness, but as far as the automatic override is concerned, I'd much prefer it didn't exist at all.

That reminds me: I found that units cannot spawn on impassable terrain via CreateUnit events unless they have the impassable terrain override flag enabled. That goes for air units, too. I took advantage of this in WotR where I used a ChangeTerrain event to kill off any residual Delayed CreateUnit events – specifically to stop any Winged Nazgul spawning in Barad-dur after the Ring has been destroyed.

 

[Boco]

Yeah, the Nazgul's refusal to attack impassable squares would affect my tactics as a player. That must have been something extra you've had to design around.

Nice trick with Barad Dur.

 

[Catfish]

Yeah, the Nazgul's refusal to attack impassable squares would affect my tactics as a player. That must have been something extra you've had to design around.

This aspect of the AI's behaviour provides some advantage to the player, but it's not overwhelming; mainly because they themselves don't have a vast supply of units capable of traversing impassable terrain over the entire map - just a handul of Eagles. Eagles are not as effective in the southern part of the map (where the Winged Nazgul spend most of their time) as there's only one airport in the game (Rhosgobel) and no local airbases. Eagles have zero range without the helicopter override flag (they get tired), so you can't sit them in the mountains (impassable) forever.