[SDK] Dale's Combat Mod!

[axisworks]

This mod makes me hot.

I say, good show, man.

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by Dale
Naval bombardment:


Platy:
What's the issue with aerial bombardment?

Dale

Can never elimante the last unit


thanks

sorry for the delay

short between the headset

[Dale]

Sorry for the delays guys. A real nasty bug has cropped up. I'll get Beta2 out soon though.

Dale

[Dale]

Beta 2.1 uploaded. See first post for details.

Dale

[Kinjiru]

Attack animations

Hmmm.... I don't seem to be getting any animations if I initiate an attack. Screen will zoom in, but there is no representation of the defender. So far this is only one-on-one combat, but I also used the worldbuilder to make two stack and the same thing happened.

If I am defending, the standard no-zoom combat shows as in vanilla civ. Again this is just one-on-one so far.

In the save file, you will see that there is a barb next to my archer. Go ahead and attack with the archer to verify.

[MattPilot]

5 stars!!

[Trenchgun]

This mod is exactly how I believed combat should have worked in Civ4 from the start.

For all the detail in it's city building, it's far too simplistic in it's combat.
I was expecting something at least similar to Panzer General in combat calculation.

[Harrier UK]

I know this mod change is still in early game testing - but can I be the Devil's Advocate here?!.

Does the AI actually build and group together a stack of upto10 different units, in a normal SP game? That is - does it create a multi-unit stack - or does it just have up to 10 individual units oin the same tile.??

If so how does that effect combat?

If there are say 6 seperate units on a tile and they are attacked are they attacked seperately or does your mod group them in a stack just for combat purposes?

Just interested - but I must say - I like the way it is going, so far.

[Addled Platypus]

so far so good, no crashes

also no battles yet.....must monger

[Dale]

Kinjiru:

There are some situations surrounding ranged units where the animations won't play. Don't worry, fixed it already.

Trenchgun:

I pushed to get this sort of combat in the release, but it didn't eventuate. Hence why I writing this.

Harrier:

No that's fine. Need some around here. To answer your question: ultimately, the code is there so the AI will do as you asked. However, the real test is everyone playing it to see the effects. The AI has always had the code to stack units, and from what I've seen, does so. Are they good stack combos though? Doubtful, only testing will tell. As for defenders, all defenders participate, even if seperate groups.

[Dale]

Okay guys, you've got a choice here:

1. I can upload Beta build 2.2 for you to test. This build fixes all current bugs as listed here and at CFC. However, the air side of the combat is broke so it would be disabled for the test. All ground and naval combat is working now. Also, the combat process has been filled in completely now so defenders and attackers both have bombard, ranged and melee phases (fixes the "invincible catapult" bug). I've been using this code for two days now, and haven't had one crash in about 50 battles, and the animations failed to run in just one battle. It appears sometimes the animation code (which is in the exe unfortunately and can't be fixed) ****s itself when too much is going on, and thus the animation doesn't run. I'm willing to accept one battle in 50 not having animations for the sake of having a clean plugin to the rest of the code.

OR:

2. Wait a few days till I can work on the air combat code. I won't be able to work on the code till the weekend now, so it'd be about a week till I can upload with fixed air combat code.

Your choice.

Dale

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Dale
Okay guys, you've got a choice here:

Personally, I'd say
2. Wait a few days till I can work on the air combat code.

I haven't even downloaded your mod once yet! But I am very eagerly awaiting it.
(Apologies for not in beta-testing mode these days)

Originally posted by Dale
... sometimes the animation code ... ****s itself when too much is going on, and thus the animation doesn't run.

So, if animation dept. gets overloaded then the animation doesn't play. Does that imply that seZereth's Regiments mod (at CFC) is incompatible with your Combat mod, or would you just be adopting some of its aspects?

[Dale]

So, if animation dept. gets overloaded then the animation doesn't play. Does that imply that seZereth's Regiments mod (at CFC) is incompatible with your Combat mod, or would you just be adopting some of its aspects?

No, not at all. It's to do with how the animations are called from the SDK.

The animations are called MISSIONS, and each mission will have a full animation sequence. EG: airstrike mission contains the entire dive-bombing, explosion and fly away sequence. In combat (in vanilla Civ4) a full one-on-one battle is a combat mission. The entire sequence from first strike to death/withdraw is the mission. It's when too many missions are called that the problem occurs. I've noticed a jump of up to 50 meg RAM usage during intense battles between stacks in my mod. This is when the animations **** themselves and fail.

Why? It's because of ranged units. Because in my mod ranged units stand back and lob arrows / arty shells / boulders / etc at the enemy stack. Each lob is a seperate combat update, which spawns a combat mission (animation) each time. With a large number of ranged units, you could have up to 50 of these combat missions called. Now you can see why the large RAM jump and why they just fail every once in a while.

The animations failing have absolutely no effect on the actual combat resolution. Combat resolution is actually processed before any combat mission is called, ranged or close-quarters.

So how does this affect the regiments mod? Not at all. Each "regiment" is still just one unit. Therefore in combat in that mod, it's still one-on-one, which means only one combat mission / animation sequence is called each combat update. That mod is not affected by this problem.

Clear as mud?

Dale

[Dale]

BTW, I am currently looking to include the regiments mod as an option in my mod.

[Dale]

If anyone wants to try Beta2.2 which has all bugfixes from Poly and CFC please download a new CvGameCoreDLL file from here: http://users.tpg.com.au/thesdale/civ4/dcmb22.zip

NOTE:
Air battles are disabled in stacked combat due to a bad bug I'm still working on. Though everything should be as it will end up.

Dale