New project: The Deployement Machine

[yaroslav]

Hi!

First of all, as some of you already know, I firmly believe that CivDip is finished as a all-PBEM-stuff utility. I'll corect any bug and I'll provide technical support in the future, but I don't believe there is still too much to add.

So I've come with an idea about other utilty. I know, I know, I'm only making utilities, but as I'm a medrioce programmaner and a very ban scen desing is the only thing I can done to contribute to the community.

I'm thinking about an utility to allow you to deploy your troops inside your country at the beginning of the scen. Of couse I'll allow scen designers to limit the way it can be done...

I'm still thinking about the details

What do you think? Any idea or suggestion?

[SCDARS]

It sounds fine.
The first "easy" way to limit deployment (I can think of) would be to divide the map in zones and limit unit placement for each zone. Limiting deployment to cities or excluding certain terrain types could be accomplished by such a rule.

I think it could also be handy to be able to move cities (incluing odd/even locations). A command line tool would be sufficent for this at first.

[Elok]

I'd rather have a GUI tech tree editor, but for tactically intensive scenarios I guess it would add a lot to gameplay. Are you going to define "country" ITO the area for a certain distance around your cities, or only inside your cities themselves? Or something variable?

[GoPostal]

That would be ideal for my scenario.

[Justinianum]

Re: New project: The Deployement Machine

Originally posted by yaroslav

I'm thinking about an utility to allow you to deploy your troops inside your country at the beginning of the scen. Of couse I'll allow scen designers to limit the way it can be done...

One of my wildest dream had always been an utility that allow to import units from a scenario to another: it would be great for creating multiple-scenarios campaigns.

[yaroslav]

Well, guys, thanks a lot for your feedback. I want to cotribute with a good utility to the comunity, so if you prefer to have a graphical editor of the tech tree, I'll do it instead of the Deploy Machine (in fact, it's a lot easier to do the graphical editor than the Deploy Machine).
----
Elok:

I'm still thinking about it. It'll probably defined by the scen designer, and could be a list of cities (or distances to cities), squares or both.

[yaroslav]

Justiniam: tell me about it. What do you exactly want? Because what you're asking for it's not very difficult.

[Varwnos]

It would be cool to be able to have barbarians as different nations, i.e. barbarians fighting each other (the player could just have special units for each of their factions). i guess that a utility that allows more than 7 civs is out of the question? well it cant be that hard, since civnet for example has that, but is it against copyright or anything? still imagine civ2 with 10 or more different nations!
also one could exploit a bug in civ2, if you have an enemy unit appear in a city then the armies of the cityciv attack their own units, thinking that the city is foreign, and the enemy armies do not capture it, thinking that it is their own. i (somewhat, well not exactly, i am mostly making this up heh) used this in my scen to demonstrate the civil war between lombards and other latins in the latin empire of constantinople (yeah, thats just it!)
infact you can exploit that bug if you just build a utility that changes the colour of the unit's shield each time such a "civil war" happens, and then easily name it civil war, with a generic text. Although i am not sure if there is a technical issue with having a different colour than the used 7 + 1 (barbarian). does this sound workable to you Yaroslav?

[yaroslav]

Originally posted by varwnos
It would be cool to be able to have barbarians as different nations, i.e. barbarians fighting each other (the player could just have special units for each of their factions). i guess that a utility that allows more than 7 civs is out of the question? well it cant be that hard, since civnet for example has that, but is it against copyright or anything? still imagine civ2 with 10 or more different nations!

Yes, 7 civs will mean a complete hack of civ2.exe, who is VERY difficult (I dare to say near impossible) unless the source code of Civ2 is given (a thing that happend with CTP2 but doesn't seem very likely with Civ2).

Although I can also dream about a civ2 with more than 7 barbarians, it's out of question, regretabily.

also one could exploit a bug in civ2, if you have an enemy unit appear in a city then the armies of the cityciv attack their own units, thinking that the city is foreign, and the enemy armies do not capture it, thinking that it is their own. i (somewhat, well not exactly, i am mostly making this up heh) used this in my scen to demonstrate the civil war between lombards and other latins in the latin empire of constantinople (yeah, thats just it!)

nice exploit

infact you can exploit that bug if you just build a utility that changes the colour of the unit's shield each time such a "civil war" happens, and then easily name it civil war, with a generic text. Although i am not sure if there is a technical issue with having a different colour than the used 7 + 1 (barbarian). does this sound workable to you Yaroslav?

Regrettabily, the game doesn't allow to have unit with different colours than the civ, unless these colours are part of the units.bmp, I think. About creating units...

... well, the problem of that approach is that it implies a modification of the game WHILE IT'S RUNNING, a thing that can be made*, but that I don't think it's fair.

Why? Because I can write an utility that will create units (I think that I can, although I'm not entirely sure about it) while the game is running, it will only work in PC, and not in MACs.

In fact, that idea of not betraying MAC-users if what is stopping me of making an utiltity that extends the EVENT language to include more space for events and more powerful events.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by yaroslav

Why? Because I can write an utility that will create units (I think that I can, although I'm not entirely sure about it) while the game is running, it will only work in PC, and not in MACs.

In fact, that idea of not betraying MAC-users if what is stopping me of making an utiltity that extends the EVENT language to include more space for events and more powerful events.

Yaroslav, if you do that, you do realize that the title of God-Emperor will be bestowed upon you? Can you handle the responsibility?

[Boco]

so if you prefer to have a graphical editor of the tech tree

This would be useful! If you decide on this one, maybe you could post a mock up to show what you have in mind.

[POTUS]

What if the game was saved, the editor was run, and then you reloaded the game?

[curtsibling]

A tech tree maker would be stunning, a really useful utility that the whole community could use!

Of course the deployment system sounds awesome too!

I hope Yaroslav can do both!

[curtsibling]

Here's my idea for a tech tree designer...

Obviously I have no clue as to the actual hex part, that is where the hex genius, yaroslav comes in!

There would be 'next tech' and 'save' buttons on there too...Just imagine them...

[Varwnos]

hm, sometimes one misses the simplest ideas! you are right yaroslav, one can just have a unit with a shield graphic that has a different colour than the civ it is used by, and the other civs, and just use that for civil war events

what is really needed as a utility-powered option for events is the option to create randomturn units not in specific locations, but in squares in x distance of the existing cities of the nation they are given to! since now you can have units appear randomly, but if you have conquered the city they appear near to it pretty much ruins the effect

btw have a look at my scen

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=110047