ant dev thread/beta release

[biru biru]

Alright, I'm most of the way through my first thorough play test. I've added 3 wonders that were accidentally set to no-no and given them via carpenter-genome, weaver-genome, and leaf-genome to those three species respectively, to counter-balance the advantage the other species have when their special ants appear with the discovery of exotic ants.

couple probs though! Harvesters went out early, and were replaced by the Persians. I like that they came back, but not that they are named the Persians. I have had strange things happen in the past when I tried to change the names of the back-up civs in the games.text. Question; if I can't fix the other civs names, can I set the scenario to not re-start eliminated civs after the scenario is under construction? civ tweak, etc?

Also, tried to add some spacing in the civ pedia text between paragraphs with the ^ mark, but nothing happened. strange I think.

Other small things, some missed sounds, names and labels in games.txt, labels.txt, etc being fixed as I find them.

Smilies cities in the non-units thread are making my head spin with improbable possibles. Will definitley take another look at terrain and cities (maybe a 2-square fantasy nest?) before final version.

Anyway, I back to work...

[Harry Tuttle]

I think Hex-editing is the only way to turn off the "restart players" option. Ask Agricola for help on that.

I think the spacing requires two ^ marks "^^". I'll check when I get home.

As for "Smiley Structures", since you already use the roads for, well, roads, I suggest the following, which has been commonly used by Kobayashi and a few others, including myself...

...you could switch out the forest terrain tiles on your map with the jungle terrain tiles. Since you seem to have them spaced one tile at a time this should not get in the way of any graphical concerns.

Since the forest terrain tile uses the extra tiles from terrain2.gif when the tiles are placed next to eachother, you could use the terrain2 forest tiles for special tiles, like a candybar or a dead grasshopper.

These tiles could be high food yielding tiles or could be a place where "candy bar pieces" are generated by events. Kill a candybar piece and your ant kingdom gets cash.

[biru biru]

no negative effects to ^^, but the paragraphs are still running together. 3:59am here and slightly hammered. Still working though. . .

Thanks for the help!


Other people have hinted at human interaction, including Valmont suggensting trashcans. So far, I have limited human interaction to ending the scenario at 4000 B.C. with the advent of human agriculture. no reason except that humans seemed like a big bit to chew at the time. of course, human related events are very apealing. ...

[our_man]

Just played a few turns of this. Fantastic work on creating a realistic miscroscopic world! It reminds me of that evolution scenario that came with FW to a certain extent, only better.

I'd say this is ready for a full release; my only suggestion is that instead of having all those individual flags to prevent tribes from talking you can select ANYBODY and that will do for all of them.

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by biru biru
no negative effects to ^^, but the paragraphs are still running together. 3:59am here and slightly hammered. Still working though. . .

Thanks for the help!

Actually, now that I think of it. I don't think you can create paragraphs for the civ pedia. In fact, I think that ^^ only centers the text in the initial intro pop up box.

[biru biru]

Originally posted by our_man
It reminds me of that evolution scenario that came with FW


instead of having all those individual flags to prevent tribes from talking you can select ANYBODY and that will do for all of them.

Damn, thanks!

I would like to slim down the events language, but kept getting errors. Got a lot of probably uneccessary induvidual flags probably in the 'kill a unit' events

inspired back to work.

[biru biru]

Harry, re: smilie structures. Do you mean that forest tiles from terrain2, which appear 3-D in the game (when two forest squares are next to each other), can be used to make other 3-d objects; for examply candybars or big bugs?

I would like to have somed 3-d cities. The nests in the game right now were made with graphics from the original hills. These taller (wider) cities could add some depth to the "microscopic feel". Probably nothing extreme (ly difficult) like the screen shopts from the mafia scenario under construction)

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by biru biru
Harry, re: smilie structures. Do you mean that forest tiles from terrain2, which appear 3-D in the game (when two forest squares are next to each other), can be used to make other 3-d objects; for examply candybars or big bugs?

Yep, exactly that.

I would like to have somed 3-d cities. The nests in the game right now were made with graphics from the original hills. These taller (wider) cities could add some depth to the "microscopic feel". Probably nothing extreme (ly difficult) like the screen shopts from the mafia scenario under construction)

I think that's possible. The larger parts of the mound would be fashioned like the mountains Favoured Flight made for his Lord of the Rings scenarios and the same ones I used in Gold Gulch. City on top, mountain base below the city.

[biru biru]

Hey, guys; if you happened to have dowloaded this scenario, please don't delete it! I'm not even kidding, my computer won't boot and I think that I lost everything. again. Anway, it's safe here, but help me back it up? cheers!

[Harry Tuttle]

I've got a copy. I'll post it tonight.

[biru biru]

thanks, I'm at public computer labs. I will download, tune it up, and save this version to cd tonight. Anyway, the link here at apolyton seems ok, so i should be alright. Will have lost a couple weeks of tinkiering, but nothing major.

[biru biru]

OK, I'm about to burn the beta to cd. Many small things fixed, a couple of new probs discovered (my GAME.txt may have some probs...)

Previously working title page doesn't seem to work now. Anyone spot the problem? shares name with the scenario.

@SCENARIO
@width=550
@title=Antbeta5

^^Queen and Colony
^
Compete as one of seven ant species for domination of a native
river-basin ecosystem. Win by law of the jungle, Fight or Flight.
Eliminate rival species or be the first to complete a
mass-migration project to another region.
^
This scenario is tough to beat! Beware of spiders and other nasty
barbarian insects.
^
Special rules: Protect your First Queen at all costs! Losing her will
lead to the rapid extinction of your species. Likewise, destroying
an enemy First Queen will eliminate the species from the game.
^
As a gentle ladies rule queens, rather than workers, should be used to
found new nests. Of course their paradrop ability makes them better
colonizers anyway!
^
Lastly, flourish or perish. There are no negotiations.

@end -- this line must be here!

[Harry Tuttle]

Sorry, forgot to post this:

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=29398_57835_ANTsce.rar

[Harry Tuttle]

I don't see any problems with the title. It's the same as before. I think that your problem might be with the game.txt. Try moving the various text files out of your scenario directory one at a time to find out what the problem is.

[biru biru]

It must have had something to do with the computer I was using. When I got hope and loaded the game to my girlfriends computer, it worked again.

Also, Harry, thanks for the post. current version is saved to cd, now comfortably backed-up. Dark cloud to the siver lining, my computer might have a major hardware problem, so it may be a while before I can get back to work on it!