The Desert War - Preview and development thread

[Exile]

Curt, the reason that Brit tanks appear in captured cities is because he's placed one in the settler slot, the first slot in the units file. Doing this means that there is a chance that, in every captured city, the game "defaults" to the settler slot.

The first time I saw this happen was in the MGE Mongols scenario, where there are not supposed to be any settlers, but occasionally they appear on a just-conquered city's build list. In AoC, it happened too, but was a desired result for various historical reasons.

In this scenario, not so much. Obviously.

Eivind, were you the guy who had "windshield wipers" as a tech in one of your earlier scens?

[Eivind IV]

Thanks for taking the time, Jerec. Another kick in the butt to finish it. Thanks!

1) This has already been taken care of in the version I have on my computer.
2) Thanks. I will try to balance out this.
3) I will have to do something with the improvement/wnoder situation. Thanks.
4) I will beef up Tobruk. This was not supposed to be as easy as you say.

Overall strategy:
Neat strategy. Please give me feedback once the scenario is duly released. Would be fun to see if I habe managed to make it more difficult (although I didn't manage to get to Alexandria myself... )

I have no good sollution for the Crusader probelm other than making it enourmously expensive, and hencly impossible to build. Please tell me if there are other ways.

And no, you're probably not biased at all. It's probably just a genuine mixture of aptness and charm that made this scenario...

Seriously, thanks!

@Exile:
Yes, that's me. I think you have brought this up eveytime I have released another scenario and everytime I have pointed our that windshield wipers were a revolutionising technology.

[Jerec]

About Tobruk...

If I remember correctly, Rommel nearly went crazy waiting for heavy artillery to pound Tobruk into submission. This means that he didn't have any troops strong enough at the time to do the job. (There was a particularly stubborn Australian infantry garrison.) The idea of German towed artillery, say 105 or 150 mm, would slide in perfectly here. Here's my humble () idea.

Make the ring around Tobruk invincible against Axis ordinary troops (including Rommel). This does NOT include the Gazala Line. Only the ring around Tobruk itself. Then, since it takes roughly 4 turns to get to Tobruk, enter an event file that brings in the Axis heavy artillery on the 4th or 5th turn. This would simulate the time it took Rommel to actually capture Tobruk. It would also force the player to bypass Tobruk and set up defenses at Sid Rezegh, which (I think ) Rommel also did.

To beef up the Tobruk defenses beside adding more bunkers and fortresses, you could create a fortified Australian unit to be in and immediately around Tobruk.

Also, is there any way to end the game if you kill the Rommel unit? When I played the scenario he got killed one time. I was expecting som funeral march music to play, and a message popping up and telling me the DAK was now doomed! (Of course I reloaded later on one of those auto saves.)

Anyway, I'm done telling you what to do now.

[Jerec]

I am all the more awed by the massive amount of time and work you have put into this scenario so far. SIX years?!!

On another note, could someone tell me how to put in a custom avatar? I wanted it to be an 88 mm, but I couldn't figure out how do it, so I settled for this WW I German general.

[Eivind IV]

Don't get too awe struck by the 6 years it has taken to get this far. It has gone forward in snail speed, I can assure you. During this time, I've always come up with other good scenario ideas, that has put this one on low priority.

I havn't decided to do with Rommel if he dies. I think nothing will happen. That's why you should be careful using him. I may figure out some sort of victory point system, and having Rommel alive could add points, or something like that.

Btw, that is not mere WW1 German general. I think that be Bismarck, my friend!

I think you need a certain amount of posts before you can add a custom avatar. Not quite sure though.

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by Exile
Curt, the reason that Brit tanks appear in captured cities is because he's placed one in the settler slot, the first slot in the units file. Doing this means that there is a chance that, in every captured city, the game "defaults" to the settler slot.

The first time I saw this happen was in the MGE Mongols scenario, where there are not supposed to be any settlers, but occasionally they appear on a just-conquered city's build list. In AoC, it happened too, but was a desired result for various historical reasons.

Good point!

I never thought of that possibility, and to be sure, I have seen it happen a lot too.

I usually do not use the settler/engineer slots for anything other than those roles.

...

[Jerec]

By the way, Eivind, do you have any idea when you're going to finish this (fantastic ) Rommel scenario?

[Jerec]

Permission to edit and perhaps rejuvenate as a ToT scen? This is my favorite military subject, after all.

[Eivind IV]

Tell you what, even better, I'll finish it off myself.

Only thing that stopped me the last time I visited it was the events. Apparantly there's an issue with the events, as whenever I try to open it, I get the old familiar error that arises when you've misspelled something in the events. So my question is, do you know how extended the TOT events are in comparison to MGE? I just merged three events into one, and I'm guessing that should be covered by TOT. In MGE, when you go over the allowed event space, the game shuts down automatically upon trying to start the scenario with the oversized events. Asuming that TOT works in the same way, I have to go through all the events and see if there's a misspelling.

Another thing, when it is opened, I expereince some wierdness with the terrain. Maybe I haven't turned off all those spr-things, but I get water terrain in the desert which moves around whenever I click my way across the board. It works fine in MGE. I've experienced this before when the dither graphic has been lacking, but here it doesn't, so I don't know what explains that. Does anyone else?

[fairline]

Did I send you my conversion Eivind?

[Jerec]

Originally posted by Eivind IV
Tell you what, even better, I'll finish it off myself.

Originally posted by Eivind IV
Only thing that stopped me the last time I visited it was the events. Apparantly there's an issue with the events, as whenever I try to open it, I get the old familiar error that arises when you've misspelled something in the events. So my question is, do you know how extended the TOT events are in comparison to MGE?

Very extended. In MGE, the max event file size is about 20 kb, in ToT the file can be about 85 kb.

I just merged three events into one, and I'm guessing that should be covered by TOT. In MGE, when you go over the allowed event space, the game shuts down automatically upon trying to start the scenario with the oversized events. Asuming that TOT works in the same way, I have to go through all the events and see if there's a misspelling.

In my experience, @DEBUG doesn't work for MGE. It does for ToT. It should be simple to find the bug.

Another thing, when it is opened, I expereince some wierdness with the terrain. Maybe I haven't turned off all those spr-things, but I get water terrain in the desert which moves around whenever I click my way across the board. It works fine in MGE. I've experienced this before when the dither graphic has been lacking, but here it doesn't, so I don't know what explains that. Does anyone else?

The best, and probably only way to 100% get rid of sprites is to take them all out of the ToT folder, including terrain sprites.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by Jerec
The best, and probably only way to 100% get rid of sprites is to take them all out of the ToT folder, including terrain sprites.

Now now, Catfish will get mad again... Do you do it on purpose?

Just kidding, but if you look around on the forum or on his site I'm sure you'll find a way to remove them efficiently!

[Jerec]

Alright, it's just the simplest way. Catfish most likely does have a better technique, but it would probably be too much hassle for me.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Eivind IV
I just merged three events into one, and I'm guessing that should be covered by TOT. In MGE, when you go over the allowed event space, the game shuts down automatically upon trying to start the scenario with the oversized events. Asuming that TOT works in the same way, I have to go through all the events and see if there's a misspelling.

Generally, if your events run over, the events just crap out and you receive an error message (@BADEVENTSFILE) from game.txt when the scenario loads. Use the @DEBUG line at the beginning of the events file (and remember to remove it before you release the scenario). Open up report.txt. If the events run over, at the end of the file you'll see the last event that the game attempted to read. If your events fit within the memory limit, it'll display the number of bytes you have spare (remaining heap space).

Originally posted by Eivind IV
Another thing, when it is opened, I expereince some wierdness with the terrain. Maybe I haven't turned off all those spr-things, but I get water terrain in the desert which moves around whenever I click my way across the board. It works fine in MGE. I've experienced this before when the dither graphic has been lacking, but here it doesn't, so I don't know what explains that. Does anyone else?

Did you convert the scenario yourself? Have you seen this guide? Did you copy the first column of terrain graphics in terrain1.bmp into columns 2 and 3? If you didn't, there's a fair chance that these graphical glitches are due to blank terrain tiles. ToT uses all 3 columns.

Originally posted by Jerec
Very extended. In MGE, the max event file size is about 20 kb, in ToT the file can be about 85 kb.

File size is not the same as events memory. ToT has 104 kB, MGE has around 34 kB.

Originally posted by Jerec
The best, and probably only way to 100% get rid of sprites is to take them all out of the ToT folder, including terrain sprites.

Originally posted by Jerec
Catfish most likely does have a better technique, but it would probably be too much hassle for me.

Most likely? I explained how to fix this in your own Caesar's Gallic War thread. It ain't rocket science.

Originally posted by Cyrion
Now now, Catfish will get mad again... Do you do it on purpose?

Ah, so people are just playing dumb when I end up explaining something for the 97th time. I'll ignore such trolls in future.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by Catfish
Ah, so people are just playing dumb when I end up explaining something for the 97th time. I'll ignore such trolls in future.

Please don't if the Trolls in question happen to be called Cyrion: I never play dumb, I just am...