Fantasy Game - Ancient Dragon Unit - How created ?

[Kestrel]

I have been reading the Events.txt in the Fantasy game and trying to understand it and I am curious about how the creation of one of the units comes about.

What creates the "Ancient Dragon" in the Fantasy game (Unit=59) ? The unit is only available to Barbarians.

There are events which trigger if an Ancient Dragon is killed, but if I am reading it right there is nothng that I can see in the "Fantasy" Events.txt that will create one.

Is this an "omission" or is there some other mechanism whereby these units get created that I am missing ?

[tobyr]

Kestrel, I ran a little test, starting 11 fantasy games. The ancient dragon was always in place before I could make any moves, and it started in 11 different places (events, I think allow using only ten different places), so I think it is a mechanism built directly into the game software.

For me, the interesting question is: how does the software know to create the special diagonal 4x4 dragon lair and the dragon? I presume it creates no such thing in the sci fi game, so SOMETHING in the fantasy game files must be triggering its creation.

-toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[John Possidente]

Mick would be the better one to answer this, but have you checked to see how many maps/scenario files there are in the fantasy game directory? One way to do this would be to have multiple scenario starting situations, which is a feature we introduced (iirc) in Fantastic Worlds.

[tobyr]

John,
You have delightfully confused the fantasy game with midgard, I think. The fantasy game has no maps nor scenario files. There is an undrgrnd.mp file in the parent civ2 directory, but there seems to be no need for it in the fantasy game.

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[Mick Uhl]

Because we couldn't guarantee the appearance of an ancient dragon in the randomly-placed treasure room at the start of the fantasy game via an event, we were forced to rely on a hard-code solution. Hence, there is no way to control that dragon.

[tobyr]

So Mick, how does the software know to create a dragon lair? As I asked:

For me, the interesting question is: how does the software know to create the special diagonal 4x4 dragon lair and the dragon? I presume it creates no such thing in the sci fi game, so SOMETHING in the fantasy game files must be triggering its creation.


Scenario designers have a lot of freedom to use this feature, since (I guess) all the code does is:
- create a lair for a specific unit.
- move the unit around, restricted to in its lair.
- does the code do anything else?


-- toby

[Mick Uhl]

The room and dragon are built as part of the random world construction at the start of a new game. Sorry, there is no way you can fiddle with it.

[tobyr]

Mick,

So Mick, how does the software know to WHETHER OR NOT to create a dragon lair?

Will the game build a lair in any secondary map that is type 2 (underground)? If I make a world with three underground secondary maps, will I get three lairs with dragons?

Tnx,
- toby

[William Keenan]

The dragon gets created in any new Fantasy game that is started with a randomly generated map.

[tobyr]

I must be unbelievably dense, my question seems to make no sense to anybody. I'm quite amused that I have a question that makes no sense to anyone else, but I'm giving in to my great desire to try to communicate. Here we go again...

I did some research, perhaps this will help to explain my question:

(A) If you change rules.txt so that all three secondary maps are type 2 (underground), you only get a dragon on map 2. (This might be becuase map 2 is hardwired into the code, or because the corresponding terrain types on maps 1 and 3 do not support the construction of the lair and a creature.) I only tried this once.

(B) if you change the fantasy map 2 to type 1 undersea (instead of 2 underground), you do not get a dragon (I tried this just once).

(C) At this point, the correct hypothesis seems obvious: when you create a game, if you click on "fantasy" to create a fantasy game, the game knows to create a dragon and its lair. To test this hypothesis, I saved the scifi game, and copied all the files from my fantasy directoy into the scifi directory. I then created a scifi game. (I tried this just once.)

I GOT A DRAGON LAIR ("cave of wonders") ON MAP2 , BUT NO CREATURE WAS IN THE LAIR.

Therefore the code is not simply triggering on the fact that you are trying to create a fantasy game. Unless, there is always a cave of wonders in the real sci fi game on map 2. I wouldn't know about that.

NOW: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@

Let me ask my question again, which I KNOW is of interest to modpack designers:

HOW DOES THE SOFTWARE KNOW WHETHER TO CREATE A DRAGON AND ITS LAIR?

Remember the saying, "If you build it they will come"?

WHAT must I "build" (in rules.txt, etc.), to get a lair and a dragon when the game is created?????


To put it another way, somewhere in the code is the following logic:

if (conditions) then
build lair and build creature_in_lair


WHAT ARE "conditions"? I'm curious.


To put it still another way, Mick Uhl said "room and dragon are built as part of the random world construction at the start of a new game. Sorry, there is no way you can fiddle with it." BUT that does not explain why some ToT worlds have dragons/lairs and some do not. SOMETHING fiddles with it...

Thanks for listening...
- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[Miner]

I know what you mean tobyr even if no-one else does. This is of interest to scenario designers hence me sticking my oar in.

I bet you it is hard coded so only Fantasy Games and Map2 gets the Lair.

[William Keenan]

To be frank ... I understood your question. What I did not say was that as a ToT fantasy scenario designer the question of what causes the dragon to appear is of no interest to me.[*] because the chance of me using a random map to create a scenario is close to nil.[*] if I did use a random map it would take two mouse clicks to be rid of the dragon anyway, so it is not a problem.[*] there are more perplexing questions in ToT scenario design that are not so easily dealt with. For example, what unit slots are dedicated to barbarian appearance on the different maps.

Basically my point is this, if Mick Uhl is going to take the out the time to answer a perplexing design question, I would much prefer it be a difficult problem like barbarian appearances then one I could easily solve with two mouse clicks.

[tobyr]

William,
You've got a very good point. I'll avoid trying to get Mick to spend time on trivia questions in the future.

I did not think the dragon issue was important to scenarios, but rather to modpacks that still worked with random world creation. It's too bad we can't have three maps with dragons...

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com