Aldebaran 2: Smax

[#endgame]

Thanks.

[Lord Nword]

Originally posted by Kaboth
#endgame,

There is a great faction editor tutor at http://smac.2be.cc/index.html follow the links that you should check out it explains everything.

I copied this straight from the guide:

ROBUST, [social], Halves the intensity of minus effects in the named social area ("ROBUST, EFFIC" halves minus efficiency effects in social model)

IMMUNITY, [social], Immunity from minus effects in the named social area. ("IMMUNITY, ENERGY" prevents minus energy effects in social model)

IMPUNITY, [social], Impunity from minus effects from a particular social setting. "IMPUNITY, Police State" prevents all negitive effects from "Police State" setting.

Actually, that's straight from the alpha.txt and alphax.txt files

Also relevant is

PENALTY = Opposite of impunity: doubles the negative effects
of a particular setting.

[Lord Nword]

Well I went ahead and made an icon for Aldebaran....

I simply resized a selection from one of the pics in the AC folder.

The pic is of a (Progenitor) escape pod.

To change the icon for your Aldebaran/Alpha Centauri shortcut, simply click properties (of the shortcut), change icon, and find the file. Admittedly, I don't know how to change the icon for an executable, but it's doable.

[Lord Nword]

Admittedly, I wasn't truly satisfied with the original icon attempt that I made... I got rid of the blurry background and put a more contrasting blackish color there instead, similar to the way the regular SMAC icon looks. The ship is much more defined now.

[smacksim]

Hey, I'm back from vacation, and better for it. I'll be attempting to integrate Nword's text-cleanups and many other changes into 2.1.0 tomorrow. If it plays well, I'll then group it with ModMan and make the major release the next day. Great work team. Maybe we're near finished?

[#endgame]

We hope not. There's always things that can be improved after a mass release.

Might I suggest once you release 2.1.0:
Make the moddir 'Aldeb' or similar version independent name.
Make the .SM files also version independent.

To make the inevitable patches easy to make.

[smacksim]

Good thinking. Now if we can just get Lord Nword off the treadmill for a few hours, I can finish before he updates something (Now I know how it feels beta testers )

[Mart]

I completed 10 turns in First Succesion game. The mod is awesome. If AI plays this way coz of changes then it is really a good change. AI builds a lot of SP, that is great. I noticed some errors in F1 - datalinks descriptions. E.g sea trunkline has defense pod description, or other sea facility like that.
Another thing - I have gamma corection set on 1.26 yet the brown color for the Outlaw faction is a bit too dark, as I can describe it. I would prefer not to increase gamma. I do not see orders on troops very well.

[Lord Nword]

The thing with the Defense Pods description error has been fixed.

As for the colors and gamma stuff, you can change the colors in the faction picture file with the bases and stuff... It's one of those small boxes at the bottom of the pic... It's described better on the networknode.org

The only thing I haven't bothered to fix atm is the fact that Lord Shi Tan refers to itself as both male and female

[smacksim]

Hehe. That's an error for sure.

After I upload 2.1.0, we'll need to eventually write a full comparison of Aldebaran to Sma(c)x. Since the only core rules that have changed from the Aldebaran-1 project are the worldbuilder and which techs are cap-relievers, this should be fairly easy.

Secondly, It would be nice to make a picture-guide showing sea-production, pretty random maps, special units, early hovercraft, the advantages of attacking from elevation, and improved artillery, and anything else that makes the project especially great (a screenshot of ModMan would be good too).

Third, a graphical tech-tree would be nice, and has already been requested by one beta tester. I've looked into automating the creation of a graphical tech tree, with some progress, but nothing solid yet.

I'm off to catch up on PBEMs and then work on integrating all the changes into 2.1.0.

-S

[Lord Nword]

My current game is the Nauticon, with the Aquatic factored in... so that'll work for showing healthy production... Though the map looks rather interesting, because I built a huge sea wall to defend against enemy ships and probe teams...

Also, is there any way to make it so that the datalinks info of the techs show the "extra minerals from mining platforms" and "allows to build soil enricher"?

Because the problem I'm getting is that I'm not realizing those things until I get the technology themselves. Sorta hard to explain *shrug*

[smacksim]

Originally posted by Lord Nword
Also, is there any way to make it so that the datalinks info of the techs show the "extra minerals from mining platforms" and "allows to build soil enricher"?

Because the problem I'm getting is that I'm not realizing those things until I get the technology themselves. Sorta hard to explain *shrug*

I forgot about that! I'd noticed this too, even in Smax. We could easily add it to the blurbs that appear below or to the tech-shorts that appear in the tech-square itself. Unfortunately there is no way to add that info to the list of improvements in the standard way. That's a hard-coded process. I suggest we add it to the tech-shorts so at least it'll appear in the tech window itself...now, what were those techs again........

Edit: Adding the odd things (mining platform, restriction lifting, etc.) is simple. Adding all the terraforming would be pretty large. What do you think?

[smacksim]

Lord Nword, what did you change in the alpha.txt? I'm trying to merge it with my own updates....

Also, did you happen to track the changes that you made to various files? I did my own editing and it's nice to work with only 2 files rather than 3 in the copy/paste department. No big deal though if you didn't. I'm currently going over the faction files integration. Will get to the more lengthy files later this afternoon. I wish I had a 'compare files' command in my word processor

[Lord Nword]

We don't really need to add the teraforming stuff, because you can find how to get it from the datalinks. The bonuses you can't...

I don't believe I modified the alphax.txt file, just the alpha.txt file...

In the alpha.txt file you had a different name for the Core Fungal Facility, something like Mystery Food Facility.

It had been renamed to CFF in the alphax.txt file, but not the alpha.txt file.

I'll log my changes next time ... I depend on my brain usually

Was there something not working correctly?

Edit: The alphax.txt file that I use IS different but not much...
I added and adjusted to the map sizes, (8 choices plus custom).
I also added a reference in mine about what the ability tags are for the premade #units.

However, I have never posted an alphax.txt file here, so I have contaminated yours

[smacksim]

I've updated the blurbsx.txt to include all restriction and terraforming info. Note: this appears in the datalinks, not in the normal F2 screen for techs.

Integrated Nwords Faction and textfile improvements into my own improvements. Have done some playtesting.

----------------------------------------------------
Moving on to improving the load-up screen and faction group buttons. My current scheme for the faction groups:

Old: Was the original Smac 7. Now are the original Aldebaran 7

New: Were the Smax 7, now are the Smac 7

Custom: Was blank, now is:

COLONIST, COLONIST
COLONISTAI, COLONISTAI
GALACTICAI, GALACTICAI
PLANETLOVERAI, PLANETLOVERAI
SYNDICATAI, SYNDICATAI
CYBORG, CYBORG
PIRATES, PIRATES
DRONE, DRONE
ANGELS, ANGELS
FUNGBOY, FUNGBOY

which eliminates the Smax Aliens, adds the Colonists as an alternate to the Nauticon, and allows 4 different SAI, AND the best 5 Smax factions. Let me know what you think of this arrangement.

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Lord Nword,

Comments on the base-names: The expanded lists are great, but the names are chosen at random, so the alphabetizing doesn't seem to help keep them in order (I was hoping). Also, because the names seem to be randomly chosen I was getting primarily names from the extended/larger list in playtesting. If these are both true, perhaps we can eventually edit the base-name list to include more personalble names. One idea would be to take good names that we come up with in our Succession Games (Chaunk Cove comes to mind ). Additionally, the Universality are a faction of Ascetic meditators, and are vehemently anti-laboratory. So that name list suffix set will need a change in character.

Overall looks good.

I should have spoken up earlier r/e keeping a list of changes. The reason this would be nice is that I had already improved several of these files beyond the uploaded versions. Since neither of us keep a list of changes I've had to compare line-by-line in a few cases. I suppose I should be the one keeping a list of changes, since that will always work. So, nevermind!

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Geo, any luck finishing the new bases?

-Smack

Plans for today: Finish the Startup screen + buttons, test with ModMan, compile 2.1.0-Complete, upload 2.1.0, and upload 2.1.0 text-only.

Plans for tommorrow: Test/debug