[C4:AC] Unit Workshop

[mdbill]

I was thinking about how we would handle units. There are so many combinations. Seems like Power, Armor, reactor, and special abilities would fit into the Civ4 promotion system.

So a Speeder, for example, would be just one unit and then we'd promote it to have Chaos (8), etc. Question for the graphics people: Is this going to work for you? Changing the unit's appearance based on what promotions it has? I guess we have to make it work. There are simply too many combinations.

If that's the case, then maybe we're better off having things like infantry/speeder/hovertank as promotions as well.

This way we just need to define one military unit, a former, a crawler, a probe team, a colony pod, and a transport. Each of those for land & sea. Then air military, missile, and maybe planet buster.

I probably forgot something, but you get the idea

[PJayTycy]

I'm not too fond of the idea of using promotions for different weapons etc...

I'd rather use the promotions to represent the moral levels of our troops and leave them available for those who want to mod c4:ac to actually use promotions.

It's easy enough to add 2 properties to each unit (iWeapon, iAmor) that I don't see any benefit of using the promotions for that. It would practically be the same as your suggestion : one unit defined for each chassis/reactor configuration, which can then be tweaked in the unit workshop. The only thing we need to do is to store attack/defense/special abillities for each unit. It's really easy to store that as some extra properties, (and check them whenever combat is done) so we don't need to use the "promotions" as some kind of easy storage.


The big problem though, is changing the graphical representation of the units... I don't think there's any way around that than actually designing a unit for each possible chassis/weapon/armour/reactor combination.

[mdbill]

Thx for joining the discussion PJay,
Let me clarify. I agree with you that Morale changes fit nicely into Promotions, and I expect we will add them there. I'm not suggesting that we replace promotions with our special abilities/weapons/armor. I just want to use the "promotion system". To be moddable, these need to be in the XML. Promotions is the perfect place for special abilities for sure. I was thinking weapons/armor too. Imagine a modder wants to keep the 2 special ability limit, but wants to add free "heal while moving" to level 6 armor. Simlilar to when Firaxis added "8r" armor. Any promotion abilities can now be combined with power/armor levels.

It might be better to store weapon/armor in a new attribute like you said. We could define a table of each and have attached to each for modders (like units get). Naturally, I don't want to see every unit with a power of 1 which then has a +600% Missle Promotion or a +800% Chaos Promotion. This may be exactly how it is behind the scenes, but we wouldn't want to display it that way. So it won't look like a promotion even if we use the "system". If it becomes too awkward mixing promotions with weapons/armor, we'll have to separate them.

I'd like to hear also from a graphics person about what they'd like to see.

[GeoModder]

I'm no "graphics person", but over on CFC there are a few artists who managed to create separate weapons to attach to different units. And some have made models with specifically in mind that the weapons attached to them are interchangeable.

On the topic of using promotions for abilities in the C4:AC, there is a workshop-like modcomponent over on CFC that can pre-promote (and rename) units, thus in essence attach abilities to them. I have linked it to this forum here when it came out.

[Rubin]

Originally posted by GeoModder
[...] over on CFC there are a few artists who managed to create separate weapons to attach to different units. And some have made models with specifically in mind that the weapons attached to them are interchangeable.

I tried to locate those threads at CFC without any luck. GeoModder, can you provide links or more detailed information?

[GeoModder]

I'll do so once I find them again as well.

[GeoModder]

Okay, found the thread I was looking for:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165591

The creator is Rabbit, White. Basically he creates separate parts on (some of) his units which he assembles in the .nif viewer that came with the tools released by Firaxis.

[mdbill]

I'd like someone to understand what we are capable of in the assembling of units, so good find GeoModder.

I think this is the other link you referred to, the Unit Sandbox:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=162499

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by mdbill
I think this is the other link you referred to, the Unit Sandbox:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=162499

Yep, it was.

[PJayTycy]

The unit sandbox is +/- what we need (but better and expanded), BUT the units don't change their appearance.

The "assembling from parts" you linked is not very usefull for us. The author took some .nif's from the game, combined them to a new .nif and used that as unit model. No gamecode or anything changed.


This will be a tough nut to crack...

[MMC]

According to the thread on CFC, the part's assembly mod would be useful, as we'd just need to write the code to handle shifting options in and out dynamically, then combining that with the sandbox mod and tweaking the UI... it looks very promising.

We'd better get our modeller's working on chassis and modules.

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by PJayTycy
The "assembling from parts" you linked is not very usefull for us. The author took some .nif's from the game, combined them to a new .nif and used that as unit model. No gamecode or anything changed.

You're right, of course. The only thing this method shows is that it is possible to have a base "chassis" unit on which different weapons/armor can be "attached". Is it really necessary that during a game a weapon is attached to a chassis? Simply let a new weapon+chassis be buildable after disclosure of a tech, and for the workshop refer to a new complete model of a given chassis+weapon combo instead of the system used in SMAC. The result is the same, it only makes the mod bigger qua size.

[mdbill]

Not even counting Missles, transports, supply, probe and few others, there are 8 chassis, 16 Weapons, 14 armor. That's 1792 different units and we'd like to be able add more weapons, etc. , so we're well into the thousands. If you want the units to also change appearance for some special abilities...

If it really can't be done, we'll have to make sacrifices, like maybe having no visual representation for Armor level and/or special abilities. Or maybe we can just adjust some colors to show armor level? That's kinda what SMACX did, right?

[Senethro]

To implement any real solution, we're going to need a real modeller. I think it would be worth taking the time to develop units not found in Civ4 (probe team, native life) but to leave the actual Unit Workshop until after Social Engineering. Perhaps someone will have turned up by then.

[MMC]

Let's start wih the models that aren't found in the unit workshop... for example, native life, alien artifacts, and unity vehicles. Although the unity vehicles could be built out of parts for the purposes of game mechanics.