Stone Road project, help needed

[Tellius]

Hi,

Some time ago, I wanted to try and add a new type of road to Ages of Man, the Stone Road (or 'Heirbahn' as some may know it). I knew that the second road-type tileimp slot would have to be available again by the time railroads would be buildable, so I made Stone Road buildable only until the Middle Ages (which would nicely reflect the drop in technology in that time, so it all fitted nicely in the general AOM philosophy). This would also add yet another time pressure on the player, who - until now - already had to hurry and build defenses, modern units such as legion and praetorian, accumulate pw etc before the dark ages were setting in. Stone road would be ideal to connect important parts of your empire.

Could anyone have a look? I have no idea why, but it doesn't work. All tga's and txt files are in the zip, there should be no reason why this doesn't work.

@Martin Gühman: maybe you too could have a look??? Even if it is indeed impossible to get this tileimp to work correctly in AOM, it might be doable in AE?

Anyway, I need someone with a bit more understanding of the game and its various txt and slic files to have a look, I won't be able to crack this one myself.

Thanks in advance to anyone prepared to have a look!

PS: I included the various tga's for the stone road's graphics separately, not in a tilefile. I numbered them from 700 onward, and this is reflected in the AOM_tileimp.txt file.

Greetz

Tellius

[Maquiladora]

As I understand it (from looking at your txt files) it would go something like this:

- research The Wheel - gives Road ("level 1 road") .33 movement.
- research Iron Working gives Stone Road ("level 2 road") .25 movement.
- researching Dark Ages obsoletes Stone Road thus (hopefully) freeing up "level 2 road" again for Railroad later on.
- research Railroad gives Railroad ("level 2 road") .10 movement.

However it seems that when you obsolete a Stone Road terrain effect (or anything classed as "level 2 road") it disables that effect on any other level 2 road for the rest of the game. So when you discover Railroad tileimp it is already obsolete. At least this is how it seems to me. In fact thats probably how it works for all tile imps, although I didn't test it.

Perhaps (with source code modification) it could be made so that when you obsolete a certain tile imp effect on a certain terrain, it should be allowed to be enabled again with another advance.

Then theres the problem with the graphics. I put all the Stone Road graphics in index 700-717 (using the Apolyton Edition) of the tile file, but still the Railroad graphic would appear. Reading this thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62915

it seems you can't add more road class graphics anyway. They all seem to be assigned to a TI index internally.

200 - level 1 road (road)
300 - level 2 road (rail)
400 - level 3 road (maglev)
500 - level 1 ocean road (undersea tunnel)

Even when you change in tileimp.txt railroad to index 200 it still shows the railroad graphic.

[Tellius]

Hi,

So you got the same problems as I did, instead of Stone Road, Railroads would appear. I'm not yet far enough in the game to see whether - once disabled by the Dark Ages - the class 2 movement type tile imp slot would remain inactive...

Martin, maybe you can have a look to see if this is easily fixable in AE? It would definitely open up possibilities.

Thanks for taking the time Maquiladora

Tellius

[Peter Triggs]

I think that this would require changing the source code. In tiledrawroad.cpp/h there are a number of defines:

#define k_ROAD_TYPE_1		0
#define k_ROAD_TYPE_2		1
#define k_ROAD_TYPE_3		2
#define k_ROAD_TYPE_4		3

#define k_ROAD_OFFSET_1		0
#define k_ROAD_OFFSET_2		100
#define k_ROAD_OFFSET_3		200
#define k_ROAD_OFFSET_4		300

If you want to add a new road type I think you'll have to expand these and also the code that uses them.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
If you want to add a new road type I think you'll have to expand these and also the code that uses them.

Well, I rather prefer to derive the base offset from the tile set index in tileimp.txt. That way you don't have to add more hard encoded stuff and you could be more flexible at starting your road stuff let's say at tile set index 555 or so.

- Martin

[Martin Gühmann]

I modified the source code so that you can use any TilesetIndex between 0 and 1023 for roads as starting TilesetIndex you specify in the tileimp.txt.

- Martin

[Tellius]

I modified the source code so that you can use any TilesetIndex between 0 and 1023 for roads as starting TilesetIndex you specify in the tileimp.txt.

Which makes you my favourite guy in the world right now!

[Martin Gühmann]

Just wanted to say that I posted a playtest with this modification.

-Martin

[Tellius]

Hi,

Martin, this sounds very interesting, sure there won't be people who would object due to the Tamerlin rule?

@Martin or @E:

E, you used to have all the links for downloading the necessary AE files in your signature, could anyone of you follow this example, it's very convenient for possible new gamers, no need to go searching and all that (I need to go looking where to download the newest AE stuff since my last dowload (playtest 771b) was still done by following E's signature links). Just a little suggestion.

Greetz

Tellius

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by Tellius
Hi,

Martin, this sounds very interesting, sure there won't be people who would object due to the Tamerlin rule?

Why would it break the rule, it's just for modders isn't it?

It would be cool to play with highways and stone roads etc in a mod, but if it doesn't change the original game it's fine.

Unless you can prove to Tamerlin that a stone road or highway is an essential improvement to the original game that is. Good luck though

E, you used to have all the links for downloading the necessary AE files in your signature, could anyone of you follow this example, it's very convenient for possible new gamers, no need to go searching and all that (I need to go looking where to download the newest AE stuff since my last dowload (playtest 771b) was still done by following E's signature links). Just a little suggestion.

I put it in my sig too.