Scripting language for scenario editor

[Alex]

As stated on the news page, RoN Pantheon interviewed Ike Ellis, who is working on the scenario editor for Rise of Nations.

It is a very interesting interview, with tidbits about how they developed a custom scripting language to allow deep customization when working with the scenario editor.

Here's the link: http://strategyplanet.com/riseofnations/iiellis.asp

And here are some interesting parts:

designers can script custom, very detailed victory conditions and individual triggers that take many factors into consideration.

It is also possible to create units and buildings on the fly through scripts. This becomes very interesting because you can do things like monitor the success of players in the scenario and fine tune the numbers and types of opponents that they will fight based on their skill and the difficulty level that they've chosen.

We also have a fantastic feature that lets you import an image that you've scanned or drawn in an imaging program and turn it into the continents you want. This has proven to be very useful as we create historical maps.

[Alex]

Wow, with all those people complaining about the lack of real scenario capabilities in Civ3 I thought this kind of news would be welcomed...

[Immortal Wombat]

I like it

[Kataphraktoi]

designers can script custom, very detailed victory conditions and individual triggers that take many factors into consideration

It is also possible to create units and buildings on the fly through scripts. This becomes very interesting because you can do things like monitor the success of players in the scenario and fine tune the numbers and types of opponents that they will fight based on their skill and the difficulty level that they've chosen.

sounds like what you can do in any RTS editor....nothing new.i do like the scanning a picture in function.

[Peter Triggs]

Here's a question for Brian.

Judging from what Ike said in the interview, it looks to me like there will be two 'levels' of scripting:

We also plan to create visual tools for using the scripting language easily. These should probably be sufficient for most users. In addition, we're also working on an in-game development environment for creating and debugging scripts for people wanting to utilize the full power of creating custom scripts.

Please could you tell us something more about the "full power" of the language. Are we talking about a language with a C-like syntax? Will it support, e.g., user defined functions? Could you post a snippet so we can see what it looks like?

Thanks,

Peter

[Locutus]

Oh, I do think this has more potential than the average RTS game. Most scripting languages I've seen so far in RTS games were pretty basic and awkward to use, with those limited graphical editors, but it sounds like RoN might just be much better... I sure hope so...

Yes, it would be great to see a simple example of a script...

[tniem]

you can do things like monitor the success of players in the scenario and fine tune the numbers and types of opponents that they will fight based on their skill and the difficulty level that they've chosen.

This sounds like that the scenario editor might even carry over into new scenarios. Like, if you win in one it sees how good you were and decides what to throw at you next time. Doesn't it? Or am I completly wrong in how I interrupted this line.

[Locutus]

Nah, I think it's still restricted to within a single game. So if you defeat opponent 1 with easy, opponent 2 will get more and better units, something like that. It doesn't explicitly state that you can actually carry stuff over to other scenarios/games so it would be a bit too optimistic to assume this would be the case (although that *would* be extremely cool).