bugLordsAWar! - Bugs: bug #27671, Allow For (Slight) Differentiation...

 
 

bug #27671: Allow For (Slight) Differentiation in Units Different Factions

Submitted by:  Frans de Jonge <frenzie>
Submitted on:  Sun 11 Oct 2009 07:46:49 PM UTC  
 
Category: armyset editorSeverity: 3 - Normal
Item Group: NoneStatus: None
Privacy: PublicAssigned to: None
Open/Closed: Closed

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Fri 16 Oct 2009 03:44:01 PM UTC, comment #12:

Alright, this seems to be working now. The following would probably result in trouble when people start sharing armysets, though.

But that was easy to fix by changing the ID to 3 - at leats for now. I imagine that was probably the reason that I had trouble getting the images to appear initially?

Frans de Jonge <frenzie>
Project Member
Wed 14 Oct 2009 03:31:07 PM UTC, comment #11:

Okay I've fixed the armyset editor to allow for editing of user-generated armysets.

The game will also check your own personal collection of armysets and present them to you when you create a random map. If the armyset isn't valid, it isn't listed.

Before this fix I tried manually changing white's scouts to have an elephant image and it worked fine. Please update from svn, compile, and try to create/use an armyset with different images per player again.

Ben Asselstine <benasselstine>
Project Administrator
Wed 14 Oct 2009 10:31:31 AM UTC, comment #10:

And just for the record: a screenshot showing that it works in the editor. After saving the set and consequently reloading it, anyway.

(file #18875)

Frans de Jonge <frenzie>
Project Member
Wed 14 Oct 2009 10:12:55 AM UTC, comment #9:

Hmmm, there must be a bug in the code somewhere then.

Ben Asselstine <benasselstine>
Project Administrator
Wed 14 Oct 2009 09:07:10 AM UTC, comment #8:

It does seem to have edited the moves (the spiders had 12, I changed it to 14, I changed all the pictures to the file "machine guns neutral.png" through the editor interface, resulting in the following.

But the game still display the spiders, see screenshot.

What am I doing wrong here? Should I remove the spaces from the file names?

(file #18874)

Frans de Jonge <frenzie>
Project Member
Wed 14 Oct 2009 09:02:16 AM UTC, comment #7:

Yeah the game loads each file separately. So in the normal case it loads the same file 9 times!

Be aware that the file "hero neutral" refers to "hero neutral.png". Watch out for spaces in file names.

Ben Asselstine <benasselstine>
Project Administrator
Wed 14 Oct 2009 08:57:20 AM UTC, comment #6:

But it did save the information to the XML file and the game it recognizes the different army file?

The editor produced that and shows it correctly inside the editor.

I had to do some wiggling around with creating a folder manually, running it with (gk)sudo etc, but it did work out in the end.

Frans de Jonge <frenzie>
Project Member
Wed 14 Oct 2009 08:47:42 AM UTC, comment #5:

Right, it's intentional that different army unit images are not shown for different players. But the guts are mostly there to make it happen.

The armyset editor is still a little wonky. I'm currently working on fixing it so that you can make a new armyset, instead of just using it as a viewer.

Ben Asselstine <benasselstine>
Project Administrator
Tue 13 Oct 2009 05:15:13 PM UTC, comment #4:

It's not used in the game yet (that's intentional, right?), so how do I currently add or change unit images in the editor? Should I use the same image for all?

Frans de Jonge <frenzie>
Project Member
Mon 12 Oct 2009 05:58:29 PM UTC, comment #3:

This is implemented in svn! Right now the same army unit image is used for each player, however this fix opens the door to the greater variation you're asking for.

Now all we need is a good artist to add the variation.

Thanks a lot for suggesting this change!

Ben Asselstine <benasselstine>
Project Administrator
Sun 11 Oct 2009 08:48:03 PM UTC, comment #2:

Oh, I didn't know it was already possible. In that case, attached is how the original editor solved the problem - the "copy another" and the arrow buttons are potentially useful ideas, but I certainly wouldn't go about implementing some kind of paint program. ;) The arrow buttons can be used for shifting a unit a little bit to the left, right, top or bottom - another way of creating variation, although it doesn't have nearly the same effect as different shields/hats/etc.

As for animation - actually this is to quite some extent the reason that I thought W2 was more exciting graphically than W3. Despite a (slightly) higher resolution and animation, it didn't have the sheer variety in army sets and between factions, if only because of the 9 different walking animations. One for each direction and then one for just standing there. However, I definitely think that animated and non-animated army sets should be able to be used alongside each other, if animation is ever added. I'd be far more likely to create one or more custom army sets without animation than I'd be to create an army set with animation, at any rate - although I suppose I could always cheat the system by saying that the animation is the same file manually, it'd be easier to just be capable of saying there's no animation here - I'll be holding out on that one for SVG though, I suppose. As far as pixels go I might have a go at porting a couple of my favorite W2DELUXE scenarios, but there'd be no way to distribute that and technically even messing about with them is probably illegal.

(file #18859)

Frans de Jonge <frenzie>
Project Member
Sun 11 Oct 2009 08:16:51 PM UTC, comment #1:

#3 is easy to implement. I already have an armyset object, but there's just one image per army unit. I think what you're describing is having 9 images per army unit -- one per player (8 players plus 1 neutral).

However the real problem in implementing this is the lack of artwork.

Having one army image per player solves a mystery of mine... in the original WL2, some heavy infantry units would be depicted holding the player's shield. Now I know how they did that. :-)

Anyway I think this is a good feature to add in the next version. Oh, and another negative thing about adding this is that it raises the difficulty bar for animation. Creating 26 animations is one thing... but creating 234 animations is much more difficult.

Thanks for the bug report.

Ben Asselstine <benasselstine>
Project Administrator
Sun 11 Oct 2009 07:46:49 PM UTC, original submission:

In W2DELUXE, each faction has its own army set. This way each nation is easily identifiable by its respective color. This has been achieved more efficiently in LoardsAWar! with the grey color, but it removes the potential to create truly unique heroes and/or sides.

There are essentially three ways that this is used in W2DELUXE.

1. Units of some factions face another way than those of other factions. For whatever reason heroes always face the same direction, though.

2. Slight variations in units. A different hat, arm stretched instead of bent, gun held in just-shot position instead of shooting position... too much to mention. Note that this doesn't apply so much to the Erythea scenario, probably because it comes more or less straight from Warlords II, but the heroes did carry their respective shields in that scenario. While the variations seem small, it does result in quite distinctive looking factions.

3. Completely different looking units. The Europa scenario (one of my personal favorites), for example, contains three different types of tanks. Combined with the facing left or right, this gives each nation a unit that looks unique, although their properties are the same.

I imagine that (1) should be fairly easy to implement and you should therefore regard it as the only real suggestion here and just keep the rest in the back of your head.

(2) and (3) are the same as far as I can tell, however, while (2) seems like the smaller application, it's probably the one with the most influence - assuming that people don't want to bother redrawing the same character again and again, but modifying parts of it isn't nearly the same amount of work. Yet it really creates factions that all have a different feeling - it's quite nice in W2DELUXE, anyway.

With (3) I'm thinking a bit further as well. With a Dune-based tile and army set, for example, the Fedaykin shouldn't be available to the Harkonnen. Yet the Harkonnen could have Sardaukar which are essentially equivalent. But that's really not significant for LordsAWar! at all, at least at this point in time.

Frans de Jonge <frenzie>
Project Member

 

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Attached Files
file #18859:  WARSCEN.png added by frenzie (133KiB - image/png)

 

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  • -unavailable- added by benasselstine (Posted a comment)
  • -unavailable- added by frenzie (Submitted the item)
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    Follow 6 latest changes.

    Date Changed By Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced By
    Sat 17 Oct 2009 02:49:58 PM UTCbenasselstineOpen/ClosedOpen=>Closed
    Wed 14 Oct 2009 10:31:31 AM UTCfrenzieAttached File-=>Added Screenshot-LordsAWar! Armyset Editor.png, #18875
    Wed 14 Oct 2009 10:12:55 AM UTCbenasselstineOpen/ClosedClosed=>Open
    Wed 14 Oct 2009 09:07:10 AM UTCfrenzieAttached File-=>Added Screenshot-Buy Production.png, #18874
    Mon 12 Oct 2009 05:58:29 PM UTCbenasselstineOpen/ClosedOpen=>Closed
    Sun 11 Oct 2009 08:48:03 PM UTCfrenzieAttached File-=>Added WARSCEN.png, #18859

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