AGEOD Forums

(Newest question in my latest post! I figure it's silly to continue opening new threads if I have questions along the vein of my initial ones...wastes forum space, aye?)

Namely, I'm looking for them. I don't know why this game has had such an effect on me - usually, I'll play a game to death, and then start in on the modification, which can be a several-months-long process, from the very outset - but AACW has captured my interest. I haven't even completed a full campaign, only one of the year-long games, and yet already there is so much I wish to do.

A constant bane of any modder, as anyone who's worked with games can tell you, are the hard-coded limits. Sometimes, they can be worked around - (Dear god, what you were able to do with ASM in Starcraft!) - and sometimes they cannot. Coming off of Paradox Interactive games, where I found myself constantly stymied in my attempt to add new units to the game, I was shocked, exhilarated and overjoyed to find that AACW allows modders to define new models with comparative ease.

Or so it seems. My first test - once I got it working right - was definitively conclusive: I was able to create a brand-new general (MDL 1001 & 1002 for his promotion, UID 1301-1302) ex nihilo via event, with his associated brigades around him. And from what I've seen so far, he works splendidly, with functional abilities, a custom name and a custom title.

To someone who is used to working inside strict structural limits, the openness of a game like AACW is...staggeringly attractive. Just a glance through the scriptfiles and various other sectors of the install show that there are quite enough things to be modified, as to eat up all of my free time, between that and actually playing the game. But it's got me wondering.

What can't be changed? Clearly, there are sections of the game handled exclusively by the code, many of them, no doubt, components of the 'Host' phase, and the battle-engine. But what about other limits? Can you really define as many additional generals and models of units as you want? Can you add new unit-types within the existing hierarchy of 'Regular', 'Irregular', 'Militia', etc. - in other words, whip up a mixed-state brigade and allow the player to build it? I have a whole lot of individual questions, and I'll ask them in separate threads when I need them answered, but right now...

I just want to know how far I can push this game, and where I'll need to stop, so I can have clear goals in mind. So to anyone who's ever cracked this puppy open and peeked around inside, what did you find that you couldn't change? Readin' through the forum, I was boggled to find that even such miscellany as the city-size required to build a fort was modifiable. So, as well, what's the strangest thing you've found in this game that you could actually fool around with?

Thanks for any information you can provide. Sorry I tend to post novels, haha.
~Kaoru

...somehow, I managed to land this in the General Modding forum. This should be in the AACW forum! Could a moderator jump it over there, for me? I guess I wasn't fully awake when I typed this up, ehe...

[color="Blue"]Sure thing [/color]

Hard coding things like number of units was acceptable when we were still with a 640 Kb limit and MSDOS. Now it is not

Do you have specific questions in mind about limits of the game?

Pocus wrote:Hard coding things like number of units was acceptable when we were still with a 640 Kb limit and MSDOS. Now it is not

Do you have specific questions in mind about limits of the game?

Eee. I have to admit, it makes me feel a little sheepish to have one of the game devs themselves answering me! But, heck, an answer is an answer...

So, I guess I'll go with a few nice, simple ones. Or big ones. Depends on how you look at it.
1. I already know that it's possible to create new units and generals, in the vein of categories already existing in the game. Is there an upper limit on the number you can create? Besides, you know, 65,536, which if it exists as an upper limit would be absolutely freaking insane and nothing to complain about at all.
2. If you defined single-province areas - like California - as usable areas, by the game, could you make units recruit-able there?
3. Is it possible to alter the types and rates of stat growth different types of units - or even different units within a category, say, different kinds of line infantry - experience, as they level up?
4. Is it possible to define new abilities? New ability-families?

...Yeah, that should do it for now. Eee. I feel so embarrassed, asking questions like this of a dev...

Age-studio is a small company, before being developers, designers we are players who like to discuss with others players of cool games

1. no hard limit, but if the database is too big, the game will slow down progressively. Things should be safe up to 10000 units, never tried!
2. yes
3. yes
4. yes - no. No new ability families as each special effect should be coded somehow. Say your new ability family is: 'create new units', ... it is not done, but can be an interesting feature for new games, so perhaps it can be coded in the end (yes sometime we code or tweak things which are asked by veterans modders)

Pocus wrote:Age-studio is a small company, before being developers, designers we are players who like to discuss with others players of cool games
[snip~!]
4. yes - no. No new ability families as each special effect should be coded somehow. Say your new ability family is: 'create new units', ... it is not done, but can be an interesting feature for new games, so perhaps it can be coded in the end (yes sometime we code or tweak things which are asked by veterans modders)

(Note! Your time is probably pretty valuable, so: If you want to get to the new question, just skip this post, it's mostly gushing adulations of AGEod!)

I like your company policy, then! Clearly, it's done wonders for creating a thriving, viable community, whose sole goal is to enjoy- and, where possible, aid in the improvement of - your games. AACW is certainly a pretty cool game! Even if BoA isn't as advanced, in fact, my experiences with AACW have me wantin' to go out and buy BoA. It's only fifteen dollars through your website - that's about the cost of a pizza, here.

One can enjoy a pizza for a night, but if BoA is even half as fun as AACW, it'll be a years-long investment. Anyhow! More on that in another forum, I suppose!

As for the new abilities vs. new ability families, eee. I've already had luck creating new abilities, though I am both unsurprised and slightly bummed to discover that, yes, ability-families are heavily hardcoded, and thus take Acts of God (read: developers) to change. It certainly makes sense, of course.

No game-code comes equipped with the ability to understand what a command like 'Generate 3 units every other turn in the city this general is in' means. I've seen some of the programming that goes into coding something like that. I imagine it'd only confuse regular folks, even if they could access it.

Still, with everything you can mess with in this game, it'll certainly stay fun to mod for quite a while!

Aaaand doublepost. But I figured that it'd be easier to organize if I split the question off into another post, and easier to see, too: So how is it that one can control the stat-growth units receive when they level up? Is that controlled by the 'ProgRate' line in the .mdl files?

And what do the values mean? Zouaves, for instance, have a ProgRate of 10 - what does this translate to, in game terms? ...Promise I'll start searching the forums for my questions after this one, though I didn't see anything about this in the mod forum, after I looked through six pages, there!

And, I noticed you'd done some things for veteran modders. I was very impressed by this - I remain so. It is my fervent wish to stick around as an AGE supporter long enough to be considered at least passably familiar, though I don't think I'd be brave enough, even after a year, here, to ask for anythin'. You guys work so hard already, portin' new features back from your new games.

Kaoru wrote:[...]No game-code comes equipped with the ability to understand what a command like 'Generate 3 units every other turn in the city this general is in' means. I've seen some of the programming that goes into coding something like that. I imagine it'd only confuse regular folks, even if they could access it.[...]

Maybe not as ability, but quite some things are already possible with the script language.
In your example you could create an event and use the command EvalUnqUnit to find your general, check with EvalRgnStruc if he is in a region with a city, use CreateUnit to make the units you wish and make with TurnIndex sure that it happens only every other turn.

Kaoru wrote:[...]And what do the values mean? Zouaves, for instance, have a ProgRate of 10 - what does this translate to, in game terms? ...

The value for ProgRate controls how fast the units gain experience. (They get experience in battles.) 10 is considered "normal".
BTW: Most probably you already noticed, but anyway: If you download the model DB (or any other) of the game, you will find an attached note to almost every column head which explains what it means.

Cheers
Norbert

Primasprit wrote:Maybe not as ability, but quite some things are already possible with the script language.
In your example you could create an event and use the command EvalUnqUnit to find your general, check with EvalRgnStruc if he is in a region with a city, use CreateUnit to make the units you wish and make with TurnIndex sure that it happens only every other turn.

There is that, yes. I've experimented with event-based controls like that, and AGEod's event system makes it a lot easier to do quite a few things. It's certainly something to keep in mind.

...And, download the databases? I'd heard about that, but...oooh. Now I'm gonna go look those up and get them! Thanks for the information, Primasprit! Keep up the great work, you and all of the other AGEod devs!

Kaoru wrote:[...]...And, download the databases? I'd heard about that, but...oooh. Now I'm gonna go look those up and get them!

You can find them here: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=5358

Primasprit wrote:You can find them here: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=5358

Whoohoo! Thanks, again! *Scurries off, to play, and mod, and mod and play, throughout the lengthy night and day!*