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1

Ascendancy Discussion / Re: Ascendancy General Information Thread (And Ask the Makers Anything 2.0)

« on: July 08, 2013, 05:03:16 PM »

How single-player friendly will this mod be?  Will there be tweaks to computer controlled AI?  Never played SOASE, so not familiar with how the AI is.

Basically, I like the single-player GCs in EaW and want to know if there will be similar in Ascendancy.  Thanks

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2

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Re: What is this dreaded "freeze"?

« on: July 08, 2013, 10:10:02 AM »

An idea for battling the freeze:

NOTE:  I haven't been scripting and modding in this game for about a year so I can't remember what is possible, etc.

Is there anyway to, through code, to copy out the current forces, money, etc of all players to a debug file?  I know that in certain running scripts for the GC scenarios, I've seen code that will produce debug output of kills, score, etc.

Anyway, if this can be done, theoretically you could produce a scenario file that is a snapshot of where the current galactic situation is, and just simply start a new scenario starting off where the old game stopped.

You could just make it write out the file every 50 weeks or so, so you know you'll not reach the 'freeze'.

Example:

1. Start AoW, run 50 weeks
2. User Collects debug file, and copies it as a new scenario.
3. Start AoW#2 (the new scenario with the updated starting forces), run 50 weeks
4. Rinse and Repeat

Using this strategy, you could theoretically extend a GC scenario indefinitely.

Any thoughts on this from the mod team?

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3

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Re: Big Campaigns and Minor Faction AI - I think i figured it out

« on: August 01, 2011, 01:01:10 PM »

Well, I figured that most of the stuff I had figured out you guys were aware of, but I know that in my case I had the hardest time finding good stuff on the web about this, so I figured I'd provide some good material for guys like me searching in the future.

As for the credit issue with Minor Factions, I'm definitely interested in how you guys handled that.  I see you give them a ton of starting credits, and i tried that too, but nothing beats having them under the same restrictions as you.

As for the backlog, i've gone pretty far into GCs, but I will continue to test to see long term issues with all those AIs, and if it continues to look stable I'll send the code over.  My mod is such a zombification of yours however it hardly resembles yours anymore, so any code i give you will have to to be highly edited to even be used in your beta.  I posted this moreso for informational purposes.

As far as a job, i have one already, and this is a labor of love, as it is with all of us, but again much respect to you guys who have put in the effort you have to create something for people just because you love SW.

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4

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Big Campaigns and Minor Faction AI - I think i figured it out

« on: August 01, 2011, 10:36:42 AM »

I have been messing with Minor Faction AI, among other things, in my personalized version of this mod, and I believe I finally got it working..

Things you must realize:
- Minor Factions DO NOT gain credits like playable factions.  Either its in the Base Code or its some flag I havent set (or anyone has) in the Factions.XML.  But not to worry, I found a very easy way of doing it in the GameScoring.LUA script.  I wrote a function that spawns a thread at game start, that every weeks does a check of minor faction planets and rewards the minor faction AI with money commensurate to its planetary holdings and based on the presence of Tax or Mining Facilities.  Its not perfect but it pretty freaking close.
- The above is not and SHOULD NOT be needed for Empire/Rebel/Underworld factions.  They gain credits fine the normal way.

Perceptual Equations:
- Woah, wasted alot of time on these and was ready to give up but read up on a German mod and figured out (through translation) how to do it.
- All XML in the XML/AI folders can be edited in the Imperial_Civil_War directory structure, EXCEPT for the PERCEPTUALEQUATIONS directory.  You can make edits to those files, yes, BUT it wont take affect in game.  The ONLY way to get perceptual equations edits to work is to have the files in the base  FOC/Data/XML/AI/PERCEPTUALEQUATIONS directory.  And you need to be very careful of your edits. 
- Why are these equation edits necessary?  Well because there are a bunch of places where it hardcodes the equations to only work if the calling faction is one of the majors.  I edited mine to take into account minor factions as well.  For instance, one function tries to determine if a target planet is connected to "me", whoever the calling faction is.  Well in it the only faction values that will allow the function to return a 1 (TRUE) are "REBEL", "EMPIRE", or "UNDERWORLD"

# of planets/ # of Trade Routes:
- came across a big error that was not allowing me to add in more planets to the GC.  What i found out is, and this is across the entire XML directory, but you cannot have a field with more than around 3500 characters in it.  Given the Thrawn's Revenge names of their routes, it could only hold around 160 trade routes in it before it would not load.  Well, just rename the routes to abbreviations like instead of "All_Coruscant_Byss" change to "CorBys" and you can fit tons more.  As a result, more trade-routes = MORE PLANETS.

The Result:
- My GC has 150 planets, and SEVENTEEN independent factions all acting with full AI, and the game is as stable as ever.  I even run it off of a work laptop, so lag is not an issue.

Anyway, credits go to Corey and the team for the awesome mod, and I hope this info is useful to other modders and to the team.  Figured all the banging my head against the wall should do someone some good.  Hopefully y'all can use this info.

Thanks

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5

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Re: Minor Factions (split from Imperial Unit Suggestions)

« on: June 15, 2011, 03:29:23 PM »

Would Slornie mind jotting down what he found to fix it?  I'm trying out some stuff myself on a personal mod and wouldn't mind some tips...

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6

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Re: Minor Factions (split from Imperial Unit Suggestions)

« on: June 15, 2011, 10:54:16 AM »

So where do we stand then with the minors..

Any thought been given to using the "Hostile" faction for a faction in the GC?  Because its a standard slot maybe it can have better AI...

Also, did you guys figure out how to get Minors to build land units?  YOu were mentioning that you thought it was possible.. if so, how?

I have alot of questions like these but dont want to overwhelm you guys.. maybe there is somewhere where i could look to research it perhaps?

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7

The Lounge / Galactic Simulation - Turn Based War Game

« on: May 19, 2008, 04:26:24 PM »

Hi folks, my name is Mark.

Anywho.. I am a Java programmer by trade and by hobby. So much so, that a few years ago I built a strategic galactic conquest game called Empire vs Republic. It went on for a couple of years and had nearly 100 participants from around the globe battling for control of the galaxy. It was a fun game, but had limitations.

Five years later, I have finally finished the core programming on the next generation of that game. I call it Galactic Simulation, or GalSim for short. Basically, you can read up about it at http://markb50k.dyndns.org:12345/gal_sim , where I give a little history and some of the features provided. I also give pics and stats for all the ships you can play in the game. All ships are in a top-down 2D view and the models are heavily simplified version of alot of old SWNR and warlords models.

In short, if you liked Rebellion but wanted more control, or like Empire At War but would love to have dozens of players, this game could be up your alley. Build ships, launch attacks, mine resources to fuel your war machine, whatever you want. And all the while, you could command a fleet of star destroyers, like we all have wanted to do.

This game is designed to be content-intensive giving you eventually alot of options on how to make your fortune, plus the ability to see your units down to the individual fighter. Anyway, I hope I have interested you enough. Check out my site (I am NOT a web designer, so it is REALLY REALLY basic) and write me if you want to sign up. Once I get a few people signed up I will start the game turn engine and the war will be on.

Thanks in advance for any interest.

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