#0001 -- ThirdSide And More... Options

[SeekSomethingNew]

HyperPatch Development Discussion #0001

Alright, first discussion topic of the sub forum!


Topic Theme: Adding full support for more than two houses into the game engine.

Ok then, now how should i go about coding this up? Remember this includes everything that is house related, Loading Screens, Sidebars, EVA Speech and so on. There are many ways to do so, but i want to hear what works best for the modders themselfs!

Remember to think simple, while try to expanded as many hardcoded problems as we can. I can add new INI keys to HouseTypes, so if you wish, you can suggest a full list of keys to be definable on the HouseType in the INI.

Have fun and remember, its just a game at the end of the day, dont take it too seriously!

Basically anything goes here, as long as your polite and respectful to peoples views and to myself, i wont take action towards you like deleting your posts or even getting you banned from the Tiberium Web forums itself if it has to come to that. I want to lay them rules down in the first post, and i hope people stick to this.

-Hyper

This post has been edited by CCHyper: Aug 3 2009, 12:12 AM

[Aro]

A simple tag for the .ini files to specify a certain unit to a certain subfaction would be really sweet (Like in RA2), this is something I really wanted to do in TI, but without the workaround nonsense.

Edit: Definitely agree with Team Black, though I know you've been bugged to hell about this already by Morpher, so I wont add to that.

This post has been edited by Aro: Jul 29 2009, 01:05 AM

[Rampastring]

I agree with Bittah, making it work like it already works for the two sides would be the best way of implenting it.

Also, if possible, you could make it so that we shouldn't have to add "Civilian" to every unit's/building's "Owner=" key which the third side owns. (example: Owner=<ThirdSide>,Civilian)

More difficulty levels could also be useful (making FineDiffControl work?)

Btw, it's nice to see some progress for this project.. and it's nice to see it here on TiberiumWeb, might make this forum more popular.

This post has been edited by ^Rampastein: Jul 29 2009, 09:49 AM

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

Bittah's Idea to expand the Houses and move some keys into this section sounds really good.

CODE

[Houses]
0=GDI
1=Nod
2=Neutral
3=Special

[GDI]
Name=GDI
Suffix=GDI
Prefix=G
Color=Gold
Multiplay=yes
Side=GDI
SmartAI=yes
BaseUnit=GDIMCV;moved from [General] in this section
BuildConst=GDIConYard;moved from [AI] in this section

By moving BaseUnit to the House would be a good start to make individual sides work. Then GDI and Nod could be really independant from each other.
And of course the biggest problem BuildConst under the AI section should be fixed to allow more entries. The alternative would be to move this into the sides section too as shown in the example code. This would also fix ambiguities when a conyard has more than one owner. Then the AI really knows to which side which conyard belongs.

I'm not sure if it's necessary to allow adding more sides too, as the AI should work already with more Houses, because in AI.ini you specify the House to which a certain TeamType belongs and not the Side. Though it could be useful to allow adding there some more neutral sides, which you can give different colors and this way allows to place on Multiplayer maps different colored units.
In RA2 it seems as it was necessary to give each completely independant House a different Side, why YuriCountry got it's own side and wasn't simply put in the GDI (Allies) or Nod (Soviet) lists.

CODE

[Sides]
GDI=GDI,Havoc;allow to add more Houses as subfactions which all belong to the same Side
Nod=Nod,BlackHand;allow to add more Houses as subfactions which all belong to the same Side
3rdSide=Scrin;allow to add more independant sides
Civilian=Neutral
Mutant=Special

With the support for more independant sides you should move imo the complete AI section into the Houses. This would really fix all ambiguities and would never lead into a GDI side building a Nod Refinery and vice versa.

CODE

[GDI]
Name=GDI
Suffix=GDI
Prefix=G
Color=Gold
Multiplay=yes
Side=GDI
SmartAI=yes
BaseUnit=GDIMCV;moved from [General] in this section
BuildConst=GDIConYard;moved from [AI] in this section
BuildPower=GAPOWR
BuildRefinery=GAPROC
BuildBarracks=GAPILE
BuildTech=GATECH
BuildWeapons=GAWEAP,DGWEAP
BuildDefense=GACTWR;this could be a problem as it's also AA
BuildPDefense=GAADVTWR
BuildAA=GACTWR;this could be a problem as it's also AG
BuildHelipad=GAHPAD
BuildRadar=GARADR
ConcreteWalls=GAWALL
NSGates=GAGATE_B
EWGates=GAGATE_A
UnloadingHarvester=HORV;just a graphical problem, but it would be fixed this way too

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: Jul 29 2009, 02:01 PM