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Obviously the numbers need tweaking. If building a unit only tilts the balance by 1 point in 1000, only building a sizeable army would have an intimidating effect, not a scout with a spud gun.
Tonights a no-no im afraid. Im at Rachels. I'll thrash some stuff out tomorrow though (day off :D)
Some ideas I came up with:
1) You need a sercercy value, how much is the nation into sneaking in and blowing stuff up.
2) Each object should have an effect on the levels based upon the items that item has. If the mech has a weapon that would distroy the planet, it subtracts max from all the catagories. But, if it is only a very weak mech, such as light armor, low-level reactor, machine gun, ect., it just subtracts 1 or 2 points.
3) Instead of 1000's (.1%), you should be thinking in 10,000's (.01%)
By the way, I know you woun't have that super weapon, it was just an example.
GAming,
The secrecy is dealt with by the diplomacy value of the faction. We're also considering adding in a collection do with infiltration making a small area on it's own, linked to - but not dependant on diplomacy.
Ian,
Good man - nice to have a day off. I think I'm going to be in this weekend as well.
Is there a difference between the initial value of creating a unit and a residual effect of having that unit.
The effect of its initial build will be taken into account but then that will fade over time. If you slowly build up an army people are less likely to kick off with you.
Makes sense - scrap the residual value - we might have a modifier that is taken into account at the beginning of the turn which compares the military might of both factions to provide a small change in complex maybe?
If someone is stronger than you for quite a length of time then the complex will slowly change towards inferiority (unless something else offsets that).
Cool - it's coming together now!
Arb : U sure yet when the next version will be ready ?
I'm looking forward to it(, maybe i even will be able to understand the game :rolleyes: )
Icheb
Makes sence to me.
I'm back home now, but I'll be offline most fo the morning (my Dad needs the line), but I'll make a start.
Icheb,
No plans yet - if you want to post the areas that are not clear to you, we'll try to include them either in the tutorial or in the documentation...
Behemoth,
Cool as! You coming round for a couple of biftas tonight? And are you still up for joining us for a couple of beers in Manchester on Sat night?
Have you sent me any of the house/monster graphics yet? I only need one of each.....
I'm going to think about the Monster details now and post something shortly.
1) unlikely. Rachel's round at mine
2) don't know yet. I'm very, very, very skint.
3) not yet. I'll get onto it.
4) OK. You do that.
here's where I'm up to:
Sounds good to me. By the way, I will be posting in the games & graphics thread about some bugs I found, and the results from the preminerary tests I have done with the differnt screen resolutions. Most likely around 4:30 PM, although it may be earlier (My time, Pacific Standerd Time)
not happy with the graphics yet but going to upload some generics to plug in for the time being. they'll be on the geocities site...hang on...
ok...
http://www.geocities.com/sentienceuk...animations.zip
http://www.geocities.com/sentienceuk...ydiplomacy.zip
The diplomacy archive has some clumsy pseudocode to get us started. have a proper look and let me know what you think...
What ho!
I'm in work today (and have been since 07:30 *yawn*), so we can communicate in here if its convenient for you.
Are there any specific parts of the diplomacy that need elaborating for you?
Awight matey
1) Quick question. What the hell are those generic animations?
Ok then. I'd like you to clarify a few things as I go through the diplomacy in more detail.
I'm guessing that a faction will have an opinion and a complex about each of the other factions - but only one mood. If a faction's in a bad mood - he's going to be grumpy with everyone, even his allies.
Possibly we could have a mood variance value which denotes how easily a faction changes his mood. A nutter would have mood swings, but a set in their ways faction would be slow to anger, but bear a grudge for a long time....
So, relating to diplomacy we have the following in the players variables.
with Player.Diplomacy
.DiplomacyRating
.InfiltrationRating (should we keep this seperate -I think so)
.Mood
.MoodModifier (1 is slow to anger, 2 is average, 4 is volatile)
.Complex(0-8)
.Opinion(0-8)
end with
Have I missed anything?
The graphics I've done that you wanted so far are in bits, scattered liberally across my harddrive, So, to provide you with something to plug into the engine, i simply created a 1200 x 40 image. Later I decide to do a few of them in case you wanted multiple different graphics. The wiggly stuff is just to ensure the animation engine is working. No biggie...
I was also looking at the tendancy to declare war.
I'm not sure it should be done on percentages like that. You state a diplomatic faction would have a 10% chance of war in one of your examples.
If this is calculated every turn then that could be very messy with war breaking out all the time. In 20 years even a diplomatic faction would have kicked off twice.
If this is determined after an event (such as an attack or other such trigger then it could be ok - but what do we decide are the tirgger points).
If we mark an attack as a trigger point then a diplomatic faction could be battered 10 times before they kick off. If someone launches an attack, is that an automatic war?
Maybe we should have a value calculated which is the war point based on the three values. As the three values change then we should compare the product to the war tirgger threshold - if it pops over then war is declared.
Whaddya think?
the MOOD trait I'd come up with was basically a measure of how aggressive one faction feels about another. This can be modified if you like, but we have to decide whether its global across all factions, or faction specific (which may be more flexible)
You mean they're bollocks?Quote:
Originally posted by Behemoth
The graphics I've done that you wanted so far are in bits, scattered liberally across my harddrive, So, to provide you with something to plug into the engine, i simply created a 1200 x 40 image. Later I decide to do a few of them in case you wanted multiple different graphics. The wiggly stuff is just to ensure the animation engine is working. No biggie...
That's what I thought...
something like that, but we really have to thrash out the subtle details together...over beer...Quote:
Originally posted by Arbiter
I was also looking at the tendancy to declare war.
I'm not sure it should be done on percentages like that. You state a diplomatic faction would have a 10% chance of war in one of your examples.
If this is calculated every turn then that could be very messy with war breaking out all the time. In 20 years even a diplomatic faction would have kicked off twice.
If this is determined after an event (such as an attack or other such trigger then it could be ok - but what do we decide are the tirgger points).
If we mark an attack as a trigger point then a diplomatic faction could be battered 10 times before they kick off. If someone launches an attack, is that an automatic war?
Maybe we should have a value calculated which is the war point based on the three values. As the three values change then we should compare the product to the war tirgger threshold - if it pops over then war is declared.
Whaddya think?
Dunno. If it's a measure of how agressive a faction is compared to another then it's a combination of opinion and complex isn't it?Quote:
Originally posted by Behemoth
the MOOD trait I'd come up with was basically a measure of how aggressive one faction feels about another. This can be modified if you like, but we have to decide whether its global across all factions, or faction specific (which may be more flexible)
If that's the case, then we don't need it.
Stance: Ally, neutral or enemy. Also, the faction that declares war is then an aggressor.Quote:
Originally posted by Arbiter
So, relating to diplomacy we have the following in the players variables.
with Player.Diplomacy
.DiplomacyRating
.InfiltrationRating (should we keep this seperate -I think so)
.Mood
.MoodModifier (1 is slow to anger, 2 is average, 4 is volatile)
.Complex(0-8)
.Opinion(0-8)
end with
Have I missed anything?
Under treaty: Perhaps as a separate special effect. If a faction is under treaty, it is prevented from declaring war for 10 years (or does this sound ****?)
Profile: it just looks nice ;) I was thinking of having this available to any faction that has infiltrative information about the faction in question.
So when do you have in mind?Quote:
Originally posted by Behemoth
something like that, but we really have to thrash out the subtle details together...over beer...
Do you fancy coming round after you finish work. No beer though as I have to drive into Manchester to meet my dykes...
I might dislike you, feel superior to you, yet not want to declare war on you. Whilst MOOD can be related to COMPLEX and OPINION, it still stands as an independent trait.
Ok then...Quote:
Originally posted by Behemoth
Stance: Ally, neutral or enemy. Also, the faction that declares war is then an aggressor.
Under treaty: Perhaps as a separate special effect. If a faction is under treaty, it is prevented from declaring war for 10 years (or does this sound ****?)
Profile: it just looks nice ;) I was thinking of having this available to any faction that has infiltrative information about the faction in question.
with Player.Diplomacy
.DiplomacyRating
.InfiltrationRating (should we keep this seperate -I think so)
.Mood
.MoodModifier (1 is slow to anger, 2 is average, 4 is volatile)
.Complex(0-8)
.Opinion(0-8)
.Stance(0-8) (will include Ally, Neutral, Treaty, War)
.TradeAgreement (0-8) *
end with
* A trade agreement will be independant to whether faction is at war or not. As these are machines, the logical thing is to buy goods whereever you can get them the cheapest. It matters not if you're fighting them at the time.
Well, what's going to modify the mood then? Any modifaction to mood is going have the same mod to opinion or complex. Explain how this works then - give me a few examples.Quote:
Originally posted by Behemoth
I might dislike you, feel superior to you, yet not want to declare war on you. Whilst MOOD can be related to COMPLEX and OPINION, it still stands as an independent trait.
I notice through looking at the documentation that you've got specific values on the events which modify opinion/complex. We need to shy away from this and put relativistic values on them.
0.2 for a troop moving within the enemy's territory is nothing at the beginning of the game when you only have one unit anyway, but when you've got loads towards the end of the game it's a massive difference.
We should try and relate them in a relative manner. The below maybe...?
Value of unit moving in enemy's territory / Sum total of enemies units
A small mech moving in a land where the enemy has a massive army is going to cause him to raise an eyebrow, but an armarda is going to cause a smaller faction to **** bricks...
I also notice that we're using things that haven't yet been developed such as (unit's value) and (enemy's territory). We have nothing in place to value these things at the moment...
I can't. Perhaps we go back to your global mood idea...Quote:
Originally posted by Arbiter
Well, what's going to modify the mood then? Any modifaction to mood is going have the same mod to opinion or complex. Explain how this works then - give me a few examples.
Well, you could have another map array of Bytes with the sightings of enemies in each tile (maybe the sighting of an enemy in a tile would increase the surrounding ones too?...). Buildings would increase the sightings in an area a lot more than mechs. Then the AI could use that map to know where the enemy's base is, if there's a breach in his defenses, where to pull back his forces to... ;)
Unfortunately that idea is inherently flawed.Quote:
Originally posted by Behemoth
I can't. Perhaps we go back to your global mood idea...
If a faction is getting a kicking off all sides, he's going to be in a pretty bad mood. So he's not going to be very nice to his allies either. And he really should be if he needs bailing out....
I think we'll go with a mood for each faction, but it's more alterable than the complex or opinion. The mood will be affected by that moodmodifier. It will be affected by the events that occur, but will slowly work its way back to the mid point suggested by the cmoplex and opinion.
The complex is going to be based heavily around the comparison of armies and techs, the opinion will be based around troop movements and actions taken, the mood will be affected by everything - but in a more dramatic or slothlike manner depending on the mood modifier.
I'm making an e.g. now
We started with these when calculating might. We'll have to go back to these next. Territory might have been viewable lad area, i don't remember. Again we'll touch on this next.Quote:
Originally posted by Arbiter
I also notice that we're using things that haven't yet been developed such as (unit's value) and (enemy's territory). We have nothing in place to value these things at the moment...
Good thinking Batman.Quote:
Originally posted by Jotaf98
Well, you could have another map array of Bytes with the sightings of enemies in each tile (maybe the sighting of an enemy in a tile would increase the surrounding ones too?...). Buildings would increase the sightings in an area a lot more than mechs. Then the AI could use that map to know where the enemy's base is, if there's a breach in his defenses, where to pull back his forces to... ;)
There's already something in place like that which tracks mech movements over the squares. If a tile is heavily travelled by friendly mechs, the AI knows to build a road there. If heavily travelled by enemy mechs - lay mines... ;)
Yeah, I like that. I'd overlooked the fact that it would be weighted depending upon the progress of the game.Quote:
Originally posted by Arbiter
I notice through looking at the documentation that you've got specific values on the events which modify opinion/complex. We need to shy away from this and put relativistic values on them.
0.2 for a troop moving within the enemy's territory is nothing at the beginning of the game when you only have one unit anyway, but when you've got loads towards the end of the game it's a massive difference.
We should try and relate them in a relative manner. The below maybe...?
Value of unit moving in enemy's territory / Sum total of enemies units
A small mech moving in a land where the enemy has a massive army is going to cause him to raise an eyebrow, but an armarda is going to cause a smaller faction to **** bricks...
I've got work to do now. I'll check back in here in a bit.
EG1
A present to a neurotic faction (mood mod is 4)
Opinion is at 200
Complex is at 200
Mood is at 200
Prezzie is worth 4
Opinion goes up by 4
Complex is unchanged
Mood goes up by 16 (4*moodmod)
Opinion is at 204
Complex is at 200
Mood is at 216
The mood will creep back down to 202 (the midpoint of mood and complex) over time. Perhaps 10% of difference every turn?
EG2
A present to a stalwart faction (mood mod is 1)
Opinion is at 600
Complex is at 500
Mood is at 550
Prezzie is worth 4
Opinion goes up by 4
Complex is unchanged
Mood goes up by 4 (4*moodmod)
Opinion is at 604
Complex is at 500
Mood is at 554
The mood will creep back down to 552 (the midpoint of mood and complex) over time. Probably next turn.
Conclusion:
The neurotic faction does a Saul Jackson (Cool!! Biscuits!!!) and is much pleased with you for a short time. Stalwart factions sort of grunts his approval.
OK, laters dude
I love it how i can come up with a general concept concerning something as abstract as diplomacy, and you can sum it up to realisation with a simple passage:
It's teamwork like that that's gonna make this a great project ;)Quote:
Originally posted by Arbiter
The complex is going to be based heavily around the comparison of armies and techs, the opinion will be based around troop movements and actions taken, the mood will be affected by everything - but in a more dramatic or slothlike manner depending on the mood modifier.
It will never reach the target score!Quote:
Originally posted by Arbiter
The mood will creep back down to 202 (the midpoint of mood and complex) over time. Perhaps 10% of difference every turn?
the stalwart faction is also less likely to react to bad situations too.
It's a natural ability (and also what I do as part of my job) ;)Quote:
Originally posted by Behemoth
I love it how i can come up with a general concept concerning something as abstract as diplomacy, and you can sum it up to realisation with a simple passage:
It's teamwork like that that's gonna make this a great project ;)
It's good to summarise periodically so you can get the concept firmly fixed in your head and the drill down the additional detail.
Correct. This will mean that the mood then becomes a value on it's own (as you were saying), where the mood is going to based roughly around the last modifier. If the last thing you did was a nice thing then he's going to be in a better mood with you than if the last thing you did was piss in his flowerbed.Quote:
Originally posted by Behemoth
It will never reach the target score!
the stalwart faction is also less likely to react to bad situations too.
Sound like a monkey to me.
Can you give me an example of war breaking out and the underlying maths now please?
Ok you didn't like the idea of war breaking out based on chance, so I'll need a little time to think it over.
We need to establish which (or all) of the traits to be taken into account when declaring war.
I had the idea of a threshold past which a store is then subject to chance/probabilty.
if a factions war threshold is 80% then past this there is a (whatever the calculation I came up with earlier was) chance of declaring war.
I do like the peace formula though.
complex is not based on physical size of army/might so much as threat potential.
for a real world example:
Since Sept 11th the entire world has been an incredible security alert. Information implies that the Al-Qaeda terrorist organisantion is not very big (in comparision to an army, say), has fairly low-tech weaponry (although suggestions of bio,chem and nuclear weaponry now abound), and their fighters are blinded by religious zealotry. However the entire US government is terrified of them...
Factors to be taken into account:
Size of visible army.
Number of unpleasant techs researched (that we know about!)
threats issued.
alos bear in mind that a simpering faction that hands out gifts will-nilly is unlikely to be a threat.
- anything else spring to mind?
Nice to see you online..
Right, what your'e saying seems good so far.
I think it should be based on the amount of hardware the other faction has got.
We need to assign points to units to represent their strength based on the components they have.
This could be awkward due the wild variations you can have.
Have you sent me any graphics yet dude, and are you going to pop round for a bit this evening?
I got in from my meeting at 11:30 last night, BUT, I did manage to bring a copy of Photoshop home with me, so I can start the ball rolling again.
I might come down tonight, I don't know yet. I'm going through petrol like its beer at the moment.
Bollocks to this. Its a pain in the tits trying to reply today. You might not hear much from me, but I'll be able to read anything you choose to post.
It's playing silly buggers with me also.
If it's a major problem I'll come and pick you up, and drop you home in the morning Pete's coming round for a couple of biftas as well so it should be a good evening.
Pete's also not a stupid as he looks, so he may have input to do with the diplomacy. He actually came up with a rather impressive 3D lanscape formulae for us over a night of beer but we opted to go with a 2D landscape...
Anyway, I've got 24 bottles of Stella in the fridge, a bottle of JD, a bottle of Vodka, 22 cans of coke and new bottle of Baileys (with ice cubes waiting).
GET IN!!!!
Or failing that, I could give you a fiver or so for petrol (as your Dad very nicely made me that CD).
Come down for a couple of beers - we've not done that in ages...
I'm missing you hairy man..
hmm...we'll see.
I'm in work tomorrow morning (about 10:00 ish), but I kinda fancy a nice chill out.
Good man! :) :) :)
I'm picking Pete up at 1900 so if you wish, I could collect you either before or after that.
If you wish to drive then you know there's always a spare bed for you. Pete won't be staying - he never does.
I think we might be able to get some good quality stuff written down if there's three of us there.
A chill out would be really nice - I'm really disenchanted with work at the moment having had a lecture from my boss about communication and I seriously lost my temper with someone to the point where I offered him outside and threatened to kick **** out of him.
Would be nice to see you this evening - I could do with some hairy company. :)
I'll knock up a list of discussion items if you wish... if there's anything you want to talk about relating to Sentience then post it here before 1600.
Cool as!
I'll probably make my own way up. I'll talk to you about it later
test
wierd...it seems to be working.
I've not had to close and reopen my browser...
test (again)
Mint,
At least it works!
Yeah, give us a buzz later!
nope, I think its stopped working :(
Awight dude,
I've been working like a monkey on it, but it's coming slowly.
I've made the framework changes to support which components are available based on chassis and amended the scripts.
I've made some amendments to the mech design screen to support the fleshvats and mechbays, but I'm not sure if this works yet.
I've fixed most of the bugs outlined in the other thread.
I've worked like a bollock so far and got nothing to show for it. I'm going to start adding the monster things to the scripts now so you can build monsters.
**** I've just thought of another change I need to make. Rats!
Well, nose back to the grind stone.
Oh yeah, and I need from you...
The OK button sending to my home account again - I've lost mine
Some backgrounds without the Sentience bar at the bottom
I've had a look at the monster houses in the game and I have a problem with each of them, (only to be expected ;) )...
The stone circle and the sand crab each have backgrounds already attached. We need to get rid of them otherwise they won't transparenterise.
The lair and the nest are ok backgroundwise, but they both have a tragic white border around them (the flies look dire on the nest and the lair looks like someone's whitewashed the walls... )
Once these niggles are fixed they'll look very impressive. :)
Are you going to be on the forums today dude?
Well anyway, I'll give you a breakdown of what I've been up to...
I've the set the monster script up so it contains both the monster overview and the monster details. Instead of limiting the stages to five and five alone, I've decided to have them variable.
Say, for example, Behemoth's may have five stages and Wasps may have one. Something with no stages will merely be houses, allowing us to have strange plants etc.
Are we going to have some form of bonus/benefit for killing the houses? Will they contain stuff like gems etc as well as provide a big boost to the understanding of the creature...
We'll need a piccy for each stage of the creature (so we can thrash out how many stages per creature tonight maybe) and you can get them to me at your leisure. (low priority).
I'm on a posting frenzy here - just trying to do a massive brain dump for you to peruse and comment on. Try and comment on each post in order if you get chance please... :)
Just to confirm what I have in my head about researching the creatures...
On the creature research/DNA screen, you can assign research points to each discovered creature. This will then slowly increase your knowledge of the creature until you finally understand it.
Killing one of the creatures will provide you with an instant boost to understanding and destroying a house will give you a big boost.
Once understanding is at 100% you can build the creatures yourself.
The components you can use to build the creatures are determined by what techs you have (as per the other components).
e.g. you can give them normal lungs, but to give them adamantium lungs you neeed super light solids (or whatever)