Frogboy Frogboy

16 Engineering hours for LH v1.7

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16 Engineering hours for LH v1.7

from JoeUser Forums

Greetings!

v1.6 of Legendary Heroes seems to have gone well and we’re now moving on to v1.7.  I’m not sure what the rest of the team has in store for that (it’s Kael’s team, I’m just a floater).  But I’ve got 16 engineer hours of my own time for v1.7 and want to make sure every hour is spent well.  I don’t know how many of you are interested in the sausage factory side of game development but if you are, this is a good chance to see it in action.

These are what I’m spending those hours on:

 

Est Hours Feature Description Status
1 Stamp fix Fix stamp creation for modders, add some new stamps. Done (1)
1 BattleRank overhaul Redo battlerank so that the AI can more intelligently make decisions. Done (1)
1 Leader Update Updated text and specific conversations per player  Done (1)
1 New Spells Add new tactical battle spells/abilities  Done (2)
2 AI tactical Update AI tactical perf  Done (1)
1 Squad size Increase squad size and test  Done (1)
1 Unrest penalties Unrest causes bandits to spawn  Done and then undone (was not fun)
1 Eco balance Update mana/maintcosts/research balance/hero generation  Done (0.5)
1 Wild land menace Wild lands spawn monsters who go after players, get much worse over time.  Done (0.5)
1 AI updates Have AI upgrade outposts, Better army management, Pariden use Arcane monoliths.  Done (1)
1 Gameplay Master Quest harder, Heroes spawn at capital, Nerf consulate, bigger maps  Done (2)
1 Monsters vs. AI Look again to see why AI and monsters aren’t attacking each other (likely a threading issue)  Looked at, hoping new combat rating system might help. (0.5)
1 Pathing Fix the river pathing issue  Done (0.5)
1 Update stamps World less flat, more interesting  Done (1)
 1  Misc.  (bug fixing, fix lockups, lost device, other annoying things I encounter etc.)  Ongoing

 

Watch this thread for updates. I’m going through this thread here for ideas.

As I finish these, I’ll update the chart to let people know. I don’t really get started on this until next week between meetings, accounting, legal, design, software work, etc. Smile

 

Update 1: Friday, May 30

Finished the first half day working on this. Some of this isn't taking as long as I expected (marked at 0.5 hours in the status).

Update 2: End of day

Okay, I've got 9.5 hours into this.  The AI is definitely nastier now with the outpost upgrades. The pathfinding is less annoying for me.  I had a hard lock today that I want to put some time into.  I don't want this to just be new goodies, I'd like to fix some bugs that people have reported.

574,361 views 211 replies
Reply #76 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting GFireflyE, reply 74


Quoting Frogboy, reply 70Of course, I realize that NO ONE has ever complained about pathfinding in this game...

The biggest issue I have with pathfinding is when you select your unit to travel along a road and the AI has it's ZoC covering. The unit choses to path off the road in an attempt to go around the ZoC instead of just travelling through it.

I would be even fine if, whenever this instance occured, a pop-up message came up while zooming on the location in question "Do you want to stop your movement?"

That's probably beyond the scope of what I can do in the time I have.  I've never been in that part of the code before.

Reply #77 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting DsRaider, reply 75

Just wow Frogboy. 1.7 seems like its going to be a whole new game. :')

The changes will probably feel a lot more subtle than that.

One fun thing from today:

So the Wildlands will occasionally pop out nastier and nastier monsters as long as they're around.  It's not a constant stream. It's occasional but they get nastier as time goes on. 

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Elemental: Reforged
Reply #78 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I'm liking the adventure setting your are producing here.

Reply #79 from Elemental Forums Top

Ok, I upgrades outposts, Pariden uses Arcane Monolith (or anyone else who has that spell). Did some nerfing of stuff. There's been a ton of little changes I've done this afternoon so far that aren't on the above list but were easy to take care of while I was in the code.

Reply #80 from Elemental Forums Top

Ok. New heroes start near your capital. This turned out to be quite a pain because of the zillions of iterations in which champions have been given to players over the years (not to mention I had never been in that code). That one feature took 30 min. :(

Reply #81 from Elemental Forums Top
Just finished rewriting the classification system on combat rating.  Now, if it says you're "weak" and they're "average" you will die if you attack them.
Reply #82 from Elemental Forums Top

Looks great, very excited to try it!  

 

One minor spelling tweak:  you want a creature "horde" instead of a treasure "hoard" in the pop-up dialogue.

 

 

 

 

Reply #83 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 81

Just finished rewriting the classification system on combat rating.  Now, if it says you're "weak" and they're "average" you will die if you attack them.

 

Good job frogboy!

 

Been liking all the screenshots u shown in this thread.

 

But by that, does it auto kill my units or I still can manually march my guys to their deaths?

Reply #84 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Ericridge, reply 83


Quoting Frogboy, reply 81
Just finished rewriting the classification system on combat rating.  Now, if it says you're "weak" and they're "average" you will die if you attack them.

 

Good job frogboy!

 

Been liking all the screenshots u shown in this thread.

 

But by that, does it auto kill my units or I still can manually march my guys to their deaths?

You can still march into them.  It's just that it's way more accurate than before.  

Reply #85 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 84


Quoting Ericridge, reply 83

Quoting Frogboy, reply 81
Just finished rewriting the classification system on combat rating.  Now, if it says you're "weak" and they're "average" you will die if you attack them.

 

Good job frogboy!

 

Been liking all the screenshots u shown in this thread.

 

But by that, does it auto kill my units or I still can manually march my guys to their deaths?

You can still march into them.  It's just that it's way more accurate than before.  

 

Alright thanks then XD

Reply #86 from Elemental Forums Top

While this thread is still up I think I better ask u frogboy while you're doing this.. is the AI even aware of the unrest reducing buildings? If not, could you put in a script or something that tells the AI to start building those kind of stuff once it reaches a certain percentage of unrest and test how well it works? Its very likely that current inability to manage the unrest is one of the biggest things holding the AI back from being a threat.

 

Its probably worth a try.

Reply #87 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Ericridge, reply 86

While this thread is still up I think I better ask u frogboy while you're doing this.. is the AI even aware of the unrest reducing buildings? If not, could you put in a script or something that tells the AI to start building those kind of stuff once it reaches a certain percentage of unrest and test how well it works? Its very likely that current inability to manage the unrest is one of the biggest things holding the AI back from being a threat.

 

Its probably worth a try.

 

A very good point. The AI doesn't prioritize unrest structures very high...

Reply #89 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting GFireflyE, reply 87
A very good point. The AI doesn't prioritize unrest structures very high...

You can fix that through modding and several mods do. I'm much more concerned about where the AI builds its troops. I see it build them in recently settled villages. They build much quicker and are much tougher when built from fortresses. The AI should be building pretty much all its troops from fortresses. I really hope this gets fixed or we at least get a xml variable for it.

Reply #90 from Elemental Forums Top

Go Brad!

 

By the way, do you get assigned to E2015 as well?

Reply #91 from Elemental Forums Top

Great job, Frogboy! 

Can you tease with the bigger squads as well?

That particularly interests me ;)

Reply #92 from Elemental Forums Top

Great work, as always!

I dont know a single company thats supporting its games as you are!

 

 

Reply #93 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, Triumph has been doing a pretty good job so far with AoW3.  But it is true, these two organisations are among the best.

Reply #94 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Very nice changes here, especially the Wildlands one since I love playing on the Wildlands map.

Reply #95 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Primal_Savage, reply 88
Does that also fixes other upgrade lines?

Altar-Shrine-Temple

Quarry-Mine-Trove

Mine-Smelter-Foundry-IronWorks

AI will only build the bolded ones unless the resource/shard is within city walls.

This would explain a lot. I was wondering about this.

Reply #96 from Elemental Forums Top

Considering what's in this patch, I'd gladly pay the same money for it as for the Leader Pack DLC.

 

Great work so far! Looking forward to this one a lot! 

 

So much so that I'm scrapping my current game and waiting for this to come out before I start a new one.

Reply #97 from Elemental Forums Top


Wheeee! So the AI might build consulates after all, which would be pretty good for Undead I hope!

Reply #98 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Rotlung, reply 97


Wheeee! So the AI might build consulates after all, which would be pretty good for Undead I hope!

Consulates are probably going to be nerfed...

 

Reply #99 from Elemental Forums Top

Leader Pack bought! Kind of liking that spider guy :)

Any info on the bigger squads yet?

Reply #100 from Elemental Forums Top

BTW As of Dead, they need one simple thing: some basic growth, when played by the AI!