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Post by celebaglar on Sept 14, 2004 13:50:23 GMT
I tried that, but it looks complete pants. Tried lifting some old b/w mule train photos from the Web but to little avail. I'm afraid that my complete lack of artistic ability has let me down here. Well I can have a look and see if I come up with any ideas tonight, but I'm no artist and to be honest I can't even visualise how it would work best. Caravans are usually long lines of wagons etc, but this is not something that would work well with the billboard system. I can't promise anything, and my suggestion would be to see if Wayne has any ideas. He's more of an arty type than I am.
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Post by sparrowhawk on Sept 14, 2004 14:45:50 GMT
Something that I was trying to do but without much success was using the horse graphic, scaling it down and layering several horses together. But it was not great.
I'll see if I still have the gif - I may have deleted it.
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Post by sparrowhawk on Sept 14, 2004 14:55:43 GMT
Here they are - what do you reckon? Large one for caravan nearby, smaller on for caravan in the distance... Both need correct scaling! At the moment, a single caravan gfx is displayed ahead of you (just like wild horses) .
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Post by celebaglar on Sept 14, 2004 15:18:31 GMT
Well, the large one works in place of the lord graphic when you are next to a caravan, but scaling it down doesn't work because it doesn't fit in with the rest of the billboards. Besides, at a long distance it shouldn't be obvious if you are seeing a caravan, a small army or whatever. I've had a very quick play - delaying my PC building again - and come up with something like this. It's a bit crude, and obviously the size could be wider or narrower if required. The idea is that every caravan would have some guards travelling with it. These would not be enough to fight off a big army, but should stop the caravan from being captured by lone lords or tiny armies (e.g. less than 250 men). Just in case anyone has problem with the page. here are the gfx: (BTW, I haven't cleaned up the small sizes, so they will look a little blurred)
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Post by sparrowhawk on Sept 14, 2004 15:25:34 GMT
Looks good. Thanks for that.
Problem is that I conceived Caravans as having zero guards. Since the lord (ie the caravan) and the army must be the same race (ie "Caravan"), I would need to add some additional code to cater for armed guards.
Alternatively I would have to change the data model to add a Caravan flag to the lords table, so that a caravan could be of any race.
At the moment it all seems to be working rather well, so I don't want to change it right now, but I would be willing to change the way caravans work after we've played around with them for a bit.
BTW, another feature - you can "Capture" an ally's caravan. This you can send food to an ally who is running low. Probably need to change the button text, but what do people think. A good idea or not?
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Post by sparrowhawk on Sept 14, 2004 15:27:43 GMT
Mind you, the flags don't really matter do they? (Maybe the animal handlers are feeling merry and having a party). And for the sake of getting it to work, the gfx is sufficiently different from the army gfx to be visually useful.
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Post by celebaglar on Sept 14, 2004 15:36:11 GMT
The guards were intended as nominal, so they wouldn't actually fight or be tranferable etc. They would simply prevent the caravan from being captured by single lords or very small armies. They wouldn't show up in the Caravan description.
As such I don't think you need worry about race or anything else.
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Post by celebaglar on Sept 14, 2004 15:38:22 GMT
BTW, one question I forgot to ask. Will stores be usable by armies in the field, or will they only work from strongholds?
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Post by sparrowhawk on Sept 14, 2004 19:58:40 GMT
That's OK then, because I've already set a limit of 250 as the minimum to capture a caravan, plus a courage of 4 ( which is scared, I think). Caravans can be used anywhere. And believe me, that caused me no end of fun on the programming front!
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Matija
Morkin Member
The Turtle Moves!
Posts: 1,696
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Post by Matija on Sept 15, 2004 7:44:48 GMT
Nice work on graphics, Bill.
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Post by sparrowhawk on Sept 15, 2004 9:46:09 GMT
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Post by celebaglar on Sept 15, 2004 10:04:53 GMT
I assume you see as many packhorses as there are caravans at that location. Is there any way to determine one caravan from another - assuming there is any need to do so? BTW, I love the make-up. It really suits you.
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Post by sparrowhawk on Sept 15, 2004 10:10:08 GMT
I assume you see as many packhorses as there are caravans at that location. Is there any way to determine one caravan from another - assuming there is any need to do so? No, at the moment it's just a fixed set of gfx as supplied by you above. I think that to have 3 sizes (a-la-army) would be relatively simple to do. Just provide the gfx tiles! Smooth talker!
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Natmus
Morkin Admin
Fight the power!
Posts: 4,518
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Post by Natmus on Sept 15, 2004 10:10:16 GMT
Yikes, is that a female Giant you are playing these days? Or a self portrait? ;D I appreciate you need to kick back and have some fun once in a while, but let me point out that the Battle Algorithm still works like crap, and you haven't even have solved the simple 'double jeopardy' bug in your new algorithm. How about solving the already existing bugs before creating new ones? But perhaps I expect way too much from a person who actually enjoyed and spoke positively about Peter Jackson's desecration of LoTR The more strange changes you make, the more I consider you the PJ of Midnight, J-Y! Instead of taking advice from non-players like Matija, who doesn't even bother playing the game anymore, how about taking heed from the people actually still testing your game and actually know how the thing works these days? Just a suggestion, of course, it's your project, but is your main concern to create a playable game or what? Nah, relax. I'm not really that mad, but suddenly I was on a roll, and needed an outlet for a whole different and unrelated set of frustrations. You're just the easy target, and please consider the rude bits above a joke ;D
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Post by sparrowhawk on Sept 15, 2004 10:53:44 GMT
Mads,
I appreciate that you may be frustrated with some aspects of the game. I assure you that I am working on MU as much as I can. But I do have other more pressing commitments on my time, namely family and work, in that order. Sometimes things don't move on as fast as I would like either.
I too get frustrated occasionally with a particular area of the game, and I need to do something different to keep my enthusiasm afloat regarding the project. Hence the caravans. It's been fun doing these, and I personally feel that they could add a whole lot of fun in games. Ambushes etc.
I have actually done some small work on the battle script today, and have fixed the bug whereby lords themselves only ever kill 1R/1W. Not great progress but the battle script is something that has to be handled with kid gloves:
Chris has sent me an alternative battle method that I plan to try out before trying any wholsale change to the existing code. It's simpler and is based on LOM/TME.
I'll see how that goes. But it won't be complete anytime soon.
Thus a dilemna. Launch with an imperfect model. Or continue testing for another x months. Personally I am tempted to go for the former. People have been hearing about MU for long enough - it's time they got a chance to try it for themselves. I honestly don't think that the battle algorithm, flawed as it is, will put too many people off. At least I hope not.
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