Messages

1

Writing, Poems, AARs, and Stories - The Storyteller's Hall / Re: Post your best extracts

« on: June 24, 2018, 12:51:08 PM »

OK, here's one.  Most of my dialogue doesn't work well out of context, but I think this holds up reasonably well:

"Kara?" Lissy whispered into the younger girl's open door.  A silhouette at the window turned to face her.
"Oh...Lissy?  You're still up?" Kara whispered back.
"Had some thinking to do."
"How did that go?"
"Not well.  Rafe came by to tell me something, and now I have even more to think about.  So I've accomplished negative net thinking for the evening."  She sighed.  "Story of my life."

2

Rome - Total Realism / Re: Welcome to Rome Total Realism, Say Hello and introduce yourself!

« on: October 30, 2016, 01:22:20 AM »

Hi Anunnak!

Wow, you've got a lot of the old gang here.  I don't go back quite as far as 6.0, but I did do a teeny bit of coding for RTR6PE.

3

Rome - Total Realism / Re: Tax 'building' with options & policy options

« on: October 30, 2016, 01:20:17 AM »

I think idea 1 is quite clever.  I've never been a fan of the city types described in type 2.

That said, I recommend making the idea 1 buildings interdependent with the economic development buildings of that type.  That will encourage players to build the trees correctly.

4

Extended Realism / Re: Get your kicks with Beta 6!

« on: August 16, 2016, 01:22:11 AM »

Mostly that neither of my projects are quite pure text-based: both needed some bits of "impure" interface to display some static images etc.

Images?  Burn the heretic!  Burn him!   

5

Extended Realism / Re: Get your kicks with Beta 6!

« on: August 15, 2016, 01:04:15 AM »

Python is good fun, and very easy to build small text adventures etc with

I can see that.  Why not stick with an old standby like Z-Machine, though?  I used to have a Z-Machine extension for Firefox back in the wild and woolly days of the beta.

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Extended Realism / Re: Get your kicks with Beta 6!

« on: August 13, 2016, 01:01:21 PM »

Cool!  I've been meaning to download Python for awhile, anyway. 

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Extended Realism / Re: Get your kicks with Beta 6!

« on: August 06, 2016, 09:48:26 PM »

I've scratch-built little adventure games, but nothing commercial as of yet.

That's cool.  Are they text-based, sprite-based a la JRPGs, Source engine-based a la Dear Esther...?

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Extended Realism / Re: Get your kicks with Beta 6!

« on: August 06, 2016, 02:58:39 PM »

Aye.  While I appreciate the vote of confidence, I'm afraid we only do a small fraction of what you'd need to do to create a game from scratch.  The only guy I know who's pulled it off is one of the best modders and AI people out there:  Darth.  If you like the Civil War, check out his game.
http://www.ultimategeneral.com/

9

Extended Realism / Re: Get your kicks with Beta 6!

« on: August 06, 2016, 01:19:13 AM »

Great, what do you have left on your to-do list?

This next release is going to be mostly Sere-directed, though I want to fix the unit mass, too.  I also think I need to cut the cavalry costs by a bit.

10

Extended Realism / Re: Get your kicks with Beta 6!

« on: August 05, 2016, 12:00:51 PM »

What skins were done by Gaivs?

Several, but due to miscommunications on my part I think we're only using the Cyrenaican Phalanx ATM.  The others weren't quite what we needed.  Check out \ExRM\Data\units\GaivsSejanvs for everything so far.

11

Extended Realism / Get your kicks with Beta 6!

« on: August 05, 2016, 03:27:58 AM »

We've made enough changes by now that a patch is probably inappropriate, so there's a new full beta on the download page:  http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?action=post;msg=107608;topic=4613.0

Major upgrades this time:
I just spent the last two days normalizing every single infantry unit's defense skill.  That should improve gameplay and AI army creation.
Sarmatia is now a Henry rather than a Genghis.  That should get more heavy cavalry on the board from them.
Various map tweaks for better AI pathfinding.
Improved some of the AOR units around the Black Sea.  It's now a little more in line with DBM.
Reorganized some unit skins and types to optimize DMB slot usage.  It's not perfect yet, but I think it's a little better.  This beta is also the first one to feature unit skins by GaivsSejanvs, so a big thanks to him!
We also did some general code cleanup.
Thanks to a suggestion from Gen.JamesWolfe, I also normalized infantry mass and reduced hoplite unit radius.  I don't think the mass is quite where I want it yet, so as you play let me know what you think.  My inclination is to double it across the board while leaving cavalry the same.

12

Stories and AARs / Re: Daughter of Coldharbour - Sigyn's Journal (Skyrim)

« on: July 31, 2016, 10:47:44 PM »

This is promising.  I'd read more.

13

Stories and AARs / Re: Short story: Invasive Species

« on: July 31, 2016, 10:44:59 PM »

D'you mind if I tweet this thread, Quinn? I'm going to need to line up the August scheduled tweets soon so whatever we have that involves good content needs to be there!

Not at all!

14

Rome - Total Realism / Re: Ancient Nabataea

« on: July 26, 2016, 01:57:29 AM »

I can't figure out how.  I just did some in-game testing (with the help of the move_character command) and the only terrain that seemed to have a movement effect was "swamp."

15

Rome - Total Realism / Re: Ancient Nabataea

« on: July 25, 2016, 02:53:11 AM »

Thank you for clarifying that you are interested in the Hellenistic era. I know nothing about the game you are working on. It sounds like you are an adept historian. I have only studied the Nabataeans and the bedouin of today. The Bedouin are small people, lightly built. Riding two people to a camel is not uncommon. If you have two thousand camels you can have four thousand mounted archers. They also used horses. For instance, there is a relief of a Nabataean cavalryman at the castle in Kerak.

Oh, sorry.  I thought Ahowl had explained that to you before you posted here.  I apologize.

And they definitely used a ton of cavalry.  I agree with that completely.

    Remember that they usually chose NOT to fight. Outside of their burial cities, national borders meant little to them. They acted more like smugglers in the early days, and later like a secret society in Rome, than a foreign nation. By 120 AD they dissipated their kingdom as most of it was annexed into the Roman Empire. The Roman coins issued in commemoration were different from others that commemorated similar events. Rather than saying Conquered Arabia, the coin said Acquired Arabia.  The hint is that the wealthy merchants purchased their way into Roman citizenship while the low-class continued on in Petra. So perhaps you should not include the Nabataeans in the game, as it sounds like it is a military game, and the Nabataeans didn't figure very much in the military history of Rome. If you want other types of units, you could include any mercinaries you wanted, as they had money to purchase whatever they desired.

Anyway, I am heading out for a month long trip, and will be off the radar (ie no emails, phone, fax, etc).  Wishing you all the best.

Very interesting.  Thank you for the explanation.  Ideally, it sounds like we should treat that area like a special case of client kingdom, but I don't think we can do that within the confines of the game engine.  Well, it's technically possible, but would require more different buildings than I can afford to spare on one area.  (There are only 64 sets of 9 related buildings allowed, and I've used up 62 of those sets creating other aspects of the game.)

As for the comment about pursuit, think of them like the N.A. Indians who simply disappeared after a battle and assembled somewhere else.  Camels can go where horses cannot, and with their hidden water cisterns, the Nabataeans could just ride into the desert where others would die. The desert was their protection, where armies could not penetrate. This is why they were successful at being smugglers and merchants. It was only they who could cross the desert, to bring goods and information from one side to the other. The Roman army took very long to go around the edges. They moved quickly across the desert. they didn't have to defend borders. And as far as the local families in each of the cities, they became wealthy merchants, and usually had the protection of the local rulers. So it is a complex set up and I think not really good for a military game made up of slow moving units intent on taking territory and holding it.

Hmmm...if we had the ability to treat the desert like the ocean, we could make that work.  Unfortunately, the game mechanics for what you're describing only exist using the deep water in the sea areas of the map.  There's no way to limit some regions of the map to certain classes of units.  I've had to either make some deserts impassable or make them passable to everyone.