<font size="">Pending feature: Increased Team sizes</font>
I've begun increasing the possible number of soldiers that can exist at any time. As a result, we can have both a higher team size and have a lot more soldiers/militia/civilians/creatures in the sector at any given time.
I've hired all AIM and all MERC personnel. For the Horde!!!
You can scroll up and down the list with [PageUp] and [PageDown]
Landing in Omerta takes a friggin long time. Plus every merc complains about those he hates, which takes another 5 minutes :silly:
Yeah... I stopped adding enemies after 90 or so. You get the point.
Because I can, I filled Omerta with an extra 510 civilians. Because I can. Look at the minimap. Next turn was a bit annoying, as the enemy team was reinforced to 288 soldiers.
[url]&feature=youtu.be[/url][/video]
Hiring everybody takes bloody time. Did you know that hiring all of AIM costs over a million dollars?
Some of you will may that the maximum size of all teams combined until now was 255, as we stored the ID of soldiers in an UINT8 (it was in fact a bit smaller for reasons not relevant here). I've expanded this to UINT16. This will theoretically allow us to have 65535 soldiers in a sector at any given time (not that that would be practical). While I was at it (I had to touch at least 60% of all files by my estimation), I also cleaned up code a bit.
Now the thing is, I would like to have this in the trunk eventually. Not necessary in the 2014 stable. There are likely still legions of new bugs in this, due to the way things were coded (like, for example, a loop-variable being UINT8, which then causes an overflow and a possible endless loop when looping over all soldiers). I've seen really odd things^^. But it seems playable to me.
For this reason, i am now releasing this as a volatile release. This means that I provide the exe (and a slightly changed ini) for this. You can then play with this as you like. The intention of this is that you people play with increased team sizes and get errors. Which you then report to me, so I can fix them and release an updated exe so you can stumble upon new errors. Until you don't. At that point, I'll integrate this into the trunk, and we'll be happy ever after.
In this exe, there can be up to
256 player mercenaries
20 player vehicles
512 enemy soldiers
512 creatures
512 militiamen
512 civilians
present in tactical at the same time.
Note that when this eventually gets moved into the trunk, the teamsizes will be smaller. Having thousands of people in turnbased is slow, tedious and, in the end, not what JA2 needs. But I feel a bit less restrictions would be good. This opens the door to so many possible new developments - more teams, sentries, you name it - that... well, I feel good about it.
Now, if you use this and have an error to report, please upload a savegame here, and also upload your JA2_Options.ini with which the error occured. Also note that I do not intend to install various mods - I already have 10 JA2 installations an don't intend to expand. The exes itself will always be based on the current trunk, and so will contain all the current features. And no, it is absolutely NOT compatible with any existing savegames whatsoever.
You can get the exe here - now outdated. The ini has a new setting, SECTOR_FILL_UP_TEAMS, which simply maxes out the civilian team once you enter a sector. It also contains an expanded SquadNames.xml. I introduced maximum squadsize to 40, which is really necessary...
I have 2 questions:
1. Does it mean that during counterattacks we get to fight all enemies at once?
2. Is upper limit of mobile militia on strategic map increased?
Messages:344
Registered:July 2006 Location: France
This may open new opportunities to mods, very nice!
I remember a funny result of code change you made earlier, that skipped the turn based system and allowed characters to act in real time. Well, that could be funny (and faster paced) with that much people!
Does UINT16 treatment includes merc profiles, so we could use characters with higher indexes?
No. I enlarged IDs to UINT16, but Profiles are still UINT8. It is a lot less work though, but I'd rather not mix these two, the changes are already massive. Also, respect for the original devs to put that line in
TBCoW
1. Does it mean that during counterattacks we get to fight all enemies at once?
Yes, provided the enemy force does not have more than 512 soldiers and you did not lower MAX_NUMBER_ENEMIES_IN_TACTICAL (JA2_Options.ini) below that value.
TBCoW
2. Is upper limit of mobile militia on strategic map increased?
Yes. Groupsizes have also been increased.
Slax
big maps are gonna be fuuuun. Now, this if anything paves the road for generic, no-name, faceless mercs. Or perhaps controllable militia. *whistle*
The ability to directly control soldiers without a profile is, in principle, independent of this. And a bad idea in my personal opinion, a lot of Jagged Alliance's appeal comes from the personality of those you command. I don't want to change that.
The ability to directly control soldiers without a profile is, in principle, independent of this. And a bad idea in my personal opinion, a lot of Jagged Alliance's appeal comes from the personality of those you command. I don't want to change that.
Wouldn't the personalities, likes and dislikes, and individual behaviour of the mercenaries generate a complete management clusterfuck though? Basically having to compare the likes and dislikes of a few score other mercenaries to establish whether the SquadPlatoon can actually operate effectively, and not to mention trying to keep them all outfitted and in good health. I don't really see any way around that without sacrificing depth of character, or introducing automatic processes which are equally cold and faceless.
Militia control or control of faceless mercenaries with pre-selected equipment and specializations might not bring with it the management problems that the classic mercenaries would, but I can see how one might not be willing to make the sacrifice. A combined approach might be still be interesting; where the combat group is made up a few fleshed out individuals, with personality and customized equipment akin to the classic characters, and they are in turn supported with faceless hired guns and controllable militia.
Nice. I actually asked for this feature a couple of years ago (simply wanted to play with more than 32 mercs), but was told it would be too complicated to realize... Apparently, that didn't scare you. Way to go! This couldn't come at a better time, with AIMNAS advancing at a good pace once again! Now we can properly populate those big maps, especially city sectors.
Apparently a few people were confused by the ini I provided (I did not change the descriptions of the settings, which still stated 32 mercs max). I since reuploaded a correct one (Link at the end of first post).
; Player mercs, valid values 1 through 256, default is 24
MAX_NUMBER_PLAYER_MERCS = 256
; Player vehicles, valid values 2 through 20, default is 2
MAX_NUMBER_PLAYER_VEHICLES = 20
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Use these to adjust the numbers of various sorts of "people" that can appear in the same sector in TACTICAL mode.
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Enemies (i.e., soldiers), valid values 16 through 512, default is 32
MAX_NUMBER_ENEMIES_IN_TACTICAL = 512
; Creatures (i.e., bloodcats and crepitus), valid values 0 through 512, default is 32
MAX_NUMBER_CREATURES_IN_TACTICAL = 512
; Rebels (i.e., militia), valid values 16 through 512, default is 32
MAX_NUMBER_MILITIA_IN_TACTICAL = 512
; Civilians, valid values 16 through 512, default is 32
MAX_NUMBER_CIVS_IN_TACTICAL = 512
To clarify, nothing has changed apart from these descriptions.
Messages:340
Registered:December 2008 Location: en route to San Hermanos
I was wondering what would be the benefit of this future? Now i see it - you can have an over crowded balime and you can send there suicide bombers - and the news will go crazy...!?!?!
no, really besides a massive zombie attack and the massive diedrana counter attacks what's the real use of this feature?
I'm not saying it's a bad addition, it's beautiful as always but what's the point?
To fill up areas with more capacity, duh. Vanilla hamlets may look crowded and 'SAM sites' overstuffed at the current cap - but even AIMNAS villages look eerily empty. Not to forget:
a) Counterattacks will really hit you rather than having one mainwave and a trickle of reinforcements coming in ones and twos.
b) You can hire a decent sized fighting force and still have room for staff and logistics forces
First, of all, you aren't. The 512 enemies are only in this test version as a 'stress test'. If this ever finds its way into the trunk, the value will be much lower.
Static emplacements are very, very difficult. The animation is nice, but useless, at least in any implementation I can think of. Static emplacements would require the ability to create new structures. That is currently impossible in maps that weren't created with those tiles (see fortification feature). We were able to load structures into maps that do not have those after a huge effort at the summer convention two years ago. However, there are still huge problems with that (no shadows, doors don't work etc.), so I've suspended development until further notice.
Apart from that, static guns would require a way to store a gun object (which map structures cannot do currently), firing animations for a structure (again, not existing) and a way for soldier animations to interact with tiles in a complicated way. Plus, we need a way to aim and fire with weapons that are in a different position than the mercs firing them. For example, what the merc sees is not what the gun 'sees', which then requires significant modifications/rewrite in all cth functions.
In short, the idea that the animation part is the biggest issue with gun emplacements is... very very wrong.
Since you asked, these are the immediate benefits of this feature in my view:
More mercenaries. Where the best value is and how much is to much is open for debate. 50?
Harder Counterattacks.
Current cities, especially in AIMNAS, are empty. Changing that would add more 'life'.
Future development would also benefit:
We can now add new teams. So one day, one might have several factions that fight each other. Imagine a mod where the player can select which side he chooses. Imagine huge threeway battles. Still lots of code needed, and this is a definite precondition.
The easiest implementation of Sentries would be to have them as unmovable soldiers. Bad idea up to now, as it limits the enemy team when heavily used, but now much more likely.
Zombies currently share a team with bugs and bloodcats, and thus don't attack each other. No more need of that if they are a separate team.
Multiplayer where each player has their own militia, and then duke it out in an epic struggle^^
Who is to say that the enemy is a monolithic block? The enemy could fracture into different factions as the player pummels the army. Hell, why not have your own militia rebel? Or the US invade?
Messages:176
Registered:May 2002 Location: Los Angeles ( Hollywood )...
The one thing I have not seen anyone really address ( which is THE most critical thing in my opinion ) is the ability to easily change and add end game and mission triggers / conditions. All the other things everyone has been working on is eye candy and bloat. The core elements to JA modding IMO has always been to create new stories and missions that would NOT require specific sectors for character triggers nor a fixed end game trigger ( ie kill the character ). I do appreciate all the hard work everyone has put in over the years and the outcome has been pretty good. But without new triggers and end game conditions you are basically playing the same game over and over.
Just my 2 cents ... oh and I raised this argument back when 1.13 was first starting out that years ago. I am not a coder so I cant do it. IF it were done you would see lots more mods being made as it would allow multitudes of different type of missions.
Messages:340
Registered:December 2008 Location: en route to San Hermanos
flug with the following 3 you've nailed it! now I'm all in!
Quote:
We can now add new teams. So one day, one might have several factions that fight each other. Imagine a mod where the player can select which side he chooses. Imagine huge threeway battles. Still lots of code needed, and this is a definite precondition.
The easiest implementation of Sentries would be to have them as unmovable soldiers. Bad idea up to now, as it limits the enemy team when heavily used, but now much more likely.
Who is to say that the enemy is a monolithic block? The enemy could fracture into different factions as the player pummels the army. Hell, why not have your own militia rebel? Or the US invade?
Btw: I've heard from 2 different sources that some people have a problem moving squads in Omerta when they've hired loads of people. As I did not get that error, a savegame would be very helpful (if the game is without any additional mods like AR etc.).
Blog
Search
Help
Members
Register
Login
Home
) that were added to the trunk until this revision.
