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Re: HAM 5 Alpha - You know it!![message #295824] Tue, 27 December 2011 23:51 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Headrock

 
Messages:1760
Registered:March 2006
Location: Jerusalem
Wow, I'm even more confused now that I've looked at that table...

From what I did understand though, if things were to be handled the way you describe there, I would have to have a dozen checks firing before even allowing a transformation to occur. This makes things even more complicated than they are now.

However, lets indeed try to figure out a working "standard", I.E. a system that would be simpler than the existing one, and still make sense, while in return imposing limits on modding. There are three primary options for this as I see it:

Option A:

A) Each IDA that can transform (hehehe another acronym we're all going to hate very soon) will ALWAYS be able to transform back to its original form. Thus if the gun has 2x integral optics which can be set to 4x, it can ALWAYS be transformed back to 2x. Making a one-way transformation is illegal.
B) If the weapon itself is also capable of transformations, it will always reset all its IDAs to their original state. Therefore, if we set the scope to 4x, then fold the weapon, it will revert to a 2x scope.
C) The weapon must always be able to hold ALL of its IDAs, regardless of how many different transformations you can do to it. Any transformed version of the gun which cannot hold all IDAs of the original gun is illegal.

In this way, the gun always has enough room for all its IDAs, so we don't need to erase or separate them at all while doing any transformations. This takes care of MOST of the possible scenarios.

However, it also means that the weapon returns to default state every time you transform it. Folding the stock returns the scope to 2x mode? Why? This would annoy players, who set their scopes to a certain mode during combat, then fold the weapon only to have their scope change undone.

Option B would be this:

A) All IDAs are completely untouchable - they cannot transform at all.
B) To change an IDA's function or mode, we need to transform the gun itself. The transformation deletes all IDAs and puts in new ones.
C) Any separable or inseparable attachment that is occupying a slot that should belong to an IDA is ejected to inventory upon transformation of the parent gun.

This is much simpler, and makes a lot of sense. But it means that the weapon needs to have many different versions of itself. In the above example, there are four versions: "2x Folded", "2x Unfolded", "4x Folded" and "4x Unfolded". Increase the number of versions exponentially for each integral attachment you have that should be able to transform, and each extra mode you want for any of these integral attachments.

The drawback is that this will easily inflate the number of items in items.XML (not to mention Item_Transformations.XML!). Therefore, it may not be a good idea to try this until we have a working templates XML, which will hold the parent item - while in Items.XML we only define the versions, i.e. how each version differs from the base (with one version not differing from the base at all).

So this version has no limit for modders, but does require them to do more work, and to inflate Items.XML. Therefore it would require a working templates system. I do hope to institute one in the near future, though I don't know how long it would take to make it operational - and it WILL mean a ton of work for modders until such time that the XML Editor can be taught how to read and edit templates.

And finally, Option C:

A) No default attachments. Option removed.
B) The weapon contains all bonuses from the attachments internally, and transformations to change these bonuses all result from transforming the gun itself.

This is similar to option B, but here we literally remove the concept of "integral" attachments completely. In other words, the 2x Mag Factor for example will come from the gun itself - with no scope installed in the scope slot.

This option takes slightly less work for the modder, but there still need to be lots of versions of the gun, with different bonuses for each version. Again, this means the gun has a lot of transformations available (thus lots of versions) but has no problem transforming back and forth as it pleases.



To be honest, I'm really not sure which option is the best. But I think that any option more complex than this (i.e. stipulating all sorts of extra rules or exceptions) will be utterly baffling. Heck, even the above is utterly baffling.

The main thing I've learned from this excruciating mental excercise (and I am refraining from posting the GIF from Scanners again even though that's exactly how I feel right now) is that there really is no way to handle this gracefully without giving something up. NAS opens up a lot of options, but it makes it very hard to make all these options work with one another. Where we made things more complex by allowing more attachments, we need to make it simpler by really defining to ourselves what an attachment IS and how we should treat it by the game...

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Sergeant Major

 
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