23-03-2004 04:41									#1
	On the subject of scenarios Got spare money?

Much of my recent posting, scattered around a number of threads, actually relates to Scenarios, their perceived deficiencies, and their relationship to the Clash game.

The first point I would like to make is that Clash has scenarios and nothing else. It differs from other similar games, and in particular Civilization, in that there is no underlying game, there are only scenarios. Of course it is certainly our intention to eventually have the kind of games available in Civilization as scenarios.

Thus the whole world, whole of history game will be presented as a scenario. Because the Clash game is in a relatively early stage of development, this particular scenario has not been written.

In passing, I wrote the basic data for the Dawn, Jericho, Delenda and Atilla scenarios, to give some variety.

The original Dawn scenario did not allow the messages that it now has. When adding the message system, I had to write an events handler. Not a hugely sophisticated one, but it does allow quite a bit of variety in the way in which a scenario develops.

In order that Mark and Laurent could modify the Dawn scenario (and the others), I wrote a sort of reference manual on how to write scenarios. I think that that manual is still around somewhere. Perhaps it could be made available to everyone. This would allow people with their own idea of how a scenario should work to write their own scenario. After all, a scenario is just a couple of text files (map, and scenario).

That way, people who insist on having the Indus Valley, or China adjacent to the Dead sea could do so.

Cheers

	23-03-2004 15:19									#2
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quote: That way, people who insist on having the Indus Valley, or China adjacent to the Dead sea could do so.

quote: Perhaps it could be made available to everyone. This would allow people with their own idea of how a scenario should work to write their own scenario. After all, a scenario is just a couple of text files (map, and scenario).

yes, that'd be great

I just want a map of the world to play on - how big can it be?

	23-03-2004 18:11									#3
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I hope for a "manual of the creator of scenarios", too. For the moment, it's very difficult too understand the game mechanic, for me.

	23-03-2004 19:48									#4
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Vampiloup = ex-Evolution project team ?

I was the High Priest of Civ 2

Edit : oh yes ! a world wide scn should be cool

Last edited by Abdul Alhazred on 23-03-2004 at 23:40

	24-03-2004 15:13									#5
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Garry, is the document you are refering to the dataformat.html, included in the testbed. It does have some description on the variouse tags used in the scenarioes.

	25-03-2004 05:50									#6
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quote: Garry, is the document you are refering to the dataformat.html, included in the testbed. It does have some description on the variouse tags used in the scenarioes.

Yes, that sounds like it. Bear in mind that I haven't seen it for over two years.

Cheers

	25-03-2004 23:47									#7
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Abdul : No no. I, i "work" in the "Syzygie" project. But it's a "in hiatus" project for the moment (i have a lot of work, sorry).

	27-03-2004 02:31									#8
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quote: Yes, that sounds like it. Bear in mind that I haven't seen it for over two years.

That's it. I updated it as faithfully as I could. This probably means I scr***d it a bit, but I think it's at least up to date with the version of code that comes with it.
Come to think of it, I think I should have added a version/history thing somewhere so that when you've got a scenario and it suddenly no longer works because of new mandatory tags you understand why.

	08-04-2004 23:37									#9
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Quoted from another thread:

quote: Or you could use random (or not quite random) groups of syllables. This gets interesting, because you could possibly program in a certain style for each language. For example the XacTec culture might name it's cities similarly (DacPak, LacPak, MoomPak, etc.), it's provinces another way (XacLos, XacMoom, XaxDac, etc.), and it's characters in another manner (Blort dos MoomPak, Port dos LacPak, etc.). This could get quite complicated- both a plus for immersion (in some ways) and a difficulty for coding...

Names are another form of eye- candy, but I like them. I already have code that generates names which have the flavour of various existing languages. You do, however, run the risk of offending people who are native speakers of the language by producing names that, to a non-speaker seem reasonable, but to a native-speaker are nonsensical or offensive.

A better approach is to completely make up the language flavour. I have had some fun with this in the past.

Cheers

	09-04-2004 15:53									#10
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maybe you were expecting this but, a quote from you from another thread:

quote: I cannot see any place at all for language in the game. Nor can I see any possibility of any coder wasting their (precious) time on it.

I think it might be worth trying it with real languages from different families to help come up with the various language flavours - and with well over 6,000 on the ethnologue.org site there's plenty to choose from!

there are lists of vocabs online in Thracian and Hittite and Sumerian things like that... (sumerian.org)

as for offensiveness, do you really think that's likely?! you could always add a textfile disclaimer?!

	10-04-2004 20:13									#11
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quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas Names are another form of eye- candy, but I like them. I already have code that generates names which have the flavour of various existing languages. You do, however, run the risk of offending people who are native speakers of the language by producing names that, to a non-speaker seem reasonable, but to a native-speaker are nonsensical or offensive. A better approach is to completely make up the language flavour. I have had some fun with this in the past. Cheers

Well, My Idea was in fact to have random cultures; no actual "french" or "russian" cultures. For real languages one could just use the set of actual city names (Moskva, Sankt Peterburg, Tver', Kiev, etc.).

As a side note, in Freeciv they appear to have made code that makes the RL city names appear in semi-appropriate terrain.

	10-04-2004 21:47									#12
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Can we please try to keep the threads on-topic? This one's about scenarios, I miss the relation of the last posts with the subject.

	14-04-2004 00:55									#13
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Laurent is right, this thread has drifted. See my comment in the language thread.

Cheers

	24-04-2004 03:05									#14
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The scenario editor progresses apace. There is a very good chance that it will be finished by the end of this decade...

In writing the code, I realized that I will have to produce an editable panel for virtually every aspect of the various XML files. It occurs to me that if this is done properly, those panels can also be used to to provide the player in the game with a wide variety of data that is not currently available. This does seem a worthwhile thing to do.

Cheers

Gary

	24-04-2004 04:28									#15
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The bit about the new informational panels sounds great Gary! I expect info junkies like me will love them.

	24-04-2004 12:32									#16
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It seems to be a good idea to have just one panel for each area - if the model gets changed, then only one part of the program needs modification, both for Clash and the editor.

Cheers

	24-04-2004 14:26									#17
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I'm not sure many informations which should be available to the player are the same as those in the xml files. For instance, a military element will have a few values that are the result of the model vlaues (base attack, attack bonus per tech level) and the tech level, which is variable and not needed in the scenario editor when designing a new unit. A player would probably want to see the final attack value an element has in order to know which one to build, while this info is rather meaningless in the scenario editor (ok it may be useful for starting units, but is meaningless for units which won't be available before a long while).
So if you want to make them in-game panels too, you'll have to add more data, in addition to preventing people from editing the values.

	27-04-2004 00:49									#18
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The display screens will have to have different incarnations anyway, for example when the object being queried belongs to the player, a different set of data will be displayed than if the object belongs to another civilization. So this is no impediment to the notion I had. Each screen will have to have a number of different actual presentations.

The reasons for my appraoch are:

• It allows a uniform approach - users only have to learn one standard.
  
• All presentations, for a particular context, are found in a single place - this makes it easier for coders.
  
• It provides a process whereby every object has its corresponding presentation or editing panel.
  

	22-05-2004 12:43									#19
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quote: Originally posted by Gary Thomas The scenario editor progresses apace. There is a very good chance that it will be finished by the end of this decade...

I was just curious as to the state of the editor. Namely, is the map editing (as for laying tiles at least) code and the scenario saving (that is, saves the scenario/map in a clash usable format) completed?

I'd be willing to do some scenario creation for the team as long as I don't have to write the 2d arrays using characters.... though I guess for a small map it would be ok, but what I'd really like to do is a full Earth Map, which I think alot of people have come in and asked about. It's the next logical step, to me at least, that is, to get a full world map going, especially since it appears Laurent has nearly got the gov't, riot and social stuff ready. With that in place, we can begin to see how different civs might appear in different locales of the world.

If it seems like a good idea to everyone, I can begin designing that. Or if someone has a better idea, speak up. Whatever needs to be done on this front, let me know. I'm in.

	23-05-2004 14:25									#20
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After making the above post I ended up re-reading the tech model and ultimately decided that would be the best place to start for the world scenario. So I set about to create a list of Level 1 techs, including those in the model. After what seemed like hours, of rearranging the techs in all manner of configurations, dropping here and adding there, I decided that perhaps top-down was not the best way to approach this. These level one techs are just too broad and too arbitrary to be of any real value, to me at least, in building the tech tree. So I’m going to tackle it with a bottom-up approach. I’m going to build a list of every invention, idea, thing and “science” that was used in ancient times (up until about 1 AD). This way, even if it is decided that a world scenario isn’t the best option right now, the list will still be available.

Last edited by alms66 on 25-05-2004 at 23:12

	23-05-2004 18:16									#21
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That sounds like a great plan alms. I'll get you the latest testbed sometime today so you can start making mods when you think you're ready. Best to keep your tech tree completely separate from the old one for the time being. You'll be able to do that with the testbed.

	24-05-2004 00:33									#22
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The first version of the scenario editor does not include the map editor. However, because of the way it works, adding the map editor will be merely a matter of adding the (unfortunately tedious) code. The window for the map being edited will look just like the one in the game itself.

Cheers

	24-05-2004 00:37									#23
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I have also given some thought to linked scenarios, that is, campaigns.

Because saved games are now indistinguishable from scenarios, all a campaign system needs is a specification of the connections between two scenarios and a way of reading the previous scenario, retaining the relevant part, and incorporating it into the new scenario. As far as coding is concerned, this is no big deal.

Anyone think that this is a GOOD THING?

Cheers

	24-05-2004 00:42									#24
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The bulk of the data for a saved game is the per square economic data. Most of this stuff has no impact on the game, but is space hungry. I may need to code it in some way, which will make the xml file less readable. This will involve grouping similar squares.

Polygons, anyone?

Cheers

	24-05-2004 03:20									#25
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Yep, polygons that are significantly bigger than squares on average are the way to go long-term IMO. However, shorter-term than polygons, I'm not sure what you're going to do. I'm looking forward to seeing it! Perhaps just keeping the maps small until polygons would be workable? I don't want to make you kludge together too much just as an interim fix.

I have to comment that this is pretty close to the issue I've always been raising about why continous save files with just the turn-to-turn changes recorded would be unfeasible. The Econ stuff is huge and it changes, admittedly always not by significant amounts, ever turn. Looking forward to that solution also.

	25-05-2004 12:08									#26
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I am not concerned about the size of the saved files. I am concerned that around 99% of the save file will be repetitive square economy data, which will make the files hard to read. What I had in mind was to scan all the squares and group ones with identical data. I rather feel that this will considerably reduce the amount of text. Personally I have never understood what having separate square economies adds to the game, since they are aggregated into provinces anyway.

Cheers

	25-05-2004 12:08									#27
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Are there no comments on the wildly exciting prospect of campaigns?

Cheers

	26-05-2004 12:15									#28
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Personally, I find it reeks of RTS games, which I despise, so I'm not all that excited about it, sorry.

	27-05-2004 07:23									#29
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I think campaigns are somewhat interesting, but there are many things higher in importance to me personally.

	28-05-2004 23:44									#30
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The only good thing I'd see in campaigns is if you can keep your units, techs, etc. from one scenario to the next. Otherwies I think it's mostly crap. A good example of such a scenario was Civ2's Spartacus scenario, where you changed the files defining units and events from time to time. It was a bit painful to have to save, switch text files and run civ again, but it was good. I'd like to have something where you have a map that grows as the game progresses (i.e. you start in Greece, then get a map of the Mediterranean, then Europe/Eastern Asia up to India/Northern Africa, then the whole world), maybe grouping squares together as upi grow the map (actually Greece would shrink from a 50 square area in teh beginning to a 4 square area in the end game, but retain population, units, etc.). If you can get something like that, then I'll be very excited about it.