Community "Unofficial" expansion

[Green1]

As I have mentioned before, I am a gaming fanatic that visits maybe dozens of forums. One such forum I keep track of is Age of Wonders 2 heaven at heaven games.

That particular community is doing something pretty ambitious. They already put out an unofficial patch for thier classic game years before Scient and Kyrub came about. Now, the next patch they are adding is basically a expansion. New units, overhauled graphics, even a campaign and random map additions. And, unlike the AC community, Swolte's and crews patches are universally accepted. Everyone in the community uses them. Yes, it took them years - but...

Why can't we do that?

SMAC, now that GOG is now selling the game as the 4x gods originally intentioned, could use that treatment.

[Yitzi]

If you'd like to design an expansion, go ahead.  If it's not too ambitious then it can be done with mods no more difficult than those that went into Lost Eden, and if it is more ambitious then post your ideas and someone might show up who's able to do the necessary .exe mods.  (Note, however, that SMAX stores data in a set-aside portion of the program, so adding new stuff that would need to be stored might require someone who knows how to safely increase the size of the file.)

[Green1]

Okay. In a minute, I will prepare a graphical and commentary presentation.

I suspect it would be a lost cause, though. Praying for a saviour to come about from the masses seems to be not a good solution. I hate to be pessimistic. Age of Wonders for a cult game community has one thing we do not: rabid eastern European fanatic coders that live to .exe mod and have massive fanbase and support. Also, I have reservations. Most coders I have known are not to receptive of some guy's ideas unless that person is a coder himself. Not to say they do not take suggestions. It is just they are the ones doing the "work". As such, what the community or myself feel is the number one goal, they may not.

Still.. give me a sec. If it is design, I must show exactly what I think an "expansion" entails and show pictures and documentation like a good designer should. I do not want to be a worthless forum whiner like I see on FPS or MMO forums. Some of it is ambitious. But, I think most would agree with me an expansion would do this.

[Green1]

First off.. and for coders, this seems to not be as "exciting" as adding new content or Total Conversions since it is work. More than 7 factions. Let me go into detail into what this is going to take. Now, first off I am going to say it is going to take UI work. I am assuming that the borders such for all the in game interfaces pull from the same graphics files. I am familiar with modders works in World of Warcraft and have played with LUA frames. I assume (maybe wrong) the first part of this would be boring finding stuff and then changing it/widening frames.

Notice what I feel is the "useless" function of the faction select screen. Why do I need three buttons up top for SMAC only, SMAX only, and mixed? Shouldn't just a pull down suffice?

But - UI is just the tip of the iceberg. Next post, I will share with you the more major challenges of this endeavor from posting here and there.

[Green1]

Another thing about it:

from an old thread on WPC from Darsnan:

my understanding is that there is a bit mask which is applied to the game, and it is an 8-bit mask. Thus only 8 Factions (including NL) are allowed in a given game. I have been able to trick the game into allowing 8 factions (i.e. I set up the 8th Faction as a playable faction), however it ain't pretty, and it crashes the game continually.

Also..  the bit mask can be expanded from another thread I can not find from an era ago. I think the poster mentioned it would exponetially expand the AI checks if you add 14 factions. His deal would be that it would affect performance. My deal is very few folks play with the 1999 minumum spec computer so that would be a non issue.

Now, unit maximum MAY bite us. I think Scient or Kyrub tried to lift the unit max but it bit him. With 14 factions, we could be pushing this.

Not sure about maps. Starting positions would have to be made for more than 7 factions.

[Green1]

NUMBER 2

Map Pack


I feel sorry for the multiplayers. They only have one map which is the veteran's map. Even the FPS crowd has several competition maps.

Any expansion would include the more popular competition maps. Maybe a scenario.

[Green1]

NUMBER 3

SMAX Palette/ graphics overhaul/ modern gfx card (HD) issues.

We do not need 3d graphics. But, it would be nice to display more colors and have a higher resolution. Resolution support for more modern graphics cards would be cool, too.


A little side note. A long time ago I was admiring Buster's Aunts take on an animated Domai and Santiago. Man, if we could lift the restrictions on that to allow stuff, it could take off. Imagine at least Civ 4 level leaderheads!

[Green1]

The controversial part:

Most expansions offer additional gameplay. Beyond the Sword for Civ 4 offered espionage, corporations, and a host of other things. Gods and Kings offered the more as well to Civ 5. Each modern Civ has had expansions. There are those that say Civ 5 will get a third. Where is AC's third expansion?

Apart from the BASIC THREE™ (and for those not paying attention: more than 7 factions, gfx, AI)

Now, I am not going to rant for 50 posts. But, extreme areas we could concentrate on:

Orbital/ sattelite warfare. Search your feelings. No one has done it right. To be honest, I do not think anyone but SMAX has ever attempted since some Steve Jackson magazine board game from the 1980s.

Creature Bestiary. More Native units to wreak havoc would be awesome.

[Green1]

Hey.. enough of my mad ramblings... what do yall think? Where should an unofficial expansion concentrate?

[Yitzi]

I suspect it would be a lost cause, though. Praying for a saviour to come about from the masses seems to be not a good solution. I hate to be pessimistic. Age of Wonders for a cult game community has one thing we do not: rabid eastern European fanatic coders that live to .exe mod and have massive fanbase and support. Also, I have reservations. Most coders I have known are not to receptive of some guy's ideas unless that person is a coder himself. Not to say they do not take suggestions. It is just they are the ones doing the "work". As such, what the community or myself feel is the number one goal, they may not.

Yeah...that's one of the perks of being a coder.  Still, being number five does mean you probably get dealt with eventually.  (Then again, I might be a bit more receptive to non-coders, since I'm primarily a mod designer, who's just learning to code SMAX because it's the only way to make my mods work.)

First off.. and for coders, this seems to not be as "exciting" as adding new content or Total Conversions since it is work. More than 7 factions.

That's a very difficult coding job, for the following reasons:
1. As I mentioned, the game stores data in the file.  Among the things stored is all the information for each faction in the game.  That means that to have more faction, you need more room to store the data...and there's enough of it that you'd need to increase the actual file size and then place the necessary code in each place the location is referenced.  Increasing the file size without damaging other files is something that I don't know enough to do, perhaps some other coder would.
2. As you said, it involves UI work, which involves figuring out how Assembly uses UI (I think it's through other programs, which means it's a lot harder to figure out.)  Some coders are presumably capable of it, but none who are here now as far as I can tell.

Notice what I feel is the "useless" function of the faction select screen. Why do I need three buttons up top for SMAC only, SMAX only, and mixed? Shouldn't just a pull down suffice?

The idea is that you might want to use pure SMAC or pure SMAX; since those were presumed to be the two most likely combinations, they're available more easily.

Now, unit maximum MAY bite us. I think Scient or Kyrub tried to lift the unit max but it bit him. With 14 factions, we could be pushing this.

My guess is that lifting the unit max caused problems due to the space issue; anyone who could solve that issue as needed to add factions would be able to increase the unit max as much as needed.

Not sure about maps. Starting positions would have to be made for more than 7 factions.

That would be no problem; just use a larger map and place the positions as desired.  We're assuming designed maps anyway when talking about more than 7 factions, so that's no problem.

NUMBER 2

Map Pack


I feel sorry for the multiplayers. They only have one map which is the veteran's map. Even the FPS crowd has several competition maps.

Any expansion would include the more popular competition maps. Maybe a scenario.

Personally, I feel that using a predesigned map with predesigned start positions is inherently unbalancing (as it'll usually either favor the builder factions or the momentum factions).  I'd rather have randomized start positions (in which case it might as well be either a random map or the Map of Planet), and a ranking system that pays more attention to long-term tendencies (so that the effect of luck is diluted via the law of averages.)

NUMBER 3

SMAX Palette/ graphics overhaul/ modern gfx card (HD) issues.

We do not need 3d graphics. But, it would be nice to display more colors and have a higher resolution. Resolution support for more modern graphics cards would be cool, too.

Yeah, that would be nice...a nightmare to code in Assembly, though.

The controversial part:

Most expansions offer additional gameplay. Beyond the Sword for Civ 4 offered espionage, corporations, and a host of other things. Gods and Kings offered the more as well to Civ 5. Each modern Civ has had expansions. There are those that say Civ 5 will get a third. Where is AC's third expansion?

I'm working on it.  (Well, technically it's more of a balance fix for SMAX and later I'll extend it to SMAC, but I'm calling it Alien Crossfire 1.5 anyway, because a lot will change in terms of gameplay.)

Orbital/ sattelite warfare.

This one is actually fairly easy:
-Make Orbital defense pods available with Orbital Spaceflight and make them cheaper.
-Make Sky Labs a lot higher in the tech tree and make them and Nessus Mining more expensive.

Now you have a system where shooting down the other guy's satellites is fairly doable unless he has a substantial production advantage, so you should get some real warfare (as well as tactics: Do you shoot down his defense pods first to prevent counterattacks, or do you shoot down his expensive satellites first to do more damage.)

Creature Bestiary. More Native units to wreak havoc would be awesome.

All the major roles seem to be covered, though, unless you have some suggestions.

[Green1]

Assembly? Ugh.  I think I dabbled in it back in the days of the Commodore 64. I really tried to understand it. But, it was so arcane and long and complex.

I had checked Scient's thread and I know he used a disassembler. I did not know he was going all hardcore machine language!

I was assuming that the Firaxis team would have at least used a higher programming language to actually build the game. Surely they used a modern (for that day) language like C for making it. Who would want to go through that much pain. I envisioned the SMAX code with process trees and marked for other members of the team to know what part was which.

The Orbital warfare deal really intrigues me. Now, I wish i had the perfect solution. But, unfortunately no other game that has been published has ever dealt with orbital warfare mechanics. SMAX is the only one with even a basic system. Even then, it is not much compared to the richness of the rest of the game.

I do agree with you on Sky Hydroponics labs though the purists (who more than likely are ALSO abusing Cloudbase Academy) are going to freak. I go a bit further. I still do not see why an advanced society would put farms in space even with unlimited energy just to ship back dirtside when most games still have lots of undeveloped land. Particulary if there are no orbiting massive manned stations/ colonies. Then, that would be a base facility as part of a "orbital base". Think the ISS but like Golden Rule out of Hieinlin's Cat Who Walks Through Walls. But - "bases" in space brings up once again UI modification issues.

Speaking of orbital, there was a board game that was published in one of these fanzines (1980s) the GURPs folks put out. It is the only example of a codefied set of rules for geostationary/low earth/ earth moon L2/ and lunar-earth warfare. All other space war rules tend to go interstellar. I am going to have to see if someone has an aging copy of that somewhere to see what they did and if there are some ideas to steal.

[Green1]

Oh yeah.. no need to worry about SMAC or SMAC ports.

Since GOG announced that the expansion is now part of the DL and that anyone that purchased will be able to re DL the expac for free, SMAC is now gone the way of vanilla Civ 4. No one mods or upatches vanilla Civ 4 or Warlords for that matter.

[Kilkakon]

Really about GoG SMAX? That's cool, means that my game is a bit less arcane.

As for machine language, it would have been written in C/C++ yeah, but as we don't have the source code, we have to use assembly to play with the exe.

[Yitzi]

I had checked Scient's thread and I know he used a disassembler. I did not know he was going all hardcore machine language!

A disassembler turns machine language into assembly language; assembly language is essentially just machine code with something telling you what each instruction does.

I was assuming that the Firaxis team would have at least used a higher programming language to actually build the game.

MS Visual C++ , I believe.  But decompiling something that large is pretty much impossible, so without access to the source code the only option is to work in assembly.

The Orbital warfare deal really intrigues me. Now, I wish i had the perfect solution. But, unfortunately no other game that has been published has ever dealt with orbital warfare mechanics. SMAX is the only one with even a basic system. Even then, it is not much compared to the richness of the rest of the game.

Personally, I feel that it's pretty decent for what's essentially just one minor facet of the larger game, but if there's something more detailed that you'd like to see, it may make the "later stuff" list.

I do agree with you on Sky Hydroponics labs though the purists (who more than likely are ALSO abusing Cloudbase Academy) are going to freak.

That's why it's something that's easy to mod; that way everyone who wants the game as originally constructed can have that, and everyone who wants a game that works as originally envisioned can have that.  You're sacrificing purity of mechanics for purity of gameplay (i.e. people playing as the game was originally meant to be played), which my style of purism is in favor of.

I go a bit further. I still do not see why an advanced society would put farms in space even with unlimited energy just to ship back dirtside when most games still have lots of undeveloped land.

There are certain advantages to space-based stuff.  More light for farms, easier transportation, etc.

[Green1]

yeah.. a minor facet when it could be richer. But, minor balance and brainstorming would be a good place to start.

First off, let's look at transhumanist lit out there and see the different visions for orbital platforms and sattellites. Now, this is not an insistance or wanting... just me dreaming.

Sky Hydroponics Lab- I maintain the position food for land bases would not be grown in orbit. BUT- if you actually had BASES in orbit, it would be a base facility. After all, there are no workable tiles in space. Nor do I think Planet's moons have an atmosphere or any tiles that can be worked for nutrients unless you put a pressure on that tile. If anything aerospace complexes would have to ship nutrients UP and be given a PENALTY per orbital lab:) Almost all the transhumanist visions from the 1960s on up envisioned food grown in orbit to support those LIVING in orbit. Larry Niven in a 1980s short story even had one character joke to another on his way to an Earth-Moon L2 station with a hydroponics lab that liquor being shipped up cost as much as replacing a liver from drinking so much liquor! But, the Hydroponics Lab was a base - A moon mining base that caught material launched from a mass driver. They had several hundred hungry workers to feed!

Orbital Defense Pod. SDI/ aka Reagan's "Star Wars" had more applications than just nuke interception. It is the reason Gorby was raising hell. It was also a fearsome orbit to surface weapons platform! Now, you could say with advanced guidance, this could be done on ground, too. But, unlike ground, you are not getting the weapons in the sky with chaos infrantry.

Orbital Power Platform. Now, this is actually realistic AS IS. But, you forget that one of the reasons no one has done this yet in adddition to cost is this can be a formidable weapon, too! Instead of zapping power down to a substation, you could just zap entire cities! EMP blast, eat your heart out...lol. Now, one thing that could be done to further weaken Cloudbase is to unattach the bonus for Power Platform away from aerospace complexes. Instead, make the bonus from this come from some kind of substation facility. I would not want the juice being zapped down anywhere near my spaceports.

Geosynch Survey pod.

Anyone actually use these?  In a perfect world, A real "survey" sattelite would remove fog of war. You would place this in geostationary orbit around whatever region you wanted to keep track of.  Now, if you wanted a basic "whole world" map like what is revealed when you first launch any sattelite without revealing units, you launch it in a orbit that it eventually traverses much of the planet. For this reason, I refuse to play any future tech game with fog of war. Trust me, even in this age we know what is happening across the globe in every city in real time if we want.