Mod: UnitGen - Random nations with procedural sprites!

[elmokki]

Finally I bothered to spend quite a bit of time programming. I stumbled like at least a half of it with a retardedly simple bug though.

http://koti.kapsi.fi/~elmokki/dom3/u...en_14_7_12.zip

Exact changelist is pretty much impossible to write, but:
- I rewrote a the basic structure, which changed some things slightly
- I've tweaked probabilities in some areas slightly. At least magic weapons should be a bit more common.
- I added dual fists for sacreds! I have no idea if they work but they'll also have a tag that should give guaranteed magic weapon on them.
- I rewrote the whole troop generation system and how tags affect it. This should result in fairly funky nations sometimes (I've seen some with like 1 foot soldier and rest cav/chariots!)
- I added ability for units to become elites. Generally elites are pretty boring, but sometimes - rarely - they can get superb stats, shapeshift and magic weapon. I bet some combos or maybe more than some are ridiculously good. Some races might get pretty bland looking elites if they don't have enough cool stuff for commanders right now.
- I added ability to get special monsters. That's basically hydra and elephant for humans (it has humans on top of it after all), but the system supports or should at least support custom sprites.

[elmokki]

Special items (magic stuff, half of the atlantean armor) weren't actually generating to units. Thanks to Happyfungi for the bug report.

http://koti.kapsi.fi/~elmokki/dom3/unitgen...gen_15_7_12.zip

[elmokki]

As per kianduatha's bug report:
- Commands from magic weapons weren't transfering and thus those 2x damage to demons and reanimating weren't working, but secondary effects were.
- Berserking and stealthy were hillariously common
- Mage naming for nations with mages with high levels of random paths (hopefully) improved a bit.
- The fists spawn properly dual wielded and both with some improvement over the base crappy fist (they're still not necessarily or even probably good, but you could get lucky). This required turning off a functionality that didn't really make sense anyway and as far as I know it shouldn't cause extra bugs since it was a pretty obscure thing that just made using unitgen less intuitive for people who don't know how it works (and hell, I had no idea that was causing it either)

And in addition:
- Hoburgs can't obviously use the same arbalests and crossbows as REAL MEN use. Their versions get -2 damage (10 and 14 to 8 and 12) and -1 resource cost (3 and 4 to 2 and 3).
- I added a couple of ruthlesly ripped off helmet graphics for humans and probably lizards and caelians too. That'll probably result in some funky looking lizards sometimes.

http://koti.kapsi.fi/~elmokki/dom3/u...15_7_12-v2.zip

[elmokki]

I bothered to wrote some sort of UnitGen modding tutorial. The first chapter with the IRC channel is the most useful one by far though: http://koti.kapsi.fi/~elmokki/dom3/u...ke_content.txt

I also woke up ludicrously early for once an spent some time coding UnitGen since I had nothing better to do:

- Fixed mounted topless black men causing errors.
- Renamed the basicnet-files to bascinets so the game actually finds and draws them
- Lizard chariots get #mounted tag
- Metal staff is sacred only weapon. It was mistakenly a normal one.
- Wooden staff is a rare infantry weapon. It was mistakenly an infantry weapon, but oh well.
- Frost Fiend / Devil secondshapes are a lot more expensive
- Magic weapon cost increases on units fixed
- Getting two or three primary mage nations is somewhat more common
- Racial magic affinities work differently now: All paths have basechance 1 by default, and the affinity number is added to them. I also tweaked existing numbers to make some paths sufficiently more common (but still by far not guaranteed) for certain races.
- I rewrote mage naming. It uses filters now in the same style as sacred naming (both use exact same system actually, though mage naming code is a bit more intricate to get a bit more presentative names). I also added some extra chanceinc commands for it so mage name part generation chances can be defined more precisely. Be warned though: I coded a short program to convert the files from the old to the new format, and it might've had some bugs. I did a quick lookup and edited some definitions to work better with the new format, but it might not be perfect.
- There are probably some undocumented changes too.

http://koti.kapsi.fi/~elmokki/dom3/u...en_18_7_12.zip

[elmokki]

Advanced descriptions were less work than I thought to finish. Here's an example http://koti.kapsi.fi/~elmokki/dom3/unitgen/example.txt

They should show all the stuff UnitGen generates, but some filters may be bugged, it may be unclear sometimes with filter stacking and it requires updating to advdescriptions.txt at /nations/ when new filters are added.

http://koti.kapsi.fi/~elmokki/dom3/u...18_7_12-v2.zip

This should be a good feature for picking nations.

[elmokki]

Water and Air were switched up on the non-random part of advanced descriptions. Fixed to the same build linked above. Won't break seeds.

[elmokki]

http://koti.kapsi.fi/elmokki/dom3/un...en_19_7_12.zip

Mage filters were applied two times. All of them. That's the reason for double filters on adv descriptions on mages.

Also some bugs with custom items becoming magic items were hopefully fixed.

[elmokki]

Next version!

[elmokki]

http://koti.kapsi.fi/~elmokki/dom3/u...en_20_7_12.zip

- Fixed a really major bug concerning secondshapes, their gold costs and wether they should or should not revert back.
- Spritegen works. Same bugs as before, but at least it starts again.
- Added bear cavalry!

[Valerius]

Several years ago DrP was working on a price list for designing your own nation. So, just like you spend points on your pretender you could do the same for your nation. I don't remember how far he got in that project, and in any case I don't think there was a program that would generate the nation in the way your programs do.

So it occurred to me that randomly generated nations are fun but I can also see designing your own nation, in the same way you design your pretender or a character in an RPG, could be quite fun. I mention it because it seems like you've got a lot of pieces in place for such a program. You have a routine to generate sprites (that's a big one), to create the mod nation, and even a weighting system to assign values to different aspects of the nation.

Could you use that core and have a different front end that would let you build the nation to your specifications? For instance, you could choose Caelians as the race, F and N as the magic (cost would vary depending on path, highest level possible and if it was a cap only mage), and specials such as magic weapons or a boar riding wingless sacred unit.

Of course players would try to game the system but they'd be working from the same set of rules and you could always adjust point values if, for instance, everyone ends up with flying astral nations.

I'm sure I'm making it sound simpler than it is and it would probably require a lot of work but I know you work on things when you get bored so if you get bored and want try something new I think this could be interesting.