Custom Traits?

Shiver · Post by **Shiver** » November 6th, 2007, 3:59 am

Here's a thought. Rather than creating an entirely new custom unit for a campaign, what if you could also make a unit that had more powerful traits that made it more useful than standard recruits? For example, imagine an Elvish Archer that has "Loyal" and "Precise" as traits. The latter trait could give him a much larger boost in inflicted ranged damage than Dextrous would provide. Or maybe a wraith with "Fearless" and "Warded", with the second trait raising the wraith's arcane and fire resistances up to 50%, making this particular unit into a daywalker of sorts. How feasible is this to implement?

I didn't see this in "Frequently Proposed Good Ideas" (at least not as I phrased it) when I glanced through it, but if you've all heard this before just link me to the older thread and close this down. To be more clear, I'm asking for support for this feature in custom campaigns if it's not already easy to add in.

Post by **turin** » November 6th, 2007, 4:54 am

It's already possible. You define your custom traits, then give them to units like normal traits.

That is, unless you wanted to have them assigned randomly to recruited units - no way to do that, AFAIK. You'd have to make a new unit.

Shiver · Post by **Shiver** » November 6th, 2007, 5:39 am

turin wrote:It's already possible. You define your custom traits, then give them to units like normal traits.

That is, unless you wanted to have them assigned randomly to recruited units - no way to do that, AFAIK. You'd have to make a new unit.

It sounds like someone could make a replica of the default units they wanted to use, then give them a different trait pool.

Post by **irrevenant** » November 6th, 2007, 6:13 am

turin wrote:That is, unless you wanted to have them assigned randomly to recruited units - no way to do that, AFAIK. You'd have to make a new unit.

That's pretty much the point of traits - otherwise it might as well be an ability.

Or do I misunderstand you somehow?

Post by **turin** » November 6th, 2007, 7:05 pm

irrevenant wrote:That's pretty much the point of traits - otherwise it might as well be an ability.

Or do I misunderstand you somehow?

But traits are understood as variations between units of the same type while abilities are type-specific. So, for example, you could give Galdrad (the elf in the first scenario of HttT who sacrifices himself for you) a "perilous" trait that made him more powerful. It gives the character more flavor. That's why you would want the ability to assign custom traits to specific characters. I dunno if that's what was desired. *shrug*

I'm not sure if you can insert new traits into the pool of available ones for recruitable units. I suspect it is possible - and if not it should be - but I don't know exactly how one would go about it. A simple

Code: Select all

[+units]
{TRAIT_PERILOUS}
[/+units]

MIGHT do it, but I'm not sure exactly how [+units] is interpreted so perhaps not.

Post by **Iris** » November 7th, 2007, 3:46 pm

Doesn't.

Post by **irrevenant** » November 7th, 2007, 8:37 pm

Shadow Master wrote:Doesn't.

It'd be nice if ultimately it did.

There's a few places where it would be nice to create WML addons that function like Wesnoth standard. The ability to add custom statuses that behave like Wesnoth statuses is another one.

Shiver · Post by **Shiver** » November 8th, 2007, 9:41 am

I haven't actually tried making a scenario so I don't grasp the specifics that are being tossed around. If custom traits can't be attached to new recruits, will that functionality be implemented at some point?

peet · Post by **peet** » November 8th, 2007, 5:21 pm

If you design new units and races wholesale, you can change the makeup of traits that way. Most of the traits are assigned on a race basis.

Peet

Post by **Iris** » November 9th, 2007, 11:35 am

irrevenant wrote:
Shadow Master wrote:Doesn't.
It'd be nice if ultimately it did.

There's a few places where it would be nice to create WML addons that function like Wesnoth standard. The ability to add custom statuses that behave like Wesnoth statuses is another one.

All you can do is create new races that have the same names and units of mainline but differ in code. Then you can add them custom traits.

What I'm looking forward now is to see whether you can override all mainline units on-demand of the campaign loader. Currently UMC define their units appending their code ([+units]) to the global cache when the UMC is loaded, but I'd like to make it possible to define a completely new set that removes the mainline set from global cache, when the UMC is loaded. i.e. by using [units] right away. Not sure if this is already possible, must try.

It would be helpful for Mods and Total Conversions.

Post by **zookeeper** » November 9th, 2007, 11:37 am

Shadow Master wrote:It would be helpful for Mods and Total Conversions.

Well, maybe not, as those can just as well replace all WML.

Post by **Iris** » November 9th, 2007, 1:07 pm

zookeeper wrote:Well, maybe not, as those can just as well replace all WML.

I meant that could be loaded from the campaign menu, to avoid the user having to install more than one copy of Wesnoth in the same system, just to use the regular game and a campaign-style mod.

Post by **zookeeper** » November 9th, 2007, 1:54 pm

Shadow Master wrote:
zookeeper wrote:Well, maybe not, as those can just as well replace all WML.
I meant that could be loaded from the campaign menu, to avoid the user having to install more than one copy of Wesnoth in the same system, just to use the regular game and a campaign-style mod.

Right, ok. For a campaign mod that would indeed work fine like that I guess.