Want to do lua mod with WesnothXP and Warcraft3PRNG options.

[StevenAus]

This is relevant for this sub-forum too. If cross-posting is not allowed, please modify this post and delete the rest of the text, but leave this link: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=38987 (I can do the modifying if you want me to).

I want to do a lua mod that works with all new versions of Wesnoth. Where is a good place to start, and I'd love to have help from Yogibear if he can be contacted, and ZedDB, the maker of the Warcraft3 PRNG. Anyone else's advice is appreciated! I've decided that the War3PRNG just doesn't suit maps at hard difficulty where you are outnumbered, and the RNGs in WesnothXP haven't been updated to the latest version for a while.

So, is this feasible? I don't mind learning lua just so I can do this, but any help will be very gratefully appreciated. =)

Also I'm wondering, does AI gold for campaigns get reduced for the new improved AI of the 1.11 development branch, if the AI has been greatly improved?

Have a great day, and I hope that the rest of 2013 is great for you too!

Best regards,
Steven.

[Dugi]

Hey, I have done a lua-based No Randomness Mod, that does something else, but it might be useful to you as something to start working on. It is just something you install, it adds a menu option where you can activate or deactivate it, and then it affects the chance to hit.

[StevenAus]

Is there source code for your program, or is it already in lua format?

Best regards,
Steven.

[Dugi]

It is just a lua-based add-on. A normal add-on. On the add-on server. Just a bit unusual that it adds a menu option to the right-click menu, and that menu option hacks the hit chance. It should be relatively easy to edit to make your Warcraft-style hit chance.

[mattsc]

Replying to this part only:

Also I'm wondering, does AI gold for campaigns get reduced for the new improved AI of the 1.11 development branch, if the AI has been greatly improved?

Well, except for a few minor things, the default AI is still unchanged in 1.11 at the moment, and I wouldn't exactly call the optional Experimental AI a "great improvement" (yet). We are working on other general AIs that might eventually play better in general than the current default, but even if they get finished soon, they will definitely not become the default for 1.11/1.12. But to answer your quesiton: yes, if another AI were to become the default in the future, a lot of rebalancing would have to happen. So the approach will likely be to keep the current AI as the default, at least for some time, and to give people the option to use one of the new AIs by specifying a single parameter (such as the ai_algorithm= key). Then, in time, a switch to the new AI might be made, but none of this will happen over night.

As a side note, there are now some specialized AI behaviors available, the Micro_AIs and if those get included (it has happened in one or two cases in mainline, and UMC authors are starting to use them), the scenario setup (gold, units, etc.) definitely has to be adapted to that.

[Crow_T]

Just piping in that it'd be cool to see more battle mods based on Dugi's excellent bit of code The in-game menu thing is fantastic, no need to patch builds!