Altered era/ruleset (AKA "Altera", for 1.16, 1.14, 1.12 and 1.10)

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The_Gnat
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Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by The_Gnat »

lea wrote:do you play with computer-controlled opponents or with other people?
Both.
lea wrote:what about thanat faction? do you think it has enough variety of movement?
Yes i like the thanat faction it has a good variety, and i like the addition of the mummy unit line, but i miss the shadow and nightguant from mainline (with nighstalk and skirmish)
lea
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Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by lea »

I added only minimum quantity of ghosts to thanats because I was very unsure whether their "spirit" trait combined with good mobility will turn out to be balanced enough - do you think it is?

more ghost-like units are likely to be added to thanats - when I get to it, that is :)
"nightstalk" ability is likely to show up as well, except I plan to limit speed at which "invisibility" abilities work, they seem to be too powerful when fast units have them without limitations - maybe I missed some effective tactic for countering them?

skirmish was recently added for all altered units as random trait and I am currently on the fence about whether it should stay this way or be turned back into ability (or maybe have both variations) - what do you think?
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
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The_Gnat
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Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by The_Gnat »

lea wrote:I added only minimum quantity of ghosts to thanats because I was very unsure whether their "spirit" trait combined with good mobility will turn out to be balanced enough - do you think it is?
It is pretty good and despite their high costs and low hp perhaps a little too good. But unlike mainline ghosts they don't have awesome resistances so i haven't seen any major problem.
lea wrote:more ghost-like units are likely to be added to thanats - when I get to it, that is :)
"nightstalk" ability is likely to show up as well, except I plan to limit speed at which "invisibility" abilities work, they seem to be too powerful when fast units have them without limitations - maybe I missed some effective tactic for countering them?
This would be true if the nightgaunt didn't have only 35 hp, compared to the Grand Knight who is also a fast unit and lvl 3 and has 78 hp you can see why it is okay.
lea wrote:skirmish was recently added for all altered units as random trait and I am currently on the fence about whether it should stay this way or be turned back into ability (or maybe have both variations) - what do you think?
I personally wouldn't keep it as a random trait. It is slightly too good. It could be left as a non-random trait that some units/races get but having it as random is (in my opinion) equal to having heal +4 as a random trait. ;)
lea
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Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by lea »

The_Gnat wrote:But unlike mainline ghosts they don't have awesome resistances so i haven't seen any major problem.
they kind of have "hidden" 50% resistance to all types of damage because of their "spirit" trait, except (unlike mainline ghosts) they also deal halved damage to their enemies and cannot be healed with healing abilities of other units, because of that same "spirit" trait
The_Gnat wrote:This would be true if the nightgaunt didn't have only 35 hp, compared to the Grand Knight who is also a fast unit and lvl 3 and has 78 hp you can see why it is okay.
nightgaunts also have 50% resistance to 4 types of damage so they survive as if they have twice as much hp, except when hit by fire or arcane damage, plus they effectively heal 2x faster as there is no such thing as resistance to healing. and they have much better movetype and defenses than grand knights, plus "nightstalk" ability...don't you think that you like mainline nightgaunts so much because they are overpowered? ;)
The_Gnat wrote:I personally wouldn't keep it as a random trait. It is slightly too good. It could be left as a non-random trait that some units/races get but having it as random is (in my opinion) equal to having heal +4 as a random trait. ;)
I added it to test if it will be too powerful and I agree that it is likely to be more powerful than my other traits... Initially I tried to limit its effect to certain speed using move and moveto events (like I already did with invisibility) but failed to make it work :( having an idea to turn it off when more than 2 adjacent enemy units are present, so that it would be hard but possible to keep them at bay with zones of control - going to try it. any other ideas on how to make "elusive" trait less powerful?

btw, if you do not like "elusive" trait then you can turn it off by removing {TRAIT_ELUSIVE} lines from *.cfg files of altered races
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
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The_Gnat
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Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by The_Gnat »

...don't you think that you like mainline nightgaunts so much because they are overpowered? ;)
Haha :D Very likely. ;)
I added it to test if it will be too powerful and I agree that it is likely to be more powerful than my other traits... Initially I tried to limit its effect to certain speed using move and moveto events (like I already did with invisibility) but failed to make it work :( having an idea to turn it off when more than 2 adjacent enemy units are present, so that it would be hard but possible to keep them at bay with zones of control - going to try it. any other ideas on how to make "elusive" trait less powerful?
Perhaps you could make it that they only can use the trait if at the start of their turn they are not adjacent to enemy units?
lea
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Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by lea »

The_Gnat wrote:Perhaps you could make it that they only can use the trait if at the start of their turn they are not adjacent to enemy units?
or at the start of their movement, so that they have to step back to use elusive trait if there are enemies adjacent to them (effectively making them slower when they want to use it) and they still can be blocked by two adjacent enemies on opposite sides (no way to step back from both enemies simultaneously)... and skirmisher ability might work only when adjacent enemies are present, so that having both on the same unit is still useful... I think I should try that )

EDIT: [skirmisher] ability seems to ignore [filter_wml] and many other filtering functions are either buggy or ignored as well :( because of that I failed to get this idea to work... did anybody else try to make something similar with [skirmisher] ability?
counting adjacent units works as desired so I'll probably have to fall back to it at least until working alternatives will be found
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
lea
Posts: 300
Joined: October 1st, 2016, 7:25 pm

Re: "Altered" era/ruleset

Post by lea »

version 0.5.0 is published for BfW 1.10.7 and 1.12.x

changes:

- added fifth "Altered" race/faction - valons (called loyalists in mainline), this faction has plenty of mounted units which have high speed and hitpoints but low defense (base defense from terrain is 40% at best) and relatively bad movetype (they are slowed by all kinds of terrain except flat and urban, often more so than footmen)
- "Rebels" (elves/woses) and "Knalgan Alliance" (dwarves/outlaws) mainline factions are removed (commented out in _main.cfg file so you can easily add them back if you want to have them as part of "Altered era/ruleset")
- "commoners" are turned into level 0 units but still have many (though not all) qualities of level 1 units: they have zone of control, upkeep of 1 gold per turn and their opponent gets 1 exp after combat encounter with them (except when it would allow it to advance - this is a workaround for a bug), but unlike level 1 unit bonus for killing commoner (level 0 unit) is still 4 exp, not 8
- "elusive" random trait now works only as long as there is no more than one enemy unit adjacent to unit with this trait
- fixed bug: units recruited in villages/windmills now cannot attack during turn they were recruited
- fixed bug: fortify ability now works for gnomes with swift random trait (because of typo it used to work only with units that have 4 moves)
- increased experience requirements and slightly reduced damage of "haunting" attack for thanat ghost-like units
Attachments
Altered 0.5.0 (core).zip
(6.33 MiB) Downloaded 2 times
Altered 0.5.0 (images of all units).zip
(4.09 MiB) Downloaded 2 times
Altered 0.5.0 (portraits for darguls and fey).zip
(5.91 MiB) Downloaded 2 times
Altered 0.5.0 (portraits for gnomes and thanats).zip
(4.33 MiB) Downloaded 2 times
Altered 0.5.0 (portraits for valons and saurs).zip
(6.12 MiB) Downloaded 2 times
Last edited by lea on February 7th, 2024, 10:35 am, edited 2 times in total.
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
lea
Posts: 300
Joined: October 1st, 2016, 7:25 pm

Re: "Altered" era/ruleset

Post by lea »

version 0.5.1 is published for BfW 1.10.7 and 1.12.x

changes:

- added small icons for traits (both random and fixed) of each unit (to the left of unit's hitpoints bar)
- income indicator (located at top panel to the right for most UI themes) now shows amount of gold that is going to be lost because of "corruption" custom rule when such losses are present (when player's side owns more than 26 villages)
- fixed: "Altered" UI theme is now available in single player mode (thanks to Celtic_Minstrel for suggestion about how to fix it)
Attachments
Altered 0.5.1 (core).zip
(6.35 MiB) Downloaded 2 times
Altered 0.5.1 (images of all units).zip
(4.26 MiB) Downloaded 2 times
Altered 0.5.1 (portraits for darguls and fey).zip
(5.91 MiB) Downloaded 2 times
Altered 0.5.1 (portraits for gnomes and thanats).zip
(4.33 MiB) Downloaded 2 times
Altered 0.5.1 (portraits for valons and saurs).zip
(6.12 MiB) Downloaded 3 times
Last edited by lea on February 7th, 2024, 10:39 am, edited 2 times in total.
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
Wayirr
Posts: 89
Joined: February 11th, 2012, 3:42 pm

Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by Wayirr »

Add-ons Altered and Altered New Sprites contain file names with special characters, namely:

Code: Select all

abilities/ability-heals(4,8).cfg
abilities/ability-regrows(4,8).cfg
main-[+units].cfg
specials/specials-to-hit/special-circular(1,2,3).cfg
specials/specials-to-hit/special-shield(10,20).cfg
abilities/ability-lurks(terrain).cfg
misc/rules/advancement_rejuvenation_(default).cfg
misc/rules/advancement-rejuvenation-(default).cfg
traits/racial-trait-(stub).cfg
+ lots of files ending with (media).cfg
Square brackets and comma have special meaning in WML. Round parentheses are problematic too, but less so.

Are there any strong reasons to have files named like that?
lea
Posts: 300
Joined: October 1st, 2016, 7:25 pm

Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by lea »

Wayirr wrote:Square brackets and comma have special meaning in WML. Round parentheses are problematic too, but less so.
could you please provide links to web (wiki? forum?) pages that describe this special meaning and possible problems? I did not stumble upon any so far. Is it something that may become broken in future version of Wesnoth?
Wayirr wrote:Are there any strong reasons to have files named like that?
the only reason is that these files have "special meaning" in Altered era, for example "abilities/ability-heals(4,8).cfg" file includes two abilities (heals+4 and heals+8 from mainline)
in some filenames numbers in parentheses mimic parameters passed to a fuction/method call in many C-like languages.
...-(media).cfg files are shared between similarly named unit files
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
Wayirr
Posts: 89
Joined: February 11th, 2012, 3:42 pm

Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by Wayirr »

Square brackets: https://wiki.wesnoth.org/AnimationWML#P ... ion_syntax
Parentheses: https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Wesnoth_Formula_Language
As you see, symbols like [,]$~() have special meaning.

Then, perhaps, instead of *_(media).cfg you can name them something like *_shared.cfg ?
It will also be easier to understand.
lea
Posts: 300
Joined: October 1st, 2016, 7:25 pm

Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by lea »

Wayirr, thanks for links.
so "special meaning" you were talking about is possibility to use file names in some WML syntactic sugar that uses these symbols as part of its own syntax.

added it to my todo list and will likely include it in next version.
when next version will be is a rather tough question because "meatspace" (aka "real world") tends to take a lot of my time lately.

do I have to make these changes soon to preserve compatibility?
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
Wayirr
Posts: 89
Joined: February 11th, 2012, 3:42 pm

Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by Wayirr »

Not necessarily, but it won't hurt to change it. Do you want help with bulk renaming? It is tedious to rename over 250 files by hand, but there are tools for all operating systems to do it quickly.
lea
Posts: 300
Joined: October 1st, 2016, 7:25 pm

Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by lea »

I can do it by hand, but suggestions for batch renamer are welcome
The_Gnat and me were looking for GUI batch renamer and could not find any good one
The_Gnat even started to write it in Java
author of: Altered Era/Ruleset (AKA "Altera"), latest version is on add-ons servers for BfW 1.16 and 1.14, latest version also still supports BfW 1.12 and 1.10, 1.10 server is stuck with older buggy version)
Wayirr
Posts: 89
Joined: February 11th, 2012, 3:42 pm

Re: Altered era/ruleset

Post by Wayirr »

Why not to use `rename` command which is included in package utils-linux-ng for example? It seems to be pretty straightforward one.

For GUI I have got suggestion to use Double Commander, but I didn't try it myself. I am personally happy enough with just shell, it is very straightforward and easy to use, compared to fairly complex interface of GUI renamers..
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