Shadowborn faction feedback thread

[White_Drag0n]

Hello everybody!

Today I decided to upload my first add-on to the server. It contains one new faction with 17 units, which I might or might not expand into a small era in the future. Aside from need of polishing the graphics, getting rid of some frankensprites and adding new animations, I find it to be quite finished. I still need help in some areas though, namely:
- Checking the grammatical correctness of ability descriptions and rewording them eventually. I'm not a native speaker and I don't want to force the players to suffer from reading my broken english;
- Finding and reporting bugs. Technically everything should work correctly, but there is some WML heavy scripting involved, so something unpredictable can surely happen;
- The era needs balancing. I focused on adding interesting abilities more than on thinking out the matchups, so playing multiplayer games of default + shadowborn might become complete chaos.

That'd be all. If I'll encounter a problem, I will ask in this topic. Hopefully everything goes clean though. Below is a little teaser, in case someone gets interested

Cheers!

A battle between forces of darkness

[Ravana]

This image is really nice, it certainly made me immediately check it out.

I liked the idea of using find_in=second_unit.

For balance I noticed that some specials are too much for rpg, but should work for shorter games.

For _main.cfg line 68 psychical -> physical.

What you plan to do with sort=potion-like in objects? I see that currently nothing uses that key.

It might be useful to add dependency link to Forgotten_Legends.

[White_Drag0n]

Oh. Thanks for pointing out the typo, gonna fix it in next patch.

The sort=potion-like key must be a leftover of some addon I borrowed part of the event from. If it doesn't have any purpose I might clean it up as well.

The problem why I cannot add a dependency link to this addon is that it hadn't shipped to the server yet. ^^ I also don't want to make it look like you must download both eras to play one of them. They aren't connected too much lore-wise and such.


Thanks for the reply. I wish you a good evening

[White_Drag0n]

Today I pushed an update to the server, which improves the gameplay a bit and fixes some bugs. About few of them I knew for a long time, but haven't really been determinated enough to care about it (it's not like this era got any recognition anyway ).


I wanted to do one more thing though, but I'm not sure if it's possible. Also, I don't know shouldn't I rather make a new topic for it in the WML Workshop instead. Either way:
There's a unit in the era, which gains attacks of every unit it kills. I want to expand the code, so it will also gain animations of these attacks.

Below is the code responsible for it, everything except the last part works:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

{FOREACH unit.attack i}
	[if]
		[variable]
			name=unit.attack[$i].damage
			greater_than=2
		[/variable]
		#[and]
		[not]
			[have_unit]
				x,y=$x2,$y2
				has_weapon="$unit.attack[$i].name|$unit.attack[$i].type|$unit.attack[$i].range|$($unit.attack[$i].damage - 2)|$unit.attack[$i].number"
			[/have_unit]
		[/not]
		#[/and]
		[then]
			#{VARIABLE_OP second_unit.variables.soulstealing add 1}
				[if]
					[variable]
						name=unit.attack[$i].icon
						contains=".png"
					[/variable]
					[then]
					[/then]
					[else]
						{VARIABLE unit.attack[$i].icon (attacks/$unit.attack[$i].name|.png)}
					[/else]
				[/if]
			[object]
				silent=yes
				duration=forever

				[filter]
					x,y=$x2,$y2
				[/filter]
				[effect]
					apply_to=new_attack
						#name="stolen_$second_unit.variables.soulstealing"
						name="$unit.attack[$i].name|$unit.attack[$i].type|$unit.attack[$i].range|$($unit.attack[$i].damage - 2)|$unit.attack[$i].number"
						description=_"$unit.attack[$i].description"
						type="$unit.attack[$i].type"
						range="$unit.attack[$i].range"
						damage=$($unit.attack[$i].damage - 2)
						number="$unit.attack[$i].number"
						icon="$unit.attack[$i].icon"
				[/effect]
			[/object]
			[store_unit]
				[filter]
					x,y=$x2,$y2
				[/filter]
				variable=forspecialattacks
				#and forspecialanimations too now
			[/store_unit]
			[set_variables]
				name=forspecialattacks.attack[$($forspecialattacks.attack.length - 1)].specials
				mode=insert
				to_variable=unit.attack[$i].specials
			[/set_variables]
			{FOREACH unit.attack_anim j}
				[if]
					[variable]
						name=unit.attack_anim[$j].filter_attack[0].name
						equals=$unit.attack[$i].name
					[/variable]
					[or]
						[variable]
							name=unit.attack_anim[$j].filter_attack[0].range
							equals=$unit.attack[$i].range
						[/variable]
					[/or]
					[then]
						{VARIABLE unit.attack_anim[$j].filter_attack.name "$unit.attack[$i].name|$unit.attack[$i].type|$unit.attack[$i].range|$($unit.attack[$i].damage - 2)|$unit.attack[$i].number"}
						[set_variables]
							name=forspecialattacks.attack_anim
							mode=append
							to_variable=unit.attack_anim[$j]
						[/set_variables]
					[/then]
					[else]
					[/else]
				[/if]
			{NEXT j}
			[unstore_unit]
				variable=forspecialattacks
			[/unstore_unit]
			{CLEAR_VARIABLE forspecialattacks}
		[/then]
		[else]
		[/else]
	[/if]
	{NEXT i}

Btw, how do I make my units display correctly here? That's the error log, but I have no idea why are these definitions missing, especially when some units went through.

[josteph]

In _main.cfg you need to change Forgotten_legends to Forgotten_Legends (with a capital L) otherwise there are errors loading the MP lobby.

[Atreides]

Guess this one's been abandoned? The typo phsycical (physical) is still in there (and totally confusing). Would be a shame as I think it has potential.

[Atreides]

Found a bug in the Deceptive Phantom (wraith.cfg) where a [/if] follows [/else] rather than preceding [else]. The subroutine in else never runs. Easy fix though, just moved the [/if] where it belongs.
Addendum: The Shadow Stalker line has the same error.

Also added a sound file to the wailing attacks where a miss was silent (which sort of is logical but very hard to play with). shadow.ogg from the Forgotten Legends works great as a sort of aborted/failed scream sound. Yes, it is a odd coincidence with the name...

It's a fascinating faction to play. Terrify takes some practice to use effectively (since it does not take effect until after the unit's attack has ended) but is probably overkill since it strips the defender of counterattacks for the remainder of the turn as well as its own turn! Still playing with it to find out how well it can be used. The shade's soulstealing is also impressive. With many kills it becomes a juggernaut of HP and a dozen different attacks! I can imagine (and am trying to achieve) it ending up a unstoppable swiss army knife.

[Atreides]

The 1.16 version has an error that prevents it from loading.