Antares Mod preview
 

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...?Number=301782

Just a couple data files - and one is missing most of the relevant data - but maybe someday I and/or someone else will pick up on this and finally make the MOO2 mod for SE4 I've been dreaming of! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

Cool work. How long do you exepect it will take you to finish the mod?

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

Could you write a small summary of the mod ?

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

How long? Probably I never will... keep in mind these are data files I've worked on a bit, held onto for months while worked on other things, worked on a bit again... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif Probably if I ever finish it it will be a mod for SE5 or even SE6 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

OK, a summary of this mod? How about this:

The Antares Mod is a work-in-progress mod which attempts to convert the game mechanics of Master of Orion II to Space Empires IV. Features will include a completely redesigned tech tree based on the MOO2 tech tree, quasi-Newtonian propulsion, scale mounts for special (i.e. non-weapon) ship components, "structural integrity fields" a la Star Trek Mod which function as leaky armor (simulating MOO2's "structural hitpoints"), a variety of specialized mounts for use on weapons, miniaturizing technology (as you research advances on a technology, instead of it getting more powerful, it gets smaller and cheaper like in MOO2; you must research a new technology to get more powerful items), Antaran attackers based on Devnull's space monsters, and more!

edit: added reference to Antarans http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

Hey, what are you doing working on an SEIV mod? Go back to that Dominion2 rogue-like! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif
Hey, I kinda got stuck on that roguelike - I'd have continued working on it but I came up with this idea for a universal Malfador data file manipulation library (to read and write files from SE4, SF, DO, and SE5), but that turned out harder than I thought and I never finished it... and then my boss told me not to bring my laptop to work anymore because the OTHER boss might get mad if he saw me messing around on it... then I remember about the MOO2 mod I'd started on a while back... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

BTW, I was planning on releasing the Malfador data manipulator under the LGPL, but I wonder what my school would think about that given that I wrote most of the code for that during my free time at work (I work at school) probably they'd want ownership of the program and all mods created with it, to be used exclusively for research purposes by the University of Cincinnati http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif YOU HEARD THAT, YOU'RE MONITORING MY INTERNET USAGE RIGHT NOW, I KNOW IT! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif But they're much nicer than that, aren't they... I think I need to contact the People for the Ethical Treatment of Software, who knows what kinds of "research" a university might put a program through http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

And speaking of creating mods with tools, most of the components in the Antares Mod preview I just showed you were created with my very own Templatizer http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ... which no one else seems to want to use http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif ... really, it's a handy tool, if you want I can show you the template file for the Components.txt and you can see how much cleaner everything looks when you have only one entry for each component family! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Hmm, speaking of the Templatizer (will I ever stop? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif), I need to figure out how to make it raise events such as "done working on entry #32, Phased Polaron Beam", so I can make a GUI Version with a progress bar... I'm getting kinda tired of the text interface I have set up; it doesn't do a very good job of reporting its progress - it is thorough, but it is a bit verbose! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

I wonder, though, if loading the entire template file into memory before doing any processing will speed up the program? I don't think so, but it's worth a shot, and it would allow for a progress bar... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

They can't, unless you have used the code from your actual project for this school. Check your contract. There should be a point about non-declaration, rights to code and such.

Great tool, indeed. But it's a dotnet, so effectively you library weight is 25 Mb. Quite big, don't you think? This also makes impractical to incorporate eee and templatizer to another project. In fact I will have to completely rewrite eee and templatizer in Python, do you mind?

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

Well, I don't actually do any coding at this job - I just brought my laptop along to have something to do when things got slow http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Yeah, I know the library size is excessive, but think about it this way - nobody complains about downloading the equally huge Java library, do they? And Java has had way more revisions to download than .NET... I think they're up to 1.5 now (at least 6 Versions) while .NET skipped from 1.1 up to 2.0 (3 Versions) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Go ahead and rewrite it in Python if you want, but I'd advise you not to; it just seems like a waste of effort - not just your effort in rewriting old code, but both of ours in that any features one of us adds, the other will have to add as well in the other language.

However, if you think you can make the program faster by writing it in Python, by all means go for it! I think it's horribly inefficient (it uses TYPE REFLECTION and it's just a math parser for crying out loud http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif) and could stand much improvement, but unfortunately I don't know where to go with it short of abandoning object-oriented programming, which I am loath to do as it would make my code even messier than it is, and besides, OO is just how I THINK... I tried learning Erlang but it made absolutely no sense to me, representing everything as a list of arbitrary numbers and indices, I don't have the attention span to keep track of what they all MEAN! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif Indices are one thing when you're working with simple BASIC programs and stuff, but when you want to do something actually USEFUL... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

Think about dial up Users. Im on 56k and it will take me a roughly 2 hours to get 25 mb, given i get the maximum inbound 4,5k/s

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

Then they cannot claim their rights to any piece of code you wrote.

It's very easy to embedd python code in C. The most trivial example is to write:
#include <Python.h>
and now you can use Python api functions inside you C code.

Ruby and Python are great OO Languages, if you are looking for one and don't want to use Java (bleh http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif).

But almost surely python script will be slower than C bytecode, so I don't expect significant impovement here. But it's worth a try, I think. It's very easy to delete entire project folder afterall. Positive side is that this app could be much smaller, crossplatform and very easy to extend or embed.

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

Well, I *think* I came up with a solution for how to parse and evaluate the expressions in C# without using type reflection, and it *might* even let me use true variables in expressions (e.g. compute 3*x + 4*x to be 7*x), but it's all on paper now and I haven't got a chance to implement it yet...

I did find, though, that part of the reason the program was running so slow was that I'd been running it with the debug symbols enabled for some time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif... it's somewhat improved though still a bit slow now that I switched to the release Version http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Back to the Antares Mod, I was testing out some weapons the other day in the combat simulator but they wouldn't fire and the AI ship I was fighting against would just move really slowly around the map in no particular direction... well, it took me until today to figure out that that was because I'd forgotten to add supply storage into the mod yet! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Speaking of supply storage, though, I was thinking about all the stupid scale mounts and such that are going into making this mod look like MOO2... for one thing, there are six types of crew quarters, one for each size of ship, and each size requires five crew quarters of its own type - AND of all smaller types! (So a cruiser requires 5 cruiser crew quarters, 5 destroyer crew quarters, and 5 frigate crew quarters.) If you're wondering why I made it 5 instead of 1, it's because of Neutron BLasters - I want even the weakest... HEY, wait, in MOO2, only hits of 5 points or above did any damage to the crew (aside from random casualties)! So I can just give the crew quarters 5 hitpoints each... or I could change the damage of neutron bLasters, since I can't make them do normal damage in addition to the neutron damage anyway, or I can do both in order to tweak the chance of crew being killed by stray shots of other weapons! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And in case you're wondering why all the fuss about crew quarters, it's because in MOO2, crew could perform boarding actions without the need for any special boarding party equipment; there were Troop Pods which doubled the crew capacity of a ship but aside from combat enhancements like Plasma Rifles (hmm, maybe I need to add multiple levels of crew quarters with enhanced boarding combat abilities?) that was it...

But what I was really talking about is scale mounts - because so many components in MOO2 are scaled to the ship, either in size or in effect amount, I'm going to need a LOT of scale mounts, even for the "essential" systems. The problem is, I can't scale everything with size, so for instance I can't make a deuterium fuel tank carry more supplies for a battleship than for a frigate. I suppose it doesn't matter because I could always make all engines use the same number of supplies and all weapons use zero supplies, and that would even be consistent with MOO2 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

But anyway, back to the scale mounts again... I'm going to have too many, even though I'm trying to consolidate them, and I'm afraid it will be too confusing for the player... so far I have a crew quarters scale mount and an armor/structure scale mount (which is used for the armor (hit first) and structure (leaky armor with equal hitpoints) of the ship), but I foresee the need for a shield scale mount, (possibly) an engine scale mount (though if I use the idea I mentioned before with the supply tanks I guess I won't need it), a fuel tank scale mount, a special systems scale mount (for things like Cloaking Devices and the like), and a computer scale mount. I suppose a good number of these scale mounts can be consolidated into one, but I haven't figured out which yet, and it would seem rather confusing to have a Shield/Armor/Special Systems scale mount and a Crew Quarters/Computer/Fuel Tank scale mount, now wouldn't it? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif But we'll see, they'll probably consolidate in some sort of logical fashion, or so I hope http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Oh, and I think I'll do something different than I originally was going to with the ancient techs... I was originally going to have them scattered around as unique ruins techs, but rather underpowered, but I was facing the prospect of duplicating all of them (not that there are many http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif) for the Antarans... then I figured, hey, why bother with the unique techs, I never liked them anyway as they were too easy to get, so I'll just put them in at full strength techs available only for Antarans, but captureable... except that, since each Antaran ship analyzed only gives a 25% chance of giving a tech in MOO2, the first ship analyzed will simply open up a new research area and more analyzed ships will be required to get any useful tech http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif I'm still trying to figure out whether or not to make the research cost of the ancient techs so huge, though, that after analyzing the first ship and getting the new tech area it would be impractical to research the other levels... hmmm....

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

You can fairly easily use the same scale mount for a wide range of components... Just set up a standard range of scale mounts, and fiddle with the base size of each component to make it a different size for each ship hull. You can even use shield generators with the same mount, as the shield modifier will be ignored on non-shield generator components. All you are really doing is just scaling all of the components. So what if it is by the same factor? That doesn't mean all scaled components will be the same size... You can even just have two Versions, one that modifies structure and one that doesn't, if you want some components to have the same amount of structure irregardless of size...

Re: Antares Mod preview
 

Well, the Antares Mod had its first official battle today... a Cruiser armed with 2x Autofire Disruptor and 4x Heavy Plasma Cannon faced off against six Frigates with 2x Armor Piercing Gauss Cannon (all ships involved had Adamantium Armor/Structure but only Nuclear Drives since I hadn't bothered to put the other drives in yet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif)...

Well, I was expecting it to be a cakewalk for the cruiser, but I forgot about SE4's multiplex rules and the huge defense bonuses I gave to small ships... which means that my cruiser's first volley of plasma cannons (too far out for the disruptors to fire since they weren't heavy mounted) all missed... then some frigates closed in and fired their gauss cannons... ok, my cruiser took a bit of damage... then I closed in and fired again and destroyed a frigate with one shot... but the stupid multiplex rules kept me from shooting down any more ships with my remaining weapons! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif The next computer turn, the frigates destroyed all my internal systems, leaving only the armor, and the turn after, they destroyed the armor.

So much for tiny ships being useless... this is shaping up to be a quite interesting mod... especially with the MOO2 sounds playing whenever weapons fire http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif