TEAM: Questions for 1.02b

[Johan Elisson]

I'm compiling the version right now, and I've also been spending some time with the events. There is one question, about the French event chain, numbered 20410 to 20416. It was included in v1.01b, so anyone can have a look at it. The two last events, 20415/20416 has a trigger saying "NOT = { flag = endmutiny }". I've been looking for something to set this flag, but nothing has been found. I don't know who scripted the event, so this is to all of you, what event should set the flag? I suspect it to be 20413, action_a and possibly action_c. Any other alternatives?

I'll post more questions here as I stumble over strange stuff.

/Johan

 

[Allenby]

I'm compiling the version right now, and I've also been spending some time with the events. There is one question, about the French event chain, numbered 20410 to 20416. It was included in v1.01b, so anyone can have a look at it. The two last events, 20415/20416 has a trigger saying "NOT = { flag = endmutiny }". I've been looking for something to set this flag, but nothing has been found. I don't know who scripted the event, so this is to all of you, what event should set the flag? I suspect it to be 20413, action_a and possibly action_c. Any other alternatives?

I'll post more questions here as I stumble over strange stuff.

/Johan

My events - 20413 is "How to deal with the mutiny?", action_a being 'buy off the mutineers' which should set the flag 'endmutiny', action_b being 'wait' which should not, and action_c is 'shell them artillery' (it may or may not have happened to some Senegalese troops) and should set the flag 'endmutiny'.

Therefore, events 20415 and 20416 should only trigger if the mutiny was dealt with by waiting - action_b.

 

[Johan Elisson]

Good. What I suspected.

It means that the date for 20415 should be moved forward a few days, to keep it from triggering before 20413 (they have the same date).

/Johan

 

[Johan Elisson]

I'v noticed a strange thing, which I'll come to later. I played a short hands-off game to watch the result of giving techs to countries. It started out pretty strange, with France gaining control of southern Germany, Belgium controlling part of the Ruhrgebiet, the eastern front pretty stabilized with a few Russian attacks, and Austria-Hungary gaining huge territory in southern Russia. It then turned out more historically, with Germany regaining its lost territories, and advancing into Belgium, while also gaining some ground in Russia, although Austria-Hungary now lost it's possessions there, due to an early declaration of war by Greece, who advanced into conquered Serbia. Britain made some naval landings on the German northern coast. Then I remembered to check how the Mexican Civil War was turning out, when I saw a fighter squadron in Mexican Governmental service. This could not be true, I thought, and checked if I had forgotten to disable fighters for Mexico at the start of the game. I hadn't. Then I reloaded the game, this time as Mexico, and checked if they had researched that far into airplane techs. Thay hadn't. And neither could I build and fighter squadrons in the build screen. Something strange is going on. I now noticed the same for a lot of other countries, building airplane squadrons they shouldn't be able to build. I don't know why...

/Johan

 

[Allenby]

Good. What I suspected.

It means that the date for 20415 should be moved forward a few days, to keep it from triggering before 20413 (they have the same date).

/Johan

I'd have the dates of events 20415 and 20416 changed to very late-May and mid-June respectively, as historically the mutinies began in April, grew in May and peaked in June.

when I saw a fighter squadron in Mexican Governmental service. This could not be true, I thought, and checked if I had forgotten to disable fighters for Mexico at the start of the game. I hadn't. Then I reloaded the game, this time as Mexico, and checked if they had researched that far into airplane techs. Thay hadn't. And neither could I build and fighter squadrons in the build screen. Something strange is going on. I now noticed the same for a lot of other countries, building airplane squadrons they shouldn't be able to build. I don't know why...

Might this have any connection with the previous problem of the game crashing when the German player attempted to build a fighter squadron?

 

[Gwalcmai]

Not really, no. It's related to a HOI bug. The AI is able to build units it shouldn't. The stock game has some countries unable to build transport ships (Brasil, for example, used to be unable to build ships). Yet, if you set the build priorities of the Brasil AI to build transport ships, it will do so, even without the tech to do so. I didn't know they could do it if the unit is completely disabled, though.

 

[Allenby]

Perhaps the best idea to counter this problem could be to take note of those countries that build fighter squadrons when they shouldn't, and then make the priority of building these units inside the AI files very low?

 

[Gwalcmai]

Maybe all AIs should start with build priorities for all stuff they can't build at 0, and then an ai-only event would fire when a unit enabling tech was acquired that would load new priorities (IIRC, all values not defined in a loaded ai file will remain as they were).

This makes for something like a "one-size-fits-all" kind of build priorities, but at least the AI should stop building stuff it shouldn't. And it could be refined later.

 

[StephenT]

I wouldn't complain, actually, if building aircraft was disabled for all countries other than those who start with the techs already researched.

I believe that something like 90% of all the world's aircraft in this period were built by the three countries France, Germany and Britain. (Those other countries who had air forces at all bought their planes from those countries, or at best copied their designs and built them under licence).

 

[Johan Elisson]

Ok. So this is an annoying problem, which can't really be solved, except for making a hell lot of AI-files... Well.

BTW, the compilation of the moddir version for 1.02b shouldn't be done by me, as I can't really understand all of it, with "blank" files and such, so when I've released 1.02b for installation over a clean HoI for us in the team, could someone then make a moddir version for the public release?

/Johan

 

[Allenby]

BTW, the compilation of the moddir version for 1.02b shouldn't be done by me, as I can't really understand all of it, with "blank" files and such, so when I've released 1.02b for installation over a clean HoI for us in the team, could someone then make a moddir version for the public release?

Stephen?

 

[StephenT]

Who, me?

I can have a go... My understanding is that the mod will involve these elements (correct me if I'm wrong):

1) A TGW directory, with lots of new files. (the actual mod-dir)

2) A number of "dummy files" for leaders, etc, which need to go into the standard HoI directories. However, these don't actually overwrite existing files - they just need to match up with corresponding files in the TGW directory.

3) An updated province.csv file which will need to replace the standard HoI one. Possibly with a batch program that will perform this function automatically.

4) The Unlimited Time patch.

Right?

I can certainly do a WinZip file that will put all these files in the correct locations, although you'd still need to do the province.csv and Unlimited Time patch things manually, and then create your own shortcut. Perhaps somebody out there knows how to create a proper installation program that will do all of these things automatically?

 

[Allenby]

I think you're spot on with that, Stephen. Gwalcmai knows the details better than I, however, and I'm sure he'll be able to post something more comprehensive.

I think Steele said that he could do an installation programme, but I think it would be best to leave that until he's here, and when we have a relatively debugged version of the mod.

 

[Gwalcmai]

Ok. So this is an annoying problem, which can't really be solved, except for making a hell lot of AI-files... Well.

Actually, the way I described it would mean just one AI file containing only aircraft build priorities, and a persistent event without a country tag (anyone know how to make those work?) which would fire when a country developped aircraft. The idea being that the majors, which should be using specialized AI, will, for the most part, already have the tech to build planes, while countries lacking the tech are, most likely, those using a generic ai file.

As I understand it, you can have a kind of AI modules to customize the AI, because when you load a partial AI file (the air build priorities) the rest of the AI settings remain the same. Having a core ai for a country, specifying garrisoning and other country-specific stuff, you can have generic modules that only increase the AIs aggressiveness, another module specifying a balanced research path, another a naval-bias research path, a low cost research path, etc. Supposedly, this reduces the amount of AI coding quite a lot.

 

[Johan Elisson]

Oh, now I understand. Well, that seems to be quite a bit simpler. I've just set aircraft build priority to 0 in the default.ai for now.

/Johan

 

[Johan Elisson]

Just a few things left to do (mostly graphics and pics), and thus I have some questions:

There are some .act-files (unitsbmp.act and france.act) included in the 1.01b, these files doesn't seem to exist in vanilla HoI, so I wonder, are they needed?

I would suggest including leader/minister and tech pics only as a separate download, to give people with low bandwidth a chance to download the mod in less than a day , this would cut download in close to half. Good or bad?

/Johan

 

[StephenT]

I think the .act files are colour palettes, created when modifying the sprites. I suspect they aren't needed to run the game, although perhaps you could try removing them, then checking that the French sprites don't suddenly change to a weird colour

As for downloads, I think the best way would be to have a complete download for everything (12 MB or so), and a separate "TGW-lite" without the graphics files - then you only have to download and install one file, whichever version you choose. Things like the new loading screen can also be left out of the lite version.

 

[Johan Elisson]

Yeah, it seems like the .act-files aren't needed.

Good idea!

BTW, a tip for future work, try to use the standard tags when modifying leader and minister files (in connection with pictures), it makes things much simpler for other. For example, don't use uls for Ulster (or hej for Hejaz, chn for China) in pictures and in the picturename in the minister files, use u18, u03 and chc.

/Johan

 

[Johan Elisson]

Allenby, could you please upload the techpictures1.zip again and tell me when it's done, I can't get the archive to open. And I can't find your new and nice background set, could you hand them to me also?

/Johan

 

[Johan Elisson]

I've sent PMs to all team members with the location for the pre-release version of the mod, to give us some time to correct misstakes that might be in the version before we release it.

/Johan