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Messages - Corwyn

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1
BM General Discussion / Re: Searching for Sages and Wizards
« on: August 20, 2011, 04:30:47 AM »
As soon as the character/realm is deleted IG, the pages that use them go all wonky.
Two options come to mind:
1. Not actually deleting the character or unique item and instead adding an "IsDeleted" property on the Character and UniqueItem objects.  The ObjectSets (aka Tables, now that you guys are using ORM) would keep growing over time though.
2. Moving the deleted characters and items to separate "DeletedCharacter" and "DeletedUniqueItems" tables/objectSets.  That way the active tables stay small and queries on them are fast.

Presumably there's no worry about the total amount of data.

2
BM General Discussion / Re: History of the East Continent
« on: August 16, 2011, 04:53:49 PM »
You may also want to take a look at http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Sirion_(Realm)/History , which has images of what some of the realms looked like back then, reports, and detailed histories since the start of the Fourth Age, etc...

Some of this you might be able to add to your history.  It is written from the perspective of two players (not characters) involved with the Sirion realm, with an eye towards being objective and following consensus, but nonetheless it's possible some subjectivity has sneaked in (you'll have to let me know if you find any and it can be corrected).

3
BM General Discussion / Re: Adventurer Game: Searching for items
« on: August 13, 2011, 06:21:44 AM »
I used to get messages about being tired, or something to that effect (I don't recall anymore -- it's been a while).  Even when I started with 0 fatigue.  So now I've been doing searched in 4 hour blocks, and resting in between.  I haven't seen that message since.

However, based on other people's replies here who search for 13 hours straight, perhaps that's not the norm?  When you search for 13 hours straight you only get messages about being disturbed (and "finding" messages), and never anything else?

4
BM General Discussion / Re: Adventurers and their Realm
« on: August 10, 2011, 09:22:41 PM »
Sorry, didn't mean to thread-jack (and it was no rant).  It was meant to be a suggestion to make it more feasible for adventurers in smaller realms to find sages and wizards, so I thought it was on topic.

Regardless, glad to hear that adventurers can in fact change nationalities!

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BM General Discussion / Adventurers and their Realm
« on: August 10, 2011, 07:22:51 PM »
Just thought of something: I'm suddenly very glad my adventurer belongs to a large realm.

I've learnt after a while that if you plan on keeping your adventurer it's best to never leave your realm's regions.  Or more precisely, never be in the same region as a noble from another realm.

The reason is that while new nobles from your own realm may beat you up at their whim (and it's happened to one of my adventurers) at least your realm's Judge knows that you're useful, and likely also knows why it's a bad idea to do so (namely because when attacked adventurers may lose items they were repairing for other nobles).  So you won't get executed, and it's not uncommon to get out of jail immediately (assuming you were just attacked on a noble's whim and not for mouthing off).

On the other hand, the Judge of a neighboring realm (whom your own realm might very well be at war with) also understands how useful adventurers are, and doesn't hesitate to execute them (in order to deprive the opposing realm of a useful tool). 

This isn't theoretical... I lost my first adventurer to the hangman's noose of a neighboring realm.  I didn't even leave my own realm, but I was arrested by a noble of the other realm that was invading.  Likewise, in another realm that I have a noble character in our Judge has executed foreign adventurers.  But they never killed "local" adventurers, always releasing them.

Don't get me wrong, I have known at least one adventurer that was a "foreigner", so I know people who don't mind moving beyond their starting realm.  But it adds to your risk for no significant gain.

As I said, this doesn't impact me: my current adventurer belongs to a large realm.  So I have lots of room to move around in, and I talk to several other "local" adventurers (though my current advy has never spoken with a "foreign" adventurer).  But in smaller realms they might feel like they can't move around as much, and they will also have less chance to speak with other adventurers, in order to "geolocate" sages.

Here's a suggestion: remove the nationality of an adventurer.  We're talking about adventurers after all, who can move at will wherever they want, and they have no reason to be beholden or show loyalty to their original realm.

Alternatively: allow an adventurer to change nationality, much like nobles can.

6
BM General Discussion / Re: Searching for Sages and Wizards
« on: August 09, 2011, 06:49:59 PM »
I'll be honest when I first read the news I did so with some trepidation.  The current system was working, and the new system makes it seem like it will be a *lot* harder to find a sage/wizard (be at the right spot at the right time -- sounds odd for a "play at your own pace" game like BM).

But I'll reserve final judgement until I see the new changes.

7
BM General Discussion / Re: Looking for a Map Editor
« on: June 28, 2011, 11:56:24 PM »
Thanks guys, that helps.

This also helped to clarify: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_with_isometric_graphics

Seems like isometric games are a dying breed nowadays, which is unfortunate for us :(

The following list of isometric games might help us to see what could potentially be used for BM:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_games_with_isometric_graphics

8
BM General Discussion / Re: Looking for a Map Editor
« on: June 28, 2011, 05:03:42 PM »
But we don't want "perspective", we want "isometric". Isometric is 3D without the edge-warping perspective effects.
That's what I was wondering, but reading up on Isometric projection it seems like it does have a viewpoint as well, and hence perspective would seem to kick in.  If I understand correctly, "isometric" just means a particular viewing angle.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_projection:
"In a similar way an isometric view can be obtained for example in a 3D scene editor. Starting with the camera aligned parallel to the floor and aligned to the coordinate axes, it is first rotated downwards around the horizontal axes by about 35.264° as above, and then rotated ±45° around the vertical axis"

Pasting in cities should be easy enough for someone with graphic arts experience, I would think.
Yeah, I'm hoping that this might work.

9
BM General Discussion / Re: Looking for a Map Editor
« on: June 28, 2011, 04:01:27 PM »
Is it possible to take the source graphic elements and use them directly, without using the map editor?
I don't think so.  We can get the art to the tiles, but it's the map editor that stitches the tiles together in a seamless fashion.  I wouldn't want to do that manually.
(Plus the art is likely specific to its 3D representation... bump maps, etc...)

If I understand what we want, it's:
* Terrain tiles that have no perspective to them, meaning that we are "looking" straight down at them,
* However the cities should have an isometric view to them (because looking at cities/castles straight down is ugly)

That's what AoW did, from what I can tell.  *This* we might be able to do manually.  Use the map editor from a "looking straight down" viewpoint, but then manually photoshop the cities onto the map.  Thoughts?

10
BM General Discussion / Re: Looking for a Map Editor
« on: June 28, 2011, 04:47:51 AM »
Yeah, I have no easy answer to the perspective issue.  It is possible to mitigate it to some degree (with various tradeoffs).

Here's what I would consider a good "high-level" view which should have a minimum of perspective issues, and showing off some fantastic terrain (from "Fall from Heaven II"):
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/Adonran/FFH/DragonBones.png

Here's a sample of various cities, grouped by factions:
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/Adonran/FFH/Cities.png

And since someone asked about it, here's an idea of what Blight might look like: :)
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/Adonran/FFH/Barren.png

You'll note that these are pretty dark images (both literally and thematically).  That was the flavor for this particular mod.  Other mods are more "light", notably the "Blue Marble" terrain mod.

These are all somewhat isometric, so they're not free of perspective issues.  That can be further mitigated by panning further out and looking "straight down".

11
BM General Discussion / Re: Looking for a Map Editor
« on: June 27, 2011, 03:37:01 PM »
Where is that artwork for Civ 4? Can I see examples? And what's the editor like? And how do we get images from it out to images?

I usually get my mods from the CivFanatics web site.  Here's the "Graphics mod" section for Civ 4:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=cat&id=4

In particular for terrain packs:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=cat&id=41

The editor comes with Civ 4.  Unfortunately, I don't know if it's possible to just download the editor for free.

Here's a sample image from one of the mods with custom terrain art:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads/untitled-1_hDB.jpg

The "Blue Marble" terrain mod has received really good reviews:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295876
(lots of screenshots at this link)

My personal favorite mod, "Fall From Heaven II", which is a lot more than just a terrain mod since it takes Civ 4 and turns it into a fantasy Civ game... truly amazing:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=1
This has terrain art for stuff like Blights, dark castles, etc...  ;D

 ----

The editor is really easy to use, and does the rendering in-game.  As soon as you make a change you see the difference, and you can easily move the camera around.  I just took screenshots to get images.  I'll try to send you some samples later today (after work).

Now the bad news: If you're zoomed in then stitching multiple screenshots together can be hard because of the camera's viewpoint.  It's truly rendered as if you're looking at it, including with perspective.  The more you zoom out, the less this is an issue.  However, if you zoom out too much then you get clouds.  That can be solved by disabling them (for example by downloading one of the "cloudless" terrain mod packs).

12
BM General Discussion / Re: Looking for a Map Editor
« on: June 26, 2011, 09:58:07 PM »
Theoretically (well, legally), yes. Then again, the same is true for the current AoW maps and in 10+ years there were no complaints.

Yes, that's certainly very true.  Some thoughts:

1. Age of Wonders hasn't been active for a while.
2. The Civ franchise is under active continued development, and it's quite profitable.
3. Perhaps due to this, Civ's owners are reportedly more litigous.  The game "Evony" had a different name previously ("Civony"), until (it is believed) Take-Two's laywers forced them to change it.
4. In my opinion, it's best not to roll the dice and gamble on staying below Take-Two's radar, when there are legal options available that look just as good (if not better -- some of the terrain art is better in my opinion).



13
BM General Discussion / Re: Looking for a Map Editor
« on: June 26, 2011, 12:29:05 AM »
I've used the Civ 4 editor, and it's been great.  Haven't tried Civ 5 yet though.

Scale is not a problem with Civ4, since you can zoom in and out as much as you need.  Here's an example that I quickly put together for one of my character's wiki pages:
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Ni%27Tessine_Family/Corwyn

I suspect the main problem will be intellectual property concerns though!  It doesn't seem like we can just use their copyrighted art for terrain, cities, etc...

That might actually be a selling point in Civ 4's favor.  There's a *huge* wealth of "mods", includings custom art terrain that amateur artists have made, and who are very likely willing to let us use for free (if we ask nicely).  Civ 5 no doubt always has mods by now (I haven't checked though), but I would guess it's not as complete as Civ 4's and not as high quality.

14
Helpline / Torturing Infiltrators
« on: April 04, 2011, 06:09:58 AM »
In one of the realms that I'm a member of there appears to be some serious confusion.  But before I clarify things, I thought it best to confirm things here.

There's a thinking that "It's a very well known concept you have to torture Infiltrators, if you're serious about banning them or executing them."

Apparently this comes from thinking that torturing an infiltrator damages their successful chance to escape prison.  I guess the rational is "torturing damages their stats, which must include their escape chance!". 

Some background: The goal of our realm regarding infiltrators is "to stop the infiltrator attacks".  Execution is just fine (and our enemies have executed our own infiltrators), and in fact is the preferred method (over deportation) of making sure that infiltrators don't continue their attacks.

Question 1: Is there any truth that torturing an infiltrator lowers their current and subsequent chances to escape prison?  (is it a permanent effect?)

Question 2: As a judge, if you have the chance to torture an infiltrator, why wouldn't you just ban them (and execute them on the second offense)?

Question 3: Is there any reason to torture on the first offense, ban on the second, and execute on the third; over just banning on the first and executing on the second?

15
Feature Requests / Re: Can't resell food
« on: March 26, 2011, 09:29:06 PM »
No, this is intentional behaviour. There are several possible exploits if we allow re-selling.
Even at the same price?  I can see the issue if they are at a different price.

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