Historic Unit Designations

[awralls]

Unless I'm missing something obvious, there doesn't appear to be any way to give units historic designations. I can't help but feel it would be so much more immersive to know a unit was Rupert's Bluecoats, the Don Gaspard Boniface tercio or the Gens d'Armes de Roi than simply Veteran Horse. Any thoughts to adding this at a later date? I do realise that such designations were not always known, certainly with respect to the 16th century, but thereafter they're pretty easy to find out.

AndyR

[scrofulus]

Sounds like a great idea.

[rbodleyscott]

Unless I'm missing something obvious, there doesn't appear to be any way to give units historic designations. I can't help but feel it would be so much more immersive to know a unit was Rupert's Bluecoats, the Don Gaspard Boniface tercio or the Gens d'Armes de Roi than simply Veteran Horse. Any thoughts to adding this at a later date? I do realise that such designations were not always known, certainly with respect to the 16th century, but thereafter they're pretty easy to find out.

Unfortunately, the only way the STUB engine will currently support this is if each unit has a separate line in the unit definitions excel sheet. This is at least theoretically possible, because the spreadsheet is permitted to contain up to 1024 different units. However, there are some limits imposed by the engine on the number of differently defined units that can be present in a scenario. (This currently appears to be 32 per side for the player side).

So naming each individual unit would only be possible for small to medium sized scenarios, unless there is an engine change. It could, however, be done for player created scenarios if so desired, provided that there are no more than 32 different units on the player side. Of course, it would be possible to individually name some well-known units and to use generic unit types for less well known or militia units.

For various reasons, we chose not to go along this route for the vanilla release.

[GBISSET]

Id like to enable unit names or numbers as well, I think Ill take a crack at the units defenitions.

One approach Ill use in various games is at least number each unit, then I can write a list or remember which unit is special.

Theres no way to display different unit numbers? I suppose the PC has to be able to tell units apart from each other.

[rbodleyscott]

Theres no way to display different unit numbers? I suppose the PC has to be able to tell units apart from each other.

All the units are numbered, but the numbers only show in Debug Mode.

If you want to turn this on, put

DEBUGMODE 1

in User.txt in

\My Documents\My Games\PikeandShot

(Not sure if this shows the unit numbers in MP games)

[cavehobbit]

Unless I'm missing something obvious, there doesn't appear to be any way to give units historic designations. I can't help but feel it would be so much more immersive to know a unit was Rupert's Bluecoats, the Don Gaspard Boniface tercio or the Gens d'Armes de Roi than simply Veteran Horse. Any thoughts to adding this at a later date? I do realise that such designations were not always known, certainly with respect to the 16th century, but thereafter they're pretty easy to find out.

Unfortunately, the only way the STUB engine will currently support this is if each unit has a separate line in the unit definitions excel sheet. This is at least theoretically possible, because the spreadsheet is permitted to contain up to 1024 different units. However, there are some limits imposed by the engine on the number of differently defined units that can be present in a scenario. (This currently appears to be 32 per side for the player side).

So naming each individual unit would only be possible for small to medium sized scenarios, unless there is an engine change. It could, however, be done for player created scenarios if so desired, provided that there are no more than 32 different units on the player side. Of course, it would be possible to individually name some well-known units and to use generic unit types for less well known or militia units.

For various reasons, we chose not to go along this route for the vanilla release.

Richard, shouldn't it be 64 units per side? Or I'm I missing something?

[rbodleyscott]

Richard, shouldn't it be 64 units per side? Or I'm I missing something?

It is 64 units per side, but there appears to be an engine limit of 32 completely different units on the player side. (i.e. From 32 separate lines in the Squads file). It will let you place more than 32 different units on the map in the editor, but the extra ones won't appear when you play the scenario. I think this must be a bug, as it allows 64 different units on the AI side.

Some of the historical scenarios have 64 units per side, but the number of different types of unit is a lot less than 32. As we had no need to place as many as 32 different unit types on a side in any of the historical or army list scenarios, this issue did not come to light till recently when we were double-checking the default unit textures in the editor.

The main engine programmer has been on holiday, so I am awaiting a chance to discuss this with him.

[awralls]

So, Richard, are you saying that if it is a bug, and can be fixed, that it would be possible to have up to 64 different unit names per side? If so, that would fix the issue from my perspective.

One question; presumably that limit applies to the different unit names, but that if there were more than 64 units per side, some unit could share a name. I. E. there could be a designation just called "Commanded Musketeers Left" that could be used for all such units?

AndyR

[rbodleyscott]

So, Richard, are you saying that if it is a bug, and can be fixed, that it would be possible to have up to 64 different unit names per side? If so, that would fix the issue from my perspective.

Well I think it must be a bug, but I am awaiting a reply from the engine designer.

One question; presumably that limit applies to the different unit names, but that if there were more than 64 units per side, some unit could share a name. I. E. there could be a designation just called "Commanded Musketeers Left" that could be used for all such units?

At present the engine does not allow more than 64 units per side. So any historical engagement that has more needs to be scaled down accordingly. This has been done for the First Battle of Breitenfeld, for example, which was scaled down slightly because of this limit. The Imperialists at the battle of Lützen actually have more than 64 units, but some of these take the form of reinforcements - the last of these can only appear if the Imperialists have already lost some units.

[awralls]

OK, got it. BTW, thanks to you for your excellent online support for P&S. I love the game. I have large 15mm French and Imperial Italian Wars armies that I never get to deploy these days. This game is really scratching the itch! Great job.

AndyR

[GBISSET]

I tried the debug mode and got an error:

Kernel memory checking is "off"

Is there a way to turn that on?

Thanks!

George

[rbodleyscott]

I tried the debug mode and got an error:

Kernel memory checking is "off"

Is there a way to turn that on?

Thanks!

George

There are some odd key combinations that do strange things in Debug Mode. Perhaps you hit one of those. I have not come across the error you describe in 16 months of using the game with DebugMode permanently on.

Perhaps Pip may enlighten us if he sees this post.

[pipfromslitherine]

I tried the debug mode and got an error:

Kernel memory checking is "off"

Is there a way to turn that on?

Thanks!

George

You will have seen that in your error.log file I imagine? That is not an error, just informational spew .

Cheers

Pip

[GBISSET]

Oh, good.

But to get back to the original problem, I probably should have said when I put the debug line mentioned above in user.txt, the game hung at the start menu (when I clicked play PS). Task manager says PS is running. Is there something else I have to do or add to start the game in debug mode?

Im enjoying the game immensely right now.

Thanks!

George

[pipfromslitherine]

Nope - that is all you need to do. The behaviour usually means that the screen rez is wrong. Check the values in your OPTIONS.TXT file to see if they are valid.

Cheers

Pip

[GBISSET]

Great! That works!

Ive got numbers on my units now (when I put the cursor over them)

Keep up the good work!

George

[Swing]

To have historic designations would be really, really cool, not to mention the added narrative it'll help generate. Go on and keep investigating

[GBISSET]

I don't see the squads spreadsheet in PS, should I bring one from BA and put it into my new campaign to change unit names, etc?

[rbodleyscott]

I don't see the squads spreadsheet in PS, should I bring one from BA and put it into my new campaign to change unit names, etc?

The squads spreadsheet is in PikeandShot\Data. (I think that is the same relative place it is in BA).

The game uses Squads.csv. However, Squads.xlsx is formatted, so it is easier to use that then save a .csv copy.

The BA squads spreadsheet wouldn't work with P&S anyway because most of the Attributes have changed.

[GBISSET]

Im not having any luck so far renaming units.

What Im trying to do is unusual, so Id best describe it. Im trying to change the unit textures so that they show up as numbers on the map (Im using PS to play miniatures, so I have an AI to play against, and my plan is to just come up with scenarios, not skirmish or multiplayer games). I first made a special campaign to fool around with. It was very easy to handraw some numbers on PS DDS. I then went into the xlsx file and renamed units to the same names as the DDS files, which I had called 1,2,3 etc. I saved the changed xlsx as a csv.

These did not show up in the editor, (although the renamed units disappeared from the editor, which makes me think I was in the right files at least). I then renamed them to numbers with a letter prefix, and then roman numerals, in case the unit names had to be letters only. But no results from that.

I did not make an army list as I did not plan to use the skirmish function, only the editor for regular scenarios.

Is there some other list I must change or add the new renamed units to?

Thanks!