[Modding] Creating my first scenario

[Cablenexus]

An important aspect I want to mention from above image is that the amount of bushes/trees on grass/plain tiles are much lower then in the original game. I set it that way in the files.

To make a real comparisson I should also take into account the fooliage on this tiles. In my opinion one of the reasons the terrain overlay works better. It doesn't lower the amount of trees/fooliage but it makes them semi transperant. That's why you can distinct the different terrains better.

Interesting, because that's one of my issues with the current implementation. Those semi empty tiles which actually are Forests. Good for variety, but I find myself hovering over all of them when in supply view.

I hope next week I have the Alpha version of the scenario ready and would appriciate if you want to test also with those tiles and settings and provide some feedback, IF you want of course.

[Cablenexus]

Some screens:

[n0kn0k]

An important aspect I want to mention from above image is that the amount of bushes/trees on grass/plain tiles are much lower then in the original game. I set it that way in the files.

To make a real comparisson I should also take into account the fooliage on this tiles. In my opinion one of the reasons the terrain overlay works better. It doesn't lower the amount of trees/fooliage but it makes them semi transperant. That's why you can distinct the different terrains better.

Interesting, because that's one of my issues with the current implementation. Those semi empty tiles which actually are Forests. Good for variety, but I find myself hovering over all of them when in supply view.

I hope next week I have the Alpha version of the scenario ready and would appriciate if you want to test also with those tiles and settings and provide some feedback, IF you want of course.

Ofcourse I'd want to test a dutch map. But only if you add Volendam to it.

[Cablenexus]

Ofcourse I'd want to test a dutch map. But only if you add Volendam to it.

Of course! Edam, Volendam, Amsterdam played an important role for the Romans. They had one of their biggest forts there. (Fort Edam?). Together with the sandy/water tiles (polder) they used it as a defense line against the tribes in the North of Holland.

[Cablenexus]

- As I informed you already by mail, the out of memory issues are history for me since I set mouse smootheness to OFF (It was set to on since it was a feature that helped me a lot to have smoother mouse in Aggressors, but in v4 it seems to break the whole game for me.

- Issues I experienced since beta v4, flashing screen when UI elements showed up, CTD out of memory, MSVCR100.dll in Mogre.dll errors, screen freezes/mouse freezes for a milliscond frequently. All happened randomly between turn 1 and trun 15.
It was something I did not experienced in v3. I never thought it could be the mouse smoothness setting so I tried all other settings, except that one.

- All issues are gone, memory usage is much lower, CPU and GPU stable, gamemap scrolls smooth, all UI elements pops up normally etc etc

- However some minor issues arise with my new gameplay experience. For example a newly build city, is not named properly directly after building one. In next turn it get's a random name from my name database. This was not an issue before. (I'm not running out of names here).

[Cablenexus]

Lonely unit looking for Pavel:

Spies find out that Pavel is really busy with all kind of neat tools and features !

[Cablenexus]

I'm not sure if this is intentional or a bug. When you met a new tribe for the first time you see the meeting screen. From there you can click to go directly to the political map window. If you choose to do this and afterwards want to click the flag to make a new agreement, you can't click the flag. It doesn't bring you to the negotiation window. So you first have to close the map screen, then you have to close the introduction new tribe screen, then to click the foreign screen again and click their flag to make an agreement.

[Cablenexus]

- However some minor issues arise with my new gameplay experience. For example a newly build city, is not named properly directly after building one. In next turn it get's a random name from my name database. This was not an issue before. (I'm not running out of names here).

This only happens when entering edit mode and leave edit mode from a normal game start. In normal game it works as supposed.

[Cablenexus]

The delete save game option should have a confirmation window.

[Cablenexus]

The save as scenario option in editor mode set all player and scenario introduction text to userNoticeRead="true"

[Cablenexus]

I need some help to be able to read this screen correctly, especially the movement bonus on certain terrain. Tooltip states that default movement for the unit is 2. Tooltip shows bonus or penalty in the terrain list but is set to 2 as well for desert and forest tiles and to 1 for grass. I don't understand. If penalty is 2 that means the unit can not move at all? If it's a bonus I don't understand it as well. Maybe I'm just getting tired

[Cablenexus]

- All unit naming is done. I added everything to the AG file (the scenario/mod). I added introduction text for every tribe and they pop up nicely for all twenty tribes I tested them.
Citynaming is finished, start locations are finished.

- I have some more work to do in finetuning the techs for every tribe they start with and the units they have access to. Also I watch the AI constantly play to see if I have to change something when some tribes are too weak or too strong, but it turns out it's really diverse. While it's a setup scenario I see the outcome is very different everytime.

- Here an example of reaching 1000 units on the 7000+ tile map (89x89).

[Cablenexus]

- Doing some texture tests. Instead of only downgrading texture I also tried upgrading the textures to see what the engine and my system can handle.

- I don't know if the engine actually use the high res textures or convert them automatically internally to a smaller size? Otherwise this is interesting for you maybe:

[Cablenexus]

Ultra high settings no performance drops.

(please note I have a lot going on in the background (Firefox multiple tabs take one gig, and paint.net with all the 100 mb textures open as well).

[pavelk]

A comparisson...

I admit that your version looks better. We will definitely work on that with you but it would be better to let other players to play your version first so they can experience the look on their own. Let's wait for V5 when the modding is very easy to share and I am sure there are volunteers to give your scenario (and also your terrain look) a try.

However some minor issues arise with my new gameplay experience. For example a newly build city, is not named properly directly after building one. In next turn it get's a random name from my name database. This was not an issue before. (I'm not running out of names here).

Can you explain it a bit? What do you mean that is is not named properly? You mean that you selected/filled the city name, clicked ok and it didnt set the name?

Lonely unit looking for Pavel:

This is a very nice screenshot really! For me it is hard to believe that it came from Aggressors!

I'm not sure if this is intentional or a bug. When you met a new tribe for the first time you see the meeting screen. From there you can click to go directly to the political map window. If you choose to do this and afterwards want to click the flag to make a new agreement, you can't click the flag. It doesn't bring you to the negotiation window. So you first have to close the map screen, then you have to close the introduction new tribe screen, then to click the foreign screen again and click their flag to make an agreement.

Can you reproduce that and send a save file?

The delete save game option should have a confirmation window.

I disagree on that. Usually people tend to let the number of savefiles grow and once they decide to clean up, they delete many files in a row. It would be very annoying to have a confirmation window for each file.

The save as scenario option in editor mode set all player and scenario introduction text to userNoticeRead="true"

That is by design. Why is that a problem?

I need some help to be able to read this screen correctly, especially the movement bonus on certain terrain. Tooltip states that default movement for the unit is 2. Tooltip shows bonus or penalty in the terrain list but is set to 2 as well for desert and forest tiles and to 1 for grass. I don't understand. If penalty is 2 that means the unit can not move at all? If it's a bonus I don't understand it as well. Maybe I'm just getting tired

This is actually a number of movement points consumed by moving to this terrain. Perhaps the word penalty is misleading.

Doing some texture tests. Instead of only downgrading texture I also tried upgrading the textures to see what the engine and my system can handle.
- I don't know if the engine actually use the high res textures or convert them automatically internally to a smaller size? Otherwise this is interesting for you maybe:

Every GPU has its "limit" of the texture size. Once it is above that limit it shinks the texture (basically divide it by 2 till it gets to the size which the GPU can handle). I am not sure what is your limit (but you can find it in the Aggressors.log) but I doubt that the difference (even when your GPU handles 16k pixels) would be noticable.
Otherwise (if your system cannot handle higher texture size than 8k) is it just a waste of startup time (basically the engine has to shrink the texture which takes some time).

[Cablenexus]

Here a list to keep track on all changes I made so far. Just to show there is no magic button to change the graphics with a simple tweak.

- Made the plains a bit darker. Change hue levels.
- Made the grass a bit lighter and less green. Less saturated. Change hue levels. (specially roads are better visible now)
- Antialiased the trees and made them darker.
- Add orange and brown small trees (for diversity and less repetetiveness).
- Smoothed all coast and border edges.
- Smoothed the mountains and make the colors more inline with the enviroment (this was specially for the Holland scenario since we do not have real mountains here).
- Added a more detailed object selector.
- Made the stone mine lighter.
- Reversed grass and plain color in terrain overlay (simple line in ag file) to make grass light green and plains dark green as in the map itself. It was reversed that was confusing.
- Added small real grass in green, light green and grey
- Change the goldmine from yellow to gold
- Made the coal and iron mine darker (distinct better from terrain)
- Made the watchtower brighter
- Made the wood in the fort brighter and less colorfull and the stones darker so there is an artificial lightening effect.
- Made the rivers more in color of the sea, so much darker.
- Reworked the whole scrub texture and sand texture to give them more detail
- Removed fade edges from borders and made them much smaller
- Added shells on coastlines
- Added cows
- Lowered amount of fooliage on grass and plain tiles significant (almost 50%)
- Added some darker forest trees (more diversity in groups)

[Cablenexus]

- Everyone can try them as soon as I have Alpha ready. Probably tonight.

- Issue with autocitynaming is only when using crtl q while play a normal game. City name only appears in next turn. Before it stays blanco.

- The nice screenshot has something to do with day/night or ambience color.

- I will reproduce it with a save file.

- IIt's ok for me the save files. I don't want someone throws away his important save by accident.

- The problem by design is that when I edit my scenario afterwards and export it again I have to manually delete all those lines to have the intro text shows up for new player

- Yes cnfusing word panalty.

- GPU limit was just to test the possibilities. It also lowers the change if I get out of memory errors that it has to do with my terrain settings. Anyway it was just an experiment. I will add high, med and low textures to the scenario at least.

[pavelk]

The problem by design is that when I edit my scenario afterwards and export it again I have to manually delete all those lines to have the intro text shows up for new player

I get the point know. There are so called "attributes" which are created for such scenarios. I will add a new attribute which will prevent this for certain reports once they have the attribute selected. Logged.

Yes cnfusing word panalty.

My collegue will be informed:)

[Cablenexus]

Hi all,

I just send my Holland scenario to Pavel. It's Alpha version 0.63 and I'm happy to show it to you. There is hundreds of hours put into the scenario. Not only making it, but doing research, reading, painting, testing and of course beta testing the editor tools and experiment with it. And adding hundreds of unit and citynames of course.

If you like to try out the scenario, I think Pavel will provide instructions of how to do it and where to download it when he have time to approve.

I will be greatful for everyone who wants to try and all feedback is more then welcome. Only Pavel and myself saw it so far.
There are a few parts that are unfinished and I show them in the TO DO list at the end of this document.

I would really like to hear feedback on the following parts myself:

- Graphics overall. Terrain, banners and added icons etc.

! Setting the saturation slider ingame to 110% gives a more colorfull image if you think it's to "grey" !

- Performance. Can you really play the game, make a lot of turns mid/end game and does it crash?

- Do you experience issues that are not in the main game?

- Do the right tribe portraits, icons, unit and citynames pop up?

Of course if you want to provide feedback about map setup and balancing it is very welcome as well, but please note that I was not able to fine tune this part yet.
Also the techs and units assigned per tribe and the resources amount are just for testing. It's all in the to do list.

TO DO

- Assigning specific units per tribe
- Fine tune starting resources and techs per tribe
- fine tuning diplomatic standings between tribes

Thank you for your help with testing and enjoy!

[Cablenexus]

Really like it with ambience change in colors.