DEVS, PLEASE CONSIDER: OoB v9.2.5 - Fixes & Tweaks

[Horst]

I copied this thread to here so that whatever assistance it may render to officially improving this game may be accomplished. I also bolded and red fonted Erik's comment below. Per Horst's wishes, PLEASE, NO FURTHER REPLIES TO THIS THREAD EXCEPT FOR THOSE OF A DEVELOPER. ALL OTHERS, PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW. Thank you. — bru888

OoB v9.2.5 - Fixes & Tweaks

See topic here: https://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=110928

[terminator]

Why use formats such as 7zip or rar for files to download while Windows 11 and macOS Ventura compresses and decompresses zip files automatically ?

[Erik2]

Impressive work.
Devs, please take note. Horst is serving you solutions on a platter here.

I plan to create a Horst mod. It should provide a 'safe' way to play multiplayer as the scenario will have to be in the Horst mod Scenarios folder.

[Horst]

So this also works with Steam and Slitherine/Matrix version, I assume?
Erik, if you know someone to play multiplayer regularily, I'm very curios if the game can actually recognize different game files and complain.
Although this isn't an online game where you get banned for "cheating" with modified game files, I'd hate to see the multiplayer-part go down under because of my simple bugfixes.
I've never played MP and never will here, but I guess Hotseat is maybe more secure than PBEM.
If the multiplayer part recognizes mods you normally install in the user-mod folder, then it's surely an idea to specifically mark playing with these fixes and tweaks.
OFT sounds maybe better than a silly Horst-Mod.

If someone is unhappy with a tweak, I can see if this gets removed then for something more of a fix than tweak pack.

The best thing that could happen is to provoke another official patch that will use some fixes at least, so I don't have so much work to redo all this again.

[Horst]

January 5th, 2023, v2: added more language support that is switchable in the main menu. If you switch then restart the game for proper translation

Download link is updated in the first post.
No changes to the *.dll file itself.
The tiny info-text about this "mod" version at the bottom is surely hard to notice, and can be misleading should someone only restore the *.dll file for public multiplayer.
Anyway, it's still important to know and recognizable with every language used, that the game doesn't currently in pure vanilla mode.
Theoretically, this text could be also added/changed with a user-mod but disabling this user-mod wouldn't restore the *.dll file again.
I guess there is no great solution other than a proper installer.

My translations are done by google, so if it sounds too shabby then I'll gladly change it.

If Erik or someone else wants to create a specific mod based on this, then why not also adding a couple of other vanilla fixes, what the GabeMod offers.
Would be a waste of a mod-launching routine if there is only a name change.
Other games with more or less mod support also offer something like an Unofficial Patch sometimes.
I'm personally not really interested in fixing only vanilla unit stats and such, as I rather prefer my own gameplay mod for that.
There are sadly still so many other bugs left....

[bru888]

This is a very, very interesting development. I wonder what the ramifications will be. Meaning, will further development of OOB be "crowd-sourced"?

[Horst]

Maybe I was a bit early with such "unofficial patch", but after almost eight years my patience went overboard.
There surely way more talented coders out there creating game mods, but sadly this game hasn't attracted any yet, so don't expect much more from me as greenhorn coming.
Fine by me if there will be further DLCs and especially bug-fix patches coming, as there are still a couple of faction left with enough campaign potential.
It's still winter season now where devs are usually not very productive, so let's see in the next couple of weeks and months what's happening.

[Applepie68]

Oh the price change for raids is nice. This brings up a question for me about the bombard action though. Why does it have a cost? It seems odd to me considering how it's attacking like how it normally does anyways. Regardless thank you so much for the patch! It's always heartwarming to see such contributions to the community.

[Horst]

I'm not up to update two topics, so I edited the first post here to refer to my original topic.

For discussions and comments, please use my original topic and not the tech support which should rather be the dev-department.

[bru888]

Bump.

[bru888]

Bump.

[Erik2]

...
Erik, if you know someone to play multiplayer regularily, I'm very curios if the game can actually recognize different game files and complain.

Tested the F & T-version in a current multiplayer game. The mp-server does not complain about edited files.

[Horst]

Tested the F & T-version in a current multiplayer game. The mp-server does not complain about edited files.

Hoho, so much about cheat-security!
I could possibly disable the Multiplayer-button, but as long as at least half of these fixes, excluding my changes, aren't officially patched, maybe some people still want to do matches with my mod.
As some changes of my mod makes it basically harder, like the mine endurance, the whole mod can't really give that much advantage anyway.
It's all about being openly fair, might it be multiplayer or shameful AI triggers.

[Erik2]

To be precise, I did not play the mp-turn. I simply downlloaded my turn.
So there may be server-complaints if someone actually play and upload their finished turn.