Slitherine

Today I start work on remaking campaigns to all of us be able to play boh sides in each battle. However I'm very limited in time with regular job and small startup as well so it would be perfect if everybody who is interested take some part in this modding

Last days I was tormenting RIchard Bodley Scott with sometimes stupid and newbie questions but now I think I know the way how to make such mod in best way.

My idea is to make two campaigns from one original - one for one side, second for another.

First campaign I take is Italian wars. 7 of 10 its battles are played now from French side so it's good idea to start making French Italian Wars Campaign with editing only battles of Seminara, Fornovo and Ravenna.

If you are interested and can help - please write here. Modding is not so fast process (it's long and sometimes boring) but the result would be perfect!

Here's what work need to be done:

1. Replacing all units on map. The issue with current scenarios is that you can't just invert unit nations on map (at least I failed to do it). So the most common and guaraneed way is to open battle in the editor, remove all units from the map (I draw first scheme where which located), then change sides.txt in campaign's folder in My Documents to reversed (so for human player be able units previously owned by AI and vice versa), again open battle in editor and place all units according to scheme or brilliant memory

2. Finding info on how ex-human player side was acting in this battle and write it here like "Battle of Pavia, Gendarmes stand still first 2 turns, city harrison attacks from 6 turn etc..."

3. Scripting actions above (or maybe you know yourself what actions should be performed) in C-like language.

These actions could easily be done separately and then merged together.

If you have any questions, ask. And let the work begin

First priorities - Seminara, Ravenna and Fornovo to be played as French. Next - 7 other battles to be played as Imperialists/Italians/Spanish/etc.

If you going to do something please write here to aviod multiple persons doing the samt job.

I'd be pleased to help out in any way I can.

AndyR

awralls wrote:I'd be pleased to help out in any way I can.

AndyR

Great! Do you know scripting? This is now seems to be the hardest part of work.

Eventually i may want to port my renaissance scenarios from FoG (The first candidate would be Moncontour 1569 since it's not on the roster) including most battles of the early italian wars (fornovo, seminara, cerignola, ravenna, novarra, marignano, with agdanello and pavia planned). Early swiss battles (murten, grandson, nancy) may also be transferred. All the research have been done and i just need to understand how the system works. So far i'm very much puzzled.

Also I need to figure out if it is possible to have impassible terrain for map overlay and immobile units for accessory counters (notably for victory/objective points purpose) as they are vital for a game to turn out in a way that actually resembles historical events.

fogman wrote:Eventually i may want to port my renaissance scenarios from FoG (The first candidate would be Moncontour 1569 since it's not on the roster) including most battles of the early italian wars (fornovo, seminara, cerignola, ravenna, novarra, marignano, with agdanello and pavia planned). Early swiss battles (murten, grandson, nancy) may also be transferred. All the research have been done and i just need to understand how the system works. So far i'm very much puzzled.

Also I need to figure out if it is possible to have impassible terrain for map overlay and immobile units for accessory counters (notably for victory/objective points purpose) as they are vital for a game to turn out in a way that actually resembles historical events.

I'm not sure about impassible terrain except water (need to learn it better now - maybe there's something in manual?) but in fact we can make immobile units for AI side only - just don't give them any scripted actions and the'll stand like trees even in the sight of the enemies.

You can easily make impassible terrain by adding such a type to the terrain.txt file (in pikeandshot\data) and making an overlay tile to go with it. In fact, as an example, there is already an impassable cliff terrain type in the terrain.txt file although we have not used it. The tile textures are at their limit, but you can use the same texture as one or more of the other tiles as impassable versions.

You can of course also have immobile "units" by giving them 0 AP. You would, however, also have to add them to the list of squad types so that you can script them not have any ability to turn.

ok thanks. looks like this may work.

NickDirlewanger wrote:

awralls wrote:I'd be pleased to help out in any way I can.

AndyR

Great! Do you know scripting? This is now seems to be the hardest part of work.

Not yet, but I'm sure I can learn, and this is a great reason to do so. However, if prior experience is a pre-requisite, I won't be offended if my offer is not taken up. I can learn on my own anyway.

AndyR

awralls wrote:

NickDirlewanger wrote:

awralls wrote:I'd be pleased to help out in any way I can.

AndyR

Great! Do you know scripting? This is now seems to be the hardest part of work.

Not yet, but I'm sure I can learn, and this is a great reason to do so. However, if prior experience is a pre-requisite, I won't be offended if my offer is not taken up. I can learn on my own anyway.

AndyR

The scripting language is a highly simplified version of the C programming language. It can be a bit restrictive at times, but on the other hand it prevents you from falling into the many pitfalls that full C programming allows.

awralls wrote:

NickDirlewanger wrote:

awralls wrote:I'd be pleased to help out in any way I can.

AndyR

Great! Do you know scripting? This is now seems to be the hardest part of work.

Not yet, but I'm sure I can learn, and this is a great reason to do so. However, if prior experience is a pre-requisite, I won't be offended if my offer is not taken up. I can learn on my own anyway.

AndyR

Of course there are no prequisite required Let's act this way - tomorrow at the evening (I have GMT+3 timezone) I'll send you remade version of Battle of Seminara where player would command French and you'll do some scripting for opposite side - you could read basics about the battle in wikipedia for example to understand what more or less forces have to do and then try to realize it in way you see best.

Richard, if you read this - am I correct understanding Spanish and Naples army was defending mostly during the battle? I've read some materials on this case but didn't quiet understood because it seemed for me that Ferdinand II was planning offensive campaign but the battle since its beginning was defensive.

Essentially the Swiss and French attacked, and rolled over them without breaking a sweat.

That being the case you may need to alter the force balance to make the scenario any sort of challenge.

rbodleyscott wrote:Essentially the Swiss and French attacked, and rolled over them without breaking a sweat.

That being the case you may need to alter the force balance to make the scenario any sort of challenge.

You could do that or you could re-create the battle accurately and recommend the scenario be played as a paired game so that each player has to make the best out of a very difficult situation. I started doing that with some of the FOG scenarios that I have made and it makes for an interesting gaming experience most of the time.

stockwellpete wrote:

rbodleyscott wrote:Essentially the Swiss and French attacked, and rolled over them without breaking a sweat.

That being the case you may need to alter the force balance to make the scenario any sort of challenge.

You could do that or you could re-create the battle accurately and recommend the scenario be played as a paired game so that each player has to make the best out of a very difficult situation. I started doing that with some of the FOG scenarios that I have made and it makes for an interesting gaming experience most of the time.

Good idea.

NickDirlewanger wrote:1. Replacing all units on map. The issue with current scenarios is that you can't just invert unit nations on map (at least I failed to do it). So the most common and guaraneed way is to open battle in the editor, remove all units from the map (I draw first scheme where which located), then change sides.txt in campaign's folder in My Documents to reversed (so for human player be able units previously owned by AI and vice versa), again open battle in editor and place all units according to scheme or brilliant memory

Is it really the case that you have to remove all the units from the map? There's no other way to change the sides round? That seems awfully clunky.
I've played a few ECW scenarios now and wanted to try them from the other side (being fully aware that I would need to do the modding work myself)

This link which I got to from the Wiki seems to indicate otherwise:

viewtopic.php?f=105&t=18140

parmenio wrote:This link which I got to from the Wiki seems to indicate otherwise:

viewtopic.php?f=105&t=18140

The units are specified as side 0 or side 1 in the .BAM file - you can in fact change those unit's sides manually. If you use search and replace, you have to be very careful how you do it, and you cannot do "replace all" without messing something up, but by searching for "_0_" you can change the side 0 units to side 2, then search for "_1_" to convert the side 1 units to side 0, then search for "_2_" to convert the side 2 units to side 1. You also need to change the Unitcount sides. You must not use "replace all" because there will be other instances of these search strings in the .BAM file.

We did this during development for the Ravenna scenario which proved not to work very well played the other way round. (Which is why the player starts that scenario on the right hand side of the map).

rbodleyscott wrote:The units are specified as side 0 or side 1 in the .BAM file - you can in fact change those unit's sides manually. If you use search and replace, you have to be very careful how you do it, and you cannot do "replace all" without messing something up, but by searching for "_0_" you can change the side 0 units to side 2, then search for "_1_" to convert the side 1 units to side 0, then search for "_2_" to convert the side 2 units to side 1. You also need to change the Unitcount sides. You must not use "replace all" because there will be other instances of these search strings in the .BAM file.

Thanks for the reply. This sounds like I need to knock up a simple editor app to make the changes.

rbodleyscott wrote:We did this during development for the Ravenna scenario which proved not to work very well played the other way round. (Which is why the player starts that scenario on the right hand side of the map).

I'm guessing some scenarios just aren't very playable from the other perspective.

parmenio wrote:I'm guessing some scenarios just aren't very playable from the other perspective.

Our view was that most of them weren't. They were mostly picked because the player side was disadvantaged historically. The other way round the victory conditions would need to be adjusted (using the method we have used for the MP versions perhaps, which I think would be easy to apply in SP scenario scripts) so that it wasn't too easy for the advantaged side to "win" the scenario even if it is fairly easy for them to "win" the battle.

Also you would need to tweak the forces. For example the player side in the vanilla Breitenfeld scenario actually has less troops than historically, but the Imperials don't. You won't be able to increase the number of Swedish units in the scenario, because it is already at the engine limit, but you could reduce the number of Imperial units.

Is it documented anywhere what the various unit properties are? Some are immediately obvious, some aren't:

UNITTS_0_0 CORNISH_ROYALIST_PIKE
UNITX_0_0 30
UNITY_0_0 17
UNITROT_0_0 0
UNITTEAM_0_0 0
UNITFIX_0_0 TRUE
UNITST_0_0 0
UNITCAR_0_0 FALSE
UNITREINF_0_0 0

It doesn't make any immediate difference to my app to swap the sides round but it would be nice to give the Unit class attributes meaningful names...

Other considerations for swapping I'm guessing are these in bold at the top of BAM file (this is Stratton.BAM from the ECW):

POINTS0 300
POINTS1 200
POINTSCOOP 0
VERSION 2
DEPLOY TRUE
FLAGS 3
SIDEID0 12
SIDEID1 13