FUN WITH FLAGS - game mode - description

[Siegfried]

An incentive not to starve your people is a good idea (lucky I made those changes so you can detect units starving to death).

Originally, I planned to add a penalty for starved troops to the knighthood flag. But then I realized that the forbidden zones will also provide attackerID = -1. Also the Commander flag has a penalty for lost units in it, so I skipped this for now. But maybe I will re-activate this for the final.

I think we should try to play a few more test games in case there are bugs/issues remaining. Just let me know when suits you and I'll try to be online

I hope so, too. My availability is limited to the evening hours > 8pm (UTC+2). This means a time after midnight for you, so I don't have much hope that it works during the week.

Let's see.

[Lewin]

An incentive not to starve your people is a good idea (lucky I made those changes so you can detect units starving to death).

Originally, I planned to add a penalty for starved troops to the knighthood flag. But then I realized that the forbidden zones will also provide attackerID = -1. Also the Commander flag has a penalty for lost units in it, so I skipped this for now. But maybe I will re-activate this for the final.

Well it might sound nice to penalize starving troops, but in reality that will probably just make people try to suicide them in death zones in order to avoid that penalty...

[Siegfried]

Btw: how do we do a playtest online? We need the newest rev and don't have a dedicated server for that. Also the masterserver complains that my rev is outdated

[Lewin]

Btw: how do we do a playtest online? We need the newest rev and don't have a dedicated server for that. Also the masterserver complains that my rev is outdated

The master server complaining doesn't stop you from playing, it's just informing you. I'll start a server for that revision.

[The Dark Lord]

Some suggestions:
- It can take a long time before one has captured enough flags to win. It would be nice if we would be able to choose victory conditions (e.g. the number of flags). But I guess it isn't possible to script this in a nice way, it would be better to set it in the lobby. I know that isn't a possibility either, but just saying it would be nice.
- There is a LOT of text on the screen. Too much for my poor laptop. It forced me to zoom out. Nothing wrong with that, but it might cause lag with older computers. It would be a great addition to be able to somehow hide the text.
- I would love to see some kind of notification if someone took a flag from me/my team or if we gained one.
- The colour white is very annoying with the white text. Lewin said something about removing white from the game; I think it should stay but a solution is definitely needed. Is it possible to somehow assign a random colour to a player who chose white?
- When I got the flag 'Knight Parade', I didn't hear a sound playing. Is that correct? If not, could it be that the sound was 'overwritten' by the chat sound?
- The 'forbidden zone' should be defined in the description (and very clearly), so players won't accidentily send their troops to their sudden doom.

All in all very nice, I enjoyed playing it. I think it works best in ffa or 2v2v2v2 (that would be awesome actually), 3v3 or 4v4 would be less suitable in my opinion.

[dicsoupcan]

I did enjoy playing the gamemode today, and all i have to adress is the easy skin trading i had in the market. Maybe it is a good idea to disable skin trading or at least trading for horses, since as you have seen the trade rate is pretty good and thus it is easier to get flags like knight parade without stables while you have worked hard to get those horses trhough stables.

[Lewin]

- There is a LOT of text on the screen. Too much for my poor laptop. It forced me to zoom out. Nothing wrong with that, but it might cause lag with older computers. It would be a great addition to be able to somehow hide the text.

We'll probably add some way to hide/show the overlay from scripting, or make a more versatile UI system. But that won't be for this release.
At least when someone is causing lag by zooming you you can tell from their FPS on the players tab

- The colour white is very annoying with the white text. Lewin said something about removing white from the game; I think it should stay but a solution is definitely needed. Is it possible to somehow assign a random colour to a player who chose white?

I was joking, white won't be removed
It would be possible for Siegfried to change the color if it's white (write your own function GetPlayerColor which replaces it if it's white). Maybe a light grey or something would work?

I did enjoy playing the gamemode today, and all i have to adress is the easy skin trading i had in the market. Maybe it is a good idea to disable skin trading or at least trading for horses, since as you have seen the trade rate is pretty good and thus it is easier to get flags like knight parade without stables while you have worked hard to get those horses trhough stables.

Maybe horse trading should also be disabled if weaponry trades are disabled? (horses are like weapons/armor)

[Siegfried]

First of all - I NEED YOUR HELP

I want to have some more translations added, so please help me out here. It's not much work, just 15 flag names + 18 other words.
All you need is this file here containing the already existing translations. You can either work with the TranslationManager that is shipped with the remake or you just open it with a text editor. Both work.

Translations that I have so far:

• english
• german
• hungarian (thanks Bence)
• polish (thanks pawel)
• dutch (not arrived yet, but dicso offered to do so)
• french (not arrived yet, but Shadaoe has already done that)

If you know another language (like russian), please help me out here and send that file either to me. You can use any file hoster to upload like dropbox, share-online.biz or what's your favorite. It that doesn't work and you have no other possibility, I think it would also be fine to send them directly to the the the contact at kamremake dot com. But please try to send it to me first.

Some suggestions:- It can take a long time before one has captured enough flags to win. It would be nice if we would be able to choose victory conditions (e.g. the number of flags). But I guess it isn't possible to script this in a nice way, it would be better to set it in the lobby.

The only possibility that we have is to make a second map. The map will be called 'florescence one' for this release of the remake. It might be possible to add a 'florescence half' with reduced flag needs. That is a very inelegant way of doing that, but that might actually work out. We could also decrease the time limit of the future flags to further speed the game up.

- There is a LOT of text on the screen. Too much for my poor laptop. It forced me to zoom out. Nothing wrong with that, but it might cause lag with older computers. It would be a great addition to be able to somehow hide the text.

Like Lewin said, that will not be possible until (at least) the version following the near release. There might be a way for you to work around that. Edit your libx-file and shorten the flag names to a very short abbreviation. So it does not need so much space.
But I'm not sure if this works online. There is a file checksum test to see if your files differ from other player, maybe that also goes for the libx files?

- I would love to see some kind of notification if someone took a flag from me/my team or if we gained one.

There is a sound notice. It's a deep drum on losing a flag and a kickdrum on gaining a flag. I did not want to make the sounds as prominent as the internal message sound, because when two people are close on a flag the leadership may change within seconds. That sound would be very annoying. So you just have to listen closely. (and disable music?)

- When I got the flag 'Knight Parade', I didn't hear a sound playing. Is that correct? If not, could it be that the sound was 'overwritten' by the chat sound?

That was a bug. Thanks for reporting.

- The 'forbidden zone' should be defined in the description (and very clearly), so players won't accidentily send their troops to their sudden doom.

Yes. There will also be an updated map files that has stones on the beginning tiles. So you can also see where the zone starts.

All in all very nice, I enjoyed playing it. I think it works best in ffa or 2v2v2v2 (that would be awesome actually), 3v3 or 4v4 would be less suitable in my opinion.

As far as I've seen, it works best with more than two teams/players. Because the temporary alliances to deny leaders the victory is great fun.
Also, if there is a player/team that is stronger than the rest - place them in between the weaker players. Because of the temporary alliances he will eventually have to fight in two directions, that makes life harder

I did enjoy playing the gamemode today, and all i have to adress is the easy skin trading i had in the market.

All weapon trades are disabled anyways. Now I've additionally forbidden trades from/to skins and horses. Leather trades are still allowed. Does this improve the situation?

I was joking, white won't be removed
It would be possible for Siegfried to change the color if it's white (write your own function GetPlayerColor which replaces it if it's white). Maybe a light grey or something would work?

I've added this. White is now changed to BGR='606060', which is a medium gray. This is only meant for the scoreboard, the real player stays white. So a identification will be harder with a white player present, but it improves the readability of the GUI.

There is one more problem: the light gray. I'd like to change the colors in that way, that current white becomes light gray and current light gray becomes medium gray. But I don't know the BGR value of light gray. It's not possible to read that out of the game because the blending changes colors. If you just tell me the value, that would be great

Another point: what about the crashes yesterday? Did you find out anything?
I tried the best on my side and the OnUnitDied does additional checks on the indexes provided by the caller function to prevent problems on that case.
Because I guessed that it was caused by the forbidden zone. My bowmen were shooting ad bence's xbows, which changed places and therefore accidently entered the forbidden zones. In the frozen screen after the crash you could see that some arrows were still flying while some already hit the target. So I imagined that the arrow killed a unit that was destroyed by the forbidden zone, giving a -1 on UnitType and therefore an index that lies outside the array, causing the error. The new index checks should now prevent that.

[Lewin]

Some suggestions:- It can take a long time before one has captured enough flags to win. It would be nice if we would be able to choose victory conditions (e.g. the number of flags). But I guess it isn't possible to script this in a nice way, it would be better to set it in the lobby.

The only possibility that we have is to make a second map. The map will be called 'florescence one' for this release of the remake. It might be possible to add a 'florescence half' with reduced flag needs. That is a very inelegant way of doing that, but that might actually work out. We could also decrease the time limit of the future flags to further speed the game up.

We might eventually add "parameters" to the script which can be set from the lobby or singleplayer screen. You could choose between different types of parameters (boolean would show as a checkbox, integer could be a slider, etc.) and specify valid ranges. Then when the script loads the parameters are set in global variables or something like that. It's just an idea, and probably won't be implemented any time soon

- There is a LOT of text on the screen. Too much for my poor laptop. It forced me to zoom out. Nothing wrong with that, but it might cause lag with older computers. It would be a great addition to be able to somehow hide the text.

Like Lewin said, that will not be possible until (at least) the version following the near release. There might be a way for you to work around that. Edit your libx-file and shorten the flag names to a very short abbreviation. So it does not need so much space.
But I'm not sure if this works online. There is a file checksum test to see if your files differ from other player, maybe that also goes for the libx files?

LIBX files are not checked, since they cannot affect the gameplay (and thus can't cause an out of sync error or allow players to cheat).

I did enjoy playing the gamemode today, and all i have to adress is the easy skin trading i had in the market.

All weapon trades are disabled anyways. Now I've additionally forbidden trades from/to skins and horses. Leather trades are still allowed. Does this improve the situation?

I agree with blocking horses, but I'm not sure blocking skins is necessary. Less skins means less leather/soldiers.

There is one more problem: the light gray. I'd like to change the colors in that way, that current white becomes light gray and current light gray becomes medium gray. But I don't know the BGR value of light gray. It's not possible to read that out of the game because the blending changes colors. If you just tell me the value, that would be great

Start a game with light grey selected, then add the line: ShowMsg(-1, States.PlayerColor(0)); and it should show you the code for that player. That's what you want right?

Another point: what about the crashes yesterday? Did you find out anything?
I tried the best on my side and the OnUnitDied does additional checks on the indexes provided by the caller function to prevent problems on that case.
Because I guessed that it was caused by the forbidden zone. My bowmen were shooting ad bence's xbows, which changed places and therefore accidently entered the forbidden zones. In the frozen screen after the crash you could see that some arrows were still flying while some already hit the target. So I imagined that the arrow killed a unit that was destroyed by the forbidden zone, giving a -1 on UnitType and therefore an index that lies outside the array, causing the error. The new index checks should now prevent that.

You're right, there is a bug in the game causing the UnitID given to you in OnUnitDied to be considered "dead", so none of your commands on it work (UnitOwner returned -1 and caused a range error in your array). It mostly only affects units killed from UnitKill so it's unlikely to affect scores. We'll fix this, but the extra checks you added won't hurt

[Siegfried]

I agree with blocking horses, but I'm not sure blocking skins is necessary. Less skins means less leather/soldiers.

Well, dicso was very persuasive yesterday The final decision on this has not been met.

Start a game with light grey selected, then add the line: ShowMsg(-1, States.PlayerColor(0)); and it should show you the code for that player. That's what you want right?

Yes, exactly. Thanks.

@Krom
I think it will come to you as a shock - but after you had to leave as a matter of fact our team did not win the match
But maybe I can comfort you with the following screenshot that shows, that you actually held a flag, even if it was only for some minutes when everybody finished their coal mines:

In the end, dicso+bence were too strong and won with something like 10:4:2


*EDIT:
I had a very crazy idea - autofeeding your soldiers.

  Code:

for units in GroupMember do if UnitHunger < limit then GroupOrderFood

That will give a huge penaly to your city when you have a large army: many serfs will continue to carry your food away from your town. I just wonder if that would be possible that easily, because the GroupOrderFood will be called a hundred times until the food finally arrived with the units and changes UnitHunger.

[The Dark Lord]

*EDIT:
I had a very crazy idea - autofeeding your soldiers.

  Code:

for units in GroupMember do if UnitHunger < limit then GroupOrderFood

That will give a huge penaly to your city when you have a large army: many serfs will continue to carry your food away from your town. I just wonder if that would be possible that easily, because the GroupOrderFood will be called a hundred times until the food finally arrived with the units and changes UnitHunger.

Meh. I'd just throw my units at the forbidden zone to get them killed.

[Siegfried]

*EDIT:
I had a very crazy idea - autofeeding your soldiers.

  Code:

for units in GroupMember do if UnitHunger < limit then GroupOrderFood

That will give a huge penaly to your city when you have a large army: many serfs will continue to carry your food away from your town. I just wonder if that would be possible that easily, because the GroupOrderFood will be called a hundred times until the food finally arrived with the units and changes UnitHunger.

Meh. I'd just throw my units at the forbidden zone to get them killed.

That means you give up on the commander flag. But if you're far away from getting this flag, then having your units killed probably is best.

That feature won't be in the release, it was just an idea that came to my mind.

[dicsoupcan]

Yes i discussed the skin trades with siegfried after the game. I suggested it because it can be very strong if you have 5(+) swinefarms working and not using the extra skins it provides and thus you can easily trade them. Since you can trade 1 skin for2 iron/gold ore or 2 coal it can be very strong to keep your productions going, although you might not get the flag for leather armor and woroden weapons made. But that is up to siegfried to decide, my main concern was indeed trading for horses since siegfried had 2 early stables and made legal horses, while i relied on my lategame economy and trading in the market to get them (out of like 30 horses my stables i only made 2 or something).

Yes i shall translate it to dutch for you, i will send it to you as soon as i can.

I got a small idea, but it has nothing to do with gameplay and will not be super usefull. Maybe remove the deadzones after a player achieved victory so they can ''invade'' the other players. It is like in team fortress 2 where you can get in the enemy spawn and kill them after you win the game.

Last but not least, in the next playtest i want to team up with krom if he is there since i really bugged the poor guy earlygame ^^

[Krom]

No worries Dicso, you were just competitive playing

[dicsoupcan]

That is true, i wanted to play the best i could do. But to be honest i really expected shadaoe to rush us very fast and thus i thought we would have a race for the first militia.it did not happen so i came to say hello to you too. I kept racing against shadaoe for the restaurant flag though (thank god for inns!)

On another note i fixed the dutch translations for you. Most ones were easy but for some i had to think a few minutes.

Florescence One RC4.dutch.rar