Patching extra functionality into <gamemd.exe>

[Bobingabout]

something you could look at for your nuke there jon

[jonwil]

I took a brief look at the SuperWeapons= tag and I cant see anything near there that would indicate how that works.
I have no clue how to get the AI to build and/or use a clone SW.

[CannisRabidus]

Well supers are attached to buildings, and it is a simple matter to get the AI to build a building. It's getting the AI to actually use it.

This controls how the AI targets supers like the nuke and weather storm -

; controls how the computer AI scores potential ion cannon targets
; the first value is for hard computer opponents, next for normal, and finally for easy
; right now, normal and hard are the same, because on hard, the computer will actually wait for
; production on an object to finish if that object is the best target; in this way all three
; difficulty levels are different.

;Also, note that these are not a weighted distribution. They are absolute ordering
;of targets. --gs
AIIonCannonConYardValue=100,100,100
AIIonCannonWarFactoryValue=100,100,100
AIIonCannonPowerValue=60,100,100
AIIonCannonTechCenterValue=100,100,100
AIIonCannonEngineerValue=1,1,1
AIIonCannonThiefValue=1,1,1
AIIonCannonHarvesterValue=1,1,1
AIIonCannonMCVValue=1,1,1
AIIonCannonAPCValue=1,1,1
AIIonCannonBaseDefenseValue=35,35,35
;AIIonCannonPlugValue=40,40,40
;AIIonCannonHelipadValue=20,20,20
;AIIonCannonTempleValue=40,40,40


Now this is not how the AI uses the Dominator, obviously it is looking for a high value concentration of units. Does it use threat values or cost or what to determine value beyond absolute number of units? I have no idea...

How the AI targets paradrops is something else, it seems to go for your base but at the same time it seems to avoid threats like pillboxes and the like.

What I'm saying is, different supers are targeted differently, so I don't think you'll find it all clumped in the same place.

[Marshall]

I believe the cause of the hoverpad IE lies somewhere in superweapon targeting.

Also, the AI always targets cloaked units (that they can't see) with weather storm/nuke regardless of their strategic value.

[jonwil]

hmmm, I have no idea how the targeting stuff for the AI works.
But I did just run a test, I put my new nuke on the Soviet power plant and make the AI soviet and they didnt fire it at me.
They would fire the normal nuke in the same situation.

Perhaps the AI targeting for superweapons is based on the Type= value which gets converted to a number internally).
I did some tests and it doesnt appear to be based on the Action= value or the position in the superweapon array.

[Bobingabout]

i know this might sound dumb, but, do a search for the name of the original type, see if anything else pops up that you might have missed?

something else you could look at while you waiting for PD, try and add more colours to the dropdown menu. me and PD had the locations once, but like we said before, we've lost them...

[jonwil]

It wouldnt refer to the name, only to the number.
What I might do though is to breakpoint on the piece of memory holding the type number for the new nuke superweapon and repeat my AI test and see what happens.

As for more colors on the dropdown list, I dont know where to begin there either.

[Bobingabout]

same problem, it referances by numbers, not names...

[~Guest~]

Can you make it possible to control the buildup time for each building?
Currently all buildings are controled by a global tag found at the top of the rules.ini "BuildupTime="
Just making it possible to add this tag to each building, or something with the same effect to each seperate building making it overwrite the global tag would be great.

[C00L DuDe]

@Guest: just write it on the wishlist

BTW: where are PD?
he is gone?
his last post is seen on his site on the "Friday 13th" :o
what is happened to him?
I never seen him missing for so long :unsure:

[jonwil]

Implementing per-building BuildUp= shouldnt be that hard I dont think...

[CannisRabidus]

A buildup animation is fairly unique in that it has no artmd.ini section like other animations have, though they must appear on the [Animations] list in rulesmd.ini. Rather than set a buildup time for a structure in the rules, perhaps it might make more sense to use an art section for affected buildups, and set the animation's Rate= there.

The underlying question is, is the building built when the buildup time is expired, or when the animation stops running?

[Bobingabout]

depends on the structure, some seem to be "Build" while the anim is still playing. for example, i can build the power upgrade on the buildup for the powerplant.


Wonder if PD died? what other reason could there be for him just "Vanishing"? if he was leaving, he could easily have told us...

Or mabey just his computer died... but then why doesn't he post from school like he used to :blink:


I'm worried...


or maybe he went on holiday, and did tell someone, but they forgot.

[~Guest~]

...or he has important exams...

[Bobingabout]

if it were, he would have told us...