Sides and Countries

[pd]

Had a short discussion (more like a monologue) today on IRC with DCoder about my plans concerning sides and countries.

Talking about ParaDrop and how I made the tech paradrops customizable for single sides, what came into my mind is that people will probably ask for country specific settings as well.
That will probably go for any new side feature.

Vice versa, if I add settings to countries, people might want defaults in their respective sides.

What I have in mind is stop extending countries from here (custom flags, loadscreens etc) and only extend sides, because after all countries are just a group of instances of a side with slight modifications.
The basic features should be per-side.

I'm not sure why WW chose the country system in the first place - in TS, every side had exactly one country (called house types there) - why have countries at all?
In RA2 they are inevitable, of course.

But since sides are planned to be as easily addable as countries and vehicles and whatnot, in the case you actually do need a side feature for a country, simply create a new side.
My plans are to extend tags like AIBasePlanningSide to take arrays (ie AIBasePlanningSide=Nod,ThirdSide) and the rest will be customizable per side anyway, so stuff like sidebars and building sets can easily be linked.

If you feel countries should deserve more attention and country specifics should be implemented for new stuff, please let me know and why.

[Marshall]

Your logic is impeccable.

[MRMIdAS]

Well I'd prefer paradrops to be country specific, but with other stuff, It's ok to have it just side specific.

[Marshall]

MRMIdAS, I don't think you understood pd's post. You can have country-specific paradrops by making each country a side.

[~Guest~]

making each country a side sounds the best way to make new sides.

[MRMIdAS]

MRMIdAS, I don't think you understood pd's post. You can have country-specific paradrops by making each country a side.

I understood that, but won't making each country a side play havoc with the AI.ini?

Besides, having sides makes for smaller ai.ini's because you don't have to repeat the same "guard with dogs" script 5 times.

[Marshall]

Indeed, could do with a better system of specifying which countries a script applies to (i.e. multiple countries/sides should be specifiable, or perhaps determined automatically based on the units in the TaskForce)

[~Guest~]

If you make each country a new side. How will this affect the current system? Since i have country specific plans in my mod, for the current system it is.

[hogo]

Indeed, could do with a better system of specifying which countries a script applies to (i.e. multiple countries/sides should be specifiable, or perhaps determined automatically based on the units in the TaskForce)

Auto based on the Taskforce would be really good and helpful, Much Easier.

[Bobingabout]

the only problem with adding a new side, is that you'd then need to set up new GUI, and everything like that.

I'd happily test all that stuff for you, however, i still working on the stability of my laptop.

[Marshall]

"you'd then need to set up new GUI"

No you wouldn't - pd's point is that the side's are more customisable than the countries. You can tell side 4/5/6 all to use the Allied GUI without including new files.

[Blade]

As long as there is an ActLike=side that makes one sides settings all default to another sides I don't see a major problem aside from a question of need. Countries have traditionally been the most specifically customised organisational unit in RA2 so I'll dissent and say I don't really buy the argument for moving the customisation back up to side level. I'd say side should really be used to specify things like the UI, eva and the notion of a base build tree while country controls the specific stuff like stat bonuses like build speed or special units. Had the game used sides to do this from the start then I'd agree with what you are saying, but it doesn't make much sense to change it now to me unless there are technical reasons in terms of optimising memory usage or something.
For the example of paradrops, make it country specific with an owners list or a required and forbidden countries list as is already done for units. Modders can then make customised copies of a super weapon specific to a side or country as is their wont.

[Bobingabout]

Yeah, [GDI] Allied shit [Nod] Soviet shit [ThirdSide] Yuri shit [FourthSide] Fourth side shit [FifthSide] ActLike=GDI [SixthSide] ActLike=NOD [SeventhSide] ActLike=ThirdSide [EighthSide] ActLike=FourthSide
I'd do that for me "Special" countries. That should specify pre-determined values for those countries, like GUIs, score screens, even AI stuff like build power, which can then be over-ridden by specifying it in that section, like FifthPower=EAPOWR, or colour FifthLoad=<green> (its an example, i ain't gonna work out a HSB code for it), and most importantly, FifthParaInf=ZOMGAFIFTHSIDETROOP, FifthParaNum=7 (actually, since it would be under [FifthSide], you'd drop the word Fifth)

though, i'd still like to be able to specify what is currently country specific, as country specific stuff.


I'm basicly just pointing out that people will want their sides to be a bit more costomisable if you force a new side for what could be country specifics. I am aware that you were probably just planning on doing this for a new paradrop superweapon clone, but, if you start doing this, people will want more.

if you really were to make 5th through 8 sides funtional, and add more than just 1 side on AIBasePlanningSide= (note, doesn't this use the countries 0 indexed number rather than name, so your example of AIBasePlanningSide=Nod,ThirdSide would be AIBasePlanningSide=1,2), along with DCoder getting the formerly AlternatePrerequisite logic under Prerequisite# working (I mean, lets face it, Prerequisite#= and more than 1 item on AIBasePlanningSide= go hand in hand for, lets say, allowing both Soviet and Yuri to build the same cloning vat structure as an example, you'd need both the second prerequisite for the player to build it, and AIBasePlanningSide for the AI to build it.), i wouldn't mind hashing it all up manually rather than having the ActLike=<side> thing. though a few things like SideGUI=Sidec01.mix would be useful, and EVA= too, rather than having to add 20Mb of GUIs(they're about 5M each i think), The EVA is just code, but, a hell of a lot of it.

[~Guest~]

So basicly:

[GDI]
Countries=America, Alliance, Germany...
SideGUI=Sidec01.mix
...
...
[NOD]
Countries=Russia, Confederation, ...
SideGUI=Sidec02.mix
...
[ThirdSide]
Countries=Yuri
SideGUI=Sidec03.mix
...
[ForthSide]
Countries=Yuri...
SideGUI=Sidec04.mix
...


Am i right?
This would require almost no coding at all when patching. Also maybe an global enable flag for those who don't plan adding new countries or modifying the at all. Just my opinion.

Chrisse

[Bobingabout]

PD is doing most of the coding, so its up to him to say really, but, going by what was already in Rockpatch 1.08, i'm guessing it'd be something like this:


SideGUI would probably be an overide of the default, and the countries are already listed under the [Sides] header.

Code:

[Sides]
GDI=British,French,Germans,Americans,Alliance
Nod=Russians,Africans,Confederation,Arabs
ThirdSide=YuriCountry
FourthSide=FourthCountry
Civilian=Neutral
Mutant=Special

so an example, if you wanted to create, lets say, a new yuri country, but it was vastly different, giving it its own side, call it the FourthSide as listed above for this demo, you'd add:

Code:

[FourthSide]
SideGUI=Sidec03.mix; or Sidec02.mix, since yuri's GUI is a hack in Sidec02.mix overide file Sidec02md.mix
UseYuriGUIFilenames=yes
EVA=Yuri
PowerPlant=YAPOWR
SurvivorDivisor=500
Crew=INIT
Disguise=INIT
BaseDefenseCounts=50,25,15

note: that the yuri GUI would need to be hacked anyway. since yuri has a special case GUI with files in Sidec02MD.mix, Sidec03.mix is a hack anyway, and unless PD codes it differently, the filenames are different.