New direction for buildings

[ronlosey]

Guys:

I had an idea. Everybody is trying to get a mod that will add buildings, but there are graphic issues. Let's go a different direction.

Forts on the game are a destroyable entity in the 3d sailing screen, like a ship. It should be a simple command to add one to a beach, just like "make ship appear." Therefore, building a fort should be an easy mod.

The forts already have interaction possibilities - i.e. "anchor at..." They already have interior graphics. They are already set to accept commanders with skills and experience, like a ship. Once you have a fort where you can land, it would place you in the courtyard, along with the officer you placed in charge of it. Modules could be added as simple dialogue - build a (x) at the fort. At least in the first version, you would not need to actually SEE your wheat farms or munitions facilities. Stores (who, since you own them, would sell to you "at cost" - buy and sell the same price), shipyards, and such could be added by copying stores from other places. Random people - officers looking for work, diplomats, whatever - could show up from time to time. A simple script will create the illusion of economic management (Value of goods produced - cost of troops and maintenence), using the same basic script as the town population. (Which was an earlier mod, so I know that code exists.)


So, you see where I am going with this. The fort does not need foot access from the rest of the island. Colony ownership and management can be built without adding anything to existing land graphics. Empty beaches to build on would be unnecessary - the fort would create its own area to "sail to", it's own beach. You could build as many of these things as you needed.
To get really complex, eventually ships could be added to your empire. They could be assigned to various forts. Then they could trade between your forts, or with other colonies.

This makes buildings possible, without the graphics issues of forts you can walk through. They could (and likely would) be attacked from the sea, by anyone hostile to your personal flag. Someone could take it, or burn it down.

And so you have your own town. If you want to tour the houses and farms, we can add them later. If they don't have to be connected to the rest of the island, we can stack as many of them as we want around the fort - the same way doors to the crew quarters were added to ships.

Thoughts?

Ron

 

[johannes scherjon]

its very nice,
A very good idea even onley
a problem I think its: when you are sailing on the 3d view you see the fort and its unlocked,
so its not niceto have an own town in the begining of the game
about seeing the fort, in fact you dont have to see it until you bought it.
that should be most realistic.

An orther option is,
to set an fort on that location owned by french,dutch,english etc.
and when you are powerful enough you can capture it, than you have to defent it
against a vleet who are attacking it for capturing it back (maby 1 manowar and 1 battleship?)
than you can enter the town, bud all is destroy it you have to reprair it with woods and stuff,
I think thats a nice option tho!
anyone idea's?
possible to code?

Johannes Scherjon

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm afraid the mod wouldn't work exactly as you describe. Forts can't truly be destroyed, because they will remain on the map after you attacked them. Also: The interiors of the forts are just land locations, just like towns. Only forts cannot be reached from the land (only the "fake forts" added by CCC on Oxbay). These forts aren't the real forts, but just land locations that look like and are supposed to represent the actual forts. I dare say that if you first attack and destroy Greenford fort, you could still encounter dozens of soldiers in the fake fort. The same goes for the land locations for the real forts. These are also locations where you are teleported to after you destroyed the fort's cannons. However, these are not the same locations as the fake forts. So it all works a bit... odd. I wouldn't recommend using forts like this as a new building mod. The easiest is to add another fake fort to a location that can be unlocked through dialog. That truly is the easiest way of doing it. But don't try to make a completely new model. And don't try to add a choice what you want to have built. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />

 

[ronlosey]

Obviously, the "anchor at" command just drops you into a preset land location. Theoretically, any beach, ship, or command sequence (i.e. the crew quarters door) could do that. I'm assuming that you guys could set your own fort so that "anchor" command there would get you to the correct screen.

I said to use the forts because they are already set up in the sail screen to defend themselves from the sea. Cannons, a commander, and such are already programmed. That makes your fort vulnerable just as others are - inadequate garrison or lack of repair could result in them getting destroyed. It means one of your officers can be placed in command. (The little dialogue clip like "Redmond Fort commander gets 200 experience." tells me that forts are set up for commanders, just like ships. Skills like accuracy and repair are already programmed.) That's one less thing to program.

The fort interior is an easy map to lift. It's small, and doesn't have 27 different regions. (Just don't use the Isla Muela map, please.) That makes it a logical choice for your base. Drop in a couple of guys to talk to (base commander, merchant, ship guy, a few randoms), and you're go. You don't have to actually build models for any of the supposed industries that would form around it - they could be a single line of code (if coffee plantation =1, then add coffee +10 per day to inventory). I'm cutting corners. If later, someone wants to add these regions for tourism, they can be plugged in (this door leads to 'street x') later.

So, place "real" (i.e. 3d ship mode) fort where you want it. Set "anchor at" this fort to teleport you to the courtyard of particular fort. Economic arrangements can me menu and dialogue options, like shops, transfer cargo, or similar to the current "make a building" mod - those are apparently relatively easy to copy, considering the number of such modifications that have already been made. (The current 'add building' mod has most of the necessary dialogue elements for a "add x to your base" dialogue.)

If you build 100 of these, every courtyard can look the same. The only thing that needs to be saved is a copy of economic data (production, money, garrison, etc.) just like the town economic mod does for the towns, plus the commander and condition of the fort (just like ship data), and of course the location (again like a ship, but saved so it won't drift down the beach).

Should somebody manage to destroy your fort, it could go up in smoke (much like a ship sinks). If garrison = zero, then erase the whole settlement and figure your enemy burned whatever you had built there.

I think previous mods have given us all the tools we need. It's just a matter of stringing them together. Of course, the details will not be easy. If it was easy, we wouldn't need programmers. If it was that easy, I could do it myself.

Ron

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I don't think you can position forts during the game. And, if it <i>is</i> possible, it would either be impossible or really hard to add the "drop anchor" places to these forts. I think these locations are handled with locators that are part of the model. So the drop anchor spot would have to be added to the model before the fort was even built. But how will you know where somebody would want to build a fort. Also: These forts would only provide support for you if you are anywhere near your own fort. Otherwise the fort is useless. There can't be attacks on the fort if you are nowhere close. Also: Have you ever seen any AI ships destroying a fort? For all I know, only the player can do that, so the only character who could destroy the player's fort is the player himself. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />

 

[ronlosey]

They do fire on the forts. The forts take damage. I've never seen them win, but one must assume it possible (if highly unlikely).

What happens when you are not there is unimportant. It can be scripted as x% chance of fort being damaged in attacks, added to the operating cost.

The real risk of such is economic, anyway - maintaining a garrison is not cheap, and if you don't choose your production well, it could be a hole for money.

Not sure how to do the anchor zones, though. There's some kind of interact option that is object-related when you get close, like "trade cargo" or "board" with ships - shouldn't be too hard to set it, if anybody can find the command sequence.

Ron

 

[CouchcaptainCharles]

<!--quoteo(post=143868:date=Mar 29 2006, 12:08 PM:name=Ron Losey)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ron Losey @ Mar 29 2006, 12:08 PM) [snapback]143868[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
... shouldn't be too hard to set it, if anybody can find the command sequence.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What is your basis for that bold assumption ? No offense, but as you seem to be set on telling us what to do I recommend that you make yourself familiar with the technicals of PotC. That would give your posts the necessary substance. Without at least some basic knowledge you can't make suggestions but only speculations, sorry.

Ron, I have made towns, beaches, landside forts and seaside forts. It is NOT easier to make a fort with a seaside access than to make a town or beach. You'll always have to make a location and an access to that location. For the seaside access you must in addition create a landing locator somewhere along the coast. Which I found always a lot more work than connecting a new location to a landlocator.

And to make a "working" fort that fights in seaview is a hell lot of work (see realistic fortifications thread)

Don't get me wrong, I like your "fort as base" idea, but it is not at all a way to save work. And I dont want to keep you from voicing your thoughts and ideas here, they are interesting and if I only had the time i would love to join the discussions. But you do nobody a favour -least at all yourself- if you venture into areas where you have no footage.

 

[Elrapido]

I totally agree with the Armchair Admiral! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile2.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=")" border="0" alt="smile2.gif" /> <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/me.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="me.gif" />

 

[ronlosey]

Well, I did say "IF" anybody could find the command that controls that. I did not say it was even possible.

I just keep thinking, and saying, "keep it simple". Don't build 20 map areas when one will do everything. Don't create graphics when you can lift them from somewhere else in the game. If someone else already has a mod that has a similar code, re-use it. Don't create 900 doors when three guys in a courtyard can add the same gameplay.

I am trying to avoid technical issues as much as I can, unless I just see where somebody has already done the same thing elsewhere - trying to avoid suggesting the impossible. However, I'm also trying to encourage people to test the limits of what is possible - maybe they will find something that would make the project easier.

I think I said: Ships have a board/trade goods command when you get close enough, that opens a land screen or menu. Forts are a resource handled much the same as ships. Therefore, it should be possible to do the same with them - IF anybody can figure out what command the game uses for that. I don't think I said anything technical. Now, if nobody knows how to control that function, say so: "We can't figure out how the game handles that command, at least not well enough to produce or modify it ourselves." Or, "the forts are handled in such a confusing way that creating one is hard enough, and scripting the creation of one would be highly unlikely." That would end the possibility of a rapid-deploy fort, and we would have to go back to a more conventional approach of building the whole town on a map like the current ones are constructed.

But I will keep saying, don't make it harder than it is. Don't add the entire city of Paris when one room will do it. Start small, test and debug. Add critical gameplay elements first. Expand and add graphics later.

Maybe I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but I've already heard too much debugging going on. Keep it simple, at least for starters. Everything you add is one more thing to debug.

Ron

 

[Kazmeister]

Actually... Everything you add is usually a few thousand more things to debug. But I get your point.

<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/me.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="me.gif" />

-James-

 

[ronlosey]

Well, every one thing to de-bug is about ten thousand individual bugs. That's true of almost everything - to change one car part, there are dozens (or hundreds) of bolts and wires to remove and replace; or to repair one medical problem, there are hundreds of ways to screw up and kill the patient; and any one of those can kill the whole process.


Speaking of process, let's get organized again. What is critical about adding buildings? Are we trying to add economic planning? Empire building? Just adding locations to the game? Just so you can say you took a town? Where are we going?

If it's economic planning we want, it might be easier to open a store in an existing town. Moving into an existing building seems easier than building the whole town, for sure. Economic takeover of other people's towns sounds like a very sneaky thing to do - pirates and Microsoft would be proud.

Same with resource development. If the idea was to provide ourselves with an unlimited supply of lumber, then we want a lumber mill, not a town. The way to do that would be to put people into existing buildings. That could be done with the current building mod, by adding a check to see if you were indoors, and if you owned the building, before you would be allowed to set up shop. Then the walk-through buildings could be dropped completely, but the people and dialogues kept.

If we just want a base of operations, a more reliable script would be to take a somewhat abandoned fort/village from some pirates or natives who live there. That would still explain the relatively low ability to add to the town, and the buildings could be placed in a conventional manner.

If we're trying to build an empire, then the ability to place forts all over creation is critical to the mix. If that is not possible, then that plan may have to be scrapped. In contrast, it might be possible to program the takeover of existing towns, if that was the objective - but it would eliminate the main storyline, so you would have to be careful.

If we're just thinking of reasons to add locations, then adding lots of houses and random people to meet ARE the story. If there is a more direct purpose, then many of these houses and people are unnecessary noise that could be added later or not at all.

So, where is this going? What is critical?

It really makes me no difference, but I sort of assumed from early posts that people were talking about empire-building. Therefore, I started thinking of backwards ways to trick the program, so it might let us do that. Later posts seemed to drift away from that, mostly due to technical problems. (Granted, backwards ways of doing things are usually shoddy and unreasonable.) So, let's decide what we want to see - then we can put our heads together, and see if anybody can figure out how to put the critical elements of that together.

If we take deadly aim at nothing, we will certainly hit it.
Ron

 

[ronlosey]

Oh, and another thing.... I was checking the file formats. The original Sea Dogs DID handle forts exactly like ships, and it would have been simple to place them anywhere you wanted them. POTC in its current version is a little more complicated, and trying to crosswire it would require a programming genius. I still think there's potential there, but it's harder than it would first seem. Sorry if I was working on out-of-date information. I knew somebody had played with that idea before, but I was one game version behind.

Sorry for any confusion that may have caused.
Ron