What do you consider to be the White Whale of SMAC modding?

[Yitzi]

Sorry, when I said nontradable I should have specified "cannot be attained from one another in any manner".  No trading, no probes, no techshare, no techsteal, nothing.

That would be a good solution then. You may have to change a bunch of places to rule out each kind of tech obtainment, but yes, that'd be awesome if you got it to work.

It would be a fairly big project, though.

This is all very true. The number one priority for making better story driven scenarios (one of the best outputs from our community, IMO) would be more control over interludes.

Unfortunately, it's not immediately apparent how to do this in any kind of flexible manner. I was working on a prototype for calling other executables from AC2 (and got it working), but I haven't worked out a good way to pass data between the AC binary and an external one yet.

Yeah...some stuff (on techs, for instance) could probably be made flexible, but more complicated stuff really couldn't.

I think what Yitzi is getting at is that that capability (even to have entirely non-exchangeable techs) already exists.

It does?  Where is the code for it (or how do you set that option in alphax)?

[DrazharLn]

This is all very true. The number one priority for making better story driven scenarios (one of the best outputs from our community, IMO) would be more control over interludes.

Unfortunately, it's not immediately apparent how to do this in any kind of flexible manner. I was working on a prototype for calling other executables from AC2 (and got it working), but I haven't worked out a good way to pass data between the AC binary and an external one yet.

Yeah...some stuff (on techs, for instance) could probably be made flexible, but more complicated stuff really couldn't.

I think what Yitzi is getting at is that that capability (even to have entirely non-exchangeable techs) already exists.

It does?  Where is the code for it (or how do you set that option in alphax)?

I seemed to recall that setting a tech as disabled prevented it from being tradeable or stealable. You have me doubting myself, though, and I can't test right now.

In any case, if the tech gave a custom unit you would still be able to bribe it and then build it, though. I don't know how to avoid that unless there's a special ability that prevents that (I think threre's one to make it more difficult?)

(prototype sharing bad for gameplay)

I always liked that AC2 gives you the opportunity to trade weapons with other factions. It makes better proxy wars and so on possible, but I understand that it could dominate the game in MP. Maybe if units you don't have all the tech to build were built slower?

Anyway, you can still trade prototypes, I suppose, you just have to trade the real unit. That's probably better.

[Yitzi]

I seemed to recall that setting a tech as disabled prevented it from being tradeable or stealable. You have me doubting myself, though, and I can't test right now.

I think that's only if it's fully disabled (i.e. one prerequisite is Disable, and IIRC the second is not None), which also IIRC prevents it from counting to allow you to build stuff.

In any case, if the tech gave a custom unit you would still be able to bribe it and then build it, though. I don't know how to avoid that unless there's a special ability that prevents that (I think threre's one to make it more difficult?)

Polymorphic Encryption makes it more expensive to bribe.

And there is no way to prevent you from bribing and building; I think that's because reverse engineering was never intended to be doable in the first place.

I always liked that AC2 gives you the opportunity to trade weapons with other factions.

Why not just trade the tech behind them?

[ete]

Sorry, when I said nontradable I should have specified "cannot be attained from one another in any manner".  No trading, no probes, no techshare, no techsteal, nothing.

That would be a good solution then. You may have to change a bunch of places to rule out each kind of tech obtainment, but yes, that'd be awesome if you got it to work.

It would be a fairly big project, though.

Indeed, I'm not expecting it to jump high on your to-do list.

Whenever I work on this kind of thing, it just makes me think I should re-implement all of the AC engine in a more modern language and open source it.

Hmmmmm.

I started planning it out once. I said "This won't even be very hard.". But you know, Hofstadter's law. Also, laziness.

More seriously, the main problem I was having was working out how to architect the engine to be as generic for modders as possible. I'd like to give that approach a good go, and then when it fails go the agile route and just try to work out how to do the minimum viable prototype thing.

Anyway, this thread is not the place. If you (or anyone else) is interested, though, maybe PM me and we should chat on IRC or mumble sometime. Or even start another thread.

https://github.com/dominx/opensmac exists, and would be pretty awesome to have progress on. He has some rough GUI stuff set up already http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=6124.0

[DrazharLn]

@ete,

Thanks. I've commented in that thread and will follow the project up.

@yitzi

Yes, disable does prevent the tech from being available in the game... Maybe my approach was to make a disabled tech the prerequisite of each of the faction specific ones and then grant the tech through faction.txts exclusively.

I seem to remember that you can trade techs to somebody regardless of prerequisites, though. So either there was some other trick I was using or I didn't solve the problem (or I'm wrong about tech trading and prerequisites).

[Yitzi]

@ete,

Thanks. I've commented in that thread and will follow the project up.

@yitzi

Yes, disable does prevent the tech from being available in the game... Maybe my approach was to make a disabled tech the prerequisite of each of the faction specific ones and then grant the tech through faction.txts exclusively.

Even so, I think that if disabled in a way that trading is disabled, the tech itself is completely disabled (to the point where it always returns "false" for prerequisites, i.e. if you make it a prerequisite and give it to a faction via the faction .txt, that faction will still be unable to build the thing it's a prerequisite for.)

I seem to remember that you can trade techs to somebody regardless of prerequisites, though. So either there was some other trick I was using or I didn't solve the problem (or I'm wrong about tech trading and prerequisites).

You can trade regardless of prerequisites, but if a prerequisite is Disabled, and the prerequisites aren't (IIRC) Disabled for the first and None for the second, then the tech itself is disabled and can't even be traded, won't show up in the datalinks, always counts as not known even if gained as a starting tech, etc.

[Green1]

The real "white whale" in the room is the cap of 7 factions in the game.

While I have been reminded by various .exe modders and elders on various forums that this is a near impossibility, I think lack of being able to do this hampers the game when compared to modern games quite a bit.

The other white whale is pathing issues with units getting to objectives and use of navy and terraforming. I have seen units bunch up near a coast trying to reach a city across a channel to no avail when there are other paths to get there. However, more modern games like Civ 5 have WTF AI moments as well.

While SMAX's graphics have aged much better than Civ 2, both the UI could be more modern and graphics could be higher fidelity but this is more a taste deal than an absolute game breaker.

Other than that, most of the other things are minor. Facedit/aceedit custom faction programs are buggy as hell, but study can overcome that.

[DrazharLn]

@yitzi

Yes, disable does prevent the tech from being available in the game... Maybe my approach was to make a disabled tech the prerequisite of each of the faction specific ones and then grant the tech through faction.txts exclusively.

Even so, I think that if disabled in a way that trading is disabled, the tech itself is completely disabled (to the point where it always returns "false" for prerequisites, i.e. if you make it a prerequisite and give it to a faction via the faction .txt, that faction will still be unable to build the thing it's a prerequisite for.)

I seem to remember that you can trade techs to somebody regardless of prerequisites, though. So either there was some other trick I was using or I didn't solve the problem (or I'm wrong about tech trading and prerequisites).

You can trade regardless of prerequisites, but if a prerequisite is Disabled, and the prerequisites aren't (IIRC) Disabled for the first and None for the second, then the tech itself is disabled and can't even be traded, won't show up in the datalinks, always counts as not known even if gained as a starting tech, etc.

Yes, maybe you're right. I did this messing around with techs ages ago and can't remember exactly what I did or how successful I was.

[Yitzi]

The real "white whale" in the room is the cap of 7 factions in the game.

While I have been reminded by various .exe modders and elders on various forums that this is a near impossibility, I think lack of being able to do this hampers the game when compared to modern games quite a bit.

I've gotten somewhat better, and while it'd still be a big job and probably add a lot of bugs until they can be fixed, it may eventually be doable...

The other white whale is pathing issues with units getting to objectives and use of navy and terraforming. I have seen units bunch up near a coast trying to reach a city across a channel to no avail when there are other paths to get there. However, more modern games like Civ 5 have WTF AI moments as well.

An AI rework would be a big job, but may be worth it...

While SMAX's graphics have aged much better than Civ 2, both the UI could be more modern and graphics could be higher fidelity but this is more a taste deal than an absolute game breaker.

This would be borderline impossible with .exe modding.