Cooperative maps for the Remake

[Lewin]

Okay after reading that and getting an email pointing out that the original campaigns are pretty much unplayable because the AI acts so strangely, (apparently you can't win mission 8 because the AI trains soldiers so fast) I decided to focus on making the AI closer to KaM.
Changes:
- The AI now trains 1 soldier every 100 seconds like in KaM, (yes I timed it) rather than as fast as possible. There is a new script command "!SET_AI_CHARACTER EQUIP_RATE 100" which lets you change this. If you set it is 0 they will train as soon as they can.
- The AI fills the highest priority defence positions (priority given by the order in the script) first rather than the closest.
- The AI will keep the highest priority defence positions filled by moving the lowest priority ones to the higher priority positions. (so if the first defined position is killed, one of the others will take that position)
- The AI will not "restock" a defence position with idle troops. They will only restock with troops that were just trained.

I checked these behaviours in KaM and it now certainly feels a lot more like KaM from the few missions I tried. @The Dark Lord: Is there anything I missed? I will send you a test version soon so you can make a good AI in your coop mission. I realise that in KaM the AI will do things without any defence positions defined, but I don't plan to add that for a while. In the Remake groups that are not in a defence position will just sit there and do nothing. (although they will be used in attacks)
Lewin.

EDIT: @The Dark Lord: I sent you the new version (r2634) with the fixed AI. Please let me know how it goes.
My current plan is to do some extensive testing online this weekend (while there's lots of playtesters available) and if that goes well and I receive most of the translations back (I sent them yesterday) we can release next week

[pawel95]

Hey I start now my project with my first co-op map.
But one question/issue.
I will make a map with 2 human players vs. 3 pc players.
How big the map should be? 256*256??

[GreatWhiteBear]

Depends, tell me what kind of map you want to make and how much space you want every player to have and I will estimate how big it should be.

[pawel95]

Ok, the problem is now solved but now i have a little problem. I want to make a cross with water-ice-"brown terrain" AND snow but it is not complementary, what could I do?


Here is a screenshot:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/707/kmeditor201112011629015.png/

And one other programming problem, I choose multiplayer Mission "NEW" but then there are 4 human players. I write in the program:

!SET_AI_PLAYER

But If i go to the map and than back to the script, this line is deleted and the players now are again human players.

What can I do,that i can set a player like a Computer Player? :

[Krom]

You need to add some transition terrain in-between, thats how it's done..

[GreatWhiteBear]

Yeah, I think we need more in-between terrain tiles.
Maybe that is even the most important thing to do graphics wise.

[pawel95]

Yes the problem with the map is now fixed.thx.

But how can I fix my main problem, with the humand--to--AI problem?

[Lewin]

Just make the mission in single player mode in my editor, that's easiest. Make one human player be the human player, and the other be some AI with no script. The Remake doesn't care, the AI stuff will only be used if the player is actually set as an AI in the lobby.
Once you've finished it you can open it with a script version (0.3_beta) and add any commands you can't add from single player mode, like center screen for more than 1 player.

[pawel95]

Damn, now i start with a multiplayer script and i thought that than i can edit some human lines, is this not possible? should I start a new program with "only singleplayer" ?

[Lewin]

Damn, now i start with a multiplayer script and i thought that than i can edit some human lines, is this not possible? should I start a new program with "only singleplayer" ?

Yes it is possible to edit a multiplayer script to add AI, but you must use a script version of my editor (0.3_beta) If you add AI commands to a multiplayer mission in 0.9 the editor will fail to load them because it does not support that. Graphical editors like mine can only do limited things they were made to do. Stuff like AI in multiplayer was not possible when I wrote it, so I did not design it to do that. With a script editor you can do anything.

[pawel95]

Now I have start with a singleplayer, like you said it. However now I have a new problem, maybe i send someone the script?
If I start online with 6 computer it not works. I can play as all 6 locations BUT NOT as location 1(MY Human Player). Location 2,the other human player(but in the program as an AI player) works fine.

If i start the game with the player No. 1 there is the error:

"An error has occured while parsing the file Draft
ERangeError: Range check error"

(Draft is the name of my map and of the script)

Can someone help me? Thx

[The Dark Lord]

Everything is working like it should now as far as I can tell. !SET_AI_CHARACTER EQUIP_RATE is really essential as it will give the original missions their original difficulty back. Good job on that.

So, while I do not have anything left to complain about, I'll just fire some requests at you.

- A new attack TARGET which lets the AI attack the nearest enemy unit/building, calculated from every single group's position.

Example:

Human player has a storehouse on X=34, Y=25 and a group of soldiers on X=145, Y=44.
The AI player has this: !SET_GROUP 21 60 25 6 5 15, !SET_GROUP 21 145 64 6 5 15

Assuming that the scouts do not suffer from annoying defense positions with importance 0, an attack like this

!SET_AI_ATTACK TYPE 1
!SET_AI_ATTACK TOTAL_AMOUNT 30
!SET_AI_ATTACK TROUP_AMOUNT 0 0
!SET_AI_ATTACK TROUP_AMOUNT 1 0
!SET_AI_ATTACK TROUP_AMOUNT 2 0
!SET_AI_ATTACK TROUP_AMOUNT 3 2
!SET_AI_ATTACK TARGET 4 (I just made that up obviously)
!SET_AI_ATTACK COUNTER 2000
!COPY_AI_ATTACK 0

would trigger the spies to attack the nearest enemy unit/building from their position. So the first group will attack the storehouse, while the second group will attack the soldiers of the human player.

All current available TARGETs use the AI's start position to calculate where to attack. This means that the AI will always attack at the same location.
If you have an AI player with a village in the north and some defense positions in the south (with importance 1), you could let him attack from two sides, even at the same time if you like.

I hope I convinced you by now.

Next!

- 'Smart attack' option

In previous releases I noticed the AI would not attack in one long line, but would gather somewhere and then move on. This would make original missions unbalanced as they rely on a stupid AI, but I like it. It makes attacks stronger. That's why I'd love a script command that would make the AI use these kinds of attacks.

OH! Edit: you might not always want to use those 'smart attacks' (for example: a quick cavalry raid) so I guess it should be a piece of script for an attack and not for an AI player.

I might have more requests later on, but if you say 'WE HAVE OTHER THINGS ON OUR MIND, GET OUT! :evil:' I'll just save it.

[Lewin]

@pawel95: Sounds like there is a script error for player 1. Does it also crash if you put an AI in that position? Double check for scripting errors in the section for player 1, e.g. using out of range or negative values.

Everything is working like it should now as far as I can tell. !SET_AI_CHARACTER EQUIP_RATE is really essential as it will give the original missions their original difficulty back. Good job on that.

Thanks I hope this means the original campaigns are actually playable now. The only things the AI lacks compared to KaM are auto build and automatic defence.

- A new attack TARGET which lets the AI attack the nearest enemy unit/building, calculated from every single group's position.

Actually it already uses each group's position for targets 0 and 1:
0: Closest unit from the group's position
1: Closest building from the group's position
2: Closest building from the AI start location
3: Custom XY

Is that the same as KaM? That's what I read in the scripting documentation years ago when I made my editor. Please correct me. So that would mean the new attack you requested would only be different in that it would select a unit OR a building. Is that useful?
I agree it would be neat to make the AI attack at multiple places at the same time. I'm quite happy to add new target types, it's very easy to do. (and there's really no limits, we can add 20 new target types if you think that's necessary )

In previous releases I noticed the AI would not attack in one long line, but would gather somewhere and then move on. This would make original missions unbalanced as they rely on a stupid AI, but I like it. It makes attacks stronger. That's why I'd love a script command that would make the AI use these kinds of attacks.

We never coded anything like that, my guess is that it was caused by a bug (maybe they attacked a unit that moved before they got there?) I think this can wait until we really focus on improving the AI because I can't see a simple way to do this. (how would it decide where to group up?) A better option might be to make soldiers smarter at walking somewhere, because even as a human player it's quite annoying when they always walk single file around mountains.

I might have more requests later on, but if you say 'WE HAVE OTHER THINGS ON OUR MIND, GET OUT! :evil:' I'll just save it.

LOL no you can keep suggesting things, a lot of it I might say "we'll do it later" but I'd still like to hear your ideas. (they've all been good ones so far )

P.S. How are you testing your coop mission? Because there's no speedup in multiplayer you might be best to save it in single player to test lots of things. Or an easier option might be to edit the gamespeed in KaM_Remake_Settings.ini. Look for the line "SpeedPace=100" and make 100 smaller (100 means it processes 1 game tick every 100 milliseconds, so if you make it 10 it will be x10 faster than 100, processing 1 tick every 10 milliseconds) Don't make it too low or your computer won't be able to keep up with it. 10 should be fine.

[Danjb]

Hey Lewin, out of interest have you and Krom had any thoughts on how AI building will be implemented?

Obviously it was something that was very flawed in the original game so it would be really cool to see the AI actually become a worthy opponent!

There's nothing worse than playing for an hour or two, mustering an army and arriving at the enemy base only to find they got stuck with their building and haven't done anything :p

[pawel95]

Yes if I set a AI player to loc. 1, the game crashes,too. I will search the error in a few minuts. One question, I choose colors to the AI and the human players, is it not possible that this colors are still working, because if i not choose a color in the lobby, the colors are randomly choosen. It would be good as this will be working, because of the story description