Recent content by SKY6A

Thank you for the reply!

To be honest, I didn't see the logic hole either. But then, I wasn't sure how WB assigns teams,  so I modified that section as follows to include some in-game feedback:


In short, the two set_show_messages commands have been disabled and two display_message commands have been added after the calls to script_team_field_ranged_tactics and script_team_field_melee_tactics.

Then, in game, I fought a solo battle against Deserters, and got the messages indicating when "Ranged Tactics" and "Melee Tactics" were called, just as one would expect. For that matter they also appeared in a simple custom battle, also as one would expect.

Later, however, I joined a battle with an AI Lord versus some forest bandits. Since AI_for_kingdoms_only = 1, I knew that the forest bandits would not call the tactics scripts, but since the messages never appeared at all, apparently the allied AI lord did not call them either. His troops just charged--no formations, no advance, just every man for himself, full speed ahead--no messages indicting that the tactics scripts had been called. And that, of course, is the same behavior I get in all allied battles, and indeed what caused me to investigate in the first place.

So, as you say, from looking at the code, it seems to me too that the AI should be applied to allied lords. Nevertheless, their actual in-game behavior and my makeshift debug messages lead me to suspect otherwise.

Any thoughts?

In any case, as always, thank you for all the work on this mod. As I have said before, it is the only one I absolutely will not play without!

motomataru,

Haven't been here for a while, so I just noticed your previous question. In response to that, I am very much in favor of having an option for formations to form at their current location. I can't think of any others right now, but I'll give it some thought.

The reason I came back here, though, was to ask whether the AI ought to be applied to allies when, for example, the player assists or is assisted by another lord.

As I read the code in script_field_tactics, it seems like it should, but in game it always seemed to me like allied lords just gave a "charge" order every time. So I planted a couple fo debug messages in script_field_tactics to indicate when the AI was being used and when it was not. And, as I had suspected, it is not being applied to allied lords and their troops.

Is there any way to fix this?

Chinux23,

I had the same problem (see a few posts above), and it was because I had applied this mod to a game in progress. If you have done the same thing, that might be the explanation.

What? Firentis? Cheating? That scoundrel! He and I shall have words, I assure you! And to think I fell for that whole "penitent kinslayer" routine.

Well, it would appear Matild was right about him after all.

Anyway, thank you for the explanation!

Thanks for the reply!

I started a new game and everything seems to be working fine now.

I do have a question about scoring, though. In the first (and only) two tournaments that I have fought in so far, I set the Difficulty to Easy--2 Teams of 1--so that these have essentially been a series of duals. For several matches I was pitted against one of my companions, Firentis, whom I soundly defeated each time. Nevertheless, after these matches, Firentis always advanced in the overall standings much more than I did. Indeed, although he is only level 8 or something like that, he has placed second overall in both tournaments, whereas I have been way down the list somewhere. Naturally, I'm proud of my companion and celebrate his acheivements. I'm just wondering how it is that he does so much better than me overall, even though I beat him easily every time I meet him on the field, yet find the most of the other combatants quite a challenge.

I've scanned the previous postings in this thread, but didn't notice anything about this, so any insight you can provide would be appreciated.

Thanks again for a great mod!

Hi, and thanks for your great work! Perhaps you can help me solve a problem...

I used modmerger (version 201) to combine TPE 1.4.6 with Diplomacy 4.2 and Formations and AI Minimod 4 Dev. Everything compiled without errors and seems to be working fine in-game--except that most combatants spawn without weapons. Round after round, most of us just bash away at each other with our fists--though occasionally a combatant will have a spear or something. I've tinkered around with the options and design settings, but to no effect, and this has happened at three successive tournaments.

So I'm wondering if this is because I am using a previously saved game. Do I need to start over?

Thanks for your help!

Hi,

Is this available by any other means than "filedropper"?  I'd rather not create an account there for just this one file.  I've also searched the Repository, but did not find it there. Any chance it could be posted?

Thanks!
SKY6A

Hi all,

For some reason, modmerger has stopped working for me. I had been using it for weeks without any problems, including using Caba`drin's "additions" to install Freelancer, but now, when I double click on modmerger_installer.py (or right-click, "open with...python.exe"), nothing happens...well,  modmerger_header.pyc and modmerger_options.pyc are compiled and appear in the module_system directory, but that's it, the modmerger main menu never appears, so I cannot proceed to "brand" the module_system files or do anything else with modmerger.

I thought this was perhaps because I had installed Python 3.2.2 (installed because I had begun to learn Python programming, and the book I was using taught that version), so I uninstalled all versions of Python from my system, then re-installed only Python 2.6.6 and verified that C:\Python26 is included in my system path--but still no joy, regardless of whether I double-click or use right-click, "open with...python.exe."

In case it matters, build_module.bat still works fine. So it seems to me that Python is set up correctly. Only modmerger itself no longer works.

Anybody have any ideas? Thanks in advance for your help.

EDIT: Nevermind, I found the problem. I had to manually re-select python.exe under C:\Python26 as the default program for opening .py files. Apparently, even though I had un-installed all versions of Python, and then re-installed only 2.6.6, the .py extension was still misregistered.

Although the problem is solved, I'll leave the post here, just in case anyone else has a similar experience.

Ha, you're right about that!

At this point, "de-coding" is still fairly challenging for me--that is, simply understanding what the code as written is doing--but I have in fact already done a little tweaking. I've managed to increase the amount of gold that looters take and bandits demand, for example, so that I actually have some incentive, besides interest, to deposit my denars safely in Garnier's bank. Oh, and I've managed to correct that pesky starter-quest bug! (You know, the one where the merchant asks you to gather five men, but then isn't satisfied when you actually return with exactly five men.) But of course, those things are simplicity itself compared to what you and others have accomplished.

Still, I appreciate the encouragement.

By the way, this is off topic here, but while I have your attention I hope you don't mind if I ask. In the Floris 2.5 Beta thread, it mentions your OSP "Trade Ledger" mod, but I have searched the OSP thread under "The Forge" and elsewhere and find no mention of it. Can you kindly direct me to the sources for that? It sounds like just the thing to replace my hand-scribbled notes about "Iron in Curaw" and "Spice in Tulga."

Caba`drin,

Thank you for the speedy reply!

Alas, I was not aware of the "field loot exploit." Thank you for clarifying. Of course, I did not mean to second-guess your decision. In fact, I did not realize that it was a decision at all. I just thought it was a simple oversight and so pointed it out in the spirit of constructive criticism. I regret that I may have given the wrong impression.

As for your question with regard to PBOD, I think it is really just a personal quirk, but I will try to explain. On the one hand (although I haven't followed it closely of late), I was under the impression that PBOD was still in beta status as you perfected some of the AI behavior. That being the case, I thought I would wait until you felt it was complete before I made a decision about including it in my personal compilation. In the meantime, I am more or less aware of the strengths and weaknesses of motomataru's mod (which is included in yours, I know), and he mentioned in another thread that it will probably be summer before he makes any changes to it, so for the time being I consider it essentially stable.

But, you ask, if all the features of PBOD are optional, why not just disable them through the interface? Why bother to remove the whole mod? Well, that really is just a personal quirk, I guess. On the one hand, I like to keep things clean and simple. And if I am not actually using a mod, then I prefer not to have it installed. But to be honest, I think I also just enjoy taking things apart and tinkering around with them, seeing how they work. So when I decided that I wanted a truly stand-alone, modmerger version of Freelancer, it became a sort of personal challenge for me to see if I could make it. A simple thing for some, no doubt, but I am not a technical person. Indeed, when I first opened up a module system file a few weeks ago, it looked to me like nothing but gibberish! But I've discovered that I actually have as much fun tinkering around with this game as I do playing it, and all that gibberish is actually beginning to make some sense to me.

So, perhaps that is more than you wanted to know, but I am anxious that you not take my comments here as any sort of criticism of PBOD. I am, after all, quite in awe of what you have already accomplished with it. I also want you to know how much I appreciate your dedication to this community. As you may have guessed, I have only gotten into this game lately, but as I have poked around these forums looking for answers to my questions, there has almost always been some helpful post from you in each thread, gently guiding newbies like me to the answers we seek. So, if no one else has said so lately, thank you for all your work and support!

This is a definite bug in the modemerger files for 1.45: if used in their present form, the player does not have the ability to keep items picked up in battle, because "freelancer_mission_templates.py" does not add the trigger to call "script_freelancer_keep_field_loot" to freelancer_triggers. It was an easy fix in my personal copy, but I point it out here in case you'd like to correct it for others.

Also, I am still perplexed about the loot screen behavior I mentioned in my previous post. Is the loot screen supposed to appear after a victorious battle or not?

To find out, I installed the latest pre-compiled version downloaded from here: http://www.mbrepository.com/file.php?id=3446. And in that version, the loot screen does not appear when you are a member of the commander's party--which is as I recalled from previous versions. So to test my hypothesis that the loot screen appearing in the latest modmerger version had to do with some PBOD dependency, I wanted to do a manual install into Diplomacy 4.2 (without PBOD), but of course the only non-modmerger source files available were those for Freelancer 1.1. Nevertheless, I went ahead and installed that version manually, and there too, the loot screen does NOT appear after a victorious battle.

But here is the truly perplexing thing: when I examine the module_game_menus insertion directives in the current modmerger version, they seem to duplicate the the manual instructions for version 1.1 quite faithfully--except, of course, for changing the "not_enlisted" condition to "non_in_party" in a couple of cases. So why doesn't the modmerger version behave like the other versions? I thought perhaps the modmerger insertion functions weren't working properly, and so commented them out and made the changes to module_game_menus manually. In that case, everything still compiles without errors, but rather than showing the loot screen after a battle, the game just freezes when you click "Continue" on the casualty report screen. So, as I say, I am perplexed.

My ultimate purpose is to make a truly stand-alone, modmerger version of Freelancer that I can easily merge into any mod. To that end, I have already removed the Diplomacy dependencies by creating Freelancer versions of "troop_can_use_item" and "slot_item_difficulty," and I have commented out all the Floris-specific insertions, but I can't seem to resolve the loot screen issue. Any help would be appreciated.

And again, thanks for such a fun mod. I wouldn't go to all this trouble if I didn't love it!

Not sure if this is a bug or just a design change, but if I recall correctly, in previous versions of this mod, you would never see the loot screen as long as you were part of a commander's party, meaning that you would actually have to live on your soldier's wages.  Now, however, after each victorious battle, I am presented with a HUGE pool of loot to draw from.  So, for example, had I taken advantage of it after enlisting in King Harlaus' army, I could have been walking around in a full Nord Huscarl set of gear after my first battle as a Swadian Recruit, or at least made a few thousand denars by selling the stuff I was offered--either of which which just seemed a little odd.

If this is not intended, it may be due to the fact that I do not use PBOD.  Instead, I used the modmerger files included in the 1.45 download to create my own light-weight compilation of Freelancer, Diplomacy 4.2, and motomataru's Formations and AI MiniMod.  Apart from the loot screen appearing after victorious battles, everything else seems to work fine.  And I've even solved the loot screen problem in my personal copy by adding another "(neq, "$freelancer_state", 1)," insertion in freelancer_game_menus.py (not hard to figure out where).  I only bring it up here in case this is not, in fact, the way you intend the mod to work.

Either way, thanks for making this. I'm having a blast!

DeadlyNerd,

You're definitely not the only one having these problems with PL and 1.143.

In fact, as pretty as this mod is, I uninstalled it after a day or two for the very reasons that you mention. I just didn't have the technical savvy to fix it. And even though I get the gist of your instructions, I'm still not sure I could implement them.

So, would you consider uploading your corrected files? I'm sure I'm not the only one that would greatly appreciate it!

This is awesome! Very glad someone has revived this mod--especially in module system form so that it can be incorporated into 1.143.

One problem--the link to the module system files in the OP appears to be broken. As of this writing I get a 404 error when I click the link. Hopefully that is an easy fix.

Thanks for your work!

Nevermind, I got it working.

The name of the last menu needs to be "recruit_nobles" rather than "recruit_normales"--which, of course, makes perfect sense.

Thanks again!