Proposal for a new & improved Conquest mode.

[Mad_Dawg]

Wall of text...

Now you're just pushing it.  My love for Harn only goes so deep.  (Just kidding, *hearts*)

You should really look at shorter ways to express yourself.  Less words with more meaning.  "The less you talk the more people want to listen."  You're first Type A boss will strangle you with reports like these. 

 

[Catholic]

I'd like to put in my word that I 100% support this and admire the work and effort behind it. I can't contribute much, but would happily play this if it happened and wish you all the best of luck.

 

[Ruthven]

All lies about FnD, one time on US 2 way back when I told the enemy team I was at the windmill in FbtR and took out the catapult with a spear. 

 

[Harn]

Holy text, where to begin? Sorry if I miss something here.

Marnid did a pretty thorough job explaining how this system can work in promoting action thanks to respawning.

I'll make a note about the whole scoring system Azan and see if I can work it out at a later point.

Trying to reply off the top of my head, a flag capture series is something I want to try. Thanks for telling me about the spawn teleport code Marnid. I had been considering an emulation of the Unreal Tournament Assault mode and this would make that possible. I remember a siege map using something like you said; Spawning in a room, then clicking on a door. If it can be scripted for the door to take a person to the furthest active spawn then this would be great. I'll be starting off with a FFA flag capture system first though simply because it's less to code and work from there.

It should be possible to transfer the Siege respawn limit system over Mad. This could be a great compromise. I would want to start with a large number of deaths (5-7), but it would have to be tested to find a balance based on avg. map duration. The spawn code utilization I have to do some research on. I think I can tell it to just use the battle spawn system locations, saving me a lot of work, but I might not be able to. Dunno if it will require new code like it sounds like you're offering.

A spawn wave system sounds like a headache. Would have to code it to start a timer on a player's death, then I would want it to increase each time a teammate died so the entire team doesn't respawn seconds after they just died. Then that wouldn't really work for a large pub and would need a flat respawn time system, blah blah. Meh, I'm trying to keep a fairly standard system across pub & competitive play.

Class limits are something that can be done; I'm iffy on it because it stifles creativity, but I can see it working. 1 cav acting as something like a goalie to prevent treb. invasions or being the invader himself. A 1-2 archer limit could be set. 1 provides a focal point for each team to engage on. 2 allow for countering cav running by on each flank and providing a crossfire at the mid flags. Unlimited inf.

Time for flowcharts, lots of flowcharts. . . bleh.

I'll be trying to get something started & do some simple pieces of code here.

Thanks for the thumbs up Eternal, Hi Ruth! Thanks again to everyone for reading & giving feedback.

 

[Mr.X]

You might've missed it, but I'm fairly sure the "spawn effector" things in the code make it so you can change where players spawn based on a scene prop, which could easily be a newly capped flag. Or maybe you found out that was wrong. I'm never entirely confident with my coding stuffs.

 

[Cradoc]

You might've missed it, but I'm fairly sure the "spawn effector" things in the code make it so you can change where players spawn based on a scene prop, which could easily be a newly capped flag. Or maybe you found out that was wrong. I'm never entirely confident with my coding stuffs.

I think I've seen this work before in NW. Though I don't know if it was NW only or not. Pretty sure you could just rip it from NW.

I really don't like class limits. I'd rather it be discouraged through cap rates or something. Though the nature of Warband might not allow for something other than class limits.

 

[Reapy]

I liked class limits a lot in vikingr, was really cool how it added a bit of structure to battle, which maybe there is in competative play, but regardless, it created pub teamwork without anybody verbally agreeing upon it every round. I think different factions had different class limits, which might be something that can be done here.

I guess though it is still possible though to do the discouraging of archers with limited los, and cav with patchy terrain, but it is going to be hard to argue against the mobility of cav when you are counting on out maneuvering people as a game mechanic.

You can even argue that creativity is easier with greater limitations in some cases. In this I can see setups where people send their cav to different routes than expected, or only use one cav and another inf or something like that.

Honestly the game will need to be up and running first anyway, so it's probably best to go no limit and play to get a feel after money, map, and point tweaking, and can even to class limit testing without coding it at first to get a feel for it.

Kinda have been relearning to play wb and having fun with it and this would be super cool to have a new native game mode like this to go along with it.

 

[Madnes5]

you had me until I saw there was a respawn timer, fight and destroy is a nice game type its just the weapons have too much hp I think

 

[Mr.X]

you had me until I saw there was a respawn timer, fight and destroy is a nice game type its just the weapons have too much hp I think

If there's no respawn timer, it would be battle.

 

[Úlfheðinn]

Please god, anything to make Warband interesting on a competitive level (in regards to the game mode and tactics, not player skill).

 

[Madnes5]

you had me until I saw there was a respawn timer, fight and destroy is a nice game type its just the weapons have too much hp I think

If there's no respawn timer, it would be battle.

I read mad dawgs post I agree I think limiting the respawn is the best way to do it, having full respawns is just like tdm mode, where as no respawns is battle, having a few like 3 or a bit more would be pretty solid in regards for deaths  youve all heard the phrase 3 strikes and youre out.

 

[Cradoc]

If there is some objective it's not just TDM. It's TDM if you just ignore the objectives which would be capturing. If it ever gets made then we'll see.

 

[Orion]

If there is some objective it's not just TDM. It's TDM if you just ignore the objectives which would be capturing. If it ever gets made then we'll see.

This. In TDM, you only achieve victory by killing the other team. While that's practically necessary in this type of game mode, you actually have to move the battlefield along to win. You can't sit in a tower and wait for a higher kill count, so there are many more viable strategies to consider, making for a more engaging experience overall.

Sorry for any typos. Power is out, had to use my phone.

 

[Harn]

Giving everyone an update here. I have been spending the past few days setting up Python, trying to learn how the code works, going through the source code, then going through the (thankfully) open source code of ENL mod which I will be working off of. ENL mod has class limits built in to it as well as some other handy doodads. Big thumbs up to those that worked on it.

I have successfully added in a limitation so cav have to dismount to capture flags (yay me). I learned that I evidently have to add the code in twice for both dedicated and listen servers. Banged my head against the wall for a day solid wondering why it wasn't working. I guess I only added code to the dedicated portion /shrug. I could cheap out & just code for dedicated & host one of my own but I'll probably be thorough and do listen code too. Subject to laziness.

I'll be continuing to do some simple code and work from there. Currently trying to get respawn limits implemented from Siege. I can't get the button to appear in the Conquest mode admin options despite me giving it permissions to run for Conquest. Then I have to change it so it limits both team's respawns in Conquest while not breaking Siege mode. Currently only limits Siege defending team respawns. I'll most likely stick with this method instead of coding up a cumulative respawn timer. It's a little less complex for players to understand and achieves the same overall goal of placing value on lives.

Things on the agenda:

• Next up will be the battle spawn location system. Giving flags names is something I haven't looked into yet, or the teleport code. Treb health, Money and points awards for flags I have come across & noted, but that's it.
  
• Any code that I add has a comment affixed so anyone can see what I've changed around. I've also been organizing text files with locations of relevant code chunks for improvements I want to implement.
  
• I'll probably make a thread for further code progress in the modding forums, but I wanted to let everyone know I'm trying to put in some elbow grease of my own here.
  
• The biggest thing to getting this mod working is code to award Conquest points for destroying a trebuchet, but I'll hold off on that until I get more comfortable with the code, or until someone that knows what they're doing shows their face in here. Please?

Thanks for reading & posting everyone.

 

[POM_Wind]

This sounds pretty interesting. I'm a senior in computer engineering and I've done a lot of work in python at various internships, but I don't really have the time to dedicate to another project right now. Although if you need any help understanding python or troubleshooting I could certainly take a look and try to point you in the right direction Harn.

Do you have a link to the code you've got so far? If the task doesn't look too daunting I may be more able to help.

 

[Cradoc]

Maybe you could use something like google drive to do an online project so people could help you

 

[POM_Wind]

For a programming project you would ideally use some kind of version control system like github. That can be a little steep if you have no experience with it though, dropbox would probably suffice.

 

[Harn]

Right now I only have 4 lines of good code for making cav dismount to cap flags that I honestly just copy & pasted into place, so I don't feel ready to post it up yet. It's pretty much a minute's work for someone that knows where it goes. The rest of it is an experimental jumble of me piecing together a combination of battle & siege respawn code. Frankly I just started getting into that a couple days ago. I'm enjoying it & I'm not ready to throw in the towel just yet.

Most all of the code itself isn't much more than if-else chains which were pretty much my favorite part of C++, so that's no biggy. Once I learned that Warband uses operators like gt for greater than instead of >= , it's started to come together for me.

What I do have to share though are my "research" notes that I've been putting together. I can transfer them over to pastebin if anyone does decide to pitch in on even a part of the code. I have them spread out across half a dozen text files based on their relevance. It's been the biggest time consumer for me & really is the hardest part of all this (for me anyway). Looking at the header_operations file was a nice bit of info. When I get the spawn code working I can definitely upload what I have.

If anyone is interested in checking out what I'm working with, it's all based off of the ENL source code located at http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=189676.0. A good tutorial for setting up to mod Warband here: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,240255.0.html.

I do have a github account made for learning Ruby, but never got around to really using it.

Anyway, I appreciate the offer for help Wind and I'll try to avoid letting my ego get in the way & ask for help at a future date if I don't get the spawning working, but I'm having fun learning atm for as long as I'm not slowing down anyone else.

 

[Harn]

Giving an update to everyone here. I pretty much finished up the respawn code a couple days ago and ran a brief testing session last night with clan mates. It works, but the counter that appears & shows remaining lives for players on death are client-side only. I might be able to have the server receive the spawn counts and somehow broadcast to the clients what to display instead of having the client do it, but it'll take time to look through the code and see if it's possible.

The easiest solution would be to do unlimited respawning for pubs & limited respawns for competitive play and everyone would have to download the mod for comp. I'll investigate at a later date for alternatives, but I'm moving on for now to get the basic game play setup.

The admin option to set the amount of respawns also only shows while the client is running the mod, same as how the ENL mod operates. Dedicated servers can set the spawn amount directly from the server console with - set_defender_spawn_count 0-5

I'll be doing one final tweak for the spawn code (having people spread out from the initial spawn point like they do in battle) and then I'll get started on assigning a Conquest point value for trebuchets. When the spawn tweak's done I'll make a mod thread with a list of things left to do. I'm looking into github some more as well, It looks great.

Summing it up, I'm about on course for my one-month estimate of having a Frankenstein of code ready. It'll be the most basic of what I'm looking to do, but it's a start.