ThanatoNoth [09.6]

Discussion of all aspects of multiplayer development: unit balancing, map development, server development, and so forth.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
Thanatos
Posts: 408
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 9:00 pm
Location: The End.
Contact:

ThanatoNoth [09.6]

Post by Thanatos »

ThanatoNoth

This is the release information thread for ThanatoNoth.
A collection of stuff done or maintained by me (Thanatos).
For full credits see ThanatoNoth/documentation/thanatonoth_credits.txt .

ThanatoNoth is only available for the 1.5 branch - or newer.
You can download it from the add-on server.

This post will be updated when a new version is out.


Contents:

09.6 (2009-04-30)
  • MP scenarios:
    • Necromanteion 0.7 (2p: Default & Custom, WML finished, map done, now testing)
  • Eras:
    • Default (No Undead)





Please note: In this thread general support concerning the whole bundle ONLY!
If you need support or want to give feedback on certain scenarios or other contents, please visit the individual threads for the scenarios. They are linked in the content list. Of course, if there is no special thread for your feedback, feel free to post here. :D
Last edited by Thanatos on April 30th, 2009, 6:27 pm, edited 17 times in total.
ThanatoNoth | Necromanteion | Undead Rights Protection Society
"The gods can demand nothing of me. Even gods answer to me, eventually. [...] I cannot be bidden, I cannot be forced. I will do only that which I know to be right." (Death in Pratchett's "Mort")
User avatar
Thanatos
Posts: 408
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 9:00 pm
Location: The End.
Contact:

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.2]

Post by Thanatos »

version 09.3 released (minor bugfixes with filenames and the image directory)
ThanatoNoth | Necromanteion | Undead Rights Protection Society
"The gods can demand nothing of me. Even gods answer to me, eventually. [...] I cannot be bidden, I cannot be forced. I will do only that which I know to be right." (Death in Pratchett's "Mort")
User avatar
JW
Posts: 5046
Joined: November 10th, 2005, 7:06 am
Location: Chicago-ish, Illinois

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.3]

Post by JW »

Thanatos wrote:Contents:

[*]Eras:
  • Default (No Undead)
[/list]
May I ask why?
User avatar
Thanatos
Posts: 408
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 9:00 pm
Location: The End.
Contact:

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.3]

Post by Thanatos »

Of course you may. :)

The basic idea of "Necromanteion" doesn't fit with making undead playable on that map. After first searching a way of getting the Undead faction sorted out and replaced via WML, for example when choosen a random faction, I decided it was easier to give the players a specialized era for the map.

If the game would ever feature something like an "exclude" option for random assignments I would maybe kick the era again. Have I just overseen this option?

Oh, and there were some questions about balancing, too. You can follow the "discussion" at the Necromanteion thread (see my sig), pages 2 and 3 I think.
ThanatoNoth | Necromanteion | Undead Rights Protection Society
"The gods can demand nothing of me. Even gods answer to me, eventually. [...] I cannot be bidden, I cannot be forced. I will do only that which I know to be right." (Death in Pratchett's "Mort")
Noy
Inactive Developer
Posts: 1321
Joined: March 13th, 2005, 3:59 pm

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.3]

Post by Noy »

Thanatos wrote:Of course you may. :)

The basic idea of "Necromanteion" doesn't fit with making undead playable on that map. After first searching a way of getting the Undead faction sorted out and replaced via WML, for example when choosen a random faction, I decided it was easier to give the players a specialized era for the map.

If the game would ever feature something like an "exclude" option for random assignments I would maybe kick the era again. Have I just overseen this option?

Oh, and there were some questions about balancing, too. You can follow the "discussion" at the Necromanteion thread (see my sig), pages 2 and 3 I think.

Umm so why isn't the undead playable?
I suspect having one foot in the past is the best way to understand the present.

Don Hewitt.
bert1
Posts: 240
Joined: December 6th, 2006, 10:39 pm
Location: Morecambe, UK

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.3]

Post by bert1 »

TL wrote:Balance may be problematic with default era. The undead faction would be practically unplayable for starters; even if you didn't strip them of most of their recruits, the fact that their enemies have a substantial advantage to gain (undead recruits) and they don't puts them at a serious disadvantage. Undead recruits give disproportionate advantages to certain factions, as well, making a hugely effective complement to say drakes or loyalists while providing a bit more of the same for other factions.
Pg 1 of Necromanteion thread.
Good is simply that which is willed. - Eugene Halliday
Noy
Inactive Developer
Posts: 1321
Joined: March 13th, 2005, 3:59 pm

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.3]

Post by Noy »

bert1 wrote:
TL wrote:Balance may be problematic with default era. The undead faction would be practically unplayable for starters; even if you didn't strip them of most of their recruits, the fact that their enemies have a substantial advantage to gain (undead recruits) and they don't puts them at a serious disadvantage. Undead recruits give disproportionate advantages to certain factions, as well, making a hugely effective complement to say drakes or loyalists while providing a bit more of the same for other factions.
Pg 1 of Necromanteion thread.
Hey Bert, I think you know I generally do a modicum of research before I post things... and I still said what I did. I don't see this as being true, if anything the Mort-Vivants might have a slight advantage over other factions (as would the drakes and the dwarves ) because their factional balance would be most amenable to playing vs UD and another factions (they have a large number of multipurpose units.

I also wonder why we have a whole era posted? Just in case people want to play without the UD?
I suspect having one foot in the past is the best way to understand the present.

Don Hewitt.
User avatar
Thanatos
Posts: 408
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 9:00 pm
Location: The End.
Contact:

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.3]

Post by Thanatos »

Alright, alright...

since there is obviously some confusion about why I included the "Default (No Undead)" area, I will address this point more precisely. I will do this in four mostly separate paragraphs, because there are actually many explanations for what I did.

1) Story:
As this scenario is based on some storyline I came up with (which is explained on the story screen and in the dialogues of the game), it was - in my eyes - storywise unfitting to let the players choose the Undead faction. The story is about two parties in a war who go for the aid of the undead as the last resort. The whole "moral problem" of the scenario originates in the idea, that this is something very unnatural to do. The armies clashing at the Necromanteion make a pact with unnatural and evil forces to finish a long war. This pact ends with the second, one side is victorious.

Fact is: The whole story wouldn't sound convincing with the Undead being one of the parties playable.
I want the story to be that way. And this is the first reason.

2) Balance:
Even if TL's points wouldn't count (I won't stress his points further), there are the following things to take into account:

a) The scenario uses the default ToD schedule, having a standard day and night cycle. Choosing any faction but Undead from the start brings certain advantages to any faction, may it be offensive potential in the night (for Drakes, Loys, Elves, Knalgans), may it be just an increased variation on specialized units (for Northeners). However, for Undead there is in fact NO advantage like this at all. A player that chooses Undead as his faction wouldn't be interested at all in recruiting just more Undead, especially not to the price that has to be paid in doing so. One of the features of the game is to lurk the faction's leaders out of their starting point onto the battle field. An Undead player wouldn't have to do this - at least not for the same reasons the other players would have to.

b) The scenario uses the "race=undead" filter for certain events, especially for the temple hex and temple area drain. Undead units wouldn't be affected by this drain at all, no matter which side they are on. (Of course you could add an additional "side" filter, but this would then again not fit into the setting of the scenario. The drain affects ALL living beings, just for being alive!) However, this results in an unfair advantage of Undead units in the map's center. Just imagine a player using a Revenant as leader occupying the temple hex: He would just sit there and be unharmed of the temple drain, not forced to leave the hex at all, just spawning more and more undead units, which have a combat advantage in the center, because they will be not drained, while their opponents will. This would be a very comfortable situation for a player of the Undead faction, because in order to win, the opponent would have to attack the Undead player, while the Undead player himself has all reasons not to move out of the center (he would only have to defend/steal some villages).

3) Simplicity:
As a result of the things mentioned above I searched a way to exclude the Undead faction from the list of playable sides. I first tried to solve this in WML, but then changed my mind, when I didn't find an easy and neat solution to this problem. (If I just missed such an option, please let me now, I will consider adding it to the code.) At least no "easy and neat" one that would be comparable to the era solution. This one is "easy and neat" in the way that it is just one file with I think less than a dozen lines of WML, doing nothing but pointing to the default factions. Therefore I cannot possibly understand the fuzz around "posting a whole era". It's one file, was less than a minutes work, and it was work done by ME!

Btw: This era is also needed for players who want to play random factions. With the "Default (No UD)" it's easy to choose Random and not getting disappointed by having UD chosen by the game, resulting in a restart of the scenario.

4) Player's choice:
If anyone is really unsatisfied with my solution, there is a very easy and comfortable way to handle it: Don't use it! As the scenario doesn't force anyone to play without UD, it's up to you, if you choose the era you want to play with. If you want to play UD on Necromanteion just use the "Default" faction instead.

The whole scenario was done under the premise that the player should have as much choices and influences on the game as possible. This was the reason for a lot of stuff in the WML code I did, this was the reason for publishing a fully customizable version of the scenario. I did this mainly because I wanted to intercept all balancing issues of the game in pointing to the possibility of adapting the difficulty to your personal style of gameplay and abilities. But the customization principle works also fine with some things of the settings. So, if anything bugs you with the default settings of Necromanteion, change it! The goal is to have fun with Necromanteion.

What really bugs me is: Instead of complaining about a thing that is not really an issue at all, I would like to have some feedback on the idea of the scenario itself, on the style of playing on the map on the tactics you used, on the map design in general (although the map can also be exchanged easily - I have already written and published a manuual for doing so), and so on...

[humor]So, go play and get me some of this kind of feedback. ;) [/humor]
Replays are welcome. Thanks.

/edited to make the last sentenced not sound so commanding. ;)
ThanatoNoth | Necromanteion | Undead Rights Protection Society
"The gods can demand nothing of me. Even gods answer to me, eventually. [...] I cannot be bidden, I cannot be forced. I will do only that which I know to be right." (Death in Pratchett's "Mort")
User avatar
JW
Posts: 5046
Joined: November 10th, 2005, 7:06 am
Location: Chicago-ish, Illinois

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.3]

Post by JW »

Balance with UD could be achieved in another way I'm sure, though it may be hard to do. I haven't played it, but if the story demands it then (1) is a fine reason. As you said, people can play with default anyway.
User avatar
Thanatos
Posts: 408
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 9:00 pm
Location: The End.
Contact:

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.3]

Post by Thanatos »

JW wrote: I haven't played it, but ...
You should give it a try. :wink:

I personally think even the default settings are quiet challenging. (At least for me, but I don't call myself a good player.) I would really like to have some feedback from more experienced players on the concept and map, and so on. Maybe a test game another day, together? Would appreciate it.

Oh, and I am still working to get some glitches out of the story and the story language and am actually thinking about some additional appeal for trying to conquer the center. I still am not convinced that the scenario is playing as I intended it...
ThanatoNoth | Necromanteion | Undead Rights Protection Society
"The gods can demand nothing of me. Even gods answer to me, eventually. [...] I cannot be bidden, I cannot be forced. I will do only that which I know to be right." (Death in Pratchett's "Mort")
User avatar
Thanatos
Posts: 408
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 9:00 pm
Location: The End.
Contact:

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.2]

Post by Thanatos »

version 09.4 released
- Internals:
* Directory structure changed, all files are now included in the ThanatoNoth main directory.
* Due to this some namechanges were necessary.
* Changed id of the "Default (No undead)" era to fit the ThanatoNoth namespace.
* Defined the textdomain for ThanatoNoth in _main.cfg.

- Update:
* MP scenarios: Necromanteion 0.5.1
ThanatoNoth | Necromanteion | Undead Rights Protection Society
"The gods can demand nothing of me. Even gods answer to me, eventually. [...] I cannot be bidden, I cannot be forced. I will do only that which I know to be right." (Death in Pratchett's "Mort")
User avatar
Thanatos
Posts: 408
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 9:00 pm
Location: The End.
Contact:

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.5]

Post by Thanatos »

version 09.5 released

- Update:
* MP scenarios: Necromanteion 0.7

- Internals:
* moved [binary_path] into the #ifdef MULTIPLAYER section for WML compliance
ThanatoNoth | Necromanteion | Undead Rights Protection Society
"The gods can demand nothing of me. Even gods answer to me, eventually. [...] I cannot be bidden, I cannot be forced. I will do only that which I know to be right." (Death in Pratchett's "Mort")
User avatar
Thanatos
Posts: 408
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 9:00 pm
Location: The End.
Contact:

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.5]

Post by Thanatos »

As by now, ThanatoNoth 09.5 has been uploaded to the 1.6 add-on server - finally.
Sorry for the delay - real life was quite demaning since last update.

I already found one minor bug - nothing game afflicting - which will be addressed in the following days, as also some bugfix by A Guy will be implemented then.
ThanatoNoth | Necromanteion | Undead Rights Protection Society
"The gods can demand nothing of me. Even gods answer to me, eventually. [...] I cannot be bidden, I cannot be forced. I will do only that which I know to be right." (Death in Pratchett's "Mort")
User avatar
Thanatos
Posts: 408
Joined: January 17th, 2006, 9:00 pm
Location: The End.
Contact:

Re: ThanatoNoth [09.6]

Post by Thanatos »

version 09.6 released

- Update:
* MP scenarios: Necromanteion 0.7.1
ThanatoNoth | Necromanteion | Undead Rights Protection Society
"The gods can demand nothing of me. Even gods answer to me, eventually. [...] I cannot be bidden, I cannot be forced. I will do only that which I know to be right." (Death in Pratchett's "Mort")
Post Reply