Kolnoth 0.3.0 -- Frat Orcs - (seemingly all ok)

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drachefly
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Kolnoth 0.3.0 -- Frat Orcs - (seemingly all ok)

Post by drachefly »

(download here)
~~~~
I played Wesnoth a while back, but not so much recently; I've been playing the Kingdom of Loathing instead.
People were talking about making spinoff games, and I suggested a KoL era for Wesnoth.

There were immediate voices of support.

I'm mostly set to do this on my own (and with help from KoL players), but there were a few things I wanted to do that are a little far out. I'm willing to do the programming, but I figure it'd be a lot easier if I had a few pointers such as what wouldn't need programming, and if it did, where to start.

First, all the terrain art should be in greyscale line art, to match the units. Will I need to make special KoL-style maps to play on, or can the era override the tileset? I didn't see anything like that in the era WML.

Second, I wanted to change the damage types to the KoL damage types of physical, hot, spooky, cold, sleaze, and stench. It's the same number of damage types as we have now, I just wanted to rename them. To achieve this, do I just provide these as the keys in the resist fields and then again as the values for the attack types, or will reprogramming be necessary?

Third, I wanted to permit attack types to be drawn randomly from a list rather than be static. For example, Saucerors' Wave of Sauce can be randomly hot or cold damage type, and Pastamancers' Ravioli Shurikens can be randomly any element. This... is going to require programming. Where should I start?

Fourth, I was wondering how powerful WML is concerning traits - can you give a character a whole new attack with a trait? I remember proposing that years ago when I put out my concerning traits post, the idea then being to give orcs a trait that would give them a weak impact ranged attack... but now would be used for 'permed skills'. If this can't be done with the code as it stands, then eh.

Fifth, and quite tentatively, I was considering an adjusted day/night cycle that would use KoL's moons. Instead of lawful, neutral, and chaotic, we'd have muscular, moxious, and mystical. The time cycle would go muscular +25% (2 turns), myst +25% (1 turn), muscular and myst -25% (2 turns), myst +25% (1 turn). I see how to edit the day/night cycle in WML, but I don't see how to get 'lawful' and 'chaotic' to have unrelated bonuses and penalties - all that's provided is a lawful_bonus, with 'chaotic_penalty' implicitly the same. Obviously, this is going to need some programming.
Last edited by drachefly on August 10th, 2010, 5:36 pm, edited 13 times in total.
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zookeeper
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by zookeeper »

drachefly wrote:First, all the terrain art should be in greyscale line art, to match the units. Will I need to make special KoL-style maps to play on, or can the era override the tileset? I didn't see anything like that in the era WML.
Can't override the core tileset, you'd need to make your own set of terrains and maps.
drachefly wrote:Second, I wanted to change the damage types to the KoL damage types of physical, hot, spooky, cold, sleaze, and stench. It's the same number of damage types as we have now, I just wanted to rename them. To achieve this, do I just provide these as the keys in the resist fields and then again as the values for the attack types
Yes.
drachefly wrote:Third, I wanted to permit attack types to be drawn randomly from a list rather than be static. For example, Saucerors' Wave of Sauce can be randomly hot or cold damage type, and Pastamancers' Ravioli Shurikens can be randomly any element. This... is going to require programming. Where should I start?
Well, you can't implement that in an era. Not entirely properly, anyway (for example damage calculations couldn't take it into account, which would be a major annoyance).
drachefly wrote:Fourth, I was wondering how powerful WML is concerning traits - can you give a character a whole new attack with a trait? I remember proposing that years ago when I put out my concerning traits post, the idea then being to give orcs a trait that would give them a weak impact ranged attack... but now would be used for 'permed skills'. If this can't be done with the code as it stands, then eh.
Traits can easily do whatever EffectWML can do, so yes.
drachefly wrote:Fifth, and quite tentatively, I was considering an adjusted day/night cycle that would use KoL's moons. Instead of lawful, neutral, and chaotic, we'd have muscular, mystical, and moxious. The time cycle would go muscular +25% (2 turns), myst +25%, muscular and myst -25% (2 turns), myst +25%. I see how to edit the day/night cycle in WML, but I don't see how to get 'lawful' and 'chaotic' to have unrelated bonuses and penalties.
The three alignments are hardcoded, so I don't think you can change their names or really add new ones. So that'd be too complex to put it short.
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by drachefly »

Hmm. About the alignments, I'm more interested in divorcing lawful_bonus from the heretofore-nonexistent chaotic_bonus than in renaming them. That is as I said low priority.

Getting the type randomization is a bit more core. As an interesting point, I think that the trunk could actually accomodate this even if it goes unused. After all, a list with one element in it, so long as it's properly dereferenced, will function as a single element. Even the existing syntax would be still valid.

That's not to say the trunk should accommodate it, but I think it might be interesting to have pierce/blade swordsmen or pierce/impact polearms or fire/cold mages, etc.
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by thespaceinvader »

Licensing issues?

Is KoL GPL? If not, you'll struggle...
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by Zarel »

KoL may not be GPL, but Jick doesn't seem to be the sort to enforce copyright particularly harshly, and would probably bless the project once he sees it. Regardless, there's nothing too original about KoL, since it was made as a parody of pretty much everything, so even if there were copyright issues, a few renames should fix that.
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by Huston »

if it is not GPL then maybe a written statement from the owner of the copyright saying you could make a spinoff of it would fix it?
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by Zarel »

Huston wrote:if it is not GPL then maybe a written statement from the owner of the copyright saying you could make a spinoff of it would fix it?
That's what I just said. :P
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by thespaceinvader »

Getting the author of KoL to come and give his approval would be the best bet.

We can't be choosy about these things - copyright and enforcement thereof is all or nothing, that is only fair. If you want to develop this, you need to do it right, or doing it here won't be an option for you.
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by drachefly »

First off, I am looking to get said permission.

Second, I was going to avoid using anything beyond the names. No ripping of images or anything.

Thirdly, and the following is entirely hypothetical - Was a clause added to Wesnoth's license to declare that all game data must also be GPL-ed? I am not sure how creating proprietary campaign data would conflict with the GPL, unless that had been made. Campaign data is not a library to be linked to the game. It seems more like saying you couldn't use OpenOffice to open files that weren't under the GPL.
Last edited by drachefly on October 1st, 2009, 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by Aethaeryn »

drachefly wrote:First off, I am looking to get said permission.

Second, I was going to avoid using anything beyond the names. No ripping of images or anything.

Thirdly, and the following is entirely hypothetical - Was a clause added to Wesnoth's license to declare that all game data must also be GPL-ed? I am not sure how creating proprietary campaign data would conflict with the GPL, unless that had been made. Campaign data is not a library to be linked to the game. It seems more like saying you couldn't use OpenOffice to open files that weren't under the GPL.
To put it on the add-on server, it has to be GPL. If you don't put it on the add-on server, it will most likely not be used by the vast majority of Wesnoth players, who are used to simply using the in-game add-on downloader/installer.
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by drachefly »

That would be pretty critical, to be sure. All right, then!
TheSpaceInvader wrote:Getting the author of KoL to come and give his approval would be the best bet.
Say, if he says 'sure' on a public part of the KoL forums, would that be good enough, or should he come here so he can't arbitrarily delete it (not that he would, but even in theory)?
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by thespaceinvader »

Why must people capitalise my name?

And I'd've thought that that would be OK - ideally, sending an email to forums@wesnoth.org would be good too.
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by drachefly »

Why? Because we perceive it as three words, but perceive a lack of spaces and underscores. We therefore fill it in as camel case.

Human memory uses lossy compression.
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by thespaceinvader »

yes, but that's not my name ;) And should not be considered as such, any more than dRacHeFly is yours ;)
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Re: Kolnoth

Post by drachefly »

Compressing and decompressing my name does not result in what you said, though.

If thespaceinvader is your name, so be it. But I did answer your question about why it happens, and that reason does not result in people mistakenly calling me dRwhatever it was (see, I can't even remember without looking it up, that's how awkward it is)
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