Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

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

Moderator: Forum Moderators

User avatar
Elder2
Posts: 405
Joined: July 11th, 2015, 2:13 pm

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Elder2 »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote: March 4th, 2020, 3:04 am
Elder2 wrote: March 2nd, 2020, 5:39 amhow come this has nothing to do with balance?
Because you can easily replace all *^Uf with Tb^Tf without affecting any stats.
I wrote that Celtic wrote that some people considered it DESIRABLE to change the defense values, therefore it DOES affect the stats. This is literally what his response was about, please, you are responding to my response to somebody else's post and you just got it all wrong. I didn't read all the responses in the thread he linked (viewtopic.php?t=49996) but there definitely are people there who would want the stats changed.
Celtic_Minstrel wrote: March 4th, 2020, 3:04 am It's on the master branch, not in a stable release. There's no reason to keep something out of the development branch just because the art for it is somewhat stand-in.
Development branches as i understand it are meant for testing features that mght be added to the future versions, my goal in this thread is to show that the mushroom change was a bad change and it should never have happened. If fundamentally its a bad idea and there is so much wrong with it, then there is no point having a feature in development version that should never be implemented in a stable version because of how bad it is.
User avatar
octalot
General Code Maintainer
Posts: 783
Joined: July 17th, 2010, 7:40 pm
Location: Austria

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by octalot »

Elder2 wrote: March 4th, 2020, 3:41 pm Alright, if you really insist I can change the text and I will add all the terrain codes. Just please don't try to dismiss the arguments because I didn't want to use terrain codes. Also at the time of writing it I wasn't aware that technically there will be 3 mushrooms terrains, including the deprecated one, not 2 (^Tf and Tb^Tf), But I clarified what I think about the deprecated one.
Are you still working on this? I see the first couple of paragraphs have had changes, but the changes seem to stop at that point. Your later paragraphs are still based on 2 terrains, so your arguments are based on a misunderstanding of what the change is
User avatar
Elder2
Posts: 405
Joined: July 11th, 2015, 2:13 pm

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Elder2 »

octalot wrote: March 4th, 2020, 7:12 pm
Elder2 wrote: March 4th, 2020, 3:41 pm Alright, if you really insist I can change the text and I will add all the terrain codes. Just please don't try to dismiss the arguments because I didn't want to use terrain codes. Also at the time of writing it I wasn't aware that technically there will be 3 mushrooms terrains, including the deprecated one, not 2 (^Tf and Tb^Tf), But I clarified what I think about the deprecated one.
Are you still working on this? I see the first couple of paragraphs have had changes, but the changes seem to stop at that point. Your later paragraphs are still based on 2 terrains, so your arguments are based on a misunderstanding of what the change is
Yeah, I just added the terrain codes in a few ones to try to clarify that new mushrooms is Tb^Tf and ^Uf is old mushrooms, well maybe I could have also added that the composie properties mushrooms is ^Tf. In general I didn't want it to be obnoxious so I didn't spam it every time, should I?

About the misunderstanding, i mean ok, I can include some post about deprecated mushrooms, but im not sure if there is a point. The deprecated mushrooms is basically old mushroom terrain, and the point of the mushroom change is well, to change mushrooms. So what does including deprecated mushrooms change in the first point? Its basically "Some mushrooms will stay unchanged". In second one its the same "Some mushrooms will stay unchanged". In third one its something like "There will be actually 3 mushrooms so its more confusing" In fourth its "Some mushrooms will stay unchanged". And in fifth its like "Same visual properties as ^Tf".

And I wouldn't say the arguments are at all based on a misunderstanding, they talk about the new mushroom terrains, and the deprecated one is not considered, and it is old mushrooms. Post focuses on arguments against the new mushrooms, the one with composite properties and the one without. But ok I will write something about the third type of mushrooms, its basically only relevant to the confusion point.

Besides, I was mostly focusing on mainline since this is what most devs care about, am I correct that no deprecated mushrooms are supposed to be left in mainline?

I will add another paragraph talking about deprecated mushrooms.
User avatar
octalot
General Code Maintainer
Posts: 783
Joined: July 17th, 2010, 7:40 pm
Location: Austria

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by octalot »

Since the new mushrooms terrain would need to substitute the old mushrooms that now have the composite terrain properties, ... Therefore ideally all mushrooms on all pvp maps would need to be changed, including survivals, RPGs, whatever, even if one said that campaign balance doesn’t matter and we can leave the old mushrooms in campaigns because it won’t change much, the changes in pvp or pve MP maps might very well be significant so the maps would need to be changed, that might be hundreds of maps.
What does "old mushrooms" mean here?
  • ^Uf doesn't fit, as those mushrooms don't have composite properties.
  • ^Tf doesn't fit either. It has the composite properties, but the only places that it's in mainline are those that have already been updated.
  • Tb^Tf doesn't fit, it doesn't have composite properties and the only places that it's in mainline are those that have already been updated.
From the comment in #4771 I'm assuming you've finished updating, but it still doesn't seem to match the change that you're arguing against.
dozens of maps would need to be changed, maybe even over a hundred in mainline alone, there are many campaign maps that have mushrooms, now arguably mushrooms balance doesn’t matter that much in mainline campaigns, not as much as in pvp maps, but even then there are over a dozen mainline pvp maps
A lot of the campaigns are going to be changed for nemaara's 1.16 lore rework, and some of the others have already been updated; that leaves 4 maps in DW, 5 in SotA, 1 in THoT and some in LoW to update purely because of the mushrooms change. It's a trivial amount to do before 1.16 is released and I feel confident committing myself to doing it in time for 1.16 if no-one else does.

In multiplayer mainline, there's Dark Forecast, An New Land and 46 PvP maps to consider. I'm not going to work on those, but ^Uf will still be in 1.16 for any map that doesn't get updated. There's also likely to be balancing work for the Dunefolk faction, which will be looking at these maps.
And this too leads to confusion. If the only arguments for a change are that it looks weird and it confuses people, isn’t it confusing that some maps will be changed and many other maps won’t be? Especially to the old players. Doesn’t this look bad too? Some people ask “Why mushrooms don’t have composite properties?” after the change many others might as well ask “Why some maps have new mushrooms and others don’t?”. It’s just counterproductive.
2p_Thousand_Stings_Garrison is one of the ones affected, a map that I'm sure has more-than-once seen the spectators' talk channel full of "oh dear, obviously the first time that this player has seen this map". Your point that
when hovering over the mushrooms terrain in previous versions, it is clear it lacks composite properties
bears on this - even if some maps still use ^Uf, it's easy for PvP players to check which type of mushrooms are on the current map.
User avatar
Celtic_Minstrel
Developer
Posts: 2166
Joined: August 3rd, 2012, 11:26 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

It doesn't matter whether or not people argue that the stats change is desirable. The new mushrooms offer both the old stats and the new stats, so the change of stats is not an argument for removing the new mushrooms.

And you haven't shown that the new mushrooms are fundamentally a bad idea. At best you may have shown that there are some minor flaws in the idea.
Author of The Black Cross of Aleron campaign and Default++ era.
Former maintainer of Steelhive.
User avatar
Elder2
Posts: 405
Joined: July 11th, 2015, 2:13 pm

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Elder2 »

octalot wrote: March 8th, 2020, 2:54 pm
Since the new mushrooms terrain would need to substitute the old mushrooms that now have the composite terrain properties, ... Therefore ideally all mushrooms on all pvp maps would need to be changed, including survivals, RPGs, whatever, even if one said that campaign balance doesn’t matter and we can leave the old mushrooms in campaigns because it won’t change much, the changes in pvp or pve MP maps might very well be significant so the maps would need to be changed, that might be hundreds of maps.
What does "old mushrooms" mean here?
  • ^Uf doesn't fit, as those mushrooms don't have composite properties.
  • ^Tf doesn't fit either. It has the composite properties, but the only places that it's in mainline are those that have already been updated.
  • Tb^Tf doesn't fit, it doesn't have composite properties and the only places that it's in mainline are those that have already been updated.
^Tf. I assumed ^Uf would get replaced by ^Tf by default because that is what I was told on discord by a dev.
octalot wrote: March 8th, 2020, 2:54 pm
dozens of maps would need to be changed, maybe even over a hundred in mainline alone, there are many campaign maps that have mushrooms, now arguably mushrooms balance doesn’t matter that much in mainline campaigns, not as much as in pvp maps, but even then there are over a dozen mainline pvp maps
A lot of the campaigns are going to be changed for nemaara's 1.16 lore rework, and some of the others have already been updated; that leaves 4 maps in DW, 5 in SotA, 1 in THoT and some in LoW to update purely because of the mushrooms change. It's a trivial amount to do before 1.16 is released and I feel confident committing myself to doing it in time for 1.16 if no-one else does.

In multiplayer mainline, there's Dark Forecast, An New Land and 46 PvP maps to consider. I'm not going to work on those, but ^Uf will still be in 1.16 for any map that doesn't get updated. There's also likely to be balancing work for the Dunefolk faction, which will be looking at these maps.
In theory but that is assuming nothing gets left out by mistake. And I have seen enough bugs during 1.14 release (there were hundreds of them) to exclude the possibility of human error.

Its possible to do yes, but it is another thing that needs to be done, and then there are still the add on maps of course.
octalot wrote: March 8th, 2020, 2:54 pm
And this too leads to confusion. If the only arguments for a change are that it looks weird and it confuses people, isn’t it confusing that some maps will be changed and many other maps won’t be? Especially to the old players. Doesn’t this look bad too? Some people ask “Why mushrooms don’t have composite properties?” after the change many others might as well ask “Why some maps have new mushrooms and others don’t?”. It’s just counterproductive.
2p_Thousand_Stings_Garrison is one of the ones affected, a map that I'm sure has more-than-once seen the spectators' talk channel full of "oh dear, obviously the first time that this player has seen this map". Your point that
when hovering over the mushrooms terrain in previous versions, it is clear it lacks composite properties
bears on this - even if some maps still use ^Uf, it's easy for PvP players to check which type of mushrooms are on the current map.
Are you arguing for removing TSG? I think this supports my point, mushrooms are at the very end of "confusion hierarchy", we have weird maps too.
octalot wrote: March 8th, 2020, 2:54 pm bears on this - even if some maps still use ^Uf, it's easy for PvP players to check which type of mushrooms are on the current map.
Not as easy if there are 3 types and not 1. There will be 3 conflicting descriptions, besides if somebody wanted to check terrain description, its not the clearest part of UI
User avatar
Elder2
Posts: 405
Joined: July 11th, 2015, 2:13 pm

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Elder2 »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote: March 8th, 2020, 10:51 pm It doesn't matter whether or not people argue that the stats change is desirable. The new mushrooms offer both the old stats and the new stats, so the change of stats is not an argument for removing the new mushrooms.

And you haven't shown that the new mushrooms are fundamentally a bad idea. At best you may have shown that there are some minor flaws in the idea.
Yeah, I give 5 arguments, and what are the arguments for the change? None, 0, nobody gave any real argument for doing the change that wouldn't be invalidated by one of my arguments. Literally the only defense of the change people are attemption here is "these arguments arent strong enough" or "these are just minor flaws" or "you didn't include the fact that old mushrooms will stay as deprecated", thats fanatical defense. "These long arguments of people who disagree with me are weak, but the change needs no justification because its right" sort of thing.

I would like to see one good argument for the change. A point I haven't adressed and a defense from somebody who is actually bothered by the old mushrooms, so far all the points on this thread focused on arguing that my relatively long rant was insufficient.
Mawmoocn
Posts: 154
Joined: March 16th, 2019, 3:54 pm

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Mawmoocn »

I don’t see the real problem here except hybrid terrains.

Hybrid terrains for mushroom is different for another type similar to dirt/shallow water, by default, the best values for movement and "defense" (evasion) are used by the game.

Based on what I see, movement is the problem to use a shallow water/dirt hybrid/mix terrains, but some units have different evasion (defense) rate on shallow water than on dirt/flat terrain.

The problem you say for horseman having lower “defense” is "unique" to it because it's only modified for that unit alone.

So it begs to question if that exception should be the norm?

As an example for different evasion values are Footpad in a shallow water (40%), dirt/flat (60%), and shallow water/dirt flat (60%). As stated before, lower evasion values are not implemented if it’s in a hybrid/mix terrain.


Basically, hybrid/mix terrain will always use higher “defense” values while using lower movement cost.

So the question is, does we need to change that behavior?

Edit: Upon rereading the first post, we should probably rename the second new mushroom terrain or the old mushroom terrain to a new one if they use different properties that are not consistent with each other.

Old mushroom -> fungi terrain
or
New mushroom -> fungi terrain

to fix any sort of confusion between the difference of terrains.

If both old and new terrains are exactly the same, renaming them would be more confusing than keeping it the way it is.
Last edited by Mawmoocn on March 9th, 2020, 12:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
octalot
General Code Maintainer
Posts: 783
Joined: July 17th, 2010, 7:40 pm
Location: Austria

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by octalot »

Elder2 wrote: March 9th, 2020, 9:03 am ^Tf. I assumed ^Uf would get replaced by ^Tf by default because that is what I was told on discord by a dev.

Since the new mushrooms terrain would need to substitute the ^Tf mushrooms that now have the composite terrain properties, ... Therefore ideally all mushrooms on all pvp maps would need to be changed, including survivals, RPGs, whatever, even if one said that campaign balance doesn’t matter and we can leave the ^Tf mushrooms in campaigns because it won’t change much, the changes in pvp or pve MP maps might very well be significant so the maps would need to be changed, that might be hundreds of maps.
This doesn't fit, the only ^Tf mushrooms are ones that have been added as part of this change. For any map with ^Tf mushrooms, the work is already done.

The other two options don't fit either - none of them turn the quoted text into a meaningful argument.
User avatar
Elder2
Posts: 405
Joined: July 11th, 2015, 2:13 pm

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Elder2 »

octalot wrote: March 9th, 2020, 12:33 pm ...
It does fit, I just explained that I assumed ^Uf gets substituted by ^Tf because I was told so, it does absolutely make sense.


"Since the new mushrooms terrain would need to substitute the ^Tf mushrooms that now have the composite terrain properties, ... Therefore ideally all mushrooms on all pvp maps would need to be changed, including survivals, RPGs, whatever, even if one said that campaign balance doesn’t matter and we can leave the ^Tf mushrooms in campaigns because it won’t change much, the changes in pvp or pve MP maps might very well be significant so the maps would need to be changed, that might be hundreds of maps."

"Since the new mushrooms terrain would need to substitute the ^Tf mushrooms that now have the composite terrain properties"

Specifically I meant that the whole phrase "old mushrooms that now have the composite terrain properties" referred to ^Tf but the meaning is the same, it was like saying ^Uf with composite properties which is what ^Tf is. By new mushrooms I meant Tb^Tf which has properties of ^Uf.

So im saying that from what I knew at the time (and was told) all ^Uf terrain gets changed to ^Tf. And then it would need to get again changed manually (or with a script) to Tb^Tf. I actually asked if automatically changing ^Uf to Tb^Tf of all ^Uf terrains would be possible, I was told that no.

"even if one said that campaign balance doesn’t matter and we can leave the ^Tf mushrooms in campaigns because it won’t change much"

Again im assuming that automatically all ^Uf gets changed to ^Tf because that is what I was told.
User avatar
Elder2
Posts: 405
Joined: July 11th, 2015, 2:13 pm

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Elder2 »

Mawmoocn wrote: March 9th, 2020, 11:54 am ...
"So it begs to question if that exception should be the norm?"

There are many exceptions, there is hardly one "norm"


"Basically, hybrid/mix terrain will always use higher “defense” values while using lower movement cost.

So the question is, does we need to change that behavior?"

Ehm I don't think so, and thats an entirely different question.


Besides that I kinda fail to see your point.
User avatar
octalot
General Code Maintainer
Posts: 783
Joined: July 17th, 2010, 7:40 pm
Location: Austria

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by octalot »

Elder2 wrote: March 9th, 2020, 5:09 pm Again im assuming that automatically all ^Uf gets changed to ^Tf because that is what I was told.
As I already said, your arguments are based on a misunderstanding of what the change is.
User avatar
Elder2
Posts: 405
Joined: July 11th, 2015, 2:13 pm

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Elder2 »

octalot wrote: March 9th, 2020, 5:24 pm
Elder2 wrote: March 9th, 2020, 5:09 pm Again im assuming that automatically all ^Uf gets changed to ^Tf because that is what I was told.
As I already said, your arguments are based on a misunderstanding of what the change is.
I added some paragraphs, like:

"To clarify, there are 3 mushroom terrains, not 2, ^Uf is old mushrooms and is deprecated, Tb^Tf is new mushrooms with mycelium base terrain (referred to as new mushrooms) and ^Tf is new mushrooms with composite properties. I focused mostly on mainline in this post. Existence of a third terrain, ie old deprecated ^Uf that looks exactly like ^Tf but doesn't have composite properties like Tb^Tf, mostly doesn't affect the arguments against the new mushroom terrains, but it does add to the confusion factor, because there will be 3 mushrooms."

And:

"At the time of writing this I didn't include old deprecated mushrooms, ie ^Uf. So there will be actually 3 mushrooms not 2. The point about confusion is the same except that is even more confusing than 2 mushrooms, especially since they will look exactly like ^Tf but have properties of Tb^Tf. 3 types of mushrooms that 2 of them look the same but work very differently is needless to say a terrible design and incredibly confusing to everyone, especially new players."

Even the specific text you quoted, I argued that changing the mushrooms is still a factor and it is a point, but even if we ignore the act of changing the mushrooms, my point in argument 2 was that some maps will have changed mushrooms and some won't, which is true and this is how it will be, as there are many add on maps out there. And then there are still at least 3 other long points if we ignore the "New mushrooms are ugly" one.


Do you have anything other to say than "You don't understand the change"? Maybe there is some great secret wisdom in that change and I just don't understand it, well at least im not alone as celtic also didn't seem to fully understand it at first, same as the dev i talked with. Maybe I just can't comprehend the brilliance of this change even despite lack of any, absolutely any argument for the change that wouldn't be tackled by my arguments. And these were 2 arguments, the argument from consistency and argument from confusion.

Its so easy to dismiss all these arguments by just saying "they are based on misunderstanding of the change" isn't it? Even though I did explain how the fact that ^Uf doesn't get changed ties to my arguments and I was eager to explain any specific "misunderstandings" you mentioned.

But hell, I still am misunderstanding the change, right? Maybe im just not smart enough.
User avatar
Pentarctagon
Project Manager
Posts: 5526
Joined: March 22nd, 2009, 10:50 pm
Location: Earth (occasionally)

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Pentarctagon »

Maps that aren't updated will continue to use ^Uf while maps that are updated will use Tb^Tf, and those two terrains are identical in every way aside from visually, correct?
99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs
take one down, patch it around
-2,147,483,648 little bugs in the code
User avatar
Elder2
Posts: 405
Joined: July 11th, 2015, 2:13 pm

Re: Remove new mushrooms terrain and remove composite terrain properties from the old mushrooms

Post by Elder2 »

Pentarctagon wrote: March 9th, 2020, 5:48 pm Maps that aren't updated will continue to use ^Uf while maps that are updated will use Tb^Tf, and those two terrains are identical in every way aside from visually, correct?
Yeah. And that is a problem. They don't look the same, ^Tf looks like ^Uf but works differently. Tb^Tf and ^Uf work the same but look differently. ^Uf and ^Tf look the same but work differently. Utter madness, as if 3 shrooms wasn't enough.
Post Reply