How to force what maps can be played with your mod

[Argh]

I just don't see the appeal of trying to bludgeon a map into conforming to a mission via an automated process.

Well, there's bludgeoning, and bludgeoning. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that there's a magical solution for everything, involving doing terrifying things to maps. That's not really practical, and no amount of clever automation can make every map work.

That said, I was thinking, as a simple first-try sort of thing, of doing a "north vs. south" automated scenario, where the player gets handed a lot of buildings and defenses somewhere near the middle (I can automatically find and place stuff on metal spots, using the stuff that avoids it, in reverse, so I could give 'em mines or what-have-you, on most maps) and the computer (not AI, as there doesn't seem to be a way to load an AI via LUA yet) would basically send waves from the other side of the map. Victory after three waves, of increasing difficulty (difficulty determined by how many things the player gets, which would then coorespond to how much stuff the computer gets) or death. That'd be pretty simple to do.

Doing stuff like, I dunno... convoy escort missions (I hate 'em, I hate 'em, I hate 'em, ever since Wing Commander... evil game-designer drek, every time)... would be fairly difficult, since the "convoy" would have to be told to go on a route that was possible (water and mountain detection? Oh, what fun, not.).

Fedex questing type stuff, though, so long as the game design had enough flex (go here, fight off the bad guys, collect more troops, listen to blather, go here) would probably be quite easy, as it'd mainly be a matter of having the script be "smart" enough to avoid bad places on the map (not easy, but not impossible, unless the map consists mainly of water and tiny islands, or is basically all mountains).

Stuff like, I dunno, historical recreations of a specific battle? Nope, can't do it that way. But, as XCOM demonstrated, it's quite fun to present players with random stuff. They can't get a guide for it, and the game designer then has to focus on making the actual mechanics of play interesting, instead of trying to be cute and giving people a puzzle to solve. I think that, in real-time, that'd be very, very interesting, if it was done well. I'll give it a go, when I'm done with the stuff I'm doing right now with World Builder- most of that coding work is directly applicable, and I think it could be fun.

[Pxtl]

Hey, Convoy Escort missions can be fun. The only frustration comes when your adversaries spawn in just outside their gargantuan torpedo range and the only way to win is to keep failing and noting the spawn point of each ship so you can be waiting for it when it appears.

The reason that most escort-missions suck is that most space-fighter games make their escort missions 10x harder than the rest of the game.

[Sleksa]

-- remove any maps with 'metal' in them

Add to BA plz

That'd leave METAL HECK out ;__;

Hey, Convoy Escort missions can be fun.

NO

If you've ever played wc3 tft campaign youll know how horrible this bloody thing can be. Boring, Boring, and frustrating.

[Argh]

The reason that most escort-missions suck is that most space-fighter games make their escort missions 10x harder than the rest of the game.

I think a lot of it is that the very same game designers who make those things are the guys who mainly spent a lot of time making the more open-ended stuff work. And they usually get to that stuff last, after everything else is working, so they're under time pressure to deliver a milestone.

Freelancer's team, for example, dropped convoy escort stuff entirely from the game, other than a couple of relatively-easy scripted sequences in the main campaign, because they were on Team no. 3, IIRC, and running out've their third round of capital (it still amazes me, to this day, how stable that utter mess is- it makes Spring look neat and tidy).

At any rate, I don't think they're inherently evil. I'm sure that, someday somebody will make an escort mission that isn't insanely difficult, or creampuff-easy. But it's hard.

Doing it in an automated way would be almost entirely impossible, though, unless... hmm... maybe you could solve for land between two points, then use the software to make a road, then put ambushes on either side of the roadway... hmm... might be possible. Probably would look horrible, destroying the heightmap like that, but maybe you could step it out some, keep it less obvious...

[Satirik]

i don't understand why you guyz are arguing ??? this is a feature, if you need it then use it ... otherwise do something more useful than arguing about that feature

[SwiftSpear]

What about if a mod which has maps limited, is no longer maintained, but new maps are being released...

I see it less as s tool for specifically limiting what maps a mod can play, and more of a tool for allowing a mod to force mappers to map specifically for it, as opposed to generally compatible maps.

IE, make your mod require the map to contain a flag that it's intended for that mod. So every map for Kernal Panic must be in the notation "KP_Mapname" for example. It's a good tool for shutting people up when your mod/map isn't going to work the same way every other mod/map is.