Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: christof139
Hi Erik and sorry for confusing you with the other Eric.

Apology accepted, it happens. I understand that it can be confusing with both of us replying all the time.

Yes, exactly, the Hall's doesn't affect the game at all, I just mentioned it because it was a unique weapon being that it was the first breechloader adapted by the US Army, and it did perform OK to a decent but not great degree. So, people were asking for flavorful info. and I thought the Hall's fit the bill very well. It is not a well known weapon even though there were a good number of them floating about, and was revolutionary at its time of production and introduction. It wasn't the first breechloader used in North America by any means, but the first mass produced breechloader and the first adapted by the US Army.

Yep, it's good info.

My Guns.txt modding stopped because of my Office '97 Excel problems. I have to get a newer Office verison, because as you know debugging text files can be very time consuming and maddening to say the least. Seems that the 97 version of Excel is not 100% compatible with WinXP and/or FoF files, so I have to get a newer used version which may happen next week when our compooter fellow returns from vacation. So, I will be getting a used office 2000 to 2007 or whatever copy soon.

Ah, Office 97 - yeah, I've been using Office XP and just upgraded to 2007. If you want, give me the changes you'd make with some source info and I'll review with Eric and incorporate everything we feel comfortable with. We already improved the guns file since the original release and we're certainly interested in making it as accurate as possible, while keeping the choices to a reasonable limit. I could see combining the Hall's and Burnside, etc.

My main concerns with the Guns.txt file are tweaking the ranges and power or firing effectiveness of weapons, changing descriptions, and even renaming some of the weapons classes, which I did already to some degree but have to find the file as I may have inadvertently erased it. For instance, there are two 10-inch Columbiads in tthe game and one is a Rodman, so this seems to be just a duplication to a degree of a weapons class and a waste of a weapons slot. The game's 10-inch Columbiad is more powerful than the Rodman Columbiad and that was not so. The earlier model Columbiads were shell guns that did not fire shot, and only 300 and some odd New Model 10-inch Columbiads capable of firing shot were produced, so I will combine these with the Rodman 10-inch New Model Columbiad into one class, while the old 10-ich Columbiad slot will be changed to represent both 8 and 10-inch early model Columbiads. Unless there is a way for modders to add new weapons, then jockeying weapons and weapons' classes around with new descriptions and stats is the only way to improve the historical accuracy of the Guns.txt file. As it stands now, the Guns.txt file is OK for those that are not too concerned with historical accuracy, but for many people with greater knowledge and understanding of ACW weapons then a quick fix is in order.

As I said above, we're welcome to all input into this. Note however, that the ratings were based on a variety of factors and may not be as easy to reverse-engineer as you think. We did use historical sources to come up with the existing ratings, but if you've been looking into these for years there's no doubt you have some info we may not have considered. I think it makes sense to collaborate. If you'd like to see the default guns file improved further, please start a thread on that subject in this sub-forum. I'd recommend focusing each post on either a weapon you think should be changed, with supporting info for the change, or removed, or added, etc. I can't promise we'll put all your suggestions in the default, but we'll read everything and combine it with our info to do the best we can.

I can also make a new file with all your changes for your own use if your version of Excel isn't cutting it, as a way of thanking you for any feedback.

Games that have map and scenario editors sell much better than games that don't, and games that are greatly moddable also sell more and for a longer time than games that don't.

Hm, I understand where that rule of thumb comes from, but it's not universally true. If a few other elements fall into place right, then yes, I agree (which is why FOF and many of our other games are highly moddable and/or have an editor).

There may be more money to be made marketting properly to educated and knowledgeable people than to plain and simple FPS-type game freaks and kids.

Hey, lots of educated and knowledgeable folks do also play FPSes! In any case, for these types of games, I probably agree, which is why we do market to wargamers rather than to the FPS crowd. In general though, the mainstream market is much larger.

Regards,

- Erik

Yeah, thanx.

Yeah, I can see perhaps in the Guns.txt file that it is connected to another file or files, and if I change the weapon's heading to 10-inch Columbiads to 8 and 10-inch Columbiads then it may not work unless other things in other files are changed, but I am going to try this soon, as I think I found the file I tinkered with. Seems I did anyway. The picture of the cannon in the purchase screen doesn'rt have to be changed at all for the 10-inch Columbiad, but the 9-inch Blakely can be changed and that may be a simple matter of just using a photo editor, I don't know but can try it. I get decent results doing BMP pics and I did make some siege and naval cannon before, so altering an existing pic is not too hard. i'm not real good at it but usually can make a passable and very decent pic, but not always.

Look at my avatar and the sternwheel Tinclad I made. I am going to do a review of the ships I made for the old TS BG games that Matrix is going to rerelease, with a Map Editor I AND MANY OTHERS hope for. The East Front 1 Map Editor can be used to complete most of a modded map for the ACW and Nappy War games, but additional work is required. I just left a message here in reply to X Legion concerning this.

I also got the Gunboats working for both sides in the old TS games, it was very obvious and simple how to do it but not anyone tried it but me. It's just that there is only one on screen Gunboat sprite for all the ships, and I never modded the sprite sheet or white ghost sprite sheet but may in the future. With the correct and updated tools and knowledge that Matrix Programmers and Graphics/Pixel People have, all this could be done very easily. There are only 6-directional positions needed for the sprites in the TS BG ACW and Nappy Wars games, the 6-major points of the compass.

Back to FoF, there isn't too much actually in the gus.txt file that IMHO can be changed, but somethings yes for sure, and those things are just text changes that I did have working for weapons ranges and effectiveness, at least the file seemed to work as I remember, but i didn't test it a lot. Excel 97 is having problems, and I have Win XP Home Ed. so I don't actually even know if I have Excel XP on it!! I should actually look.[8|]

Anyway, another newer version of Office 2003 or whatever will no doubt work fine, I just have to get the software, which software I could have already gotten but I have been being rotten and haven't gotten. IOTW, I have been just too lazy to go get it.[&:][8|]

In FoF there is already a very good spread/choice of Arty., and I was very happy to see the 24-pdr Siege Gun for Field Siege Arty. along with the 8-inch Howitzer, the latter of which was not all that common. The other Howitzers are neat too, and 32-pdr. Hwtzrs. were used in the field, as at Antietam where there was one battery with the Yankees.

And yeah, I know that 'normal' people play FPS games, I just don't like them too much. I can throw bricks or something at one of my neighbors[&:][:(][:@] I don't like and get the same effect anyway for free.[8|] Of course I can also envision a Battery of the Washington Arty. or similar lined-up along my fence pointed that-a-way and can actually picture the wonderful and hilarious results as the down range neighbor and everything he owns is simply blasted into oblivion, blown away, a double and triple cannister Mr. Bragg at Buena Vista type of thing or thang. I'm not too concerned about my fence at all, nor this particular neighbor. My other neighbors are OK though, and I hope they don't get upset with the noise.[X(][8|][:D] I better do that during the day so I don't wake people up at night, a brilliant idea. This last bit here is pretty funny.

Chris

Back to the interface issue. I purchased Crown of Glory the other day (very inteligent move on my part) and it's a very good game. But what is really good about it is the INTERFACE. It is very stable, I feel more so than Forge in that when moving troops the paths are designated by the computer and the move occurs with no problem. Very handsomely done. But in Forge, as discussed, the process of moving just seems to be jittery.

ORIGINAL: RB

Back to the interface issue. I purchased Crown of Glory the other day (very inteligent move on my part) and it's a very good game. But what is really good about it is the INTERFACE. It is very stable, I feel more so than Forge in that when moving troops the paths are designated by the computer and the move occurs with no problem. Very handsomely done. But in Forge, as discussed, the process of moving just seems to be jittery.

One of the things I always like about CoG's interface was the way to transfer men between units. If I had some spare militia units I could transfer the manpower into an infantry unit to top the infantry unit off. I wish we could do that here with FoF. The camps are nice and being able to remove a unit and have it manpower distributed is ok, but being able to directly send needed manpower to a specific unit is better.

Dude

One of the things I always like about CoG's interface was the way to transfer men between units. If I had some spare militia units I could transfer the manpower into an infantry unit to top the infantry unit off. I wish we could do that here with FoF. The camps are nice and being able to remove a unit and have it manpower distributed is ok, but being able to directly send needed manpower to a specific unit is better.

Dude

Same people that made COG made FoF (I think anyway), so maybe they'll incorporate the COG sysytem of troop replacement. [:)]

Chris

I hope so. COG just feels right.

ORIGINAL: dude
One of the things I always like about CoG's interface was the way to transfer men between units. If I had some spare militia units I could transfer the manpower into an infantry unit to top the infantry unit off. I wish we could do that here with FoF. The camps are nice and being able to remove a unit and have it manpower distributed is ok, but being able to directly send needed manpower to a specific unit is better.

We decided not to let players transfer strength between units as they could in CoG because we added the guns, attributes and special abilities and we were worried that allowing players to transfer strength would mean that players would always be transferring strength from the poorer units into the better equipped units and that this wouldn't be good for game balance, and it would encourage players obsessively to micromanage shifting lots of strength points around every turn.

You can disband brigades and their strength will be distributed to all the other brigades in their (directly attached) military group. The Quality is weighted-average, with a greater weight given to the Quality of the unit that receives the reinforcements (Quality is also a measure of the junior officer quality, and the junior officers in the receiving unit don't change when it receives replacements.)


Glad you'all like CoG. Are you not getting the movement arrows in FOF though?? The interface for moving should be pretty much the same as in COG, and we even added a little tooltip telling you which province a unit is moving to. The rivers do make movement a little more confusing in FOF, at least in places, but otherwise I *think* the interface is pretty much the same. We did redo the graphics for the movement arrows.