Topic: Advertising the "Hardcore" starting condition.

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Astuur Topic Opener Joined: 2009-02-28, 09:08 Posts: 733 One Elder of Players Location: Frankfurt / Germany	Posted at: 2011-08-12, 12:00 Hi, everyone! I'd like to bring something to your attention that HJD has been kind enough to prepare for us all. Unfortunately, it's buried in some bug report on Launchpad, and not everyone will look there. This stuff really deserves better! It is a set of .lua files that will give an additional choice when starting a new game. So your starting conditions now are: Headquarters medium: This is the default; you have a headquarters, some wares and craftsmen to start. Citadel village: This is even easier. You have a strong military building, a warehouse, some other basic buildings and more soldiers. Added to these two now comes a third one now: Hardcore: This one is just one step ahead of "impossible". You have the bare minimum to start. Make one mistake, and you are lost! All this is available in single player and multiplayer mode. Yes, this is a challenge! I 've played the hardcore starting condition for all tribes (not without making mistakes initially ) and I am very thankful we now have this. It's great fun! It also teaches you a lot about how the tribes' economies work and allows comparisons! I recommend it for experienced players and newcomers alike (though I admit it's harder for the latter). What you should do: When you have downloaded and installed this new option (more on that later), you should start a new game as usual. Just make sure, you choose "Hardcore" as start type. Choose any map you like. Save your game as the first thing you do, so that you have a saved game to come back to. Save often! *Here is your warning:* Do not try to compete with computer players that play on other starting types! You'll be overrun in no time on most maps! In fact, I even recommend switching them all off and playing alone for your first time experience. Also: Do not try to make the computer player use the Hardcore starting conditions! It takes brains to succeed with this, and the AI has yet too little. How to install: Get the zip file here and save it to your widelands directory. Then unpack; the relative paths are inside the archive. That should be all. Remember that this is not an official Widelands add-on. You're using it at your own risk! Hope I don't get flamed for this, but this stuff is too much fun not to share! Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills. I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino). Top Quote

hjd Joined: 2011-06-12, 19:24 Posts: 164 At home in WL-forums Location: bugs.launchpad.net/widelands	Posted at: 2011-08-13, 21:10 Thanks a lot. A little background: the bug report in question is https://bugs.launchpad.net/widelands/+bug/730178. It was primarily made as an example of how easy it is to tweak the starting conditions to create your own. The first one took me roughly two hours effective time (plus some testing and making sure it was actually possible to build up something with what I started with). Then later I added matching start conditions for Empire and Atlanteans on request from Astuur. That took somewhat longer because I am less familiar with the tribes and didn't know exactly how the economy and buildings were tied together. This one is just one step ahead of "impossible". You have the bare minimum to start. Make one mistake, and you are lost! Absolutely true. Which is the part I don't like about it. The moment you make a mistake from the predefined build order, you will not be able to make it. I do see the value of it, and making it made me think a lot about how the buildings are tied together and which ones you really need in order to support other parts of your economy. I know I picked up at least one trick that have made it possible to establish my kingdoms slightly more effective. The downside is that you only get a bare minimum to survive on and it is really unforgiving. I think if it could be reworked from "follow this specific build order or else" into "extremely low on resources, but should be able to do something", it would be not only a lot better but also more available to players. For those who compile Widelands themselves, the Hardcore starting conditions are stored in a branch which you can merge. All you have to do is run: bzr merge lp:~widelands-dev/widelands/hardcore-starting-conditions in your Widelands directory and it will fetch them. (As an alternative to using the zip-file) Edited: 2011-08-13, 21:11 Ships! Top Quote

Astuur Topic Opener Joined: 2009-02-28, 09:08 Posts: 733 One Elder of Players Location: Frankfurt / Germany	Posted at: 2011-08-15, 06:31 Whatever you do, HJD, please don't kill that hardcore! If only for testing the AI. (Yes, I do think that at as a final state the AI should be able to cope with this.) There is nothing wrong with having an extra, attenuated "softcore" version, and the number of starting conditions is not limited, so... I cannot see why you dislike the unforgivingness. You fail once, and restore, maybe you fail twice... so what? Live and learn! I can hardly imagine a better way to understand the dependencies of each tribe's economy, and to make comparisons. Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills. I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino). Top Quote

Warnuf Joined: 2011-02-26, 17:57 Posts: 16 Pry about Widelands	Posted at: 2011-08-30, 15:27 I have just tried barbarians. It is very cool, but not the limit of hardness on some maps and impossible on other maps (I have some own maps without trees, I had to add some. On the other hand the second miner and second lumberjack is not neccessary as you can deconstruct buildings). Please add it to default distribution Perhaps a mode "few resources" should be added, not beeing so close at the limit Now trying the other tribes Edited: 2011-08-30, 16:03 Top Quote

Astuur Topic Opener Joined: 2009-02-28, 09:08 Posts: 733 One Elder of Players Location: Frankfurt / Germany	Posted at: 2011-08-30, 19:59 Äh...what? Deconstruct? Ah, you mean the usual burn-down? Sirver and the team is currently thinking about adding a dismantle option for buildings. That's why I was a bit irritated - was thinking of that. Yep you're right. You could mine coal for a while, then iron, using the same miner --- but that makes a long process even longer And well, a map without trees would need a trunk more or so.... Yes --- Hardcore gotta get into the distributions! Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills. I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino). Top Quote

Warnuf Joined: 2011-02-26, 17:57 Posts: 16 Pry about Widelands	Posted at: 2011-08-30, 22:22 Yes, I meant burn-down. I didn't want to suggest removing the other miner and so on, I just wanted to point out that it is more than one step from impossible. And you could mine just enough coal for the coal burner, so it is not that much longer. Map dependencies: For barbarian on a map without trees you need 4 more trunks, 7 in total. Adding one stone would be a good idea too, because you cannot expand without blackwood and you cannot get any if no stone is in range. Or three, for the granite mine, out of range. Top Quote

Horatio Joined: 2011-11-07, 19:27 Posts: 36 Pry about Widelands	Posted at: 2011-11-19, 18:36 Just checked your hardcore settings out with Atlanteans which is probably the tribe that takes the longest time to work "properly" due to the food economy. Love it and with the dismantlement feature of the development version it is not that uber-hardcore. Thumbs up, Astuur. Top Quote

borim Joined: 2009-09-04, 11:13 Posts: 52 Likes to be here Location: germany	Posted at: 2011-11-20, 10:31 I loved to play settlers with minimal ressources. This way it is much more fun to build up I wonder why this start condition did not make it into trunk? Top Quote

Astuur Topic Opener Joined: 2009-02-28, 09:08 Posts: 733 One Elder of Players Location: Frankfurt / Germany	Posted at: 2011-11-20, 11:10 So do I Being no programmer, I apologize for all my suggestions that imply undue workload and for other misjudgements due to lack of expertise or relevant skills. I am on Win32, have no means to compile, and rely on prefabricated distributions (Thanks to Tino). Top Quote

hjd Joined: 2011-06-12, 19:24 Posts: 164 At home in WL-forums Location: bugs.launchpad.net/widelands	Posted at: 2011-11-20, 12:31 Warnuf: good point. I've just updated the starting conditions, adding the necessary resources to build ranger's hut/forester's house for all tribes. I suspect something similar should be done with quarries, to ensure at least some stone, but I am not sure how to deal with this yet. As for why this is currently an addition, and not included in Widelands see my comments above and on the bug report. Basically I think the starting condition is too limited and not mature enough yet. I do believe there is place for a minimal starting condition in Widelands, but it needs a lot of tweaking before we get there. Also as Astuur mentioned, the AI is completely incapable of using this, which I consider a quite severe blocker. Improving the AI to better deal with running low on resources would allow it to better cope with running into deadlocks and perform better with this starting condition. It is well-known that the AI is in need of improvement though, and this might be far into the future. Oh, and dismantling mentioned above is now available in the recent development versions. I'm curious to see how this affects "Hardcore" Ships! Top Quote

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