Mega New Elk WIP
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sent ya an email regarding setup
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EF looking cool
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@Black_Elk, @beelee, @VictoryFirst
Because the xml is early development, I would suggest that territories be broken down into variable lists, maybe by PUs to start. territoryAttachments can be created using foreach. Territory effects, capitals, victory cities can be added with triggers/foreach. I think it would be easier to manage.
Cheers...
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@Black_Elk, @beelee, @VictoryFirst
If using Notepad++, copy all territory definitions under <map>, to a new page. Replace " water="true" with " and territory with element. Now you have a long list of elements that can be used.
Cheers...
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@wc_sumpton
I cannot open the link/xml please repost it.I get
This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below. -
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Saw this last night, right before I fell asleep! Very cool! That should make it way easier to go under the hood and tinker.
I haven't had the chance to play with the relief anymore since last time, but the thing I tossed in there the other night should be serviceable for now, since it'd be easier to mark out the sea zones first anyway. Or especially if I have to slide anything around like with islands or coastline contours, though hopefully that won't be needed. I anticipate that the main adjustments would be to the sea zones, like ideally just adding in divisions and keeping the same geometry there.
Since the labels for the sea zones are all alpha-numeric should be easy enough to add in a new sea zone here or there by just changing the alpha part of the label and adding in a new poly with the map tools. So Sea Zone 101 A,B,C,D,E,F,G or whatever. That was the rationale behind adding in the letters, just so it wouldn't require us to rework the full sz count. For most of the standard games the land tiles have the jaggedy contours and curves, while the sea zone tiles have a more stark and angular geometry. It would be possible to change the sea zone shapes completely to have them be more rounded and swoopy, but then to me that would look less axis and allies-ish than I was after. I think it works well enough. I'd say maybe adding a dozen zones, and making those convoy lanes would work to balance out the income once the production is established, since I think the values there are in flux.
The reason to add more sea zones I think would just be to accommodate the base units in the G40 roster with the M3 movement. I can see a few options there - Most extreme would be to nix the bases entirely from the roster and only focus on an M2 map. I can see that working but M3 definitely adds some excitement and dynamism to the play. If keeping the Air and Naval bases, then it might make sense to do some extra vertical divisions in a few spots to add distance per turn at M3.
I think the map would also be entertaining on the ground at M3, in which case a novel Base on land that increases movement +1 is probably optimal. It has graphics available, the little Rail line unit could be used, as I think I have a damaged version of that, or similarly it could be attached to the Factory unit, which already has a damaged variant for each. I think if doing that I would probably restrict the +1 movement on land to only the Tanks and make those the exclusive M3 unit for the ground game. Basically since they are the most expensive land unit, and it sorta fits the vibe. Would give the player an excuse to buy more armor, but also give us a way to control stacking there across the longer distances.
Or again, could just go with M2 like the standard, but I do think M3 has a lot of promise for a very divided up map. It's just that it's not terribly familiar from the other games, so to me it would make sense to introduce the new concept using a single unit type, the tank, which players are already used to having the extra movement. I think it would make the SBR or Tactical Bombing runs more likely, as a way to limit the range of enemy armor stacks. Anyhow just some ideas, I thought it would be fun to have a sandbox map with one of the familiar rulesets that people can tool around with and make scenarios, so it could go in different directions, but essentially like a supped up v3 or v5 or global was sorta what I had in mind, just on a very large map hehe.
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Right Arm
I copied the xml and added it. Game fired up fine
I'm gonna go through Elk's latest additions and make sure I have the right ones, then I'll update everything to git.Edit
Uploaded to git. I'm not real confident I have the right stuff. wc's xml is there and I renamed it to 1.327 now. There's ane extra xml when you open "map". It's 1.32. I thought I had deleted it but it's still there.
So, it can be deleted. It may have been a backup for Victory's changes.The test setup xml in "games' may have been related to those too. I can't remember. It looks different than a normal xml. Anyway, I left it for now.
@Black_Elk can you dl from git and check and see if I got the right stuff. I didn't add the blends one yet but I still have it.
@VictoryFirst can you check and see if that looks right for your placements ? From what I remember they are.
At 50%
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Looked good to me. It's easy to set the blue or how light the land goes when blended via the base, so we can always tinker with that later. I'm sure right now the set up is mostly experimental and only just taking shape.
As I recall, if using the Export xml (beta) feature, it will save that xml into the main tripleA folder of the directory next to downloaded maps and saved games, unless the user clicks a different location. So probably if there was an extra xml somewhere or a backup that seemed reduntant might have been from experimenting with that feature.
Once the production values are established, should be easy to tweak the starting unit set up just by tooling around in edit mode and then saving out the adjustments in various drafts till it looks/feels right.
For example, I just messed around adding a couple ships to the Regia marina and to set up a little 3 point focus for the Brits, with NBs and Gibraltar, Malta and Suez then saving it out via edit mode. Seems to work nicely and fairly convenient.
PU place is a little off in many places like you noted before. Also a couple labels may have clips, Pinsk still mispelled Prinsk etc. I think a nice convention would be to have the quick click spot for each tile right on top of the PU graphic and then to avoid having a unit place in that spot. Idea being that the player knows exactly where to click the tile if they want to bring up the full list of units quickly rather than an individual unit selection. Otherwise sometimes it can be tough for some of the smaller spots to bring up the list. Just anticipating that a spot like Malta might need an obvious click spot to bring up the unit list, since it's likely to use an overflow line with anything there.
Anyhow sorta tit for tat I think once the PU values are all sorted, to add in TUV, and highball those for Axis a bit for parity by sides. Then see where it falls in the totals. I think to make up the difference income can go into convoys Europe 2000 style and that's an easy way to even things out. Once the totals are more or less in place for starting production, it probably makes sense to just add a few extra PUs here and then until we get some nice round numbers so it's simple for the player to parse the stats screen in the opener. Like to ballpark the smaller powers so they're viable, and then sorta build out the larger factions till you get the desired opener for the start date. I think should be straight forward enough to develop two start dates simultaneously and just keep a couple draft xmls, maybe by year or season. Whatever makes sense or seems entertaining.
Nice work!
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ps. Just realized I forgot to attach the xml lol
xml_2025_02_14_Mega New Elk_wip.xml
Basically I just went around the board adding in a couple bases and some naval/air units for the Brits to keep the ball rolling.
It's debatable whether every spot really needs an AB or NB, depends on the purchasing power of the player over the course of the game, but one would expect players might add to what's available at the start. I think it makes sense though for some thematic spots to get a vibe going. For example to have the Air transits across the Atlantic out of Canada north towards UK, or fighters sent from West Africa towards Suez, I think those could be represented by ABs. Malta I think it makes sense to have an NB there for the Brits since it was such a linchpin. Axis main prob was that they didn't have sufficient capacity at their North African ports (for example in Tripoli) to fully resupply their forces. So for places like that might make more sense to leave spots light on infrastructure and if the player opts to, they'd have to invest a bit to set that up.
I think for first round combats, it can be helpful to use Transports or the Transport/DD combo, since DDs alone aren't necessarily top targets, but a transport is almost always worth trying to shut down. I just lowballed figuring more could be added once we got some pocket forces going, add in a carrier or two later maybe depending on what the Axis end up with. Didn't want to get too ahead of myself in case Victory had laid down some more stuff in the interim hehe.
Anyhow, just for a gist, that's where I got before the power went out earlier... I added WIP to the end for 'work in progress' since that's clearly the deal
Probably there are quite a few different approaches for how to set up the Commonwealth and the Allies.
I think what I would try to achieve is just a general thrust where the first round combats suggest the main timeline of the opener. For example to avoid a big round 1 Naval attack by Britain vs Japan at Sumatra which we see on some boards, since that never really happened. Instead a situation where they pull back towards Ceylon, which is what did happen hehe. I think it's probably helpful to use DD blockers to limit Japan's range for a J2 set up on India. Or at least to force some fighting and a stall at Singapore, so Britain has a chance to regroup. Also I think for anything like that to keep the KJF type press in mind, where we probably don't want the Allies going too insane in the first round for a Japan stomp type thing. But yeah probably much is up in the air, or floating around and subject to change.
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OK I was able to reduce the size of the relief down to about 69 mb using a series of grays.
The difference between mixing 2 blues in full color, and mixing a 1 blue with gray cuts the file size in half, down from about 120 mb. I think it's probably serviceable for a match closer to the UHD vibe. Or for now while it's still being worked up. The hue of the blue can be controlled from the base with a single color edit. So we can do a simple value change easily that way, or make adjustments at the very end when I drop the lakes on top.
Here are the Relief_Tiles if you guys like it lighter footprint on the file size.https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mgPTmrBkbfPKCq_lWJxNEP3BpdVzqVxR/view?usp=sharing
Looks like so for the quick view
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Did a quick strongarm for the color grading to get it closer. I think it's in the range now for sure. Extended Dutch harbor a bit to more closely match the UHD. Here's a quick update for the tiles and new base/polys for that. You can ditch the older base if you like so we don't mix em up, I'll use this one going forward since it keys up the blue. You can just replace the base tiles, relief tiles and polygons.txt and should be good to go.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lozx7HCKZHIewSVtarDyTKxsQJsFByZE/view?usp=sharing
For the relief I just cranked the brightness and saturation like 10% as that last step to get in line with the UHD G40 look. Pretty close, last element I think was just adding a tiny bit of noise to the sea zones to get a little more contrast there, but that's a pretty easy edit to isolate only the sea zones for a tiny bit more texture, which will create a slightly darker value like we see in the other one, but scattered using that cloud effect. The hue on the blue is very close though, I handled that through an edit to the baseTiles color. Didn't do any base fancy for the blends this round, since I just wanted to match that blue or get a bit closer first, so when I insert the smaller lakes the colors there will be ok. Pretty close though. Let me know if that seems ok for now.
Looks like this at the moment... pretty subtle compared to the last iteration, but closer to what I had going for the Global, which used a bit more blue and bit less cyan.
Catch ya next round!
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sweet I should be able to upload it to git today
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@beelee Right on!
I wasn't sure on the export xml feature after using edit mode. I thought it might be a grab and go sort of deal like basically just keeping a backup and then renaming the file to match the game name. But I think there must be some sort of extra step either after saving out the file or lines maybe need the edit in the xml for it to launch properly after making draft type edit. Anyway, I'm not the xml wizard there, so it might be super obvious and just over my head, but at least the map Tiles I sorta know my ropes hehe.
Random other ideas...
VCs - I think somewhere between 30 and 36 Victory Cities would probably be optimal, starting with the 19 from Global so it's familiar, but then adding like a dozen or so more to get a spread. For these I would try to located them in contested spots of the map for the push/pull and to drive the play pattern in the active theaters. So for the campaigns in North Africa or the Central Pacific, to incorporate more VCs in the hotspots where memorable battles occurred, or for the 'reliving' WW2 fantasy, that those beats would be sorta baked in.
A name - Since more VCs would then be part of the theme, and Victory helped, maybe having Victory somewhere in the title would be fun? I was just imagine that the V for Victory shaped graphics I have chilling in random folders might get put to use.
NAP - I think a solution to the Japan/USSR front that uses a kind of hard limit on when they can engage each other directly is pretty good. Since the scenario uses the more Oztea style total war start there is no politics, but this might be introduced in a more limited way towards the end, to handle the whole Japan vs Soviets thing. Similarly the choice for handling Neutrals. Global has a zero sum approach, where the downside for the aggressor is to have the other Neutrals join the opposing team. I think a more simplistic attackable neutral, or no pass neutral, is easier to work with. For places like Brazil and Mexico/Central America etc or those spots which joined team Allies in 42/43 I think a simple walk-in situation to claim the empty neutral territory would work. There are almost no Pro-Axis TTs that would have joined the fray after the intended start date, so the pro-side mechanic of G40 is sorta overworked for this one. No real need to simulate the politicking that went down the way things were set up in the 1940 scenarios. Although it might be helpful for that to simply follow the 1940 rubric, to allow for 1940 scenario here at some point.
Tech Progression - using the Token system of v3, or a progressive tech development similar to NML but given a 1940s flare. I think this could come later on, but I like the idea of using the Token system as opposed to the all or nothing tech rolls where it's like sudden death, or tech just gets ignored etc. Which would be common I think for the more standard Global, like unless peeps are using HRs to spice it up, that many will end up no-tech cause it's so wild. Whereas a progressive tech scheme using the Tokens of v3 is a bit more predictable so I think it might be more popular provided it's more staged in, or where the return on the investment isn't quite as lopsided or random. More build as we go, rather than endgame hail mary shot, if that makes sense. Again we got quite a few graphics to use for that, so hopefully covers some options that would be familiar from the older boards.
Convoys- To add new Sea Zones by adding new line divisions, that is pretty straight forward, although it is possible this may not be needed provided the balance of forces and production gives a play pattern that feels ok for the start date. I think there are enough intermediate or transit sea zones where we could set up say a dozen or so convoy lanes (where income is attached to the sea zone similar to the implementation in A&A Europe/Pacific 2000, denying cash to the opponent basically) as opposed to the standard G40 convoys which require the player to count coastal production to calc. I think they're just easier to work with, especially for something at this scale.
Otherwise I think the basics are more or less in place, or at least once we get the Place sorted hehe. Good looking out dude! Catch ya in a few
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I'm at 12 zoom here. Can still make out the lines, although some fading. I still need to look up what i'm on for the 1440 1080 stuff. Forgot how to do it lol
I'll look it up
I'll start crunching through the xml and see if I can get it sorted. I'll wait and do git after it's dialed.
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@beelee said in Mega New Elk:
I'll start crunching through the xml and see if I can get it sorted. I'll wait and do git after it's dialed.
What's the problem with the xml?
Cheers...
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I think it was an error along the lines of "cannot find delegate" when attempting to launch.
Not for the xml you provided, but rather when using the "export xml" feature afterwards, like trying to save out a new xml from that, after adjusting starting units and such via Edit Mode. The one I attached the other day, couldn't get it fire back up. I figured it was probably something to do with the export xml feature when using the pre-release maybe, but then I'm sorta clueless. I didn't want to dive back in there, in case it somehow borked the game file that was working, cause the one you sent loaded up fine until I did the Export thing after Edit Mode hehe
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Ahh... An exported xml cannot be used as its structure is different. If you are exporting to change a 'starting' set up, you should copy the <unitInitialize> (and <ownerInitialize> if you changed territory ownership), and replace those sections in the original xml. Trying to reformat an exported can be very confusing and time consuming.
If you are still having problems post the XML and I'll see if I can help.
Cheers...
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