Tower and Walls
I've been messing with Seiges in custom and wall and towers in general, and i've noticed that once you get Cannon/Ballista towers, the towers stop firing arrows. Anyone figured out how to add extra weapons onto towers yet?
Also, anyone figured out how to revert towers back to their RTW functioning as i'm sure it's the tower activation requierment thats messing up Auto-Calced seiges, I think the auto-calc engine can't handle it and counts them as permanantly disabled.
Thanks.
Carl.
Re: Tower and Walls
I don't understand your question. Towers stop firing arrows when updated. Nothing wrong with that because they fire ballista bolts or cannon shots instead. However, there's this bug that mixes up the upgrades and makes ballista towers fire cannon shots and vice versa. That can be fixed.Originally Posted by Carl
What do you have in mind with extra weapons?
The second issue you mention is most probably hardcoded.
R'as
Singleplayer: Download beta_8
Multiplayer: Download beta_5.All.in.1
I'll build a mountain of corpses - Ogami Itto, Lone Wolf & Cub
Sometimes standing up for your friends means killing a whole lot of people - Sin City, by Frank Miller
Re: Tower and Walls
My first question was related to the fact that theirs no reason, (Historically speaking), for towers to stop shooting arrows just because they have Cannon/Ballistae in them. They would still have arrow slits. I was wondering how to set up towers so they'd fire the arrows AND the Ballistae/Cannonballs.
In addition for my V1.14 ProblemFixer I'm trying to make sieges a LOT more bloody so that in the late game in conjunction with other changes), it becomes much more difficult to simply blitz your way through as the sieges become so bloody, and eventually start to force you to bring artillery along if you want to have any chance of winning at all. That would slow a LOT of Blitz down massively. Right now, to achieve this with ballista cannon towers is requiring me to raise the fire rates to FAR too high a level, Arrows work fine, they probably look a Little fast on the bigger unit sizes but they work fine. I'm having similar issues with cannon towers except here it's a case of Cannons being too weak against siege equipment if I keep their fire rate and accuracy low enough that they don't annihilate units, plus with each shot being so destructive to infantry, blind luck plays a BIG part in just how well they do, sometimes they get lucky and hit the right combination of points and the damage routs several units which causes most of the army to then chain rout due to the cumulative penalties applied. Other times the balls have a bad day and half the army make it intact. Worse still, Damage rates that would massacre troops also tend to leave artillery in piece far too quickly. The arrows could easily cure both these as the Ballistae/cannon towers could become slow firing Siege equipment killers.
I think I've figured out the cure for the Ballistae/cannon towers bug during my experiments, but could someone outline it for me so i can check as I found nothing about it on the forums.
Mostly I'm after any information no matter how trivial on how towers/walls function. that why i put the thread here instead of in Modding questions, I was trying to get a discussion going on the mechanics of them.
Re: Tower and Walls
If I understand correctly, the various tower_level entries in the export_descr_buildings.txt file account for what ammo is fired by what given wall or tower upgrade building. You can see in descr_walls.txt the descriptions of all the various wall levels... most importantly, the different level definitions that tell you what each level does, and a stat line for each level that tells you what it will fire. I think in this case the order of those entries matters, and they seem to be referred to in the EDB by level numbers in sequential orders: arrows always are listed first, and represent tower_level 1. Then (in the fixed descr_walls.txt file anyway) comes the ballista shots, which are tower_level 2 (you can verify this by checking the corresponding buildings that grant the upgrades in the EDB - the city and castle versions both give tower_level 2). Then of course are the cannon shots, which are tower_level 3. From here, then, there are a couple of ways it might work:
1. You are allowed to define a building to have more than one tower_level entry associated with it. This would mean we could simply add tower_level 1 to the 4 tower entries in the EDB, and then they would fire arrows along with the upgrade weapons too. Probably best to list the new tower_level entry just after the old one, so you'll easily see if your upgraded towers fire arrows and nothing else (indicating the last entry encountered sets the level, and they wouldn't stack).
2. You are allowed to define a tower level to have more than one stat line, or possibly are allowed to define a tower weapon outside of the level structure, and instead where the general info like health usually go for a given wall set. In the first case we could simply copy all stats for arrows into all the 2nd and 3rd level wall file entries. In the latter case, we would move the level 1 weapon (arrows) entirely outside the level, and instead before the level structures, thus making the wall fire arrows (hopefully in addition to any lvl 2 or 3 upgrade) no matter what level its towers are. I wouldn't count on either of these to work, they seem very iffy conceptually - smart design could disallow both possibilities because they do not make sense or could cause functionality problems.
3. No changes can make a tower fire more than one weapon. This happens if the design rules do not allow either 1. or 2. as I'm reasonably certain I've covered all possibilities that would have a shot of working.
One may wonder why, if #1 was the case, that your desired behavior wouldn't be happening already: it would seem that if the wall grants level 1 and the upgrade grants level 2 or 3, then if they were going to stack, they would. This isn't necessarily the case though, as it's possible the game only allows tower levels to apply from 1 building, and so would just ignore the walls when the tower upgrades are built - thus adding "tower_level 1" to the appropriate tower buildings in the EDB would make them stack. If anything is going to work, I pretty much expect it to be this, as #2's ideas are a much longer shot IMO.
If anyone thinks of a possible configuration option I've neglected to mention, let it fly - I'm not too proud to admit that I could easily have overlooked something.
Re: Tower and Walls
I'll get back to this later but in the meantime here's the correct descr_walls.txt file:
Code:; ; Gates: model plus left and right gate models, offsets and sizes. ; Assumed the gates face outward along Z. ; NO double gates, please. ; Using none anywhere here means the items are simply ignored. ; ; Gate types: wooden; reinforced; iron. ; Short gate - wooden only ; Medium gate - all three ; Huge gate - all three ; ; Valid sounds are: none, knife, sword, spear, axe, mace, club, arrow_tower and ballista_tower ; gates { gate short_wooden { full_health 100 height 10.0 ; TODO - pursuit_lockout_radius 80.0 blocked_lockout_radius 70.0 } gate medium_wooden { full_health 100 height 10.0 ; TODO - pursuit_lockout_radius 80.0 blocked_lockout_radius 70.0 } gate huge_wooden { full_health 150 height 10.0 ; TODO - pursuit_lockout_radius 80.0 blocked_lockout_radius 70.0 } gate medium_reinforced { full_health 150 height 10.0 ; TODO - pursuit_lockout_radius 80.0 blocked_lockout_radius 70.0 } gate huge_reinforced { full_health 200 height 10.0 ; TODO - pursuit_lockout_radius 80.0 blocked_lockout_radius 70.0 } gate medium_iron { full_health 200 height 10.0 ; TODO - pursuit_lockout_radius 80.0 blocked_lockout_radius 70.0 } gate huge_iron { full_health 250 height 10.0 ; TODO - pursuit_lockout_radius 80.0 blocked_lockout_radius 70.0 } } ; SHORT WOODEN WALLS wall { level 0 siege_tower_size too_small wall { full_health 125 battle_stats flammability_medium impact_damage_high localised_name wall } gateway { full_health 10 battle_stats flammability_medium impact_damage_high localised_name gateway projectile_impacts_all_hit_gate short_wooden ; Just one type allowed! } tower { full_health 60 control_area_radius 30 manned 1 battle_stats flammability_medium impact_damage_high localised_name tower ; as in descr_unit.txt level { stat 12, 0, arrow, 100, 10, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, arrow_tower, 10, 1 stat_attr no shot_sfx TOWER_ARROW_FIRING fire_angle 90 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms fire_rate small 2000 1250 fire_rate normal 1500 1250 fire_rate large 1000 1250 fire_rate huge 750 1250 } } } ; TALL WOODEN WALLS wall { level 1 siege_tower_size small wall { full_health 250 battle_stats flammability_medium impact_damage_high localised_name wall } gateway { full_health 10 battle_stats flammability_medium impact_damage_high localised_name gateway projectile_impacts_all_hit_gate medium_wooden medium_reinforced medium_iron } tower { full_health 125 control_area_radius 30 manned 1 battle_stats flammability_medium impact_damage_high localised_name tower ; as in descr_unit.txt level { stat 12, 0, arrow, 120, 10, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, arrow_tower, 10, 1 stat_attr no shot_sfx TOWER_ARROW_FIRING fire_angle 90 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms fire_rate small 2000 1250 fire_rate normal 1500 1250 fire_rate large 1000 1250 fire_rate huge 750 1250 } } } ; SMALL STONE/TOWN WALLS wall { level 2 siege_tower_size medium wall { full_health 500 battle_stats flammability_none impact_damage_high localised_name wall } gateway { full_health 500 battle_stats flammability_none impact_damage_high localised_name gateway medium_wooden medium_reinforced medium_iron } tower { full_health 250 control_area_radius 30 manned 1 battle_stats flammability_none impact_damage_high localised_name tower ; as in descr_unit.txt level { stat 12, 0, arrow, 120, 10, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, arrow_tower, 10, 1 stat_attr no shot_sfx TOWER_ARROW_FIRING fire_angle 90 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms fire_rate small 2000 1250 fire_rate normal 1500 1250 fire_rate large 1000 1250 fire_rate huge 750 1250 } level { stat 40, 0, tower_ballista, 150, 10, siege_missile, artillery_mechanical, piercing, ballista_tower, 350, 1 stat_attr no shot_sfx TOWER_BALLISTA_FIRING fire_angle 45 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms fire_rate small 4500 6500 fire_rate normal 3000 5500 fire_rate large 2000 4500 fire_rate huge 1500 3000 } } } wall { level 3 siege_tower_size medium wall { full_health 1500 battle_stats flammability_none impact_damage_high localised_name wall } gateway { full_health 1500 battle_stats flammability_none impact_damage_high localised_name gateway medium_wooden medium_reinforced medium_iron } tower { full_health 750 control_area_radius 30 manned 1 battle_stats flammability_none impact_damage_high localised_name tower ; as in descr_unit.txt level { stat 12, 0, arrow, 120, 10, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, arrow_tower, 10, 1 stat_attr no shot_sfx TOWER_ARROW_FIRING fire_angle 90 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms fire_rate small 4000 1250 fire_rate normal 1500 1250 fire_rate large 1500 1250 fire_rate huge 1000 1250 } level { stat 40, 0, tower_ballista, 150, 10, siege_missile, artillery_mechanical, piercing, ballista_tower, 350, 1 stat_attr no shot_sfx TOWER_BALLISTA_FIRING fire_angle 45 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms fire_rate small 4500 6500 fire_rate normal 3000 5500 fire_rate large 2000 4500 fire_rate huge 1500 3000 } level { stat 40, 0, bombard_shot, 290, 10, siege_missile, artillery_gunpowder, piercing, cannon_tower, 80, 1 stat_attr no shot_sfx CANNON_FIRING fire_angle 45 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms fire_rate small 20000 16000 fire_rate normal 16000 16000 fire_rate large 14000 16000 fire_rate huge 12000 16000 } } } wall { level 4 siege_tower_size large wall { full_health 2000 battle_stats flammability_none impact_damage_high localised_name wall } gateway { full_health 2000 battle_stats flammability_none impact_damage_high localised_name gateway huge_wooden huge_reinforced huge_iron } tower { full_health 1000 control_area_radius 30 manned 1 battle_stats flammability_none impact_damage_high localised_name tower ; as in descr_unit.txt level { stat 12, 0, arrow, 120, 10, missile, missile_mechanical, piercing, arrow_tower, 10, 1 stat_attr no shot_sfx TOWER_ARROW_FIRING fire_angle 90 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms fire_rate small 4000 1250 fire_rate normal 1500 1250 fire_rate large 1500 1250 fire_rate huge 1000 1250 } level { stat 40, 0, tower_ballista, 150, 10, siege_missile, artillery_mechanical, piercing, ballista_tower, 350, 1 stat_attr no shot_sfx TOWER_BALLISTA_FIRING fire_angle 45 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms fire_rate small 4500 6500 fire_rate normal 3000 5500 fire_rate large 2000 4500 fire_rate huge 1500 3000 } level { stat 40, 0, bombard_shot, 290, 10, siege_missile, artillery_gunpowder, piercing, cannon_tower, 80, 1 stat_attr no shot_sfx CANNON_FIRING fire_angle 45 ; unit size reload_ms flaming_reload_ms fire_rate small 20000 16000 fire_rate normal 16000 16000 fire_rate large 14000 16000 fire_rate huge 12000 16000 } } }
Singleplayer: Download beta_8
Multiplayer: Download beta_5.All.in.1
I'll build a mountain of corpses - Ogami Itto, Lone Wolf & Cub
Sometimes standing up for your friends means killing a whole lot of people - Sin City, by Frank Miller
Re: Tower and Walls
Looks like I did figure out the fix for towers on my own. You just add the arrow level to the last wall level, correct?
@Foz: Forgive me if I repeat anything you've just said in your post, my brain is a bit foggy ATM.
If I'm understanding you and how I think this game works Tower engine functionality is either:
A) Hardcoded bar the existing entries in the Descr_Walls file, although the tower bug fix things make it clear that we can add already existing towers to walls earlier if we wish.
B) it's not hardcoded but is spread around. based on my limited knowledge of how M2TW seems to work and how DoW works in regards to this the game probably uses the entries in the Decr_Projectile file and the calculations in whatever Ballistic model is used in the game to determine arrow appearance, firing angles, Arrow drop, e.t.c. however their is probably something either in the Tower Model file, Tower Animation File, or another separate Tower related file that tells the tower exactly where the projectiles issue from. This may or may not, (depending on how it's coded and how error prone the hardcode is), allow you to have more than one set of points defined (i.e. you may be able to define 2 or more sets of points with each needing a separate entry in the appropriate level section of the appropriate tower type). In addition if the Hardcode is lax enough we might even be able to define more than one weapon as using 1 set of firing points, (this is something DoW will let you do, but it's much laxer about animations, you can have invisible weapons with invisible projectiles killing models if you want).
It's this last possibility that I'm hoping to use, I was hoping that someone might have found some more wall/tower related entries outside the Export_Decr_buildings file, and Descr_Wall file, or know somthing that would not only tell me if it was possibbile, but prefrebbly how to do it.
Does any of that make sense and have I just repeated you their or am i on a completely different track altogether.
Re: Tower and Walls
BBBBB!!!!!!!!!!@1!1!!11one!!1one1111!!!!
I think it's B.
Granted the models and therefore sizes of all available towers are predefined, but I think their functionality is entirely up to the moddable files we've been discussing. That we can correct the use of improper ammo at all says the game looks at the files and reads what's in them, so at least that much is clearly not in hardcode, which means the whole file probably matters and thus all is moddable.
The stat lines in each level{} are same in form to the ones in the EDU, which means they should invoke the projectiles file as you suggested for the animations and projectile stats.
As for the points from whence the projectiles issue, a few weeks ago I stumbled into what probably amounts to the same thing, in a file outlining how siege towers among other things operate. They've got bunches of arrow weapon point definitions in them, with coordinates relative to the siege tower model telling the game where they are located, what angles they can fire on, and with what stats. It's unclear why the code written there doesn't work then (the towers don't shoot arrows like it seems clearly they are intended to) - maybe as you suggested that functionality was moved to models or some other such place that we do not see/cannot get at. In any case there is something somewhere that tells the game where the shots come from.
To clarify the involvement of the EDB, I think its tower_level lines serve to directly reference the level{} entries of the walls file. So "tower_level n" would point the game at the descr_wall file->the currently built settlement wall->its nth level{}. I'm just unclear whether more than one level is allowed to be "on" at a time. There shouldn't be an animation problem as the wall itself is not directly involved: the specs just define a weapon firing point, which from then on I'd imagine is automated, and the game probably doesn't check for origin point overlap. Also any unit you like can fire any projectile from the projectiles file, meaning they're not tied to walls or units at all, and are handled separately. Thus the only thing that probably would be a concern is if two projectiles spawned at the exact same time on top of each other - I have no idea what the engine does in that case.
Your explanation of firing points and their associated weapons is very good, and it seems you correctly understood the various ways I suggested we might be able to use that information to fire 2+ kinds of ammo at the same time.
I'm actually kinda getting into this now, and think I have very good handle on what to actually do to the files to try all these things out. I'll see if I can engineer an appropriate siege later on and roll through as many ideas as I can stomach.
Re: Tower and Walls
Thanks Foz, I'll be intrested in your results, I've been doing a lot of messing myself with limited results. On thing thats doesn't work is copying the Arrow Tower entry (minus the level line), in after/before the Ballista/Cannon lines, but without knowing how the file is formated i'm not sure i'm entering it right their.
Re: Tower and Walls
Things I've tried:
EDB
- Putting two tower_level lines in the same capability section of the towers in the EDB. One was always ignored (i.e. the towers continued to only shoot one kind of ammo).
- Putting two different level numbers on the same line in the capability sections of towers in the EDB. Like "tower_level 1, 3" which CTD'd the game at startup due to parsing error. Multiple other ways also didn't work: the game simply won't take multiple numbers for a tower_level line.
- Putting two different capability sections for each tower in the EDB, using each as home to one of the 2 needed tower_level lines. This again caused the file not to parse correctly. Apparently... there can be only one.
descr_walls.txt
- Putting two stat blocks in each level{}. The game loaded and worked, but towers only fired one kind of projectile.
- Putting a cannon stat block just before the level{} entries in each wall level. Again it loaded fine, but failed to fire any cannonballs, just the usual ballista shots.
Running out of options here...
It's really beginning to look like it just won't accept the attempts to have more than one type of shot firing at the same time from towers. I would guess that either the devs didn't anticipate ever doing this so only 1 is ever looked for, or that it's an intentional design limitation to prevent any possible problems.
I did find out some good information about how things work though. I was testing in a Citadel where I had built ballista towers... then switched over to controlling Spain to go crush the place (Toulouse). First thing I noticed is that it's the tower_level line in the EDB that determines what sort of slits you get in the tower wall for shots to issue from - 1 links to the arrow ones, 2 to ballista, 3 to cannon. If we can mod that relationship at all, then I haven't seen where it is that the slit models are linked to the tower levels in the files. It also looks like those entries do point to the corresponding level{} in the walls file, and so tell the tower which ammo to select.
As expected, the tower slits have no connection to the ammo fired, which is in fact determined by those stat blocks in each level{} of the walls file.
The strangest thing was that it seemed the tower_level entries in the EDB were referring to the wrong wall levels in the wall file - specifically, I was doing a lot of changes to level 4 which should be the highest one, and used for citadels and huge cities. However, even though I set my towers to all give tower_level 3 in the EDB, and removed the cannon stat block from the level 4 wall->3rd level tower, the towers of the settlement continued to open up with cannon fire. It wasn't until I removed the other cannon entry, the one for the level 3 walls, that the settlement stopped firing. I checked several times to make sure I correctly noted the settlement's walls that were built and the other specifics - it was a Citadel, w/ a Ballista Tower that I modded to grant tower_level 3, yet none of the wall level 4 changes affected it ever. Strange happenings.
Could be that 1 is subtracted from the number before it is referenced by the game - there is much disparity in how the game numbers things. Several systems begin at 0, others at 1, so it could easily have happened that the coder thought he had to convert it, when really he didn't. Anyway it's possible some other weirdness is the source, just wanted to mention that something a bit funky is definitely going on with the way the game uses the file.
Re: Tower and Walls
I noticed while playing the game that towers only fire 1 type of ammo and fire very slowly. MY fix >>>> go into walls.txt and where it says MANNED: 1
change this to 2, 3, 4 , 5 for the levels.
2 will allow 2 arrows to fire, 3 will fire 1 ballista, 2 arrows, ect
so the last will usaly fire 1 cannon shot, 2 ballista, and 3 arrows.
you can also change the reload times which could allow fast arrow firing
Re: Tower and Walls
Hey, nice info, i'll try to check it out later, but thanks for that info.
Re: Tower and Walls
Nice! We've all been wondering what the heck that setting was for, lol. For the sake of completeness can you actually list each value and what the towers fire when that value is set? It'd be helpful to have an easy reference chart
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