Hello everyone! If you've been browsing our forums recently, you might have seen this topic at Ares forum, which was recently started by AlexB, who is maintaining Ares for the last... God knows how many years. Anyway, he has recovered his motivation to add some interesting features for Ares, such as allowing you to choose how many of which buildings AI will build, customizable fall rates, customizable build times, etc. But his motivation willl vanish again if no one provides feedback. Here's the long essay that he has written about it:
So, what are you waiting for? If you have a Yuri's Revenge mod that makes use of Ares, give it a try and post your feedback at Ares forum. Do it for Yuri. Yuri is life. Yuri is master. My life for Yuri.
| AlexB wrote: |
| Long time no updates.... After 0.C's release, I went on to work on its successor, which was scheduled in three months from then. I didn't hear back much from the community until late 2016 or so, though, so I lost interest to publicly work on Ares further. If there's community interest (and not just interest to get something from me), this shall be a double-release. First, there will be the features I already completed, preferrably released around June (that is a full year after the last one). This is for keeping up with the current state of Ares compared to the last released version. An intermezzo to catch up. The other one will be three months later, in September. I'll stick to my plan this time, that is, there will be a fixed date, and what's done until then is done, and what's not done won't be released. So, here are some new features. There are more finished ones, but that would be a bit too much to include them all in one unstable build, so this isn't all there is. As always, some work went into updating the inner workings of Ares, but as adding more and more features means more things need to be checked and more time has to be spent doing that, is there anything to say about performance? How is the startup and game speed compared to Ares 0.C? Fixes and Minor Additions
Potentially Breaking Changes to ArmorTypes The ArmorTypes feature has some issues, which stem from the the order of initializing new types with a default value and reading the corresponding tag from the INI. This is a bit abstract and hard to describe. Setting all the defaults always took place before the values were read, thus, one default value could only ever be another ArmorType's default value. If a type at the beginning of the list defaulted to a type after it, then the default value was still uninitialized but was used anyhow. Now the order has been changed, thus the parsed values now could be different, but I can't tell you what to watch out for without writing a novel. There was also an inconsistency with parsing verses data. If using non-percentage values (like 0.01), the special flags could be cleared for small values, but they wouldn't be set again once a higher value was parsed. Now, the verses and flags are always updated to reflect the state represented by the value of the parsed tag. This is a breaking change, which affects non-percentage verses values. Commonly, percentages like 30% are used, so the impact should be limited. Ares no longer tries to parse ArmorTypes if a tag is not defined. This is another breaking change: Previously, parsing non-existing tags in game mode and map files reset verses to 0%. Thus, newly defined warheads in maps would use the wrong values as default. Now, ArmorTypes that aren't defined aren't reset. Let the AI build more than one building of each type This should help to get rid of War Factory clones with all their shortcomings and ugly workarounds. Additional buildings are not build one after another as a block right after the original building, but instead mix randomly with the structures planned to be built later in the build list. [BuildingType]AIBuildCounts= (list of integers, defaults to 1,1,1) The number of buildings the AI will build of this type depending on the difficulty. Order is hard to easy. Each value must be equal to or greater than 1. [BuildingType]AIExtraCounts= (list of integers, defaults to 0,0,0) The maximum number of extra buildings the AI can build of this type depending on the difficulty. Order is hard to easy. A random number of buildings will be build in addition to the ones from the normal build count. Each value must be equal to or greater than 0. A way to combine Abduction weapons with Temporal warheads [Weapon]Abductor.Temporal= (boolean, defaults to no) Instead of abducting target units right away, abduct them only after they have been temporally erased. When the target unit would warp away, it will be placed inside the abductor unit as passenger, given it suffices all other abductor checks like having enough free space. If abduction fails, the target is erased normally. Optionally Consider Health for Temporal Weapons [Warhead]Temporal.HealthFactor= (multiplier, defaults to 0.0) How much the health is factored in when calculating the remaining warp value of the target. Valid range is 0.0 to 1.0 inclusive. 0.0 means health plays no role. 1.0 means the remaining warp is reduced proportionally to the target's health, down to 0. Another way to look at it is that the remaining warp value is linearly decreased from full for completely healthy targets down by this value for a target that has no health left. Turn off the Iron Curtain nullify flash per warhead [Warhead]IronCurtain.Flash= (boolean, defaults to [AudioVisual]IronCurtainFlash=) Whether units and structures will flash black or blue if hit with this warhead while under the effect of an Iron Curtain or Force Shield respectively. [AudioVisual]IronCurtainFlash= (boolean, defaults to true) Whether units and structures will by default flash black or blue if hit with this warhead while under the effect of an Iron Curtain or Force Shield respectively. Customizable Fall Rates [TechnoType]FallRate.Parachute= (integer, defaults to 1) The acceleration towards the ground applied each frame a parachuted unit is falling. [TechnoType]FallRate.NoParachute= (integer, defaults to 1) The acceleration towards the ground applied each frame a unit without parachute is falling. [TechnoType]FallRate.ParachuteMax= (integer, defaults to [General]ParachuteMaxFallRate) The maximum speed a parachuted unit is falling with. Value has to be negative. [TechnoType]FallRate.NoParachuteMax= (integer, defaults to [General]NoParachuteMaxFallRate) The maximum speed a unit without parachute is falling with. Value has to be negative. Attached Effects no longer count as parachute and thus won't reduce the fall rate. Customizable BuildupTime [BuildingType]BuildupTime= (double - minutes, defaults to [General]BuildupTime) The time the buildup animation runs regardless of the number of frames. Disable drivers entering units by owner country [Country]CanBeDriven= (boolean, defaults to MultiplayPassive) Whether units owned by this county can be captured by CanDrive=yes infantry. |
So, what are you waiting for? If you have a Yuri's Revenge mod that makes use of Ares, give it a try and post your feedback at Ares forum. Do it for Yuri. Yuri is life. Yuri is master. My life for Yuri.