[freeciv-data] Re: Suggestions -- useful things for modpacks.

[Jeff Mallatt <jjm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2000/06/04 04:14 , Bobby D. Bryant wrote:
>
>Here are a few more things that would be useful to me and presumably to
>other modpack designers, if anyone is interested in implementing them:
>
>1) A customizable calendar.  It would be nice to be able to specify
>totally arbitrary starting and ending dates, and also to be able to
>customize the size of the year increments over various arbitrary
>periods.
>
> o The arbitrary start/end dates would be useful for things like the
>Middle Earth modpack (in progress), which would presumably start during
>the First or Second Age, and thus need dates completely different from
>those used by the standard game.
>
> o The ability to scale the clock ticks would be useful for my Ancients
>modpack.  Since it is strictly pre-gunpowder, it would be nice to end it
>around 1500 or so.  However, since the clock ticks are large during the
>older dates, ending around 1500 would reduce the number of possible
>turns in a game by more than half.  It would be nice if I could have
>(e.g.) flat n-year increments from 4000 BCE to 1500 CE, with n
>calculated to give the same number of turns as the overall game.
>(However, a more flexible system would be desirable, since hopefully
>other modpacks will appear when the idea catches on, and they will have
>yet different calendar needs.)

I'm actually working on this.  It should be quite general when I'm done.
(I just don't know when I'll get the time to finish it.  Maybe I'll try to
make time for it this week... ;-)

>2) It would be nice to have an "overview" page available from the help
>menu, which could be customized for use with a given modpack to tell
>what the game is all about and what to watch out for.
>
>
>3) It would be nice to have a field for governments that specifies a
>technology that expires them.  For instance, the Ancients modpack has a
>"Dark Age" technology that makes legions, triremes, etc., obsolete, but
>unfortunately it still lets you keep the efficient government for
>running a large empire.  It would be nice to be able to obsolete that as
>well.
>
>
>4) It would be nice to have non-researchable / non-transferable
>technologies.
>
> o For instance, the most elegant way to do a Middle Earth modpack would
>be to grant the Elven nations a technology called "Elven Lore" in their
>entries in nations.ruleset, and have a flag on the technology that keeps
>anyone else from researching it.  (Actually, the latter part would work
>with the existing "never" flag, but we still need a way to grant the
>tech to specific nations at the start of the game.)
>
> o Related to this, we would also need a new flag to mark specific
>technologies as non-transferable (neither by trade, capture, theft, or
>whatever).  That way the Elves could have a tech tree that is at least
>partially independent from the Dwarves, Humans, and Monsters, and the
>latter three classes would never be able to acquire the technologies
>that let them build Elven Archers, Swan Boats, etc.  The Elves would be
>able to research the necessary techs, because Elven Lore would be one of
>the prereqs, and only Elvish nations would have that particular prereq.

All these sound like good ideas.  Anyone interested in coding them?

jjm