Question on Shards

I'm sifting through all the tags regarding elemental shards before I work on that part of my mod, and I have some questions for anyone that's able to answer them:

<Type>WaterShard</Type> - This appears in the xml, and I can't determine where "types" are determined, so that I can add additional shard elements.

<PreferredTerrain> - Does this mean there is a greater chance of the shard spawning on that type of terrain?

<HarvestType>ShardHarvest</HarvestType> - What does this do and where is it located?

<WaterManaValue> - Going through, it looks like there was a previous thought on seperating out mana. Does this tag even affect the shard? If so, what is the effect for the game?

<Medallions InternalName=""> <All></All> </Medallions> -These are arranged like this in the code, and I'm not sure what it is. I'm going out on a limb and assuming it's the icon for the top of the screen where it shows how many of a shard you posess? Forgive me - I'm at work so I have the XML files on my thumb drive, but no actual copy of Elemental with the full graphic files to sift through.

<EnvironmentType> <EnvironmentSpreadIntensity> <EnvironmentSpreadRadius> - I've not seen shards affecting the environment, but then again I play in cloth mode after my empire becomes so large. How do each of these affect things?

<Rarity> - I see 0.5 as the value here a lot. Has anyone worked with increasing or decreasing values to see how the seed works?

I know I have a lot of questions, but if someone else has answers then it will save me a lot of work in what little time off I have to work on my project.

Edit: Going through some of the related files I've come to the conclusion that "Type" is actually specifically pulled from within <ResourceShardType>/<ResourceType> and so when looking at the improvements, I see <SupportedResourceType>. So I assume you name the type in the resource XML, and then the SupportedResourceType is for assigning what resource an improvement is built upon. So I'm still answering my own questions, but I still would be most grateful to anyone who could help.

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mqpiffle

Join Date 10/2010

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Yeah, the shard XML is a bit confusing, since it is broken out among a least two xml files. Really they are both simply resource files, the shards.xml file just defines each elements appearence (ie I believe there are 5 different water shard models, a few earth, a few fire, etc), the text on the little cards that pop up when you click on them, etc. I'm not sure that some of the tags you mentioned actually affect any other XML, though they may be hooked up to the other code.

The CoreResources.xml file defines the what the resource node actually produces - the icons in the UI. I know through my own tests you can't just create a new shard and it will pop up in the UI, although it will show in the city screen so you'll know it's there and it can be used a lot like a shard. It's best to just create a resource that doesn't accumulate and call it good, if that's what you're trying to do.

Hope this is helpful, sorry I can't be more specific.

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