I Despise Empire Environment » Forum Post by Valentine82

Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

+441

What you want to do is take a look at TerrainTypes.xml. In the top terrain you'll find

<TerrainType InternalName="Land">
    <DisplayName>Plains</DisplayName>
    <MaxHeight>50</MaxHeight>
    <MinHeight>50</MinHeight>
    <MovementCost>8</MovementCost>
    <TerrainMovementNote>1x Movement</TerrainMovementNote>
    <Category>Land</Category>
    <IsTerrainFeature>0</IsTerrainFeature>
    <IsBaseTerrain>1</IsBaseTerrain>
    <PassableByLandUnits>1</PassableByLandUnits>
    <PassableByWaterUnits>0</PassableByWaterUnits>
    <PassableByAirUnits>1</PassableByAirUnits>
    <SuitableForStartingLocation>1</SuitableForStartingLocation>
    <Indestructable>0</Indestructable>
    <MinTilesPerSplat>0</MinTilesPerSplat>
    <MaxTilesPerSplat>0</MaxTilesPerSplat>
    <MinBrushRadius>3</MinBrushRadius>
    <MaxBrushRadius>6</MaxBrushRadius>
    <PlacementOrder>0</PlacementOrder>
    <SupportsSubTerrain>false</SupportsSubTerrain>
    <IsBorderTerrain>0</IsBorderTerrain>
    <CannotBorder>Category:Water</CannotBorder>
    <MapGenPlaceChance>100</MapGenPlaceChance>
    <GameModifier InternalName="CityTileYield_Fertile">
      <ModType>Resource</ModType>
      <Attribute>TileYieldGrain</Attribute>
      <Value>1.5</Value>
      <PerTurn>1</PerTurn>
    </GameModifier>
    <TerrainTypeEnvData>
      <Environment>Barren</Environment>
      <Texture>gfx/terrain/barren_ground_rough.dds</Texture>
      <TextureWeight>1.0000</TextureWeight>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Berren_Land_01,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Berren_Land_02,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Berren_Land_03,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Berren_Land_04,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Berren_Land_05,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Berren_Land_06,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Berren_Land_07,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Berren_Land_08,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TacticalMap>T_Barren_Land_01</TacticalMap>
      <TacticalMap>T_Barren_Land_02</TacticalMap>
      <DistanceFogColor>94,89,76</DistanceFogColor>
      <ClothMapColor>205,185,130</ClothMapColor>
    </TerrainTypeEnvData>
    <TerrainTypeEnvData>
      <Environment>Dead</Environment>
      <GrantsTileYields>1</GrantsTileYields>
      <Texture>gfx/terrain/fallen_ground.dds</Texture>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Fallen_Land_01,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Fallen_Land_02,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Fallen_Land_03,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Fallen_Land_04,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Fallen_Land_05,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Fallen_Land_06,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Fallen_Land_07,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TextureWeight>1.0000</TextureWeight>
      <TacticalMap>T_Fallen_Land_01</TacticalMap>
      <TacticalMap>T_Fallen_Land_02</TacticalMap>
      <TacticalMap>T_Fallen_Land_03</TacticalMap>
      <DistanceFogColor>83,65,88</DistanceFogColor>
      <ClothMapColor>165,180,190</ClothMapColor>
    </TerrainTypeEnvData>
    <TerrainTypeEnvData>
      <Environment>Grassland</Environment>
      <GrantsTileYields>1</GrantsTileYields>
      <Texture>gfx/terrain/light_grass.dds</Texture>
      <TextureWeight>1.0000</TextureWeight>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Grassland_01,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Grassland_02,50</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Grassland_03,30</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Grassland_04,100</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Grassland_05,90</TerrainPropData>
      <TerrainPropData>P_Grassland_06,20</TerrainPropData>
      <TacticalMap>T_Grassland_Land_01</TacticalMap>
      <TacticalMap>T_Grassland_Land_02</TacticalMap>
      <DistanceFogColor>200,220,228</DistanceFogColor>
      <ClothMapColor>180,185,120</ClothMapColor>
    </TerrainTypeEnvData>
</TerrainType>

I bolded some stuff there, those correspond to the various environments a "Land" terrain tile can have (barren = brown, dead = empire, grassland = kingdom). In particular interest to you is the <Texture>gfx/terrain/fallen_ground.dds</Texture> tag, which you'll want to change for something that looks like a desert.

Replace that for all the different terraintypes inside the <TerrainTypeEnvData> where <Environment>Dead</Environment>.

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Wait I don't want to change the Environment for EVERY empire or kingdom, I'd like to add some diversity to them, like make Kraxis a Desert empire that gets standard "dead" environment bonuses in Desert instead of "dead" environment.

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Why does Stardock require us to discipher a walls code to change simple environment aesthetics for our kingdoms or empires anyway?

Why Stardock Why?

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Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

+441

Quoting Valentine82,

reply 2

Wait I don't want to change the Environment for EVERY empire or kingdom, I'd like to add some diversity to them, like make Kraxis a Desert empire that gets standard "dead" environment bonuses in Desert instead of "dead" environment.

Not possible, the total amount of environments is 3 and it is hardcoded.

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The first thing you need to do is in your mind, or in terraintypes.xml rename fertile land to "fertile" or else it will be labeled the same as default land (Plains). There are two layers to terrain the underlying land and the overlaying environment.

3 base lands

Fertile (I renamed this you can see in terraintypes.xml Fertile_Land is named "Plains" which is very confusing

Plains

Rugged

3 environments

Fallen (what your refering to as empire or dead)

Grassland

Barren

So you have the following combinations

Fertile, Fallen (yields GEM)

Fertile, Grassland (yields GEM)

Fertile, Barren

Plains, Fallen

Plains, Grassland

Plains, Barren

Rugged, Barren

Rugged, Grassland

Rugged, Fallen

It is very confusing since the revive land used to work differently in the original this is a game idea that shifted around from recovering "fallen" terrain so you could make a new city, hence why its was refered to as dead. 100 iterations later and the names don't make any sense. Since both grassland and fallen produce GEM on fertile land there really isn't a problem. You could make a map and put down fallen and grassland environments set player number based starting positions and kingdom could start in a fertile/grassland and empire could start in a fertile/fallen.

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Quoting Heavenfall,

reply 5

Quoting Valentine82, reply 2Wait I don't want to change the Environment for EVERY empire or kingdom, I'd like to add some diversity to them, like make Kraxis a Desert empire that gets standard "dead" environment bonuses in Desert instead of "dead" environment.

Not possible, the total amount of environments is 3 and it is hardcoded.

Since when? This hasn't always been the case.

Why would Stardock do something so stupid and limiting?

Back when Elemental came out as a horrible buggy mess that in no way lived up to what Stardock had promised, even though the game itself generally sucked and was completely boring to play there were mods to add flavor to the kingdoms.

I played a game where Wraiths were an Arctic Empire, Kraxis was a Desert Empire, One of the Empires had the default land and had an undead theme, and I had an Empire of Druids dedicated to restoring the land.

The factions were all boring by default so I had to come up with ways to make them interesting. One of the reasons I stopped modding was because Stardock kept completely overhauling the game and breaking mods, I had hoped they'd incorporate what was in some of the mods but it seems they've just pigeonholed modders around a boring game.

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You cannot add new terraintypes through the xml. If you do add a new terraintype it is just ignored and the environments are hardcoded.

A way to work around this problem would be to create a new terraintype and add the GEM yields in TerrainTypes.xml but that doesn't work. You could add them to the default types and have the whole world awash in GEM, was that what you did in EWOM?

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Let me qualify that it ignores it more specifically it is not on any of the stamps and doesn't show up in cartographer, it might be possible to manually do it but it would be a massive amount of work and I don't even know if that would work.

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Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

+441

E:wom had more types, it was still hardcoded there. Believe me, I'm the one that did the mods that changed that stuff around. Had a faction with arctic, one with desert and so on.

Why did Stardock choose to limit us to 3 for FE? My guess is it happened either 1) by accident or 2) "memory".

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Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

+441

Environments that would be awesome to have in the game with mods:

Arctic, no brainer for my Frost Giants really.

Desert, obviously, just straight up cool.

Burning lands / Volcanic lands, for Living Stone and maybe a Demon faction as well.

Swamp environment, for the Greenskin or Lizardmen.

Forest environment, for the forest-loving Elves of course

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Oh dear god I'm done with this game I wish I could just get my money back and uninstall for good.

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Quoting Heavenfall,

reply 11

Environments that would be awesome to have in the game with mods:

Arctic, no brainer for my Frost Giants really.

Desert, obviously, just straight up cool.

Burning lands / Volcanic lands, for Living Stone and maybe a Demon faction as well.

Swamp environment, for the Greenskin or Lizardmen.

Forest environment, for the forest-loving Elves of course

Everything you just said is absolutely true and obvious and I'm deeply disappointed that Stardock not only hasn't learned from the modders who have put so much effort into polishing this turd but have actually seemingly gone out of their way to shit on modders work. I'll never buy another stardock game.

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parrottmath

Join Date 03/2008

+206

So the coreenvironment.xml file doesn't do anything besides show the names of artic desert swamp environments. All the environment stuff is commented out and uncommenting doesn't change anything on the map editor, besides have their names show up. I find it rather curious that they limit us to these 3, but yet I can have these environment names show up in the editor (nothing happens when you try to place it on the map).

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So this is obviously really important to you, because I just read all your posts and they are all variations on the same theme - why can't I change the environment my faction lives in, the factions (graphics I assume because you never comment on the actual gameplay differences) are not different enough.

I suggest you actually play a whole game, I think you'll find there is a lot more to the game besides the simple environment differences, or lack thereof. Just my suggestion.

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I just wanted this game not to be so fking boring and bland, I've played the whole game and it sucks, the magic in this game sucks, the factions are all two flavors of vanilla crap, and this is something they could have done easily from the mechanics in the game to give the factions some identifiable differences on the map.

The whole game sucks, it's bland it's boring and it's not immersive at all, it has all the mechanics to be a good game and that makes it even worse because in every way it's falling short of it's potential. Modders kept trying to realize that potential and Stardock kept breaking their mods. Modders are the only hope this game had and I can't even find a clear database of mods much less mods that work. Stardock really blew it here as far as I'm concerned.

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scifi1950

Join Date 02/2005

+119

I am sorry that you don't find the game enjoyable (I am among those who really like it), but in the hope that one of the Mods has what you feel is missing, here is Frogboy's Post on the Modding Library which includes a link.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/435776

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Well, good luck and goodbye, have fun with another game and forum.

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Stardock hasn't broken our mods. Unless you are talking about the improvements they are making in their own patches. I don't know, for me with stormworld mod or master's affliction I am loving the differences in the factions/heroes/units. Even vanilla, the factions play quite differently. :shrug: To each his own, I hope you find a game you like.

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Maybe trying to use WoM mods on FE? I'm at a loss.

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Valentine82's posts are bland and boring.

+1

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Some great info here, thanks all!

Within this limitation of three: i've a mind to set all players to Fertile, Grassland. Then borrow some brilliance from FfH2, and use Fallen terrain to illustrate a spread of corruption. 'Evil' players of Empire _and_ Kingdom can tech towards fostering its spread. 'Good' players have options to reduce. 'Neutral' players are less affected by Good and Evil tagged tiles. Something along those lines. With alignment being somewhat flexible based on actions and decisions.

Had been thinking the terrain types might be unlimited. Had wanted to make all players FertGrass and provide tech choices for terraforming spells to form the land towards these players strengths.. if so they choose that route. With some nations favoring and doing better or worse in some environments than others. i seek for land to change due to decisions and consequences of events, quests, wildlands, research, more.

i wonder if SD will be unlocking more option as coding gets tweaked and cleaned.

i know this is OT.. but i really favor 2D sprites with massive content over 3D figits with limited content and scope.

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Polistes

Join Date 02/2008

+19

So judging from this thread it would be impossible to change terrain types to arctic due to the hard coding?

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Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

+441

It would be impossiböe to make a faction spread arctic environment, yes

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I stumbled across this myself while attempting to make the environments as they were back in WoM on my own. Spreading desert or snowy tundra across the world while you conquer it had such a fresh, unique feel to it compared to the others. I was fairly shocked when I found it wasn't going to work. Most of the features and gameplay mechanices from WoM which were removed mostly needed more polishing or weren't too highly regarded in the first place. But I figured keeping all the environments was a no-brainer, or better yet seeing how far FE has come, the possibility of even more of faction environments this time around.

Still I have high hopes they'll improve on this down the line, or at the very least address why they were removed in the first place. Regardless, with all the memory-management improvements in each update, if memory issues are the reason for this, I'd hope this at least gets seriously reconsidered. It's one of those things you didn't appreciate exactly how much depth having a few more diverse faction environments added to the game.

Quoting Heavenfall,

reply 11

Environments that would be awesome to have in the game with mods:

Arctic, no brainer for my Frost Giants really.

Desert, obviously, just straight up cool.

Burning lands / Volcanic lands, for Living Stone and maybe a Demon faction as well.

Swamp environment, for the Greenskin or Lizardmen.

Forest environment, for the forest-loving Elves of course

Great ideas. Considering the assets already used in the game, all of the above biomes shouldn't involve much graphical work; mainly just the programming to do. I could even see a few other biomes that could easily use existing assets, like making a biome consistent with bhinadmi fissures, for rock-type races, lightning elementals etc.

Please, Stardock?

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Quoting Victor5,

reply 25

I stumbled across this myself while attempting to make the environments as they were back in WoM on my own. Spreading desert or snowy tundra across the world while you conquer it had such a fresh, unique feel to it compared to the others. I was fairly shocked when I found it wasn't going to work. Most of the features and gameplay mechanices from WoM which were removed mostly needed more polishing or weren't too highly regarded in the first place. But I figured keeping all the environments was a no-brainer, or better yet seeing how far FE has come, the possibility of even more of faction environments this time around.

Still I have high hopes they'll improve on this down the line, or at the very least address why they were removed in the first place. Regardless, with all the memory-management improvements in each update, if memory issues are the reason for this, I'd hope this at least gets seriously reconsidered. It's one of those things you didn't appreciate exactly how much depth having a few more diverse faction environments added to the game.

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 11Environments that would be awesome to have in the game with mods:

Arctic, no brainer for my Frost Giants really.

Desert, obviously, just straight up cool.

Burning lands / Volcanic lands, for Living Stone and maybe a Demon faction as well.

Swamp environment, for the Greenskin or Lizardmen.

Forest environment, for the forest-loving Elves of course

Great ideas. Considering the assets already used in the game, all of the above biomes shouldn't involve much graphical work; mainly just the programming to do. I could even see a few other biomes that could easily use existing assets, like making a biome consistent with bhinadmi fissures, for rock-type races, lightning elementals etc.

Please, Stardock?

Thank you, the ravenous fanboys who refuse to acknowledge any flaws with this game get rather defensive when you point out an arbitrary restriction on an element that could improve the distinctions between factions.

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