0.6.0 release

[elmokki]

It should be soon I suppose!

We should probably write a rough changelog (I can do it for the part that's obvious from commit messages) and I think the thread original posts deserve an update as well. As for the release I think the best option is that I'll compile it and upload to where the older versions are.

[Ealb]

I'll aim to get to a stopping point (hopefully the completion of the milestones I set) by the end of the weekend. (I mean, hopefully I'll get there sooner, but the last two weeks I've not exactly been making fast progress.)

[Ealb]

I think I'm going to set my stopping point as finishing defining bonus abilities for the big hoburg constructs, and defining bronze clockworks for the quasi-Arco/Mictlan regional themes. That'll give all the regional themes some visible definition, as well as completing a basic version of the size-3 units; this will minimally satisfy my remaining two content milestones. If these two tasks and testing go quickly tomorrow, I may mess around with specific hoburg regional itemization for the less-developed non-oriental themes as I'd like to, but if not that can wait 'til a post-0.6.0 patch.

[elmokki]

Here's a quick changelog. Tell me if something major enough is missing.

Code

• A pile of seed-affecting options are now available. They give an options 0"seed" that can copied easily to sync options with other people.
• Mage and priest special ability generation rewritten. The distribution of stuff is different now.
• Theme system: Races get random themes and you might end up with something like oriental advanced hoburgs or primitive slaver lizards. For most races there are just few themes with moderate to little effect. However, see content part.
• Preview drawing is back (but does have some limitations like now showing #copystatted special monsters, so do note that)
• Troop generation overhaul
• Troop themes: Similar to old rare troop templates but able to affect unit generation instead of being given to units afterwards. These allow stuff like militia, minor elites etc and are far more common than the old troop templates. Every nation should get at least one.
• Support for mage/sacred/etc themes for future ideas of random templates for those
• Monsters support custom sprites
• Troop and commander naming was entirely rewritten
• A good pile of new #chanceincs for content creation
• Documentation on some things has been updated
• Forts moved to a file for ability to affect their probabilities
• Hero gold costs are now zero
• Heroes shouldn't get chaos recruitment and similar stuff
• Fixed a bug where only the last #chanceinc per thing was applied. This changed massively on how some things are generated.

Content

• New race: Minotaurs
• Slaver variants of races merged into normal race with use of themes
• Major theme setup for Vaettir: Tribal themes that affect stats, equipment and magic
• Major theme setup for Amazons: Tribal themes that affect stats, equipment and magic
• Major theme setup for Hoburgs: More complex tech level themes and regional themes
• Major theme setup for Lizards: Demographic composition themes
• Major theme setup for Abysians: Demographic composition themes
• Major theme setup for Minotaurs: Civilized-Savage divide themes
• Avvite elephants re-enabled
• Winged monkeys
• Magic path themed kite shields for sacreds

According to github there has been net of 9990 lines of code and content definitions (probably more definitions than code) added between June 13 and July 13. Last version of the program was released at the end of May so this is not even everything. To give credit where it's due, pretty much all the content additions apart from some of the troop and commander name files have been made by Ealb. While I've written most of the new code, Ealb has written a lot of bugfixes and tweaks and even more importantly spotted a huge number of bugs that may have been there for years.

[Ealb]

This seems good, though I have a nagging feeling the content side is missing something(s). I just finished spending an unreasonable amount of time tracking down a minor data error in the troop templates, but I should be back on track to get my changes finished out today.

Incidentally, do you have any thoughts on the cost/stats of minotaurs? They're currently in line with vanilla, which means the savage ones are berserk size-3 tramplers with meh att/def stats for 40g, while the civilized ones are size-3 tramplers with meh +1 att/def stats for the same 40g. Would a gold discount or a stat boost be in order, or does that still seem right?

[elmokki]

I think trample + att 8 + def 8 is pretty god damn hard to balance. I find it hilarious that LA Pangea war minotaur description talks about trained soldiers and they're still att 9 def 8. Agarthan pale ones are fat things with poor eyesight. Minotaurs are beings full of muscle with to my knowledge at least somewhat decent eyesight. Also, at current stats the civilized ones are horrible in general. Berserk +4 at least lets the savage ones hit something with att 12 (def 4 and natural prot 8) while the civilized ones are just bad warriors.

Now, I talked about this in IRC. I got some ideas and some balance points:

• It makes very little sense for minotaurs to be that horrible in combat. Attack/defence 10ish. Maybe 10/9 and 11/10 for the different themes respectively
• Trample on size 3 is generally pretty useless (maybe against hoburg infantry it's ok)
• Good base price would be around 25-30 gold.
• Possibly +2 berserk only. Especially at att 10 you'd end up with same attack, 6 higher defence and 2 lower prot this way.
• It might be a good idea to have civilized minotaurs get both trampling dual wield or twohander more savage troops and non-trampling "formation fighters" with shields (some very specific twohander like pike might fit here as well).

This diverges from Pangea minotaurs quite a lot, but for Pangea minotaurs are (bad) auxilliaries. A minotaur nation might be different. That said, even if there is a Pangea style race at some point I think minotaurs should have at least att/def 9/9, lower berserk and lower price.

One sensible balancing point is also adding a gore attack. Selectively or to everything.

[Ealb]

Noteworthy missing items from the content part of the changelog (pretty sure this is most everything):

• Added several possible melee weapons for ranged units and restricted non-elite ranged units from getting strong melee weapons
• Distinct nation names for advanced humans
• Several miscellaneous new mounts added to various races (small bears, black dogs, etc.)
• Several new filters for mages and troops; imposed some common sense restrictions on some of the shapechanging filters

[Ealb]

We can release now or in a day or two. Now is fine; while in a day or two is finer still, that'll always be the case. I'd deem occidental and central hoburgs as "functional but unpolished"; I can probably get them to "polished" in two days, but we've been pushing back 0.6.0 for long enough that I'm okay with releasing them in a most-done-but-largely-indistinct form.

[elmokki]

Let's say I'll release it sometime on Friday my time (GMT+2, it's 1:40 AM Wednesday now). It doesn't probably matter that much since 0.6.1 can be released very fast afterwards if need be.

Argueably the 1.5 month time since last release now is more than a bit high considering how much stuff has changed. Then again stuff like the themes and troop template filters added a lot of stuff that can be done and I have some minor ideas I should really implement related to those.

[Ealb]

Sounds good. I'll see how much refinement I can cram into the next three nights. I'll also try to generate a few hundred nations to make sure all of our new bugs are at least subtle ones.

[Ealb]

In all probability, I should be able to work on NG more-or-less uninterrupted for the next 8h, so after that last push I'll make sure everything I've been working on is at some sort of stopping point and commit a "0.6.0 final content" update or somesuch.

[elmokki]

In addition to what you added to changelog I'll add at least:

• Massive amount of new equipment for hoburgs
• More likely nation filters (ie nation level special things are more likely)
• Some more nation filters

[elmokki]

Yeah. I released. Github stores release repositories as .zip files but I'll still make a new branch to store old code.

[elmokki]

...actually scrap that. It seems that since I released with tag 0.6.0 you can just pull that whenever you need to.