Quoted from from the other thread:
I have been playing with the AI Castle Editor a lot recently. The Queen never finished her castle and after a little muddling around, the editor is really easy to use. It's got some issues that could be tweaked but they are more annoyances than anything else.Quoted from Ouly:
I've yet to look at the castle editor and I was under the impression that it is used to change the footprint of an AI's castle. Is this change saved to the map file or does it change some other game file?
I just assumed it would alter one of the game files and that I would need to include this altered file in the DL. Any one dl'ing the map would then have to mod the game slightly to have the change take affect. Am I right or wrong with this assumption.
I would like to use this program since Barclay in my current map is not quite finishing his castle for some reason. He is leaving out 1 small piece of wall next to his keep allowing me to waltz right on in bypassing his inner gate. I'm just not keen on requiring people to mod their game to play my map.
Fixing that problem with Barclay would not be hard and then yes you would have to supply the updated .aic file for downloaders to drop into the Castles folder. A wonderful path of opportunity for custom maps if people can follow along because you can get a lord to build to into custom terrain and timing. Some of the War missions use special .aic files for the lords.
I've been building aic. files to release as a bundle. Fixing existing errors and making more defensive castles that will work flawlessly with the existing files. You can just add more castles to a lords repertoire by increasing the file name integer e.g. Queen_01.aic to Queen_09.aic . I was thinking about seeing if anyone else was interested in getting involved to make a SH2 Heaven AI Castle bundle with a whole lot of working designs, because the default small AI castle in the game is pretty lame. There is plenty of room to design bigger castles too.
I never really noticed this before but from this statement I'm assuming that the AI's in the game already have a number of designs to use when building their castles. I wonder what factors are used to determine what design an AI will use? The space available perhaps or is it just a random choice? It would have been really nice if we could specify what design an AI should use.Quoted from Doomsword:
You can just add more castles to a lords repertoire by increasing the file name integer e.g. Queen_01.aic to Queen_09.aic I've been building aic. files to release as a bundle. Fixing existing errors and making more defensive castles that will work flawlessly with the existing files.This is a great idea Doomsword! I wasn't impressed with the existing designs of the AI's castles either. I agree that most castles are quite small but size can be an issue on 6-8 player Kingmaker maps. Some just don't have the room for a very large castle layout.
I'm looking forward to this bundle to see and what you come up with! I would be willing to help with this but I'd need to know what you've done so far first. I was about to begin work on a new siege map but maybe I'll take a look at the AI castle editor instead.
ps...
It took me most of the morning but I finally got the Java version I needed to run the AI editor. I've only taken a quick look and so far I like what I see (mostly). I see what you mean by annoying. Too bad the editor doesn't default to the castles directory where the .aic files are stored in the first place when you go to open one.
I noticed that Barclay has 3 layouts to choose from yet he always uses the second layout in my current map. I'm glad it stays the same yet I wonder why that is? I also noticed that the missing wall tile in his castle should not be missing. In the editor it shows the wall in this spot overlapping the corner tower of the keep. I willing to bet that the person who created this layout knew about the missing wall tile and tried to fix it without success and just gave up on it and moved on. This suggests that getting the AI to build the way you want is as difficult as getting the AI to attack the way you want.
Anyway, I'm off to see what I can do with this and try to get the hang of it.
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