You must sign in to post. | SirGnip_Revolt Mod released! :: May 2, 2007 @ 3:30pm |
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 SirGnipJoined: Dec 27, 2006
Posts: 59
Location: Chi-town | Ok, here it is. The first public galcon mod (to my knowledge). Be gentle. It is very rough and not polished up for public consumption, but here it is. This "mod" contains a game mod, a stats tool and a config file util. This mod is unashamedly a direct 80% copy of Phil's "classic" mod.
Here's the file. Download it and unzip it into your mod directory. It should create the "SirGnip_Revolt" folder for you:
SirGnip_Revolt.zip
What does this "mod" include?
* Revolt gameplay mod - every 30 seconds, one of the leader's planets revolts!
* StatsLogger utility - turn on logging to generate a .csv file that saves stats over time and per player: planets owned, total production and total ships. Easy to create charts in Excel! (Sample Excel PivotChart graph using StatsLogger data)
* This mod is driven by an options file (gnipoptions.py) that lets you easily tweak game settings including: number of bots to have in a game, random map generation settings (planets, production ranges), loading a map from a mapedit file, etc. Revolt and StatsLogger are also driven from gnipoptions.py.
Here's more details:
--- Revolt Mod
Tired of whoever is in the lead running away with the game because of exponential production growth? Well, taking a cue from the "Settlers of Catan" board game, lets penalize the leader so his production doesn't get out of control. Every 30 seconds (or whatever you set the interval to in gnipoptions.py), one of the leader's planets (determined by total production) will "revolt" and come under ownership of another player. This does make the game a bit more random. But, being my first mod, this was more about learning the Galcon mod system than creating the best mod ever.
--- StatsLogger Mod
Not really a mod, but more a utility. Every time a game of "SirGip_Revolt" is played, stats of the game are logged to a file after the game is complete. This log file is saved in the "data" folder. You can specify the filename in gnipoptions.py. This file is a .csv that logs, per player, the number of plants owned, total production, and total number of ships. These values are logged every second. So, the main idea was to write this out in a format that would be easy to manipulate in Excel. Excel can open .csv files directly. So, if you know how to do charts in Excel (or better yet, Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts), you'll be able to very quickly got yourself a very nice graphical representation of the ebb and flow of a Galcon game, suitable for framing.
--- Options file (gnipoptions.py)
In order to learn the modding system and to make it easier to test mods, I did a bit of work to expose a lot of Galcon options to an options file (gnipoptions.py). By simply tweaking these values, you can change the settings that generate random maps, load a map from a file (see the mapedit mod), set the number of bots, etc. This by itself has given single-player Galcon new life for me as I've been able to now play against 3 bots... create wacky planet configurations (upping the number of random planets to 100+)... Lots of fun!post updated on May 2, 2007 @ 3:36pm | | Re: SirGnip_Revolt Mod released! :: May 3, 2007 @ 10:30pm |
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philhassey Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 678
Location: Zarcon | For anyone who wanted to try this mod - just download the .zip file and save it into:
Windows: c:\program files\galcon\mods\
MacOSX: /Applications/Galcon.app/Contents/Resources/mods/
Linux: ./galcon/mods
And then browse to that folder and unzip the mod. Then you will see it listed in the mods.
(BTW - next version of Galcon will be easier, you won't have to unzip the mod, it will run while still packaged in the zip :)
- Phil | | Re: SirGnip_Revolt Mod released! :: May 4, 2007 @ 3:37pm |
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eckels Joined: Mar 4, 2007
Posts: 200 | I like the visual effect of the revolt mod a lot.
I dont really care to play with the option on, because it's easy to lose a planet with a hoarde on it, and be basically defenseless. but it seems like a great first step toward something awesome!
I'm REALLY digging the external options file. that puts the editor much farther down the road as far as usability is concerned. way to go! | | Re: SirGnip_Revolt Mod released! :: May 4, 2007 @ 8:37pm |
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SirGnip Joined: Dec 27, 2006
Posts: 59
Location: Chi-town | Thanks, Phil, for instructing people how to install this. Forgot to add that.
eckels... Thanks for trying it out. Yeah, I didn't mean for Revolt to be the be-all and end-all of Galcon mod's. Just wanted to get my feet wet and share to start getting stuff out here in the mix.
And, with regards to the external optoins file, I've found stuff like that invaluable in other games I've written. It sure beats pouring thru reams of code looking for that magic number. This way, they are all in one place.
Phil, this might be one thing to think about as you move forward on the one-zip-mod-install. If there are any config-ish files (.py like mine, .ini, etc.), those who install the mod just using the zip won't have access to tweak the file easily. Though, the one-zip-mod-install idea is targeted (I'm assuming) for those users who need ease of distribution, not those who want maximum flexibility. Those who want to tinker should be comfortable and able to unzip the file themselves. Just thinking out loud... | | Re: SirGnip_Revolt Mod released! :: May 5, 2007 @ 10:43am |
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 assassin437Joined: Jan 29, 2007
Posts: 115
Location: Quantification | For anyone who wanted to try this mod - just download the .zip file and save it into:
Windows: c:\program files\galcon\mods\
MacOSX: /Applications/Galcon.app/Contents/Resources/mods/
Linux: ./galcon/mods
And then browse to that folder and unzip the mod. Then you will see it listed in the mods.
(BTW - next version of Galcon will be easier, you won't have to unzip the mod, it will run while still packaged in the zip :)
- Phil
Forgive me for being terminally useless, but I'm fairly new to Mac tinkering and can only see Galcon listed under the Applications menu. Not sure how to get to the contents/resources...etc.
EDIT - Nevermind, worked it out :)
For anyone else using MacOSX who had the same difficulty, right click on the Galcon entry in Applications and choose "Show package contents"post updated on May 5, 2007 @ 11:03am | | Re: SirGnip_Revolt Mod released! :: May 5, 2007 @ 2:17pm |
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luminousnerd Joined: Apr 28, 2007
Posts: 74
Location: Utah, sadly | Finally got around to playing this today.
Very fun little twist, makes gameplay interesting.
I would love to see some good mods like this incorporated (as an option) online.
Also it would be neat to play user-made maps online. | | Re: SirGnip_Revolt Mod released! :: May 8, 2007 @ 11:05am |
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philhassey Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 678
Location: Zarcon | SirGnip -
For changing options, I may create a very simple gui.py so people can interactively enter options. Then you can just pass your options object to the game, instead of getting them from a settings.py
- Phil | | Re: SirGnip_Revolt Mod released! :: May 8, 2007 @ 11:06am |
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philhassey Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 678
Location: Zarcon | BTW -
During the next Galcon release (hopefully pretty soon) I'll be including instructions on how to license your mod so that I can include it with Galcon - which I think could add a lot of interest to the single player part of Galcon.
- Phil | | Re: SirGnip_Revolt Mod released! :: May 8, 2007 @ 4:52pm |
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SirGnip Joined: Dec 27, 2006
Posts: 59
Location: Chi-town | Phil,
A gui.py would be cool. So, this means mod-specific options could be exposed to the GUI? Nice.
The licensing bit sounds interesting... |
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