Conquer Club

lackattack wrote:Map XML Improvement
Map designers can now specify the maximum number of starting positions to be issued to each player. Details to appear in the Map Foundry...

XML Tutorial wrote:Start Positions

Lets say we found that whenever someone starts with Asia they win. This isn't true and nearly impossible but just go with it. We want to make that impossible to do. One way we could do this is using the new start position tool. Start positions are contained in a tag called <positions> which contains multiple <position> tags. These position tags can contain one or more <territory> tags, like so:

Code: Select all

<positions>
   <position>
      <territory>Ural</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>Afghanistan</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>Middle East</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>Siberia</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>Irkutsk</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>Yakutsk</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>Kamchatka</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>Mongolia</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>Japan</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>China</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>India</territory>
   </position>
   <position>
      <territory>Siam</territory>
   </position>
</positions>

So in the above example we have 12 start positions. When the game begins these start positions will be split up randomly amongst the players. If there is a remainder, the territories of those start positions are dealt out in the same way as other territories (unless of course they are coded as neutral).

We can restrict the game engine to allocate a maximum of 2 postions per player as follows - any additional/leftover positions will be ignored and divided in the usual way:

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<positions max="2">
...
</positions>

Lets say now that we discovered that Middle East isn't a viable start position unless they have 5 armies and that Kamchatka is overpowered and needs to have 2. We can change the number of armies that start on a given territory as follows:

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   ...
   <position>
      <territory start="5">Middle East</territory>
   </position>
   ...
   <position>
      <territory start="2">Kamchatka</territory>
   </position>
   ...

If the nunber of starting positions is not evenly divisible by the number of players, the leftover territories will be dealt out in the usual way with 3 starting armies, rather than the number specified in the start position code.

XML Tutorial wrote:If the nunber of starting positions is not evenly divisible by the number of players...

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  <positions>
       <position player="1">
          <territory>x1</territory>
       </position>
       <position player="2">
          <territory>y1</territory>
       </position>
       <position player="3">
          <territory>x2</territory>
       </position>
       <position player="4">
          <territory>y2</territory>
       </position>
       <position player="5">
          <territory>x3</territory>
       </position>
       <position player="6">
          <territory>y3</territory>
       </position>
       <position player="7">
          <territory>x4</territory>
       </position>
       <position player="8">
          <territory>y4</territory>
       </position>
    </positions>

natty_dread wrote:Sadly, no.

MrBenn wrote:"Team" or "grouped" starting positions is one of the things on my xml wish list...

natty_dread wrote:Good, good. When do we get conditional autodeploys?