The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

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Brazil danielpereira
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The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by danielpereira »

For those who don't know it, the Unhardcode Patch is a fan-made patch which aims to remove the hardcoded limitations faced by AoE3 Modders.

Even though right now the Unhardcode Patch is more focused in the modding aspect, we are planning to widen our scope, in future releases, and add bugfixes and new features aimed at both casual and competitive players. We have begun doing so at the v1.5 release by extending the team amount, but we want to do more! And we need you!

Which bugs in AoE3 you would like to see fixed and which new features you would love to see implemented??

Of course, we can't promise we will implement all of your suggestions, but we will do our best to improve the AoE3 experience for both modders and casual and competitive players!
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France Rikikipu
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by Rikikipu »

Hey !
As a modder, for my vanilla mod for instance I directly inject the balance in the map with triggers in order to not have CRC mismatch issues.
The trigger that I use, "modify proto unit" works well for modifying speed, hp, etc. But it doesn't work for whatever related to attack. The trigger doesn't work if i want to change the attack of a unit or his Rate of Fire. It has always been a limit for the modders, and that would be really great if you find a way to do it.
Thanks again for your insane work !
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Romania mandosrex
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by mandosrex »

A great idea! Now let's start.

Personally, and I already annoyed Daniel with this several times, I think that increasing the performance of the game should be number one priority.
It is a serious issue and it brings down an otherwise great game. Even more of an issue for mods who hope to add higher resolution textures and/or models.
No matter how powerful your system is (i9 and 2 titanx), the game will lag/stutter/have performance drops in certain situations.

The game is simply not made to take advantage of all power modern systems have, a rather common problem in old games. But many such old games have "memory fixes" and other performance mods/fixes which do help a lot (like GTA SA for example).

From the tests that I made, basically every time FPS drops, cliffs are involved. When a lot of cliff sides are present on screen, or when the cliff is too high or too low, making it larger in height, the game's FPS will suddenly plummet.
You could test it on one of Gandal'f amazing maps, Canyonlands, and see how bad it is: http://aoe3.heavengames.com/downloads/s ... 1&st=0&ci=
Just load the map and look in the middle cannyon and you will see what I mean (you will also need the most distant camera setting).

Stuttering is also a huge issue which affects everyone and every version of the game, modded or clean. When you start a map and you simply scroll the camera continuously, you can see the stutter. But if you look closely, this happens randomly even if you don't move the camera at all, it just happens.

Since AoE Online is made from AoE3 and runs incredibly smooth, I can only hope that maybe one day you guys will be able to figure it out and bring us the performance this game deserves.


Other things I'd like to see UHC Patch tackle are already on their "to do" list, like selection limit, adding new commands and unhardcodding features like the UI.
There are also some other improvements from AoM EE and AoEO I'd love to see, if possible (I am probably being really ignorant to how all of this works codding wise but hey, I am trying to suggest things everyone will enjoy).

In AoM Extended Edition they unlocked the UI from the screen's resolution, which means the UI does not look ugly and stretched anymore. But they did not touch the UI files, they are exactly like in the original game, the change was made from inside the exe. If AoE3 could get this... it would be amazing.

And I could dream on about what I'd like to see but Daniel probably wants modding suggestions.
:D
Thank you again guys, you are the backbone of AoE3 modding.
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Brazil danielpereira
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by danielpereira »

@Rikikipu Thanks for the kind words and for the report! I and Cliff will give a look on that!

@mandosrex Thanks for the suggestions again, but, unfortunately, I don't think that AoEO and AoMEE will be helpful, since, even though their engines have similarities to the one used by AoE3, they are very different... But thanks once again! I and Cliff will see what we can do!

Also, I'm accepting all suggestions, regardless on whether they are modding-related or not. As I said in the first post, we want to widen our scope by providing features and bugfixes that would be helpful not only for modders, but also for casual and competitive players ^^
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by mandosrex »

Hm, any hope tackling the "Your official maps or set files have been modified. You will not be able to play online." problem on ESO (happens when you add new maps over the originals)?
I guess not since it's a server side issue but maybe we can trick it or something. Or just disable the check altogether? Does ESOC do anything about this already?
It would be a welcomed boost for many mods.
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Brazil danielpereira
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by danielpereira »

Well, as far as I know, as long as both players have the same maps and set files, the mod will be playable on ESO, but only against people who have the mod, regardless of this message. Such error shows up when playing WoL on ESO, yet I myself have played WoL matches in ESO before.

Now, if you are just asking for the message not to show up, I believe that this would be possible. I might give a look on that later. Thanks for the suggestion!
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United States of America musketeer925
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by musketeer925 »

mandosrex wrote:Hm, any hope tackling the "Your official maps or set files have been modified. You will not be able to play online." problem on ESO (happens when you add new maps over the originals)?
I guess not since it's a server side issue but maybe we can trick it or something. Or just disable the check altogether? Does ESOC do anything about this already?
It would be a welcomed boost for many mods.

This happens if you don't regenerate the file hashes in the resources.xml to match your new and modified maps. I attached the program that both the ESOC patch and WoL use to generate the correct resources.xml file (or at least, both have used them in the past. I honestly don't know if either uses them currently). Source code included!

I didn't write this software. It was given to me by someone else, and I think it was originally written by the Age Sanctuary FanPatch developers.
ASfilecrc.zip
(35.04 KiB) Downloaded 68 times


As far as suggestions for the UHC, could you guys look into the bug where explorers can be revived, despite health too low, by changing their stance via hotkeys (the infamous "Alt-D bug")?
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Romania mandosrex
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by mandosrex »

Oh, and maybe make the transform command only transform the main selected unit/units of that type, not all selected units of different types, so that if I select a wall piece and a town center, they won't both transform into a gate...

Also, the resources file! I forgot about that one. Well, at least I didn't think it could be causing this issue. I usually generate that when all maps are complete, which is not the case for some time now.
I used JavaProphet's tool which he made at my request, and as far as I know it worked fine.
I'll try yours Musketeer and see if there's any difference between the resulting files.
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Brazil danielpereira
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by danielpereira »

@musketeer925 Thanks for the report! We shall investigate that ^^
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France Rikikipu
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by Rikikipu »

Oh and one more thing, i'm not sure if that's a limit or not but i haven't been able to figure the solution myself and i have never seen someone doing it in any AOE3 mod.
We can not make terrains where both Warships and land units can go. In AOE1 for sure and maybe in AOE2, you have like "shallow waters" were every type of unit can go.
On AOE3 my searches ended with both the proto file were :

Code: Select all

Land units got :
<MovementType>land</MovementType>

Water units got :
<MovementType>water</MovementType>


and then terraintypes.xml in the art folder got these lines :

Code: Select all

   <type name="PassableLand" uiname="Land" mapcolor="1 56 184" impassablewater="">
      <uiclass uiname="Default">
         <subtype mapcolor="147 147 054" impacttype="terraingrass" bump="great_plains\ground1bump_gp">great_plains\default</subtype>
      </uiclass>
      ...

I tried to remove the impassablewater="" stuff and I globally try to work with that, but it didn't work. Maybe it's not something that needs unhardcoded patch and can be done in another way, but I didn't find a solution and i'm pretty sure no one has already find it before. It's sad because with this feature we could make maps totally new for the players.

Thanks again :flowers:
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Malaysia Aizamk
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

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Post by Aizamk »

mandosrex wrote:so that if I select a wall piece and a town center, they won't both transform into a gate...

You can't even select a wall piece and a non-wall type unit at the same time in the first place though...
However, you've just reminded me of a certain mechanic that I think will be amusing to use in the future. :chinese:
oranges.
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

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Post by mandosrex »

@Aizamk Ok, fine, you cannot select a town center and a wall, but:
1. You can still select all wall pieces at the same time, meaning even wall corners can transform into gates.
2. Some mods use the transform command for other units as well, which means you CAN select that unit and a different unit and have them both get affected by the transform command.

Image

So my point still stands, the freaking thing is busted.
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Malaysia Aizamk
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by Aizamk »

mandosrex wrote:2. Some mods use the transform command for other units as well, which means you CAN select that unit and a different unit and have them both get affected by the transform command.

Your point only still stands for walls. I'm pretty sure the hardcoding is such that the transform command doesn't work on any unit other than wall->gate, and it's been a grievance of modders for years.
oranges.
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Romania mandosrex
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by mandosrex »

Wait, what do you mean? I remember using the transform command with resource wagons, making them transform into crates. Like, you could choose into what type of crate to transform (food, wood, coin) and if you also selected other units... The bug happened.
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Romania mandosrex
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Re: The Unhardcode Patch needs you!

Post by mandosrex »

New suggestion:
Some new, properly implemented unit types could be of use for all big mods, for example something similar to AbstractSkirmisher, and it should also be linked to an icon to show in the UI and to a name in stringtable.
And if adding new unit types is impossible/too difficult, then maybe modify existing, unused unit types, such as AbstractJunk and AbstractTemple to use those features.

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