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Topic Subject: Hercule's Vs Hydra; An amazingly cool modding trick.
posted 09-27-10 03:58 PM CT (US)   
Anyone who has seen the Walt Disney make of the story of Hercules will remember the fight against the Hydra.
If you haven't, it goes like this:

Cut off one head, Grow three more to replace it.

I've taken that phrase, and applied it to my good friend, Mr. Militia.

Basically:
Using AGE 1.8, I've managed to make unit's multiply in numbers when they die.


Playing upon this, I've made Mr. Militia here do some quite nifty things.




And even:



At the moment, the maximum I can chain-spawn from one unit is four.

Why? It's all based on Town Center's and Gates.

Town Center's are very unique buildings, because they aren't One building but actually three bolted together in the same way Gates are.(As seen in this screenshot)


Buildings like the Town Center have other Town Center parts spliced onto them. (I believe with Town Center's; its the Main building, the "wings" and the Pillars. With Gates its the Gate, and the two gate towers.)

To make Mr. Chain-spawning Militia, I made my own Building.
I took an Outpost, got rid of its name, LoS, Health, Graphics and all that stuff. I changed its death to create a Militia corpse, but also, I assigned it as the "Head Unit" to two other buildings I made.

Those "Two" are actually one, but I made them Annex 1 and 2.
These Annex buildings are identical to Mr.Militias Corpse building, but instead of creating a corpse create a Militia.

This, as you can tell opens so many doors.
Im playing around right now with making it spawn more than 4 units

(Spawning a building as an annex, but that spawned building also has annexes)

Proud Member of Black Forest Studios
Co-creator of Silent Evil - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2009
and The Seas of Egressa - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2010
Replies:
posted 09-27-10 04:42 PM CT (US)     1 / 14  
Cool stuff. Perhaps an inclusion for EEE?

Member of BlackForest Studios
Co-creator of Silent Evil (4.6) Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2009 (Most Fave'd Multiplayer Scenario)
and The Seas of Egressa (4.8) Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2010
"Popey just hates everywhere." - Chocolate Jesus, on my fear of Romanian organ-traffickers
"Hooray for Dear Leader-Comrade-Generalissimo-Presidente-Lord Protector Popey!" - Lord Sipia, on my benevolent, iron-fisted rule
"You're not Popeychops; you don't get to physics." - Moff, in response to a clumsy muon simile
posted 09-27-10 04:47 PM CT (US)     2 / 14  
Indeed.

Someone has already suggested a chain spawning unit, and another has recieved something similar

Proud Member of Black Forest Studios
Co-creator of Silent Evil - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2009
and The Seas of Egressa - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2010
posted 09-27-10 05:11 PM CT (US)     3 / 14  
Nice find

Experience a fierce Norseman's tale of vengeance in the bloody saga The Fury of Rästulf

My Unit List
posted 09-27-10 05:54 PM CT (US)     4 / 14  
Someone should really point out that this allows group training. A mod could now allow the player to train by three instead of one. The unit created merely needs 0hp to die as soon as it is created, give it no dying graphic, and you can have three units instead of one.

Good find, I figured it was possible but had never actually tried it. Many, many uses.

"And Matt is a prolific lurker, watching over the forum from afar in silence, like Batman. He's the president TC needs, and possibly also the one it deserves." - trebuchet king
posted 09-27-10 06:01 PM CT (US)     5 / 14  
This is quite awesome. GJ Tanks. As Matt said, it allows group training!

I've wanted to do group training for awhile now, but never thought it possible.

me

[This message has been edited by Impeached (edited 09-27-2010 @ 06:02 PM).]

posted 09-27-10 08:12 PM CT (US)     6 / 14  
However, where you have the "Annex Unit" it Must be a building, otherwise Units, Heroes and objects just die asoon as they are created.

But like Matt said, an invisible building will do the trick fine.

Proud Member of Black Forest Studios
Co-creator of Silent Evil - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2009
and The Seas of Egressa - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2010

[This message has been edited by BF_Tanks (edited 09-27-2010 @ 08:19 PM).]

posted 09-27-10 10:12 PM CT (US)     7 / 14  
After reading this, I played around with AGE for a while and eventually got a system set up for training soldiers in groups. The only complication is that the train time of the outpost must be 0, otherwise once it has been trained, the "completed" unit will stall have the building progress bar that building foundations have. Deleting this "incomplete" building does not produce a unit (due to the same logic behind why building that you have laid the foundation for, but not started, do not leave debris when you delete them). This could cause problems because it requires that the unit(s) have no train time and will be created instantly. While some people don't care, it could cause significant problems.

In order to bypass this, I created a unit to be built at the Trade Workshop (because it was convenient). This unit had a train time (20-something i think). When this unit was created (after 20 seconds), it had 0 hp and therefore died instantly. Its dead unit ID was set for the invisible outpost (with annexed outposts), which also had 0 hp. This building's (and its annexes')dead unit ID(s) were units, in my case spearmen. When this second round of invisible units died automatically, I was left with a group of spearmen.
posted 09-28-10 07:18 AM CT (US)     8 / 14  
Nice find Sarn. I was going to experiment with that earlier.
Good thing is we have a way to train the groups, just we have to create alot of blank insta-death units.

Proud Member of Black Forest Studios
Co-creator of Silent Evil - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2009
and The Seas of Egressa - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2010
posted 09-28-10 08:01 AM CT (US)     9 / 14  
reading this topic makes me think that AOE2 can be converted into a much better game, one which would outlive even those games which are yet to come. i once dreamt that i played aoe2 when i was 43 years old (i'm 17 now). with innovative people like bf_tanks, and with softwares like genied an AGE, i'm sure my dream will be made into a reality.
posted 09-28-10 10:52 AM CT (US)     10 / 14  
Oh im sure AoK will surpas the lifespan of most games out nowadays..

Proud Member of Black Forest Studios
Co-creator of Silent Evil - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2009
and The Seas of Egressa - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2010
posted 09-28-10 02:27 PM CT (US)     11 / 14  
Great find!
posted 09-29-10 10:32 PM CT (US)     12 / 14  
I've been playing around with this trick some more and I was able to train an entire stack of units at once (mixed types). I only stopped at 40 because it was convenient, but at one point before I got all the parts lined up right, it spawned 7000+ before I stopped the scenario. So I guess what I'm saying is that you can train units in groups, in whatever number you want, even mixing units. This isn't achieved by having an annexed building also having an annex, but rather giving the original building 4 annexes (which spawn units) and setting the building's dead unit id to another building, which also has annexes.

The one problem is that whenever the invisible units & annexes are created, it places the "--_________ Created--" text on the side of the screen (or "--Created--" if you're using the unit's internal name.) I don't know of a way to make this text not appear for every annex but still appear for normal units trained elsewhere. Ideally, only the starting unit would have the "--_______ Created--" string, while the annexes would not display anything, but at this point, I can't thing of anything that would allow us to disable it only for certain items.
posted 10-01-10 05:11 PM CT (US)     13 / 14  
I just approved this file, which seems to be vaguely related to the topic.

Very nice find.
posted 10-01-10 06:31 PM CT (US)     14 / 14  
If you were bothered enough you could train 100+ units lol.

Proud Member of Black Forest Studios
Co-creator of Silent Evil - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2009
and The Seas of Egressa - Voted Best Multiplayer Scenario of 2010
Age of Kings Heaven » Forums » Mod Design and Discussion » Hercule's Vs Hydra; An amazingly cool modding trick.
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