Evolve Mechanics

[lalelunatic]

how does it work? as far as gameplay goes it triggers around the elite lvl upgrade and beyond for the most part for heros.

does it have a specific trigger or just randomly rolls after a certain time? as for units it seems to only depend on exp and discovering the upgrade unit somewhere (does this have to happen? or is evolve possible without the discovery part?)

as there are units that multi-evolve its certainly possible, but may it be possible to get some insight on the mechanic, as figuring that out via gameplay takes up a lot time for it to probably not working =). especially to determine "when" it happens, to balance out skills/spells to give each state of evolve the "parts" of the unit gets.

for heros that is, as those are the most intresting to fiddle around with =).


e.g.: lets say i wanted to mod a scenario campain that starts with your hero beeing a plain peasant and over time evolve into a footman, or archer or mage, then upgrade and diversify those classes further. as the mechanic itself is an actually pretty good tool to implement some kind of rpg feeling. its just not used to its full extent so far i assume =). well, depending on if the code allowes for selecting the hero upgrade and working multiple times.

so far i only see the few lines in the campain data for the hero upgrades, but i have no clue what determines their functionallity.

furthermore it would be intresting if its possible to have more than 1 hero in your party. so to say, to emulate adventuring around with a pack of heros =). just an idea as all the basics would be there already.

[Les]

There are two mechanics here:

1) Normal units can evolve if they have enough exp and also if you know the next unit (i.e. it's visible in Bestiary). Some units have diffierent upgrade patchs, for example: Bowman can evolve to Fire Archer or Ranger.

Note: a few upgrades are hidden and won't be displayed in Skills untill you know the next unit, for example Skeleton Warriors can be upgraded to Skeleton Rider or Revenant (which is not visible unless you find a secret level).

2) Heroes' upgrades are scripted and player cannot upgrade them from Skills dialog. If you are creating a campaign, please read the Modding Guide ('upgrade-unit' command).

I also suggest to check our other games - most of them feature at least two heroes (some campaigns span up to five heroes).

[lalelunatic]

ok so for normal units is easy enough. even to create an upgrade loop like:

peasant > footman > knight > paladin > peasant

or make it multichoice and give the last iteration the de-evolve back to the start unit to emulate something like a respec.

for heros, the guide and the "upgrade unit" part dont tell me if its possible to trigger the upgrade event multiple times. e.g.

start as mage > upgrade trigger to archmage > trigger upgrade again to supermage or whatever.

also it doesnt tell me if its possible to choose what they upgrade to (seems its fixed though).

for the code in the campain xml its just the upgrade command for the respective hero, mage>archmage. but what happens if i add another line for archmage>supermage? does it trigger the event again? directly at the same time? after a certain triggermechanc? or just ignores it?

or is it possible to give the "evolved hero" (so mage>archmage, the archmage in this scenario) an entry in its gameobject.xml, to be evolvable again. e.g.: if i add the line to the archmage xml to let him evolve into the supermage, will this be possible AFTER the scripted evolve happens? or does the game simply ignore all lines with the evolve thing completely for all "hero-units"?

the only thing the section in the guide tells me is that i could upgrade 2 units at the same time via adding a count higher than 1 at the end. (for whatever scenario this might be usefull =P)

in a nutshell, i just would wanted to know if its possible at all and when it happens. because im far away from using all the information in the guide comiled for just making a simple evolve rotation for a unit =).

[Les]

Originally posted by lalelunatic:

ok so for normal units is easy enough. even to create an upgrade loop like:

peasant > footman > knight > paladin > peasant

or make it multichoice and give the last iteration the de-evolve back to the start unit to emulate something like a respec.

It's possible to create such a loop via xml. As far as I remember there is no check for it in our tests suite (you can run them from Workshop Manager).

for heros, the guide and the "upgrade unit" part dont tell me if its possible to trigger the upgrade event multiple times. e.g.

start as mage > upgrade trigger to archmage > trigger upgrade again to supermage or whatever.

also it doesnt tell me if its possible to choose what they upgrade to (seems its fixed though).

I don't understand the question. Normal unit upgrade is selectable via Skills dialog. Also, the game will display the resulting unit configuration with a Confirmation button.

for the code in the campain xml its just the upgrade command for the respective hero, mage>archmage. but what happens if i add another line for archmage>supermage? does it trigger the event again? directly at the same time? after a certain triggermechanc? or just ignores it?

or is it possible to give the "evolved hero" (so mage>archmage, the archmage in this scenario) an entry in its gameobject.xml, to be evolvable again. e.g.: if i add the line to the archmage xml to let him evolve into the supermage, will this be possible AFTER the scripted evolve happens? or does the game simply ignore all lines with the evolve thing completely for all "hero-units"?

Hero is stripped from all evolutions options and hero unit upgrades can be done only via a script command. This was done to control game story telling.

Commands are executed in sequence, however they can be skipped if you apply conditions. This creates a structure: if (...) else if (...) else if (...)

the only thing the section in the guide tells me is that i could upgrade 2 units at the same time via adding a count higher than 1 at the end. (for whatever scenario this might be usefull =P)

By default upgrade-unit command upgrades all units which match the selector. If you are refering to unit by its name (e.g. Sir_Edward) it will only match this unit (it won't match re-nameable units). You can also select by races, type, etc.

in a nutshell, i just would wanted to know if its possible at all and when it happens. because im far away from using all the information in the guide comiled for just making a simple evolve rotation for a unit =).

I suggest to check the existing campaigns for code samples. The Free World has very limited script in campaigns, the most scripted campaign is in AOF4. There is also shared global events file (shared-globalevents.xml) with good examples.

[lalelunatic]

i already altered a campaign mod for testing, that works fine. altering the units, skills, etc. is easy enough, thats not the problem.

so heros work only with scripts, thats a bummer... for the thing you dont understand the question. i just wanted to know if you can do the following:

select random hero on start of campain (mage as example). play until ugrade event to archmage triggers.
now you have an archmage.
if you play some more, is it possible the alter the code / scripts (as i know know) to have that "upgrade event" trigger again for the now archmage hero unit (that already had that event going from mage to archmage)?
lets say 2nd upgrade event (after already having had the mage>archmage trigger) evolving/upgrading your now archmage to a supermage (archmage>supermage).

cant explain it much better i guess... =(. i just assume its not possible without really altering the scripts which is beyond me for now =/.

well, thanks for the answers again. =)

[Les]

Those commands will upgrade all heroes (or one hero if you have only one) randomly into archmage, paladin or lich.

<commands condition="${random-per-hour}%3==0">upgrade-unit [+Hero]* archmage</commands>
<commands condition="${random-per-hour}%3==1">upgrade-unit [+Hero]* paladin</commands>
<commands condition="${random-per-hour}%3==2">upgrade-unit [+Hero]* lich</commands>

[+Hero]* selects all units which have Hero attribute.

Please note how random-per-hour variable effectively works as switch-case pattern, like this https://www.w3schools.com/java/java_switch.asp