FreeOrion

There isn't always a suitable planet available.


Having multiple players start in the same system would be difficult to balance.


Placing new star systems late in universe generation is problematic, due to the restrictions on how starlanes connect systems and the need for reasonable separation between systems.

Species balancing is waaaay down the line. In the mean time its lame to test the game in a galaxy where you only meet a couple different kinds of aliens.

And just because there are X-number of potential starting species doesn't mean they will all be found in every game you play-- you can set the number of empires.


The plan is to support both random galaxies and scripted, pre-planned galaxies. Currently i don't think there's been much development for scripted, pre-planned galaxies, but that properly should probably occur at a later point in development.



I think he means (or at least it would make sense if he did) that instead of just the homeworld being over-written, the entire starting system should be set a certain way to make starting positions equal.

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Yes, I did mean that - but on reflection I like the idea that the rest of your starting system is random.

Wouldn't it be better to generate the galaxy and all the starting empire details, then choose starting locations, replace staring planets with prefered environment, then place the starting empires and then after all this start turn 1. Then there is no problem with starting on (temporarily) hostile planets?

If i understand correctly, Geoff fixed that so that's no longer an issue.

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now, geoff has added the basics for "native" non-imperial planets.

Currently we have "SP_TEST", & "SP_TEST2", and in night's fairly recent compiled game, they both display prefixed with "ERROR".

So is it too soon to start adding some additional planet-bound species options?, or will that just make it a pain to get things running

Can i give them other focus options beside farming (for when they are conquered)?

I see all environments are set to "Good". Is this because EP is not set for them like imperial species, or you just wanted variety?

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That's because there are no stringtable entries for them. Add strings with those names, and it should work.

Yes. I just wanted some very simple species to test with.

That was done so that they would be able to spawn on any planet type and would thus be easier to locate in-game. Otherwise, it was difficult to locate a planet with one of the two non-playable species due to the rarity of particular planet types and the larger number of other species that can spawn.

In general, non-playable species are treated exactly the same as playable ones, except they aren't shown in the lists for which species to start as during game setup (and they can't build ships or can't colonize).

OK, i put in all the species with a background that i already had icons for.

Didn't mess with focus much yet.

Also fixed the strings for the test species, to avoid breaking somebody's save... I guess we take them out when we add something that unavoidable breaks saves?

So how does species spawning work?
A planet has a random chance for getting a species.
A species is randomly chosen.
If the planet's EP isn't "good", the species is skipped --- or another species is chosen?

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Adding or removing strings won't affect save files; it will only affect what is shown in game (same as if you set the game to use a different stringtable translation). Edit: And, I'll likely be breaking save compatibility soon and frequently. /Edit


The game locates all planets that are far enough away from player starting locations, then for each of these it checks the random chance test. For planets that pass the chance test, it gets the planet type and finds all species for which have "good" environmental preference for that planet type. It then picks one of those species randomly and assigns it to the planet. If no species match the planet, the planet gets no species.

I added the strings instead of deleting the species definitions.
I was more concerned that removing the test species from species.txt would break saves-- but perhaps species.txt is only referenced at universe creation?


What do i need to do to set the size of a species homeworld? Some species concepts are specific on that count.

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Species.txt is used when loading games as well. If a species was missing, I expect it would still load the game, but planets with the missing species would end up depopulated. I haven't tested this, though...

For that you'd need to add an effect to the species that sets the size of planets they're on to whatever you want, and which only works on turn 1, similar to what used to be present for planet types:I suspect would also work instead of the Not-based condition above. The test is low <= current_turn < high.

OK, i added additional minor species, and did a bit of refining.

I have a few the ability to focus on more than just farming, and that worked, but while i can change the focus they don't seem to be able to actually produce anything but food.

I think i know what i need to do, just for now, FYI that bit is broken.

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Are you saying that there's a problem with your species definitions, or that the engine is acting weird and not letting some species produce resources other than food, even when controlled by a player?

What i think is happening is there is one bit of (XML is that the right term?) that allows a species to focus on something, and there's another bit which i haven't added, which allows a species to actually produce a resource.

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There's no XML in the species definitions. XML is a markup language that somewhat resembles HTML. See credits.xml or config.xml for examples. Species and other content in FreeOrion are specified using a custom scripting format that was intended to be a bit easier to read than XML.

That's correct. Just adding a focus does nothing unless there's an effect that acts on the species' planets when that focus is set.

Ok,

I've noticed there are a ton of foci in species.txt i've never seen in the game: logistics, bioterror, etc. Do these actually do anything, or are they just further in the Tech tree than i've gone?


Things are a little lopsided at the moment, but i'm moving toward 3 planet-bound species for each EP. I'm taking the liberty of using some that weren't designed to be minor. Some are just filling a hole (probably temporarily). However, the concepts of George and the Cynos seems well-suited to being planet-bound.

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