[MOD 0.18] Robot Army. v0.4.4

[SpeedyBrain]

I was doing something like this back when I started the SupremeWarfare mod
Sadly if you want to fully automate it you will run soon into performance problems... (limited by modding API)
I am hoping that it will get better when version 0.13 is released^^

If you are interested in working on a 'RTS' Mod together drop me a line. I think the more people work on such a project the better it will turn out
With a good amount of people you can focus on the quality of the mod.

[kyranzor]

Version 0.1.2 release!

Recent Update: 0.1.2
Date: April 17, 2016
Changes: When a player places a droid unit, the droid unit is added to that player's unique "squad". This squad is commanded to follow the player at all times. Please play-test this functionality. One cool thing I saw while play testing was I had a personal robo-port with logistics bots and repair packs, and my drones where repairing my droid soldiers in the middle of combat. I was acting like a medic! It was cool and gives me more ideas.

Get the files in original post.

I am working on some code which is almost done which allows me to generate new squads if there are no nearby squads, or add droids to existing squad if it's close enough. Next after that is stable, is adding simple GUI buttons which will be along the lines of a button for: "guard here", "follow me", "set patrol A", "set patrol B", "begin patrol", "hunt", "disband". What these will eventually do is pretty self-explanatory.

Speedybrain: Hopefully with some good optimisation and as little table-scraping as possible it should be reasonably low impact on performance, up to a point of course. If Factorio gets Lua JIT we will be cheering! Could iterate 100,000 times in a millisecond or two! In terms of developing a full-on RTS mod, I certainly don't have time to do that, but I am trying to get some framework in place for handling squads of units, so the units can be anything and all of this can be expanded on later. I really do want to make some robot-assembler buildings which "Deploy"/spawn units and they auto-join/create a squad and maybe have a rallypoint or default order set from within the building itself. Being able to create units automatically is important for an RTS mod, can't rely on the player to have to place all the units!

[DOSorDIE]

Get an error with 0.1.2
i can produce it but when i want to place it I get this.

Error.jpg (12.75 KiB) Viewed 15736 times

Please fix!

[kyranzor]

Get an error with 0.1.2
i can produce it but when i want to place it I get this.

Error.jpg

Please fix!

Have you got a multiplayer name? start a multiplayer game by yourself and make sure you have a character name.

[DOSorDIE]

I have try it in Multiplayer (and yes i have a name) but same error

[Qon]

I forgot to mention (0.1.1): If you attack a robot soldier they turn on you and try to kill you. Probably succeed also if you are in the middle of a hundred or so q:

[kyranzor]

Okay ill check out what's going on with the control lua error DOSorDIE.

Qon, yes they attack (only the one you shot btw) if you friendly fire them. Avoid spamming shotgun shots near them.

[Qon]

only the one you shot btw

False.

[kyranzor]

only the one you shot btw

False.

Well maybe we had different situations going on because I had already found and played around with that "feature" and it was only the single guy who you shoot at that tries to kill you. Could you please test again and tell me what you do?

[kyranzor]

only the one you shot btw

False.

Well maybe we had different situations going on because I had already found and played around with that "feature" and it was only the single guy who you shoot at that tries to kill you. Could you please test again and tell me what you do?

[Qon]

Well almost every time I do it all of them respond. I've tested several times. If the robots die instantly they don't tell the others and no one attacks back. If I hurt 1, every robot within a short distance (maybe 20 tiles radious or something) will then all attack me, always. I'm using shotgun, but even the guys behind me will attack me if I hurt one of their pals if they see me do it.

[kyranzor]

Well almost every time I do it all of them respond. I've tested several times. If the robots die instantly they don't tell the others and no one attacks back. If I hurt 1, every robot within a short distance (maybe 20 tiles radious or something) will then all attack me, always. I'm using shotgun, but even the guys behind me will attack me if I hurt one of their pals if they see me do it.

I don't know what to say.. I just tested it again while fixing the issue DOSorDIE had with the crash. Only the robot I shoot at (I put mouse over him, use C to force fire) will shoot back at me. The other 24 just stood around watching.


HOTFIX RELEASED: Deals with undefined state of someone loading with the mod into a game which did not have the mod from the beginning. checks for player's unique table and creates it if it doesn't exist.

Sandbox testing results - The sandbox scenario "god controller" player can be followed by the squad of droids. This opens up more direct "RTS" style gameplay. Once I get GUI control buttons going it will be cool to play with having a disembodied character and building a factory and controlling an army.

[LoSboccacc]

this mod is very interesting! how hard would it be to have them respond to basic order, like click on a radio item, map pops up, click on map and robots go there?

[kyranzor]

this mod is very interesting! how hard would it be to have them respond to basic order, like click on a radio item, map pops up, click on map and robots go there?

Not hard, that's the next round of features. I am very close (today maybe?) to releasing the new version which has full manufacture + deploy (spawn) + automatically sending them in groups to attack nearest biters. I need some GUI buttons for the squad orders functionality though so that might take some time.

[LoSboccacc]

wonderful! attacking is the last part of the game that needs manual intervention can't wait to put that problem under logistic categoy

[kiba]

wonderful! attacking is the last part of the game that needs manual intervention can't wait to put that problem under logistic categoy

Amateur talks tactics and strategies, professional talks logistics, or something like that.

[kyranzor]

Version 0.1.3 released! New changes include fixed animations (muzzle flash, selection box) for droids, added building which deploys/places them, droids will join a nearby squad when they spawn (or create their own) and when they reach 5 members they will begin moving to hunt nearest biters/enemy players stuff. You can manually add more droids to an existing squad merely by placing more droids down close to the squad.

This is the main functionality I think most of you wanted - they don't follow you anymore, or stay still and guard (unless you place only 4 down! They will just wander/defend in that scenario which is kind of cool. ). You can now mass-produce these guys to swarm out and kill all biters.

When a squad dies, you will get a little message on the side (console print-out). This can be useful feedback to know if your squads are surviving much or not. if you end up with MANY small squads it may get annoying if they are getting pwned in the late-game a lot. Please test this and get back to me, it will be a quick fix in future if it is not wanted.

[Qon]

Trying to deploy robot soldiers with a droid assembler:

Code: Select all

Error while running the event handler: __robotarmy__/prototypes/Squad.lua:41: attempt to index local 'newsquad' (a nil value)

Robot soldiers 0.1.3
Factorio 0.12.29

My guess:
So essentially you can only spawn soldiers after you have already spawned some or you will crash and burn

[DOSorDIE]

Thats exacly what i want ... good Job !
And now we need only T2 and T3

[kyranzor]

Trying to deploy robot soldiers with a droid assembler:

Code: Select all

Error while running the event handler: __robotarmy__/prototypes/Squad.lua:41: attempt to index local 'newsquad' (a nil value)

Robot soldiers 0.1.3
Factorio 0.12.29

My guess:
So essentially you can only spawn soldiers after you have already spawned some or you will crash and burn

Ah that's an interesting condition! I'll get onto fixing that now

It seems that my util function "Shallowcopy" somehow returned nil, but that means that a globally declared table "global.SquadTemplate" somehow failed to copy, which doesn't make sense at all . How can some explicitly declared then completely fail to copy? A really weird bug for sure. Hopefully it's rare and I can find a workout, like as you say placing a droid down first (which will indeed set up a few tables if they didn't exist but it's strange this bug happens).