Author Topic: War2, Danny's AI Royal Edition (DAIRE) - Showcasing NEW MOD now  (Read 4693 times)

Offline dannyldd

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War2, Danny's AI Royal Edition (DAIRE) - Showcasing NEW MOD now
« on: December 23, 2022, 05:43:49 PM »
https://gamebanana.com/mods/418350

Hey fellows, Danny here again with a new mod to showcase with some new generation features to Warcraft II alongside the classic campaign maps.

This mod is mainly intended to showcase all the new generation features I have been tweaking around, alongside Edo-gorod to modify Warcraft II in 2022.

DAIRE main features are:
1) Includes all my war2 modding features since like early 2019, up to this date. Since my earliest mods in Insane Edition or DAIFE.

2) This mod uses the maps being showcased on Warcraft 2 Danny's Insane Edition (DIE) [Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness] [Mods] (gamebanana.com) The maps have been tweaked though (hopefully) in a way that the MOD is NOT as hard as the insane edition, but mainly focused on showcasing the new features included into the game.

3) Featuring the very first mod with: AI_FIX_PLUGIN . More info about it in: AI fix plugin (war2.ru)
It was initially intended that this would be a single plugin that would showcase those features but now its code is included into the main DAIRE plugin.

Main features from ai_fix that highlights:
- Now only 2 peons needed to repair damaged building.

- Enemy transports can siege any single island on the map, can recover their own units and set them up to attack the next island (original game would keep those units stucked on initial island).
- Now capability to repair ballista/catapults.

- Capability now to change mana cost from spells. Example, 4 mana / 1 hp I natively set up in DAIRE.

- Computer now can keep their progression of attacks and keep gathering wood once you save-Load any map against computer. Since in original game if you save-load any time, you would bug out computer and would eventually stop upgrading- gathering lumber since this was never fixed up by Blizzard Entertainment. Either way, this fix was included into a separate plugin for other my mods like in Warc2 Multiplayer/CustomMap Patches w/Enhancements [Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness] [Mods] (gamebanana.com) or DAIFE.

- Computer is now less likely to get stucked with units around coasts to wait for transports.

Unused spells:
- Computer can now use Runes spell from Ogre-mages on player units.
- Death knights can use death coil on gryphon/dragons.
- Death knights can use actual player strategies from Multiplayer like using Haste/UnholyArmor + Whirlwind or Death-Decay on peon/peasants.
- Death knights can use raise of the dead. Skeletons buffed in this mod.
- Peon/peasants can now power build (build faster any not finished building).
- Death knights / Mages can now siege up alongside the armies to player through transports and only-ground squads.
- Mages now can use invisibility + Blizzard on peon/peasants like Multiplayer strategy.
- Fireballs no more used against farms.
- Computer can now build up cannon towers in 50% to 50% ratio with guard towers.
- Computer can now train Goblin sappers / Demolision squads and use them aggressively against player. This can be controlled with AI_SCRIPT.

4) Some of the features included in other of my mods like Insane Edition or DAIFE 7.0+ are:

Damaged portrait icons system:

- Now almost all units have a hit points portrait icon control that allows to showcase a different icon depending on Green - Yellow - Red health bar of each unit. You can see this in left side panel while playing. Credits to MFromAzeroth for his wonderful artwork and contribution to my mods & Warcraft 2.

New audio system in Warcraft II:

- If you ever noticed that you could spam sounds for each unit on each time you right click, then this happens no more. With this new audio system, now almost every single unit (for now) have a timer that does not allow anymore to spam sound files each time you right click OR you move fast enough between your group controls (aka ctrl + 1  and ctrl + 2). So in the end, each time you left click or right click a unit, you may have to wait a little bit before hearing out the next randomized sound file.

- All units keep their own original sound files from Warcraft II, but quite a couple of them now have quite new audio files that either come from Warcraft 3 or Chronicles from the Second War (December 23th,2022 - This is a new incoming Warcraft 3 mod that intends to remaster Warcraft II into that game engine).
For example, Trolls keep up their own unique audio files but Berserker now includes the whole set of audio files from Headhunter in Warcraft 3.

- Several units have death audio sounds coming from Warcraft 3 (classic & reforged), like ogres or grunts or footmen or peasants. Those death audio files are randomized.

- Units that used to have very limited amount of sound files (also known as: ballistas, catapults, flying machines, gryphons), now include a whole set of new audio files coming from Warcraft III. I kept still intact the limited audios from Warcraft II for such units. And as far as I remember, for example Ballistas now have up to 10 left click audio files, just to mention.

Multiple new (& old) tilesets:

- Through the rescued old files from unknown authors since early 2000, I managed to find out several tilesets that have been showcased since DAIFE mod. So in this mod, there's a total of 23 tilesets that are showcased within the 52 campaign mission maps. 19 customs + 4 base game tilesets. In essence, the 19 ones are replacing in one case or another to the 4 classic tilesets. But the capability is unlimited to add up any new others... As long as I have more motivation to it, there're many more I could add up into either this or any other future war2 mod.

- Several of these tilesets I did not manage to find who exactly made them possible, but some credits are into here for the ones I managed to find:
- Alexander Cech, author from NightForest & Desert (WooW). Tilesets available in Weapons of our Warfare mod.
- Hell: Warlock & Cameron Vine, as far as I know these 2 guys made this tileset possible.
- Cameron Vine, author of Glacier - Jungle - Desert (Normal) tilesets.

Not enough gold, lumber, oil, mana, food alerts:

- The mod now include alerts for Oil, lumber, food, gold, mana whenever you don't have them available. Just like Warcraft 3. At least "not enough oil" is available for humans. Still need any contribution for: "not enough oil", "oil platform depleted" for orcs and "oil platform depleted" for humans.

Upgrade / Research completed:

- Like Warcraft 3. Now you recieve a sound alert anytime an upgrade or research is completed. Knight or Grunt from Warcraft 3. Also, Dwarves make their own contribution to this department in some of the Alliance missions. Credits to Chronicles of the Second War warcraft 3 incoming mod for their work into it.

Mission objectives:

- This mod now contains the main plugin with the feature to showcase the original Warcraft 2 triggers into the campaigns, but some of the missions already have tweaked objectives in order to showcase the new features. So within the code, you're now capable to not only change the mission objectives for each map but take the code to make your own maps as well. Take a look into Plugin folder and so then " w2p.cpp " file in order to check the plugin code.

I cannot remember more at the moment but surely you may discover them up through the mod.

5) This mod is NOT fully tested and up to December 23th, 2022. I have just wanted to release this because it has many features and I may take forever to test it all through. Since testing phase takes a lot of time, to be honest.
The mod is released today in Alpha v1.0. Even though, most if not all missions are theorically possible to beat. Since Insane Edition had all of its missions to beat already. Even though, this mod is NOT intended to have a difficulty just as hard as it is showcased on Insane Edition.
I may keep updating this mod though, to fit the proper difficulty intended... And most specially, I hope at some point to deliver an easier version for more casual level people to still manage to experience the new generation features.

How to install & play:

1) Just like any of my other war2 mods in gamebanana, you need to first install Warcraft 2 Combat Edition from https://en.war2.ru -> lambchops build (this is set up by default on installer). Combat Edition is THE ONLY WARCRAFT INSTALLATION THAT ALLOWS TO PLAY THIS MOD WITH THE PLUGIN NEEDED TO WORK.

2) Set up the main DAIRE plugin into Plugin(s) folder (this folder is built up by default once you install War2 Combat Edition).

3) Place DAIREfiles folder (DO NOT CHANGE THIS NAME) into your main War2 folder.

4) Place Install.exe into your main folder. This file contains quite a couple of remastered, fan-made music based on classic war2 music.. Note: december 23th, 2022 I hope in the future, this install.exe file is NOT needed anymore.

5) Place DAIRE_HD.exe and DAIREnormal.exe files into your main war2 folder. Depending on whether you play on Widescreen War2 or normal classic resolution game. You NEED to load up the game whether in DAIRE_HD.exe or the other .exe files. Most probably, if you didn't hear of Widescreen feature, then just load up DAIREnormal.exe file.

6) Just play from the campaign menu.

** IMPORTANT INFO:

If you were willing to know how it was possible to add up all of these new generation features into Warcraft 2, you gotta take a look into Plugin folder, which includes ALL code being used in the main DAIRE plugin.
MBuild.exe file is the one that will compile all code into the main plugin.
w2p.cpp is the file that contains ALL code. It's all written in C++ (once again big thanks to Edo-gorod for it's contribution to the game and modding features).
ORIG war2 triggers.cpp file contains the original campaign map triggers. You can use this as a guide to make your OWN MAPS ! But also use this as a guide to make different triggers from either DAIRE or other maps around. There's also an objective trigger for custom maps (search on filter from w2p.cpp file for "v_custom" to set up your custom winning trigger).

Maybe on the future I may do youtube tutorial videos to explain this stuff about the code even further, but you can dig on already within DAIRE's plugin code to change the new generation features. Don't worry. I did not know much about C++ at the start but you may eventually understand without much issue.

** If you would like to give me any feedback about this mod, I would appreciate it quite a lot if you can do it on either my twitch or youtube channels: https://twitch.tv/dannyldd OR http://www.youtube.com/@dannyldd5966 while I regularly do these tests for the war2 mods.

If you could help with my livelihood or making these mods possible in 2022, I would appreciate your money support to my paypal address in: https://www.paypal.me/dannyldd
« Last Edit: December 23, 2022, 07:25:12 PM by dannyldd »

Offline Chevalier2000

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Re: War2, Danny's AI Royal Edition (DAIRE) - Showcasing NEW MOD now
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2023, 10:23:58 PM »
Hi,

As Danny know, i'm currenttly playing/testing it and give him regular feedback. This mod is really awesome, everyone should try it !
It still need of few fix/correction/balance, but it still great and playable.

If you have Avira antivirus it still target install.exe as a threat detected. I put the file in a white list, but i don' know how to give avira the file, so they can test it and remove it from potential threat.