The Hand of Merlin – Units Modding Guide

Extensive and detailed guide to adding new Units in The Hand of Merlin, written by its game designer Mat.

소개

이 가이드에서는, 우리’ll talk about adding more Units to our game. This can be both new characters or new enemies.

What is a Unit?

~ 안에 The Hand of Merlin, a Unit is a dynamic entity capable of taking actions. It has attributes, including Health and Armor, and is always part of a Warband, 에이 “옆” – Player or Enemy.

Every unit is described with two files: a Unit Params and a Unit Class.

Unit Params

A Params file (from parameters), with the extension .ep, is where we house most of a unit’s visual information and identification.

You can create one with the Create menu (CTRL+N). Go to the Generic group, and browse the (Merlin) Unit params type.

그 다음에, save the file under the Content/Merlin/Heroes folder for playable units and Content/Merlin/Enemies for those that are not. Using the Heroes folder allows a unit to show up in the roster selection screen in the Lobby.

지금, 허락하다’s take a good look at a Unit Params file, and explain how each entry works.

첫 번째, we have the unit’s identification.

• Identification is used in encounters to refer to a specific unit, also note the Traits in the middle of the document, where you can put “personality traits” for this hero to be queried in encounters.
• 이름 are used to represent the unit wherever it is. Short names are usually on portraits, and the full name in the book and larger tooltips. In Breunor’s case, his full name is “Sir Breunor”

• Finally you got the Biography, shown in the Book, which tells a small story about the character.

Note that because these are text entries, they need to have both an identifier and an actual text, to facilitate translations.

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Then we come to #1, 단위’s Skirmish behavior.

• Unit Class determines a unit’s attributes, starting abilities, and passives. 그것’s an important aspect, 그리고 우리’ll talk about that later in this document. Note that every single unit params has a unique class in our design, but this is not obligatory.
• Unit Size determines if the unit will be a 1×1(정기적인) or a 2×2 (크기가 큰) 단위.
• Unit Species, used in a myriad of effects, like Holy Desecration. We save “alien” for the monstrous abominations you fight, but all of your heroes and the bandits are “humans”.

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In category #2, 너’ll find Portraits. We got a ton of those, so feel free to check the ones already made to find out the right sizes and styles.

• Skirmish portraits are used in battle, shown in the portrait bars to the left and right. You can put multiple ones in the “alive” category if you want them randomized per unit (we do that with bandits!). And the “죽은” 하나 (which we usually just make a skull will only show if you set it on the checkbox above. 그렇지 않으면, the portrait will simply disappear once the unit dies.
• Map Portraits are used in the book, for the warband page and in encounter options.
• Score View is saved for the banner that happens when you finish a fight, such as showing the unit you lost when the fight is won.

• Highlight 그리고 Silhouette are seen in the Hero selection screen, if a character is hovered or still locked.

이후, you have several entries about the unit’에스 비주얼. The .mdl entry handles the actual model and animation information, but the rest configure how the unit behaves in the map. Take particular care when using Shoot Target 그리고 기원, as this governs how the unit interacts with projectiles – where other units try to shoot it, and where its projectiles originate from.

참고하세요 Quote Map 그리고 무기 are deprecated.

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마지막으로, we reached #3 – Unlocking behavior.

The first is the requirements to unlock a hero – nothing here means the character is already unlocked. 여기’s how Rana, 예를 들어, is set up:

This is a complex entry where you can determine what sort of in-game event needs to happen for a character to be unlocked. Note the obvious 설명 entry, but the magic happens when you determine the Event Type. Each event type describes how it works, and then the final 4 entries determine how the event is checked. For the above example, we are listening for >=5 instances of “Spend Currency” 이벤트, but we reset the tracker at the end of every run/session.

To qualify the event, we use the Inspectors. For Rana’s unlock, we set up two: One describes that the currency we’re looking for is 마나, and the other describes that we can only check for events that happen in a specific zone, Albion. 여기’s how we did it:

Once you set a Value to Inspect, 너’ll see written in it the information of which other entries we need to fill, as noted in the image above. This takes a bit of trial and error to get right, but all the required information is laid to you in the descriptions (감사해요, MarkoP!)

지금, B-side Unlocks (Called “Prowess unlocks” 게임 내) work in a similar way.

But besides how you actually unlock it (그런데, we use the same unlocking for all characters: just have it complete a run without dying. Check any of our heroes in the Heroes folder for how we set it up), you can put a 이름 for this alternate version, add some bonus attributes, and even put an alternate model/texture.

Unit Class

Now let’s work on the 수업. You can use the Create menu, but I suggest you just click on the appropriate entry in the Params file and select “새로운”. 그 다음에, remember to save the new file – we use the Content/Merlin/UnitClasses folder for that.

지금, the Unit Class file is a bit simpler, but it houses many important configurations. Take a look at Breunor’에스:

첫 번째, 당신은 있습니다 Class Name. This is only for show. If you want to specify if this class is to be considered a 전사, 레인저 또는 Mystic for ability and AI purposes, 사용하다 Unit Role entry, assigning 탱크, Nuker 그리고 지원하다 각기.

그 다음에, you have to decide which abilities the unit is able to perform. ㅏ Movement Ability, most likely Run.rsc, and then the Starting Abilities. For player characters, we recommend only 2 능력, a base attack (삭감,Singe and Shoot are our examples) and an extra one, like Bash for our Breunor example.

만약에, 하지만, you are working on an enemy unit, go nuts. We recommend up to 5 abilities to keep the AI reasonable.

그 다음에, you got your Base Attributes, where you can define your unit stats. Pretty self-explanatory if you know the game, but note: “방어” refers to evasion, “Reaction Takes” is not used in the current design, 그리고 “Passive Power” is a hidden attribute you can use to scale things behind the scenes, but the player has no knowledge of that.

지금, note Bonus Attributes per Rank and Random Upgrades on Spawn. This is how units get stronger or have small variety in their stats.

Bonus Attributes per Rank is only used for player characters. It’s a flat increase added whenever the units level up. 지금 바로, this has been set to 0, but you can change that and even add fractional numbers if you want. Enemy units, unable to rank, are not affected by the entries here.

Rankup Bonus (not visible on the screenshot) creates cards on rankup which allow the player to choose which attribute to increase. It’s currently set as 2HP or 1 Armor with an added random card choice between Power, 회피, 범위, 정확성, Movement every 4 레벨. Enemy units also do not gain this.

In The Hand of Merlin, we scale enemy power per zone index, in a file attached to the Random Upgrades on Spawn entry. 그러기 위해서는, we use a structure similar to the Blacksmith Upgrades, where every zone represents a new tier.

예를 들어, 여기’s MinorAbominationUpgrades, used on Mandrake, Wyvern 그리고 Redcap. You can find all others in the Merlin/Enemies/BlacksmithUpgrades 접는 사람.

있다 3 “styles”, to generate some variety. Each style has 4 upgrades *for each zone – Albion, Marca Hispanica, Al-andalus, 예루살렘). Each entry has a few attribute modifiers. The expanded entry above means that 1 in every 3 Minor Abominations spawned in Jerusalem will have +10 Max Armor, +12 최대 건강, 그리고 +6 Power added to their base stats.

Pretty easy to adjust, I hope!

마지막으로, if your unit is an enemy unit, assign a Brain param. We talk more about those in their own guide – Artificial Intelligence.

Adding Enemies to a level

괜찮은, last bit. 허락하다’s add a character to a level as an enemy, so we can see it spawn. While the creation of maps is covered in another guide, 여기’s a quick rundown on how to add an enemy to one. I recommend checking Content\Merlin\Examples\Gameplay\GameplayTest as a baseline.

1. Create/find the Script Object. 그것’s represented in-world as an orange cube, but you can press the N key and search for it.
2. Duplicate any of the Unit Variables. Inside the script there’s a few CHOMUnitParams already. Just duplicate one and work on the double.
   
3. Browse a new Unit Params file
   
4. Do a bit of scripting inside the .lua file after the initial set up, type in the command

homSpawnUnit(worldInfo, XXXXXX, wbEnemyWarband, worldInfo:GetEnemySpawnPoint(“”, 0))

Where XXXXXX is the name of the params, like warlockParams or test1Params.
그렇게 간단해요, whenever that skirmish start, the unit will be spawned on a spawnpoint. Make sure there’s no other ones set to the same spawn point, as seen on the Creating new Levels guide.

Testing Characters

A few tips to test out your characters:

• When starting a level from the editor instead of going through the Lobby/Main menu, the game assigns you the characters in the Content\Merlin\Databases\TestingRoster.rsc document, so you can change those characters to the ones you are working on.
• To test enemies, you can use the console to type hom_dbg_bDisableAI = 1, allowing you to control the enemy warband

New units will make your experience even more varied. 재미있게 보내세요!