#restricted as bitmask - think about it!

[Psientist]

So, here is my biggest official patch request - conversion of #restrictedgod in pretender/newmonster and #restricted in newspell mods to a bitmask rather than a lookup table.

Think about it - it's really the only mod command that applies to a fixed set of numbers (the nations), and if you want to create a monster or spell available to more than one, but not all nations, you have to completely duplicate that spell/monster (since #copystating has proved buggy when used in my pretender mods for this purpose).

I realize it might be a LARGE bitmask (with up to 94 nations), but I think it makes sense. Here is the bitmask for 2^94= 198070406285661000000000000003


And yeah, I know such a patch would break a lot of mods out there, but I don't think it would be a hard mod fix.

Thoughts?

[Edi]

That's an idea. However, take a look at the modding wishes shortlist. A much better way of doing things would be for each nation to have a pretender list just like they have a recruitment list, and using two commands like #clearpretenders and #addpretender <monster nbr> you could build a custom god list for each nation. Yes, that's a bit more work, but it keeps things clear and removes the necessity of resorting to such ridiculously large bitmasks.

[Sombre]

Having #addpretender commands would be very useful. As it is I don't like to use the current method to add pretenders so most of my nations just have the default.

[PvK]

(After whether or not IW feels like providing it,) what can be modded is the most important thing, followed by how easy it is for people to figure out.

Essentially we'd all like some way to have full control of which nations can use which pretenders, without having side effects and/or having to duplicate units to get around the unwanted effect of #restrictedgod.

Maybe there is another operation already in the game (from the programmer's perspective) which can be exposed by mod command, which would do the trick.