SJ's Tech Gridder 0.50 - now with ability support!

[Suicide Junkie]

Are you looking to make huge grid techs?
Just want an easy way to make 100 levels of some component?

Try my tech gridder!
Tech Gridder v0.1.zip

Current features:
- up to 255 new component levels
- multi-dimensional grids
- Modify values by addition, multiplication, or exponentiation at each step.
- Supports modifications to all 3 resource costs, size, hitpoints, supply usage.
- Preview graphs show how your current settings will affect the values.

To do list:
- Expand automatic component naming options.
- add support modifying weapon-specific values
- add support for modifying ability amounts.
- and more

[ May 11, 2003, 05:00: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[ZeroAdunn]

Wow SJ, this is just the thing I was looking for, I love making mods, but I am so lazy I just never get around to it, now, with you tech grider, I can make mods from the comfort of my own couch in minutes, thank you SJ.

And now for another testimonial:

Seriously though, this is a great thing, I just downloaded it so I don't know if it works, but I suspect it does, thank you very much!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

sounds good.

[Suicide Junkie]

Tech gridder v0.2.zip

- Added support for Roman numeral naming, and alphabetical naming. Both expanded and compact forms of all three types of naming are available.
- Added .ini file to save directory settings. It will now remember where you keep your se4 mod files

[tesco samoa]

how does it work ??

[TerranC]

I thought DavidG already made something like this; what makes this one any different?

[Suicide Junkie]

Tech gridder 0.2b.zip
- Fixed output for multidimensoinal grids
- Changed preview windows to calculate and display values for the same number of steps as the # of tech levels specified in the tech area tab.
- Added "successful completion" message box, since processing can take some time when working on higher dimensions with hundreds of components.

Terran & Tesco:
---------------
This is a more powerful component creator, designed with multi-dimensional grid techs in mind.

As an example, consider designing an engine.

First, create a basic template component.
A simple "Ion Engine I", with 200 minerals cost, 50 radioactives cost, 10 supplies used, and a size of 10 with 20 hitpoints.

Place this component in a text file by itself (be sure to have a line starting with "*begin*", just like the components.txt

Run the tech gridder, and select this the file above.
For the tech levels tab; fill in: 20 levels, starting at zero, and a tech area of "Engine Manufacturing"
In the cost tab, enter:
add: -7.5 ... multiply: 1 ... exponent: 1 under minerals
Add: 0 ... multiply: 0.95 ... exponent: 1 under radioactives.

Go to the Misc tab, and click "Grid this tech".

After a few milliseconds, the text file you had will now be filled with 10 components.
Ion Engine 1 through 10.
Their costs will range from 200 down to 50 minerals, and the radioactives will go down in cost with diminishing returns.

Now comes the powerful part.
Go back to the tech area tab, and change the tech area to "Engine Durability"
Go to the cost tab, and set the resource modifiers back to default (0/1/1)

Go to the "tonnage" tab, and set the hitpoints modifiers to multiply by 1.5, and exponent by 0.9
Set the initial value on the preview window to 20, and click preview. Observe the nice increasing curve with diminishing returns

click "grid this tech" again.

When you look at the text file again, you will find it now has 100 components, forming a 2-D grid.

Repeat the process to get a 5-level dimension that reduces supply use by 1 per level.
Now you have 500 components!

You can add as many dimensions as you like in the same way.

[ April 20, 2003, 17:41: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[ZeroAdunn]

now, if only you added a function so it would do weapon damages too

[pathfinder]

Hehe, my thoughts too ZeroAdunn

worked nicely getting the costs set.

[Suicide Junkie]

Tech Gridder 0.3.zip
Thanks to ZA's excellent suggestion on IRC, I have a nice start to weapon gridding!

Notes:
- Keep the "lock zero values" checked, or you'll probably end up with range-20 weapons. If you know what you're doing, and put some fractional values into the initial component, you can get good results with it off.
- The modifiers apply to all the weapon's values at the same time.
If you add then divide, you can cause the damage at all ranges to converge on a single value. EG: +3, x0.5, ^1 will make the values converge on 6.
If your weapon originally had damage values of 6 5 4 3 2 1, then this will strengthen the max ranges while leaving the short ranges at the same power!

Use of the Preview window is highly recommended to get these things to work out.