GDL Notice: New Tables and Variables pertaining to ACP and Capture

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>]

Hello fellow Xconq game designers,

  I just added a small truckload of new functionality to GDL and thought
you should know about it. I suppose now I really should get back to
fixing bugs (including new ones that I probably created with these
enhancements).

  Where to start? Hmmm..., let's talk about ACP modifiers first.
  New tables: 'night-adds-acp', 'night-multiplies-acp',
'occupant-adds-acp', and 'occupant-multiplies-acp'.
  Tables that are no longer around: 'acp-night-effect' and
'acp-occupant-effect'. Don't worry, __I replaced these old tables with
their new "*-multiplies-acp" counterparts in the various games in the
library.
  The documentation describes all of these new tables in a fair amount
of detail. I will be updating the doc Web pages at the Xconq site
shortly.
  Also, the new version of Wreckreation demonstrates the usage of
'night-adds-acp' and 'night-multiplies-acp'. Play the Undead side, and
watch how much ACP a Nightwing has during the night as opposed to during
the day. For that matter, notice that the zombies are a bit sluggish
during the day, and that the various human units aren't too active at
night. Better yet, actually try to move a Nightwing during the day. :-)
(Hint: If it actually moves or causes a crash, then you have found a
bug.)

  Now let's talk about the capture-related stuff.
  I finally got fed up enough with the model-0 combat/capture situation
and provided true capture-resistance tables. These are independent of
any combat protection. They are: 'occupant-allows-capture-by',
'occupant-allows-capture-of', 'stack-neighbor-allows-capture-by',
'stack-neighbor-allows-capture-of', 'any-neighbor-allows-capture-by',
and 'any-neighbor-allows-capture-of'.
  Again, these are fairly well-documented. But, as a summary, the
"occupant-*" tables pertain to how an occupant helps/hinders its
transport regarding capture. The "stack-neighbor-*" tables pertain to
how units in the same cell (excluding occs) help/hinder one another. The
"any-neighbor-*" tables are like "stack-neighbor-*" but include occs as
benefactors. The "*-by" tables refer to how the helper/hinderer affects
the capture based on the type of the unit _attempting capture_. The
"*-of" tables refer to how the helper/hinderer affects the capture based
on the type of the unit _resisting capture_. In all cases, 0% is good
(meaning capture is entirely prevented), 100% is normal (attempted
capture is not interfered with), and >100% is bad for the unit which is
the victim of the capture attempt.
  Wreckreation demonstrates the use of 'occupant-allows-capture-of'.

  But, that's not all. By default (for legacy support), the combat
protection tables ('protection', 'stack-protection',
'cellwide-protection-for', and 'cellwide-protection-against') are still
considered as capture chance modifiers. This is because the new global
variable, 'protection-resists-capture' is true by default. To make the
Xconq capture code _not_ use the combat protection tables when
calculating capture chances, then:
  (set protection-resists-capture false)
like Wreckreation does. Note that the new "*-allows-capture-*" tables
are always considered, no matter what this global var is set to; there
default of 100% will not (should not) affect existing games in any way.

  And, finally, per my wish and Matthew Skala's verbalized suggestion,
Xconq nows has 'changed-type-if-captured'. If an unit is successfully
captured, it will change type to whatever unit type you specify for the
given captor-prisoner lookup. By default, no type change occurs upon
successful capture (the table default is 'non-unit'). Wreckreation
demonstrates the usage of this table as well.

  Hoping this wasn't all too much,
  Enjoy,
    Eric