Floating Islands in sea combat

[Seravy]

It seems that when you engage over sea and your stack contains a floating island,
a 3x3 area is turned into terrain where walking units can move, and ships cannot.
I assumes this is supposed to simulate the island carrying the unit.
However, the location of these tiles do not match the starting position of units, moreover, this effect seems to only happen in some combats, not all of them, randomly.
I assume this is an intended, malfunctioning feature?
If yes, that's pretty powerful, as units on the island cannot be properly attacked by ships, they are effectively invincible to them (except their ranged attacks of course)

A quick recording showing how it looks like when it happens :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MixXWLQO...e=youtu.be

Do I remove this or try to make it always work and place it properly under the unit(s) if possible with an actual land terrain shown?

[Anthony]

Having an actual island that you can stand on would be neat. On the other hand, it sort of suggests that passengers on board ships should also be able to attack, and that sounds like a can of worms to code.

[spottedshroom]

Huh. I kind of always assumed that the floating island caused land units to be able to participate in the sea battle, but not actually move around. I don't think I've ever seen them move in that situation, but I suppose that's because they had no path to my units.

I like the effect of units on the island being inaccessible to ships. It's interesting and makes Floating Island a more fun spell. If it does only happen randomly and not match the units' starting positions, it would be nice to fix. It would also be nice to get a visual cue of where the island is, perhaps ala Flying Fortress?

[Seravy]

Investigated a little, and I found that
-The variables where this floating island effect is stored is not properly set to 0 prior to setting it to 1 to apply the effect.
-The procedure that puts the terrain there comes BEFORE the units are placed and checked for floating islands
-And that it seems to put the effect in different locations if both players have an island than when only one does (this combined with not resetting is probably responsible for the effect sometimes being next to the unit, other times not accessible)
-As well as the effect writes into the "roads" array whatever that means (not familiar with this data section yet, but that's the name in tweaker)
Chances are we are better off coding this effect on our own instead of relying on the existing code if we do want it to work.

Edit : I can't seem to make it display any terrain resembling land or clouds in any easily doable way.
The only thing I was able to get drawn are...rivers, are those even used? Don't think I ever seen any in combat. I bet terrain modification 4 was meant for that (causes terrain to be unaccessible without swimming, currently only used by ocean combat).
For the time being I removed the buggy code that causes what was shown in the video and fixed filling the floating island variables (but they still get filled after the place where they were supposed to get used), and have a rough idea how to turn the terrain movement costs into land, but no idea how to actually display one.
This will be hard to implement.

[Seravy]

Success!!!
   
Wasn't easy, had to manually call the subroutine that draws stuff, calculate positions for it, etc.

Question is, do we want this in 1.50 or not?
While it probably was intended, it never actually became part of the game, and we have no idea if it was not properly working because of an incomplete implementation that got forgotten (bug) or because they decided not to use it. It affects gameplay a lot, as it essentially makes floating island a counter to ships (they cannot attack, but you can if you use missiles).

[Tiltowait]

Sure, throw it in. Restoring forgotten features is always good.

[spottedshroom]

That's awesome, Seravy! I vote to include, since it was already semi-implemented in the released game. The other reasonable option would seem to be removing the combat island functionality completely, leaving the units on it unable to move.

You've also got me really interested in seeing restored combat on river terrain, although that's a harder sell for inclusion in 1.5

[Anthony]

It affects gameplay a lot, as it essentially makes floating island a counter to ships (they cannot attack, but you can if you use missiles).

Only really a counter to triremes, galleys and warships have missile attacks anyway.

[Seravy]

It affects gameplay a lot, as it essentially makes floating island a counter to ships (they cannot attack, but you can if you use missiles).

Only really a counter to triremes, galleys and warships have missile attacks anyway.

Unless you put a magician on the island. Warship still works even then though, but that is limited to a few races only.

[namad]

When my floating island is alone and attacked in caster of magic mod the battle ends instantly and the floating island is dead. It isn't even allowed to act and I cannot cast spells and in fact I never even see the combat load.

Is this working as intended?