Item Spawning system

[sethmachine]

Hi,

For finding random leveled utility items, I am having them appear randomly in the places players explore on the ground (if you've played Phase Killer you know what I mean). Of course the areas where items can spawn are also areas populated by creep spawning, so it's not completely "free" per se.

I am thinking of giving each player their own spawn (so more players = linearly more items appearing), but I have some worries.

1) What do I do to prevent players from farming these items? I imagine there could be one guy in a 10 player game who just goes around grabbing everything (people have virtual inventories, so they can get many items besides the vanilla 6).

I plan on making getting currency very hard in this map, and also players can't pawn items or sell them (they either have to use them or throw them away). So I think that would deter some item farming, but nonetheless that won't discourage it completely (people love items, especially picking up free ones, and everyone on WC3 is an item ninja).

I suppose I could somehow put in a cooldown for how often you can grab items? This isn't a problem in say a single player game (because items will be harder to come by), but if in a 10 player game one guy has grabbed 20 items in 5 minutes, something is quite wrong.

Problem is too that if there's too many of something, it gets valued less and doesn't become as exciting or stimulating. I want people to always be excited about coming across items as they explore, rather than ignore it. This obviously would encourage exploring and playing. And I especially want people to "fight" over items too (because then items always have some relevance or value).

 

[Cokemonkey11]

I think you may have just described precisely why most game designers use a creep drop system. It's harder to wander and steal items if they don't appear until a creep is killed.

 

[sethmachine]

Possibly, though I don't want to give up this idea yet.

I guess I want to do it because it's how the GBC game DWM II did items--they just appeared on the ground randomly and I'm trying to re-create that experience for the map I'm doing.

But the situation is a bit different because there's only a single player, and you're pretty much guaranteed to fight creeps in your trip to the item and back (since there were random encounters at a good rate).

I know I'll have to have a very low spawn rate of items per player (if I keep it linear). And I suppose I'll have to keep the wilderness relatively dangerous (very high chance of being attacked in the time it would take to come across an item and pick it up).

Still debating these things though...

 

[Cokemonkey11]

Ah right, I recall that actually (I even played DWM2 recently-ish)

I usually avoid these things, but there may be a way to use local blocks to hide items from all players but one.

SetItemVisible will cause a desync though, I think.

 

[BPower]

DWM II

I haven't played that game, so I might miss the goal you want to achieve.
I assume it should be similar to an ego shooter, where ammunition and healthpacks are spawning in certain intervals at predefined places.
I guess the best solutions is, that it's good to be at this place at spawn time, but in general it is more effective to be somewhere else. However Wc3 is not as fast as egoshooters are :/.

SetItemVisible will cause a desync though, I think.

Probably yes, otherwise you could create item loots locally, which would be awesome especially for multiplayer RPGs. We should ask waterknight. I'll also run some tests later.
It's no solution for you seth, because it would kill the "fight for an item" aspect.

This is the first example I've read, where an item indexer would be really useful.
It would allow you to assign a indexed item to a player/unit.
A practical use would be for instance:
A unit can't pick up more than 2 items, which do not belong to it within 60 seconds.
There was a long debate, but in the end noone ever wrote such a snippet.
Mainly because there is no native TriggerRegisterItemEntersRegion :/.