Concept Workshop
Hey guys!
Now that I've shown those three systems that I was really eager to surprise people with, I'm now dumping everything I have on this thread. I mean it, absolutely every thought I had, every note I jotted, it will all be recorded here in this thread for eternity.
These notes will like be updated as we go along, but at the moment they feature everything from systems already done, fully baked concepts, half baked ideas, what's happening, what will be happening...
I would be surprised and ecstatic if people managed to read through it all, but just realise it's not necessary until you REALLY want to know what's in the works.
I'll probably use it as a reference for anything else on this thread. This is the Concepts Workshop. I will also be slapping up a Database Workshop, such as unit statistics etc, and whatever others are necessary.
The more you read of this, the more you'll be in the know of what is happening with Myriad, and I hope it excites you guys as much as me!
So, if you have a read, please take your time and enjoy!
Warning: Epic length post! 
See how long it takes for you to scroll to the bottom if you don't believe me!
Ramblings: This is what I typed up on the laptop.
Ahl Hadin – A light-hearted desert warrior, despite his friendly nature he is one of the deadliest fighters in the Barren Land.
Say his name ten times fast, and you’ll know who he’s supposed to be.
There will already be an existing world at start up of game, Myriad will be populated by a bunch of characters that can provide you interesting side-quests. As mentioned before however, quest-givers can die like any other unit, and it may be necessary to either die yourself, or find some way to commune with his spirit, in fact, one quest practically forces this upon you.
Probably the MotD sends out an agent to kill the guy before you can finish the quest, it might lie in waiting until you come scurrying back to finish the quest, then kill him. It is of course possible to stop the beast if you happen to both intercept and detect it en-route, but the chances of this is remote for the unprepared and still difficult if you are prepared.
Druids etc have it easy, they have the natural ability to detect spirits.
The Mistress’ minions: I’m going to have fun with a whole bunch of sub-AI. A particular brand of minion which is a ghoulbeast looking thing will spring up out of the ground and instantly surprise everything around it. It then starts a version of threatcounter, where it starts evaluating what target it want to attack, it rapidly counts up, and any move that you make or action that you take will accelerate the process for you, so if you run the minion will very quickly target you and start hunting you down. The first unit to met the pre-determined integer will become the first target, and the ghoulbeast will commence its attack. (It may have a magic targeter, where every unit in its radius when it springs from ground is marked, and it can now find them wherever they go. It will hunt them down one by one depending on ‘threat’ priority. If your bravery is high enough to resist the fright, one of two things might happen, either your horse will still stop because it’s smart enough to see the minion is a threat, and just allow you full control, or your horse will ignore the minion and blunder through, which is not a good move if you want to escape, but probably the move of a brave but dumb knight. I think it will be possible to train different behaviours in your horse, war training, so you can decide.
If your bravery is low enough, then the fright will cause your horse to panic and bolt (not to mention the rider), and will hasten away, with a chance of throwing its rider. Not good for either of them.
A middle range means your horse will just stop in fright and limit your control.
The ghoulbeast has a unique attack look compared to the usual standard of the game. It can jump up and rip riders from their horses, this is true even if they are in motion, it can also do the same to horses, ripping them about, according to strength vs. Weight. (More physics here) Basically a modification of the Charge physics, where the strength of the unit Ripping will decide how much force to apply to attacked unit, and the direction will probably be one of two, either 220, or 140, behind to the side, and adding ripping damage to the force damage. Sort of a pull, as opposed to the Charge push force.
So the ghoul beast can rip riders from their mounts as they attempt to flee, and attack them. Once a rider is off his horse and stunned, his ‘threat’ level is instantly decreased, so that another rider nearby who is attempting to flee might suddenly be a greater threat than the current target. So a ghoulbeast might rip all riders in sight to the ground before dispatching them properly. (Threat levels can only be accelerated by a target’s action if the ghoulbeast can actually see what target is doing.)
So commonly if a whole party is riding along and one of these buggers pops up, they’ll all freeze, because any movement will just highlight them.
Other attack features that will be introduce to game is ‘line attacks’, where if a footman slashes horizontally from the right (attack range of weapon = 90), the trigger will instantly calculate the region which the sword passed through. E.g. 90(x) by 90(y), centred at Position of Attacking unit offset by 45(x), 45(y). The attack damage will be spread out among all enemy units (maybe not just enemy) with collisions in this region (hopefully that what the trigger uses when you say all units within region) with a flying height equal or less than height of attack (not sure how I’ll calculate this). How the damage is spread exactly I’m not sure yet. I might do it like Charge where the damage starts out as full, then will every progressive enemy it reduces accordingly because it is slowed by impact. It would be good to also have a fully decked out attack physics system, (after Myriad is functional), where it takes into account things like the unit’s strength, and the weight of a weapon which is applied to the force behind the weapon, and then penetration value of the weapon (sharpness), which calculates how much of the force is translated into actual killing damage, the rest of the force left over becomes the trauma force. A blunt sledge hammer would be almost completely trauma force, which also has a damage, but takes the mass and armour of unit etc into account (as the penetration damage does as well), and mostly stuns rather than injures. It also has greater wear on both the weapon and the enemy stamina and armour.
So there is a balance between trauma force and killing damage, the penetration value controls how the scales tip. But in this way, while a strong man can bash his opponent around with ease, a slim man could still deal more actual damage simply by the sharpness of his blade. A knife won’t stun anyone, but it’ll still kill him if it is stuck in his heart. A blade will cut where a hammer will just bounce. So there is no better way to go, trauma and mortal damage are both equally useful, it’s purely up to you and the situation how you want to go. You cannot have 100% trauma force AND 100% mortal damage, but you can have 70% trauma and 30% mortal damage, which is common with swords ( yes it’s only about 30% despite common opinion). A samurai sword might be more like 20% trauma and 80% mortal damage.
A shield is a great device, a successful block will push all the mortal damage back into trauma. (Maybe it just negates m-dmg, leaving 70% trauma, but the following way is more realistic) Thus trauma force will be back at 100% (maybe trauma damage doesn’t damage HP, just other stats like stamina). Unless the shield is crap and the sword penetrates it. Shields have a value, probably a counter to Penentration, e.g it might have a shield value of 35%, meaning that it can cope with up to 35% of penetration and turn it into trauma, anything over that will deal that excess damage and break the shield.
So if it has 35% shield value, and an attack has 40% penetration, it will now deal 5% mortal damage, and 60 + 35% (95%) trauma force, and break the shield. If it was 35 or less, the shield would just take normal wear and tear of the force, which would simply be trauma force % of force of attack (strength, weight of weapon etc...)
This is why they are so good against arrows, because arrows have a high penetration value, between 80-95%, but low force because of their light weight. If they didn’t have such a high penetration value then they would be quite useless at killing the enemy, because their trauma force would be laughable. Say 100 force equals either 100 trauma force, or 1 damage.
If an arrow has 1000 force behind it with a penetration value of 90%, that means that it will cause 100 trauma force and 9 damage. But if say it was a fowling bunt, and penetration was 10%, it would have 900 trauma force and deal only 1 damage. 900 trauma force is hardly enough to cause any serious stunnage, and 1 dmg is pathetic. In fact since the shield will likely reduce any trauma force because of deflection (halves it maybe) now it is even less useful at 450. However it might be useful for stunning animals, as they are unarmoured, or perhaps even just a footman without shield. But nowhere near as useful as an actual killing arrow would be. Also will have to think of ways of introducing the element of accuracy, such as if an arrow/sword strikes the head and penetrates the armour. Perhaps this can be reflected by critical strike, which is in turn affected by attacking unit’s attack skill, and attacked unit’s defense skill (dodging, rolling with the blow).
I would like to be able to target specific bits of the body, not necessarily telling the unit to target body bits, but just a way of having a trigger calculate which body-bit was struck, and all according stat effects. E.g. Leg, cripples movement, and affects certain abilities (dodge), arm will impair use of whatever is held in that arm, such as shield/sword, striking the arm may even cause him to drop whatever he is holding. Torso = Stamina. Head = Death.
In the mean time however I’ll simply have a Wounded status, if a unit is wounded, he is crippled in movement, attack etc... I may make it that wounds or even just HP do not regen on their own, only stamina and mana naturally regens, wounds need to be treated before they will regen.
Vertical attacks will have very small AoE, but the reach into the air will be increased according to length of weapon, this is simply in the case of say a rider on a horse, if a warrior has a long enough sword it is possible for him to strike both the horse and the rider. Thrust attacks are very specific, and are simply calculated in the normal fashion, as they only affect the target unit.
I am going to have a pig farmer character with a bunch of pigs (as these characters usually do), named after the pigs I know. They may even be important to a storyline, I know I’ll involve them in a quest. Dr. Evil, No.2, Little Bugger, Sunshine, Lady, Old-timer, Bruce, Big Fella, Gutsy, Britney and Porky.
Spirit. As mentioned in notes, when you die, the strength of the spirit you become is entirely dependent on the spirit (mana) you had when you died. Spirit, for those still alive is basically the essence of who they are, heroes are those with great spirit, and spirit is used in everything. How heroic and how much ‘spirit’ the guy has is generally judged by his max spirit. The hero uses this pool in order to do things such as cast spells, or even things like special sword attacks, or a rallying cry, because this isn’t magical mana it is spirit. Which is basically what warcraft mana is, it applies to everything, even non-magical.
So if you plan to deliberately consign yourself to the spirit realm, then make sure your spirit is full, because that will be the only thing that matters.
Skills- The skills that you are used to seeing on the UI of the bottom right grid may at first glance seem the same, for you will see four skills at the bottom, and the big plus on the right. However, this is far from the case. The four skills you see are nothing more than skill sets, such as maybe Weapons, Spells, Endurance, and Survival, these act as spell books, they each hold a max of skills or spells in their categories, (In fact they may not even have categories). The real spells are in fact little icons lining the bottom of the screen in WoW fashion, each skill-set might hold the abilities for maybe three or four slots out of the 10. This is simply shortcutting. You can activate ability via the numbers 0-9. The big plus sign is now how you access your entire repertoire of skills, and here you can either activate the stored skills, or add them to one of you skill-sets. To remove a skill, you simply click on the skill set containing the skill, and then remove it (maybe shift click?).
This way all of your skills are available to you in the field, just not all of them are easy to access.
I was thinking of making a limit of some type, like in regards to spells, so that a Wizard might have to go back to his house or library to swap around some spells. Maybe I’ll create a memory for units. E.g, a Wizard has a memory of 30, he can remember thirty string spells. These are basically his spell shortcuts, he might be able to activate any of these spells by typing anything between 1-30. However a player could still have the spell-string written down on a bit of paper IRL, this is fine, in fact it is encouraged because it’s just utilising the player’s ‘memory’ as a way of storing (instead of a big plus), he’ll still have to type in the full thing, so it isn’t a shortcut.
Memory can of course be improved, via intelligence, learning, training or artificially. In fact I might replace the hero attribute Intelligence with Memory.
Combining. As well as items, an Alchemist can combine monster ingredients in order to create a new monster. (Unfortunately at this point, I can’t really make it create new models for every combo, instead, it’ll use the model of the primary animal, and then add or subtract appropriate attributes like with the building constructions.
I think I will have to create dummy spell casters for every player in order so that I might use things like faerie fire. Also, as a reminder, all spirits will just be invisible (as the ‘burrowed’ invisibility category seems to be non-functional) and hopefully I can create an artificial ‘illumination’, probably via faerie fire from Player’s dummy spellcaster. (Perhaps I can name it a Servant, but it will have to be as invulnerable and undetectable, so probably have to remove it’s model. Either that or change its model to a glow and/or sink it in the ground.)
With artificial detection, I can decide whether to reveal spirit units, or just sneaky units. Wish I could do it enmass, but with the targeting system that I’ve invented it would just faerie fire everything. So I will have to give it instant cooldown and to cast faerie fire on every ‘target’ unit. Wish I could just cast a spell or buff on units without all this dummy unit business.
I will have to use the dummy speller (or perhaps a regional one) in order to cast things like Frightened, when a hero is confronted with the big vast desert, or affected by the heat or any other kind of environmental feature.
Arenas – Heroes like to test out their skills and abilities against each other, and they will have the chance to do so in the Arenas. There is one Arena in the game to begin with, but players themselves can create new Arenas just like Race-courses. The rules in a arena can vary just as races can, with their own weapons or given new ones, with prizes or without, to the death or to the injury. Of course, hero battles need not be in official arenas, normal rules apply outside it. But arenas are handy just for officialising a battle, and also giving you the opportunity to beat up on your friends without suffering the relationship consequences of friend-beating. Arena battles can also be between teams, not just 1 vs 1, or tournament style, so that the grande winner of the lot will receive the prize.
Terrain – I would like Myriad to feel as big as possible, so the terrain has to be as interesting as possible in a small space. It is also of course supposed to be quite open, but this doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of paths. It would be quite cool to have nice windy bumpy narrow cliff paths through the forest, adds a tactical terrain, and is also a natural environmental thing. I wish (or hope) it is possible either to remove cliffs, or create a system (like TKoK sort of) where you can make cliffs from normal terrain, and somehow make the cliff part unpathable for ground, maybe I can make a certain tileset unpathable, or just create pathing blockers, but the latter have complications, and hopefully be able to create a special effect for the cliff models themselves.
Might create another contest for this feature.
Would be cool because then I can add things like avalanches and the like, so a sorcerer could cause landslides to wipe out a fleeing opponent or block off paths. That’d be really cool, then you could have workers to clear away the debris, and perhaps also have them cause landslides also. Should have little ‘dirt piles’ on top of cliffs that they can dig away to cause a landslide (AoM styles), and perhaps trees and stuff can make it more difficult or longer to do so.
Also would like a bunch of water around like I said in notes, rivers, streams, rivulets, and lakes, all as natural looking as possible (not giant trenches), so that most places are pathable, cliffs would only be occasional, for effect. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s possible to ‘create’ shallow or deep water in game, and certainly not to remove it, but I think I can get around it. Simply make all terrain water in map, then cover it over with new terrain, or raise the terrain. So in the game, in order to affect the ‘water level’ all you have to do is affect the height of terrain, lower or deeper water, higher for shallower or no water. Maybe not everywhere will have water, such as in most places of the desert etc... so that to build wells, you need to strike water in order for the well to gain water value.
Prize Winning – I’ll set up some sort of hidden prize package. Hopefully I can hide it, I don’t think map protection is enough against experienced hackers. But basically, I have a calculator that will convert the Player name and maybe IP address with some other integers to find out what unlocks certain prizes. This makes it more difficult to muck things up or prize stealing, as long as they keep using the same Player/Character and IP.
Prizes and the like are stored via Game Caches, and therein lies my dilemma, how do you stop naughty people from simply making a map to duplicate these caches to use in the online version? Perhaps there is some way to authenticate the caches for online, such as adding a little marker which says the ID of the map, and if it doesn’t match the authenticated map on profile it won’t work.
Maybe I can make some sort of CD-key.
Either they can be told their prize password when they do something worthy in-game, or a Game Master (me or one of the team) watches a game in order to make sure it’s authentic, in a tournament contest of some kind and bestows prizes appropriately.
Prizes may simply be hidden items that will be added to inventory during the current game, and/or at the start up of a new game, as well as revealing perhaps spell codes, uber spells, adding attributes or abilities, increasing skills, bestowing a personal undead army, practically anything that comes to mind. As well as giving the player an appropriate achievement title. (Xbox 360 styles!)
Also, there will be ranks, which is basically just the level of your character. This just means that players who have played the game before and are returning to the World of Myriad with the same characters can find similarly levelled opponents. I hope I can make it so that people can see the levels of each other’s character before starting the game, just so no noobs get punked.
But even in a Myriad game where the levels are significantly different, this doesn’t automatically mean pwnage for the low levels, the noob can use his smarts to overcome his handicap, as this game does not run on the usual getting ultra-powerful through gained levels. Although characters of course improve their skills massively over time, this doesn’t necessarily mean instant death for others. They will probably always win every encounter (even if we don’t take into account exactly what skills have been buffed up) but they won’t deal a billion damage with only one blow. E.g with a warrior, they will be stronger or more skilled, being more accurate and having abilities that can allow them to blast you away, but they don’t get godly or invincible, you actually still have the possibility of dealing them a mortal blow as well, and as long as you have armour you have a good chance of surviving, to run away. Which you’d really have to do because there’s no real way that you could expect to win the fight unless the opponent was really really dumb, like actively shooting himself in the foot, but you should still have a fighting chance to do as you please. You may still get obliterated, but there’s a goodly chance you can find a way to escape or turn the tables.
I just thought of something, mana is now pure spirit, so structures and the like that aren’t alive won’t have mana. But any structures that are alive, such as Tree of Life will have spirit, and thus will become a spirit/wisp upon death.
Perhaps items too can have a spirit. I’m going to create the sword Stormbringer.
If the sword is destroyed then the spirit is released.
A well uses the value Element_Water instead of mana, which is dependent on whether there is water beneath it. I wonder what happens if you submerge a building into water? Probably destroys it as soon as you are finished. If it doesn’t I’ll probably create a water damage trigger which damages it over time, so it can be saved if you raise it out of the water in time. The water value will probably increase along with it, and wood will probably decrease in relation because of rot. To stop the rot you will have to get rid of the water value (it will decrease by itself over time if struck by sunshine), unless the building is alive in which case water has no effect, and is in fact probably useful.
It would also be good if I could introduce something else into the game, units can go into deep water, but they can also drown if in there for even a short period of time. Of course this might not be a workable idea because then I have the trouble of trying to tell units not to go through deep water instead of a bridge five steps away when trying to get to the other side, so I might scrap this for the time being. But if/when I do implement it, I will use unit height to determine whether it’s deep enough to drown him, so it’s not just the two states deep or shallow there actually a whole range in between in which a unit would either breathe or drown. Now we’re getting into lung capacity. Any damage like this should be stat damage, such as stamina, because it doesn’t actually damage the body physically, like cuts or bruises or dismemberments, but rather impairs the breathing, no oxygen going to blood cells therefore it simply affects stamina. If stamina reaches 0, then unit dies. In this way it is possible to ride a horse to death, or if you push your hero too far to collapse from exhaustion and die.
Maybe a hero will also have a sort of mental limits as to how far he’ll follow your directions (this might take away some of the first person perspective however) such as if he hits 10% stamina he’ll stop, and refuse to budge, because he’s on the verge of collapse, unless he is galvanised into action some way.
Or perhaps I’ll just let player have total control, and leave it up to him not to exhaust his hero (which is supposed to be him).
Companions – Those who are joined to your cause will be owned by you (player wise), they’ll still be subject to the same personality vs. order rules but the fact that they had thrown in their lot with yours should mean that at least for the time being they’ll follow your orders explicitly.
Companions will be very interested in your continued health, so they’ll tend to warn you of danger, or shout advice during battle, and attempt to assist you.
Mace – A stalwart companion of the Captain/Prince, wields a mighty mace.
Bruno – A big fella with giant blood, he has a Viking like passion for battle. A valuable ally to gain.
Companion AI – As long as a companion’s interests are aligned with yours he will accompany you etc... but if after a while something else takes precedence or your goals diminish in importance to him, he will leave to do whatever it is that he deems more valuable. Once he does that, he might in fact find your goal top priority again and so he will try to find you, or maybe even completing the goal on his own if it is non-interfering for him to do so. In any case you run into him again along the way or at the destination and he is once more at your service.
Assassins – These are always fun, assassin’s are generally present in any society and are usually available for hire or contracting. Getting chased by an assassin is always exciting.
Camera moves – Would be good to get someone onto this, such as if an enemy uses a move on you such as backstab, or some sort of move your hero can’t respond to, the camera will move about in an exciting manner, zooming in, crabbing around in relation to move.
Wish musings – Would be cool if in a future update I could bring in a shooter mode, so if a Archer Hero wants to he can ‘snipe’ with bow, camera zooms in on target or just shifts around to over shoulder Zelda style and player can aim at a point, and damage will be dealt according to where the arrow strikes.
Desert Spirits – Spirits generally don’t have the physical ability to harm physical units, but they have other abilities, such as summoning sand storms, blizzards and earthquakes to defend their domain. They can also perform these tasks at the behest of one with the talent, such as a Shaman. The roles of Shaman or Druid simply signify what type of spirits they most strongly identify with, and since heroes don’t have classes per se, they can gain ability with any spirit class. It may also be possible for Druids, Shamans, Spiritualists to in fact perform these tasks themselves, since they themselves have spirit, but getting another spirit to do it has certain advantages, such as if the spirit is immensely more powerful. I would like to have variables such as how much a particular unit/spirit likes a certain hero/person, and how that race of spirits as a whole regard him. I would also like to apply the rule to every unit, but I don’t know if that is possible, memory wise, but if it is it would definitely become a 3D array such as UnitRep [UnitID of Triggering Unit] [UnitID of Target Unit] = Reputation
So it might go UnitRep [233] [154] = 100. So unit 233 likes unit 154 at a value of 100. But there could at the same time be UnitRep [154] [233] = -100, meaning unit 154 doesn’t return the feeling, and really doesn’t like the guy.
These like variables are affected by other factors, such as race, class, behaviour, previous dealings, public reputation (this saves time) etc, etc...
So you might have trigger, Hero does something Nasty to Unit. Set UnitRep [UnitID of Unit] [UnitID of Hero] = (UnitRep...) -10. So when hero does something Nasty, the unit he did the nasty to will like him 10 points less.
I think this is possible via Jass.
Desert Spirits are nasty in particular; they are fiercely protective of the Barren Land and will do anything in their power to drive away outsiders. If you can survive the desert, then you must face the desert City, and survive them. If you manage to either convince them, or show them that you are better as a friend than an enemy (hacking off warrior’s heads demonstrates this quite effectively), then you will be fortunate indeed. You may convince them to start opening up to outsiders and trade with the other Cities and the like. Or you might simply reap the benefits of being the only welcome outsider there is, or you might use your influence to make an exclusive trade with them. All up to you.
Maybe there is two forms of ‘magic’, one is the Wizard’s version, where they must learn the words of the spell they wish to use, but there is also a natural (druid’s etc) magic, which requires only the skill and will to use it. The Word and the Will maybe.
Animals – There will be animals that wander the world too, from herds of deer gallivanting across the plains in droves, to the lone predator stalking its way through the forests. They all have AI of a sort as well, but I doubt there’s enough memory to devote to having individual personalities, unless they are simply considered as a typical unit then I guess they would by default have personalities.
But depending on the current situation on the animal it will react accordingly, a hungry predator might attack a lone hero, but avoid a party, deer might skitter away, or ignore the hero.
Animals also have certain attributes, which may include Meat, the bigger the animal the more meat available, and young animals may gain more meat value as they grow up, if they are not starved.
Farming animals is as exacting an occupation as looking after your horse, but on a larger scale. What you want your animals for will affect the decisions you make, such as if you are farming them for meat, you will stuff the little bastards full, if you want them for their skins then they should probably be groomed if anything, and allowed time for the skin/fur to grow; and if you are training them to be used in battle then you would cater to their every need trying to keep them in top condition.
Big Wizard – The boss of the wizards, he is actually a magic wielding giant, and he totally kicks butt with magic and might, enemies beware...
Game – It would be cool if I could convert the game to a MORPG (Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), get someone to host it on their server, and thus I can store all prizes and extra stuff I can think of at the server itself, instead of accessible by the players, and also meaning that the only playable version of Myriad is the hosted one, but they can have the map itself for ideas for their own map.
Further Ramblings: This is what I've jotted down on paper.
Unfortunately all of these notes are copied out of a scrapbook, which was pretty much half drawings and diagrams to explain and show what I mean. I'll just have to do the best I can to describe it to you without the 1000 words = 1 picture thing.
It did start out with a nice big drawing of the eventual map. Oh well. I'll try to descirbe it to you.
In the top left of map is the City as you know, surrounded by woodlands, to the east is the Orc Villages with the City of the Dead behind them in the Undead Hills. Between the City and Orc villages is the original battleground in which the initial opening battle is fought, originally on a big barren plain which soon grows over with trees when the game gets started.
To the north between these two is the Northern Migration pass, which is where people and animals tend to appear, having 'migrated' from the north. It is also how people leave. The ones that tend to migrate via this pass are Giants, and various northern animals.
There is a nice big river that sort of seperates the map, but there are many many streams and trickles that weave their way through the terrain.
To the east of Map, you can see a nice little tower sitting in the middle of unclaimed forest. This is the unclaimed Ancient Mage's Tower. A player may gain access and/or ownership to the Tower by passing the tests and traps set in place eons ago. Guess it's sort of a Medivh's tower but I wouldn't know having never played WC1/2 or WoW.
Interspersed along a dubious forest path leading from the city are various outposts. Three in total guarding the path between the City and the Villages to the south-east on the other side of the river.
You can also see the Docks adjacent to the river at both thet City and the human Villages. The human Villagers by the way are the rural version of the City. Very villagery, and fairly similiar in context to the Orc Villages.
To the east of Villages is the Castle, where the Lord of that particular bit of land resides. And to the South is the ruins of an ancient abandoned City. Very interesting place to explore, and i plan to make it possible to rebuild this City to it's former glory. Think of it as a Myriad version of Dalaran with all that that implies.
To the South-west corner of map is the Barren Land. A vast stretch of desert, but you can see on the map scattered oasis' throughout the desert, meaning that it would be possible to traverse it, and perhaps reach the mysterious city of the Desert warriors.
Whoops!
Whoops, just realised that this wasn't actually the beginning, I'm near the end! I'll go bac kto my first notes. Most of the stuff you'll probably recognise as I've just implement the beginnings of them in my last update.
Pirate Ship
Maraud Ability - If Pirate Ship is close enough, this ability can be activated. The Pirate crew will then begin to jump over units to the other ship, and each unit will begin stealing a certain amount of goods/loot/plunder over a short amount of time. In the meantime they will be locked in battle with the defending crew who will be attempting to kill the pirates before they make off with everything.
The Mechanics - If I cannot find a way to make the unit's follow the contours of a ship like a walkable doodad, then I will do the following.
'Create' 10-12 'attach' points, these will just be co-ordinates of certain points on the ship itself, e.g, the helm, the crow's nest, all over the deck.
All ships will have this.
When ability is activated, a little 'animation' will show a marauder jumping across to the other ship, then apply a (jass version of) Move Unit Instantly to 'attach' point, with an offset if there is a defending unit already occupying this position.
Then the pirate will fight for several seconds all the while 'stealing' booty, then he'll jump back, and the next pirate will go. Perhaps it will be possible to have more than one pirate go at a time, seeing as there is more than one attach position.
MAYBE - It will be that a pirate will pick a random position, and if there is no enemy there he will get a bonus to his plundering, But the other side of this is if the ship has unoccupied crewmembers, one of them will jump to defend the position. So it is unlikely that pirates will get their bonus unless the ship is deserted, or all defenders have been killed. In which case, they could just commandeer the vessel.
Helmsman - Is the most important unit for a Ship. If the helmsman is kill, then the ship will lose all movement control unless another cerwmember takes his place.
Thus a Pirate Ship's first tactic is always to take out the helmsman.
[NOTE: Every unit in the game should have a corpse, pirates etc, who die on a ship, their corpses will still be attached to the ship until land is reached. If there is room, corpses may go in the cargohold in meantime, or just get chucked off the side and removed.]
There are three facets of a Ship.
Basically, above deck, below deck and inventory.
Below Deck - Is your typical cargohold transport ability, nothing new here. I'm guessing that this will be chiefly for passengers and for sleepy crew. It may also be used to protect units such as the Captain from open fire, who can go below deck if need be.
By the same token, people below deck can come up Above Deck. Thus your hero may have the opportunity to participate in such above deck action, maybe improve his seamanship, which might come in handy later if he ever finds himself having to naviagate a ship. Prhaps if he decides to pursue an exciting life of piracy!
(Note, attributes of a Ship may include Reponsiveness, Draft etc... Reponsiveness is sort of like reflexes which is covered later.)
Above Deck - Is the new feature. This feature means that the crew will not just be abstract non-existent things that invisbly control the ship, you can actually see them at work on the deck and they will perform as real units. They will in fact be real units.
(Note: If it is possible to have them walking about on deck, remember I also have to find that jass GetCollisionSize some joker invented somewhere. Dunno where it went.)
Helmsman continued : The helmsman basically decides who commands the ship, whatever unti is at the helm, that unit (and by proxy the owning player of that unit) controls the ship itself regardless of crew.
Inventory- Is nothing new, this is the 'cargo-hold' for items, ships generally have a large capacity.
(I think I will have to alter the item Stack trigger to use cargo capacity as a trigger, instead of just pure 'strength', if cargo capacity is less than maxcap - weight etc of item item, then stack, else drop item or unit.
Terrain:
The terrain in regards to water will be changed. Cliffs will be rare (but present to give variety and effect) mostly it will just be slopes, so the level of water will vary according to raise/lower terrain.
This will allow ground units the ability to cross easily and inturn allowing me to make much more in way of rivers etc because they don't interefere with pathing so much.
PHYSICS! (Lol, if you are reading this, you probably already know what I'm doing here, but I'll write it all out anyway. )
-This will be VERY important, especially when it comes to things like Charge, or Joust abilities on horseback. This is because of momentum!
Basically whenever a unit attempts to stop the movement of another, either by attacking or getting in the way (like blocking a river mouth against ships), this physics trigger will come into effect.
(Here I have drawn a pretty little diagram of two stick figures, one of a horse one of a dude in order to illustrate basic physics.)
The man has a mass of 100, and a speed of 0. The Horse has a mass of 200 (arbitrary number, I've put the real life average mass in game) and a velocity of 320.
Basically this is F=ma put into effect here. Or rather /\F=ma.
To save you the time of reading through all my speculation of possible physics, I'll just put the end results of my thinking.
The trigger will calculate the seperate forces of units at impact according to mass x velocity.
So the horse will have a force of 64000 'newtons' 9as it is called), and the dude will have one of, well, 0. Then the trigger will go Force of horse - Force of dude. Which will equal 64k. Then it will aply the effect.
The dude will be buffeted a distance of the final force / his mass, back in the direction he came from. The horse will be slowed down in accordance with the dude's mass.
(I have a little diagram a horse smashing through a group of enemies that are buffeted varying distances because of horse velocity being reducd by each successive one. But you can see this in the game.)
Note: It must be taken into account however of the knight/horse striking more than one soldier at a time, really the force should be dividing equally, so perhaps when the collision triggers, it will take into account all units within a certain radius of the horse greater than the triggering radius. Thart way he can smash up against a packed group all at once, and perhaps find it more difficult than a sperated group.
This physics trigger, in the interests of friendly fire, might be activated via a charge ability, else knights etc might always be smahing into their own troops. In normal mode knights etc will also safely detour around friendly units.
(Note: Maybe I will make collision activate when he reaches a certain speed, or % of total movement speed, which can generally be reached by a charge ability.)
A Joust charge however is even more deadly, this is the true terrifying charge of a champion, and no-one, friendly or enemy had better get in the way. A Champion's Charge may be targeted on a unit or point, and the charge will not stop until the Champion does, which is generally when he reaches the point. A hero will not attack anything but the target unit, if there is none, the hero will not attack, completely bent on the charge, but units will still get trampled under horse.
An attack delivered by such a charge is devastating, a lance with the full force of the charge behind it will easily dispatch an enemy. It will certainly unhorse an opponent.
(Note: All horses should be neutral passive maybe, not directly controlled by you, but by your hero.)
Unhorsing- Occurs when an attack hurls the rider off the horse, beyond the mounts collision area (or when something unexpected happens), immediately reverting the rider to normal stats/collision. Very cool.
This Physics trigger means the game will take on a new dimension of gameplay. Physics can now be applied to say an explosion, environmental features, falling rocks, bucking horses and more...
Destructibles are also affected, but they will probably not move, they will simply be destroyed if the force is strong enough. E.g, a barricade foolishly standing in the way of a Ship or charging Knight bearing down on them.
Ships are a very good example of physics in action. If units are trying to block it, or accidentally in the way, in the shalows, Ships will generally plow right through them without any fuss. Through friendly as well as enemy units. A Ship on Ship collision would be fun to watch too.
Note: If the force difference is below a certain value, then damage will not be dealt to anyone 'hit'. Who was ever hurt by someone tapping their shoulder? Unless they were tapping it with a machete.
This avoids charging horses from hurting each other, if they are bound in same direction, so that any contact between would be negligible force and won't hurt, unless for some reason a horse decides to turn and ram into another horse.
(I wonder if I might be able to get 'animations' of units flying away from impact, perhaps through special effects or projectile art.)
Jumping - Hit space bar. Basic abilityv (hopefully), you hit jump and immediately trigger exexutes changing units flying height to say 100, over 1.5 seconds, but at 1 second, change movement type to Fly, and at 1.5 seconds (at peak) revert flying height to 0 over an extra 1.5 seconds. At 2 seconds change movement type back to ground. At at 3 seconds you should be safely back on the ground, wherever that happens to be.
This should regardless of movement speed, so you should be able to jump say 100 points away, or even up and down on the spot regardless. (It would be nice to have the flight 'animation' in the form of a parabola, I've heard that this has been done before. I have a distant memory of reading a comment somewhere that said that.)
(Here I have a bunch of little pictures detailing what it would look like trying to jump over a fence, if you jump too soon or too late, hitting the wall if you turn to ground movement too soon. But I'm sure you can pictue it in your head .That's the magic of imaginaaaaaation! Good ol' Spongebob, so full of wise little gems like that. *rainbow*)
It may be possible to bring some more physics into it, comparing relative heights.
(You'll probably all realise where this little piece of speculation took me. Relative Z's and all that.)
(Lol, on the next page is some notes on the RPG Myriad I invented as a young teen, my dream online MMORPG. I realise now that the memory requirements for the game would not only be huge, but if scientists are right, I would need a super-computer the size of the galaxy in order to process the AI's I invented for so many NPC's and players. Wonder if God will set me up?)
Cont. RPG Myriad
Unit Attachments! Now that this concept has been broached and made possible, why not go all the way?
Guards to patrol aor guard the heights of castle battlements? Archers and the like... why not?
Perhaps the same principles of piracy can be applied here. Buildings canot be captured while guards are present however.
Enemies can raid barracks, stealing supplies such as swords, armour, arrows etc, while fighting guards. Maybe this is only if they breach gate/door.
They cannot be prevented from looting, even by fighting them (through some mysterious multi-tasking ability they have), the only way to stop them is to kill them.
Unfortunately the besiegers almost always win in a siege with equal or greater numbers (onc door is breached) simply because attackers will only engage for short amounts of time between them, spreading out the damage. Defenders have the advantage only as long as the door holds.
PORTALS!
(I have a nice little illustration here of a cartoon wizard waving his hands at a big hole, standing on a mountain in a mountain range, and in the hole you can see trees and a road, the picture is divided into a second which shows a big woodland with a road and a hole which shows mountain and a wavy hand through it. And for some reason I doodled a miniature golem Arnold Schwarzenegger flexing it's muscles on a nearby mountain top.)
A Wizard can create portals to any non-warded or protected area of the map. Perhaps he has to have been there first, or have it marked with a ward of his own, or have current LoS via a magic eyeball etc... (as game doesn't seem to let you do anything with mini-map when camera is locked).
Mesmer/Chaotician/Jester/Harlequin - Some Guild Wars style Mesmer, or mad jester type role that can warp reality and change the physics rules of the game. The wildcard, and the ultimate nuisance. Not as devastating as a mage in sheer power over nature, they are shadowy manipulators of the forces behind it. (If you've read the Fifth Magic or whatever it's called, by I think Lyndon hardy, it's reminiscent of a meta-magician in that.)
It can be said that while Wizards wield the sword of reality with their spells and incantations, it is the madness of mesmers that forge and re-forge it.
In the game, Mesmers can alter and suspend things like mass, force and gravity. They can make it so a unit can jump 'miles' into the air, or so that a charging knight will knock an enemy several times the normal distance.
Mesmers can target specific units, or alter the rules for the entire map. They can put their hands on the formulas such as (mass1-mass2) x (speed1-speed2) /mass 2, they might change it to (mass 1 - 0.5*mass2) etc...
DEAD
Killed people leave corpses woth their inventory. I'm not quite sure how I will handle corpses/ Maybe I will just use the killed unit, and invulnerable it at 1, and pause it and death/decay animation etc... (Kinda like Kelthuzad.)
(NOTE: This has been changed, because of new combat system that will be installed, which makes corpses insusceptible to normal bash and stab.)
Then the ghost will be a new created unit, the corpse should still have all the elements etc... though obviously attributes will be null. [----->
I think I'm going to have to invent a new attack system for Myriad, so that while you can target anything, you won't necessarily damage it. So you might attack a corpse with your sowrd, but you'll like look silly. Or a wee bit on the nutty side. You would have to burn it or explode it to get any results. (Little Sword Icon) 0-0 (Trigger - If Attacked Unit is Alive, deal (strength*weapon damage) damage to attacked unit.)
---->] Then again, just to simplify matters, corpses will jsut all be given a value of 0 or something 9unless there's enough array spaces for corpses too) and ID is set to created Ghost. Maybe?
(Actually I think it would just be better to leave corpse with original ID, and give the ghost a new ID since its in a different realm now, and if it reclaims it's body, it can just reuse it's ID. Maybe.)
Bodies can be reclaimed by spirits, (maybe by other spirits too).
I would rather not have all the corpses as 0, simply because that's going against the grain that i want ,they are not all the same corpse. And sharing an ID, means they can't have seperated Elements. Perhaps i could use a struct or whatever simply to create the two different states, Alive or Dead.
(Here I have a lovely picture of some fat guy with a sword in his belly.) X.X
(This page has Unit Stats, the statistics that I want to give every unit, but it will go in a seperate post.)
(Formulahs. This page and many others is just full of formulas, me trying to remember and work out what I knew/remembered of physics. I really wish I had paid attention now. Oh well, at least I was always well rested. The page also shows my idea for a 'bowling' minigame, and the fact that warriors will be able to charge too.)
Reflexes:
Units have reflexes, which is probably synonomous with dexterity, reflexes determine the speed with which a unit can strike or defend. The reflex to defend is generally always be higher than attack speed (because of lesser distance).
Attack speed is based on strength of unit vs weight of weapon as well as dexterity/ reflexes.
I could probably just replace weight of weapon/shield with attacking/defending item.
The system goes: If enemy strikes you, you will 'relexively' block with shield or sword. If your reflexes are faster than the enemies (or faster than their attack speed rathert) then you will successfully block. Attacks will only actually miss if dodged.
(Note: Swords are generally quicker to block with, but less effective defense, much lower shield value. Shatters easily.)
Reflexes will slow along with reduced stamina. So you might be up against a faster opponent, but if you manage to tire him out while preserving your own stamina, then you should gain the upper hand in speed.)
Attack and defense speed/reflexes are interdependant (I think the word is something or rather co-efficients), having a balance like trauma force vs. physical damage, via stances.
You can Raise/lock Shield, which means you block every attack (from front 60-90 degrees) but this slows your attack rate and reflex, as well as killing ability to dodge. (pretty much an advanced Defend.)
Defense with a Shield will become 3D. A shield will have a certain size, which dictates the field in which it can block, such as 60 degrees (probably take size/width and compare it with circumference of unit collision). If enemy unit attacks, defender will react, and try to block with shield, if the 60 degrees does not encompass the point of impact in time then block will fail.
To begin with though, I'll just have a very simple comparison of speeds.
(Little picture of a Shield with 60 on it, and a sword going whack on it.)
Punching is pure trauma force. Maybe you can learn unarmed combat techniques to change this, gouging, crushing windpipe, choking, tearing etc... All within the province of the unarmed. (Handy for places you aren't allowed a weapon in, or if you happen to be doing the monk thing
)
Same story with any blunt object, staffs, cudgels etc...
Note: Trauma force, if it hasn't already been nted is almost pure stamina damage. But as a unit can go unconscious at low stam, and die at 0, you can still kill a unit this way.
Physics continued- Units will (hopefully) have acceleration, or pseudo acceleration.
E.g, a hero has a top speed of 500. He has an acceleration of 250 p/s, at 0 seconds he will have 0 move speed, at 1 seconds he will have 250p/s, at 2 seconds he will have reached his max of 500 p/s.
So say if he is slowed down by impact of 300, gicing him a current speed of 200. In one second he would be back at 450, and at 2 he would be at top speed again.
Horses have a slower acceleration, having more legs and mass to sort out, maybe 150-200 p/s accel, but much higher top speed, say 1000 p/s (arbitrary number, but if 1000 = 10 metres, that would actually be true according to google.)
Phil - He runs the Arena already in the game, and is also a trainer for would-be heroes.
If you can't guess who he's supposed to be, you don't watch enough Disney.
He features quite early in the storyline.
(Model: Take a wild guess.)
(Next page is a little short story I wrote for Starcraft when I was but a boy.
)
Ah ha! Now we are back at where I started Further Ramblings all off.
City Eyes: These are the primary means of the detection and alarm system of the City. They have the same Watchful ability as the guards, but if they spot a unit they will not run up and accost them, instead they will just alert all nearby guards, flashing red and casting it's beady gaze upon the unit. (Model will be Sentry Ward.)
Spells:
Spell of Finding - Allows you to find a unit with the specified name. Upgrades may include specifying specific ID.
Throw: Update so that certain items may unduly alert guards or distract them.
Summon Elementals - It is possible to summon more than one elemental. This is especially useful when summoning elementals from cliff rock piles.
Elementals will always start neutral hostile. To control them you must cast a different spell, or create a combo spell.
It's a good tactic to summon uncontroled Elementals upon an enemy when you are well out of the way. Such as to cut them off when fleeing, oor to sow discord among a numerous enemy.
CINE - Intro to Master Wizard
(Little illustration of an Archmage confronted two golemarmies marching down seperate passes to destroy him. He's doing the Gandalf glowy staff thing.)
You'll see him alone, facing an advancing twin army of elementals, which you have discovered to be quite devastating. Even one elemental being quite formidable.
So you instantly think the mage is in for it, and needs to be saved. But then he acsts a spell on the front ranks and they turn of their brethren, then he turns and leavse. You then have to make your way through the battling golems, while they are distracted, to chase after the Archamge.
The Archamge of course wants you to follow. If you cut him off, then he will use his magic to teleport himself.
O-->
O-->
O--->
(That was my little illustration of moving boulders)
Would be good if I could make a physics momentum thing for boulders and the like. Perhaps if I made them units? Thus traps can be laid, boulders along a cliff line, then a warrior charges into them.
It would also be good if i could create a height system. So if boulders are at the top of a slope, their velocity will accelerate according to slope.
Perhaps a gravity 'potential' based on Z.
And also perhaps a slope checler, that will go, if boulder speed os greater than 0, then check angle between point (position of boulder) and point (dist:speed of boulder along angle: facing angle of boulder) every second then speed = speed + angle (have to find out real formula).
This is great, because even the most powerful Wizard, if unprepared, can be flattened by a well timed land slide.
"Even the mighty can be laid low by the most mundane of illnesses"
-Justin Maditup
This game is much less frenetic than actual warcraft, so it is actually beneficial to lie in wait at an ambush for an extended period of time. You don't have the feeling of, "I'm wasting my time" or "other players will be heaps ahead of me after this", because it doesn't quite work in the same frantic, time efficiency needful way.
You'd perhaps had a scout that as as an extra set of eyes, warning you when someone is in LoS. Then you spring the trap, and you and your merry men ambush the rider, hopefully with good consequences.
A height system would be good, because then i could change cliff pathing. Say a unit has been Moved, via collision, and he is butted out into open air, he will suffer falling damage. (Maybe a little animation, and change flying height, then dead animation to show that he's landed flat.)
Same story with boulders etc...
Basically, if a unit is to be moved, and the place where he is moved to is a lower Z, then calculate fall.
(Note: I may make it so that if units are bashed down a slope, or in other words suffer an uncontrolled momentum, then the physics of boulders and dead objects will be applied to them because they have no control.)
Probably start with a normal rock model, then it turns into a projectile art rock model)
Mages can probably defend themselves by turning the rocks into elementals, or diong something elementally. Shamans can plough trenches with their magic in front of the impending landslide to stave off the disaster. Cool huh?
(Note: The following is my Slope Movement system I believe.)
If slope is going up, the velocity will naturally decrease, maybe I'll apply this to normal units as well, s othat their movement is slower going uphill and faster down. /\acceleration. Every second, movement will be calculated as acceleration of unit - acceleration of opposing force (slope etc...). This might alwso be true of Charge collisions etc...
(Maybe instead of checking point (distance based on speed), it'll just check either a collision size ahead, or for pinpoint accuracy, 1 point ahead. (This has been changed to Velocity/100, in order to get distance covered per 0.01 seconds.)
Mesmer/jester's have the Neo like ability to stop projectiles in their tracks. They can kill the velocity of anything. Trying to ambush them is an exercise in futility for in this sort of thing, a good mesmer is supreme, they hold the keys to physics.
They are also a Mage's worst bane. "Destroying the naturally order of things".
Becoming a Mesmer is not precisely a character choice, it is a story event, where if you stumble across it you gain mesmer powers.
(Cont. from Slope Movement paragraph)
This way also, units can get stuck down a hole, that might have been dug as a trap, and laid over with a cover to hide it (the pathing map of a platform should work), and when a unit of sufficient weight/mass gets onto it, it will 'break' and they will fall in hole, suffering falling damage as well.
You might be able to get covers of different strength, so that a normal man might be able to run over it, but an ogre or even a group of men will break right through it.
And also, because attack will be point to point distance based, if it is possible for units to still head, even though origin of unit is far away (Z wise).
With unit attacks, likelihood to strike body parts is based first off on reach of weapon vs. X, Y, Z of body parts, and then on ratio of distance difference. Closer is more likely to be struck. If head is closer than every thing else, then chance to strike head, with subsequent, is much greater.
(Addition: Also, blood splatter effects will only happen when yo bypass the armour and strike flesh.)
Also, destructive spells cause craters. Cast on terrain it would go.
(I have lots of pictures on this page, I'll try to do some.)
Before After
/\ *_*
/ \ / \
/ \ / \
Pitfall trigger - Maybe since it's a platformish thing, I can make it trigger like a switch, if someone steps on it, it flicks down.
Maybe Blizzard just used regions for that. Hope not, but I suppose I could 'create' regions accordingly.
Addition:
Buildings:
Certain Buildings, or perhaps all, will become proper buildings that you can walk in and out of. This will be done by having a nicely complicated trigger that will place doodad/units (unpathable walls), and then a roof, either as a destroyable special effect or a remodelled tree so that it can be occluded when your character of LoS wanders inside.
Hopefully i will be able to use this for things like barracks. it also means that 'item plans' will be more complicated, yet more rewarding. The walls will actually have to be units (destructibles can't have abilities).
For say, a barracks, this means that units really can do their normal thing. In a barracks there is armuor and weapons and objects that you can train with, or locations to train in.
When a Citizen becomes a footman, basically this is by 'sigining' a roster (add unit to unitgroup), from that point, to fully become a footman/soldier they put on the armour/tabard etc... then their model should change to reflect this. (I wonder if I can use a special effect for model change.
But basically in Unit Struct (not building, jass Struct) it will now say:
Soldier:
Armour - Head50,Torso50,Shoulders30,Legs30... and so on...
And then Soldier can also grab a weapon (model is weaponless).
Since Soldiers are sort of Citizens in their spare time, they follow general sort of rules, their times and shifts just happen to be generally different. At end of shift, they replace their amrour. Because they are normal blokes, they earn money, and they spend it. (Units might have a 'Shopping List' with priorites of stuff they want or need for them or their household. They might even take a 'holiday' off work if they can and need to when list is big enough or urgent enough.)
But they will make decisions and the list based on their life including work. So a Soldier might save his money so that he can buy his own set of armour and weapons for the house so that he has what he needs close at hand in case of a trespasser or emergency.
(When you kill someone, you might get a Blood of killed person on you, that will stay there until you wash it off. If say you kill a Soldier's wife out of his LoS, but then he sees you with 'Blood of Wife' he'll automatically know you dunnit. Or maybe just Blood. SO if you just came back from a Slaughterhouse, don't go anywhere near murdered bodies.)
Buildings - All the parts of a building will be identified as part of the building. So say a wall of a barracks is attacked, then all the defenders associated with the building will rush out to defend it.
Note: Buildings have no LoS of their own.
I wonder if all building parts will have same ID.
Hmmm, probably won't work as I want walls etc to be seperately targeted and destroyed.
(To begin with I'll have it act as one big unit, if you destroy one wall you destroy it all.)
(Here I have a little diagram of a 'full-sized' building, with individually created wall parts, door and inside objects.)
NOTE: Actually every object that is sort of 'owned' by the building will be considered as such.
So if someone starts stealing items or breaking furniture, owners or units related to building will respond.
Units that enter into say, a Tavern, will simply base all their current AI off Tavern realted activities, or whatever pers their interest in the Tavern. Everything else in judged independently.
E.g, a unit wanting a drink will enter Tavern (if they spot it or are familiar with it), he will buy a drink in the Tavern, and then he will find a seat and sit down in the Tavern (nearest chair owned by Tavern) if there's one available. Or perhaps he'll just pick nearest seat (owned by Tavern, or public) if there's no immediate reason for him to stay in Tavern.
It would be really good if it were possible to get multiple floors. So you could walk up the stairs (ramp) to next floor. But this would probably only be possible through use of flying movement.
But that could be fine seeing as everything should be point to point based.
The only problem will be collisions with flying units, say if one enters the lower room or flies overhead etc.
(Addition: This should be solvable just by disabling collision.)
Tables - It would be good if when a unit gave an item to a table, it instantly dropped it, so that the beer is actually sitting on the table, as a physical item. Will have to figure out how to float it on that height. Use a platform thingy? Walkable?
It will put the item on the part of the table closest to giving unit (using polar position etc).
(Chairs sould be walkable too, so units can sit on them.)
So units can set their mugs down, and then pick them up again.
When a building is destroyed, the roof will do collision damage to everything beneath it, so objects and units inside can also be destroyed in the rubble.
NOTE: Perhaps to make the table unit walkable you can use the Pathing texture of a walkable doodad. Hmmm... that might not actually work, I'll try it anyway.
Spiders can climb and hide in trees, waiting for a victim to pass by. They can apply physics force to their tackle, so if they leap into a group, they can tumble them all to the ground.
(Followed by a small series of illustrations of a happily whistling villager getting pounced on by a giant spider.)
Trees can also be felled, and will also cause collision damage. The direction of fall is based on the position of unit who dealt last blow, so setting up traps like this is easy.
(Little picture of a stick figure lumberjack giving a big tree it's last chop before it falls on another unsuspecting stick figure. Followed by another picture which against all reason shows the tree resting comfortably on the back of the lumberjack. I can't really explain why.)
Pirates!
(Merry little pirate ship bobbing by the title, for some reason their guns seem to be shooting fireworks. Well, each to their own.)
I will make functions or whatever that have created 'attachment points' for ships etc. So all a loading trigger has to do is say Move Unit to Attachment point 1 of Ship.
But hopefully I can make it so they can walk around on the deck. Might be difficult.
Advanced Movement - The faster a ship travels, the more water depth it drafts (not sure of the correct word but that sounds close), if it goes too fast for water depth, it starts to cause damage, thus why ships have to ease out of docks. I wish I could get a speed slider to control speed of units. I could probably invent something that does the same function.
(Addition: It's probably pay to add a Top Speed variable to units, to keep track of it, not default speed, but current possible top speed as it may have been improved or changed.)
(Ships can ram btw.)
Buildings cont.
Things like Granaries will for the short term just be normal buildings.
Also, the New building types we will have will have all it's parts given a Unit-Type classification for trigger ease. This is also handy because you can give the Unit-Type classification to any building you choose or design.
New Stam System Revision - Units will automatically fall unconscious at say 10-20% (depending on stats), but there is a chance, every time you cause trauma damage to knock him unconscious. At high levels of stam it is quite unlikely, but when you deal trauma damage it takes the new stam level (e.g from 100% down to 50%) to decide the % of K.O, and for how long. (In other words this is a stun. Update will feature that the % is higher the more stam you kill in one shot).
Collision - Collision will take place unless Unit Avoids the Collision, then the only thing that will happen is the unit will Move to the left/right of charging unit, or behind (to avoid rolling off cliffs).
(It would be good to have an animation for this with suitable camera movement.)
See if there's a method thingy or something that I can use to prevent camera from sinking below ground.
NOTE! Perhaps the 'roof' of building will just be an overlaid, appropriately scaled original model (or multiple modles places together).
(Nice big fully detailed diagram of a full sized barracks with rooms, functions, stairs, descriptions etc.)
Barracks serve the basic functions of the City Guard and Military. A barracks can sign a Citizen up to be a Soldier, provides base equipment, quarters, even things like sustenance.
Every barracks also has a prison, under the watchful eye of the guards.
ROOF - If the Roof uses Barracks Model, then it should be easy. Also multiple levels can be done, simply by pasting Barracks overlapping each other, so that the wall looks roughly one piece. Would probably have to create a floor for second level though And every floor would be given a 'Level' like a 'cliff level'.
(But at the moment multiple floors is a bit dodgy, with Fly collision interaction.)
So for the moment it will just be the one floor.
(Little picture of a barracks with Soldiers standing on the top, attached pirate style.)
(I think certain colours are transparent, perhaps I can use transparency on Door Skin, so Players can only see the Door inside.)
I think that the first version of Full Building Construction will be as follows.
First the 'foundation' is laid (probably those elevators), it flattens terrain and gets rid of growths etc tha will be in the way. (This will later be updated to make the workers clear it away).
The every section will be put up like.
Wait Until Condition : There is no unit/doodad etc in region (building placement zone).
Then the action will create that wall, or part. (Later, unit's will actually build them individually. At the moment they'll just stand around outside and throw hammers at it.
[New Item : Apron! You can have a unit hold individual tools like hammer etc, but Aprons are a pseudo inventory of their own, they can store a certain numbe of item abilities, (or strings like: Hammer) so that your tools will only take up 1 slot, and you can fit more than 6 tools on your belt.]
If zone acnnot be currently built for some reason (unit standing on it), then it will cycle the action through to next object to build on List, (Wall[4] to Wall[5] etc...) The list will keep cycling until finished or cancelled.
If for some reason a job is unable to be completed for lack of a tool (for want of a nail a horseshoe was lost...) or resource/equipment, then foremen will send a request back to 'office' (the mayor) and Wait (disable actually building but they will still be doing their routine, such as their I'm_On_a_Break behaviour) until the Mayor either fulfills request or cancels their work order.
PRE-CONSTRUCTION will probably be a scaled model of building, in othe words, my original concept for blueprinting, in order to determine if building can be placed there. Note: Foundation ill probabl be a big platform). WHich might be good for contructing buildings in water areas. I can also imagine floating castles.
SPECULATION - With the velocity based slope finder, it might be good to make the point being checked based on current velocity, that way, while if you are wakling you can fall into a hole, if you are running fast enough you can 'jump' right over it. Unless the point checked happens to be inside the hole, then you will jump right into it. Distance checked = footstep.
For units that are Above Deck, or on Rooftops, or anything like that, attached to the Deck/Roof will probably be a little unit (flag or something) that they can use to go below.
This unit will load up units and then change them accordingly into their Below counterparts.
A Pirate Ship could probably do this off it's own bat, with it['s cargo hold.
NOTE: Probably every room of a building will be a sub-region of it's own. If creating regions is too hazardous to memory, simply store it as part of a string.
E.g
(Probably go: if susbtring 1-4 = "Stor" etc...)
String: Storage1050,2090,3154,3905, so region is the co-ordinates X, 1050 to 3154, and Y 2090 to 3905, and that is Storage Room.
PROPERTY - A house will be a Full Building Construction.
Trespassing is illegal, this includes the property surrounding the house, if Owned by the house. The surrounding property is als a region, it will probably be a region - region of house in order to iudentify it.
Just like in maths class when you calculate an area with a hole innit. Going into someone's yard is technically trespassing, but the penalty is even graver if you break into their house. (Graver might make a nice little dead monster. The penalty is Graver!) You have to be well-liked by owners to be able to enter the premises. (If they give permission.)
Elementalism - This might be a little tricky. If somethin has a Fire Element, that gives the item Immolation (or just Heat/Radiation). If the fire is strong enough, it can burn, and it's AOE will increase along with Fire Element.
So if a mage summons a fire elemental out of it, if fire reaches 0, then immolation should be killed.
Okay, that doesn't sound s otricky.
Note: Fire eats wood, if Fire is strong enough, it will slowly eat wood according to strength, which means torches are not permanent. As is realistic. Probably should also have that Fire needs to feed to survive, so it needs some kind of fuel. Might be too annoying/comlicated.
Afvanced updates may include how a fire can increase in strength as it feeds on wood etc, and different burn rate buffs, freen wood high high resistance than normal wood, and stuff like wax can be applied to an object to buff up it's resis %.
BARRACKS
Every Barracks will or should include at minimum:
A Captain
A Quartermaster
And hopefully a Soldier.
Other units a Barracks should have:
An Armourer (Smith),
A healer (Medic)
More Soldiers
Facilties should include:
Soldier's Quarters
Officer's Quarters
Armoury
Training Yard
Conference Room
Kitchen
Storage
Optional Facilities:
A Chapel
A Green Room
A Prison
A Clerk's Room
[Note: Training yards, like most 'rooms' can be built as independant structure since they already are in a respect, which is the beauty of such a flexible and open system. As Independant Structures however, they are generally of a lower order than as an extra room.
An outide Training Yard might just be a tent and a field with a fence to denote the boundary. Because anything can be classed as this or that, a building or location is defined by it's function which is in turn conditional upon what it contains and what the 'blueprint' was.]
"Map Units"
Foremen of a construction job are considered "map units". That is because they are the organisers, unit's under the foreman's command will often have to approach to 'ask' (take it's order string) in order to know what to do next. "Map units" have the info.
The main "map unit" that you will see in the game is of course the Mayor, or Lord of the City.
They are called "map units" because of the origin of the idea was literally a map - unit.
A Map ~ Maps are hugely useful and important for any tactical situation (especially with NPC's). An example.
In a barracks, there would be a map in the Conference room, maybe several.
On the map, you (or officers) can enter co-ordinate 'notes' on the map along with a defining string. For example Guard_Position(900,8000). Note - I might be able to create a function to use the previous thing such as take real and return location etc.
Now if a Soldier that starts work will look at the map, if the Guard Position is unfilled he will take the job. So he will trot out to perform Guard duties at these co-ordinates.
Certain things can affect this, if there are many open positions, he may take the one his skills are most suited for. He might have a sub-classification of say Guard or Raider etc... that will cause him to look through these positions first.
If a Player does not have the task of writing up the map, thet NPC filling Captain position will do it, and he will do it in co-operation with his Commander who ensures no Barracks overlaps each other's role. Takes care of logistics.
If a Player does it, this is how I hope it will go. You open the map, and then you can click on a spot, and then enter a string defining the position, and then how many positions open. These will be stored as info that can be mofied or deleted.
There are also other options such as Increase Guard.
You write what classification of Soldier positions you want to increase, and then you write how much by. You can type +1 or x2 etc...
If there are no positions open, then the Soldier will footle about the barracks, training etc...
(Positions can include many things, they are just job descriptions such as : Trainer, Guard, Moving Guard, Defender, Trainee, Soldier, Law Enforcer etc...)
(Little picture of a footman by a toll bridge grouching about being in th swamp 3+ days.)
They make the maps based on strategical consideration, taking into account disposition of enemies, or friends, important locations and objects, objectives, disposition of own forces etc...
For example, a bridge close to City territory would constitue as an important location/object as a chokepoint, especially if it is one of the only ways in.
It may also take into account statistics like previous raids/attacks, where the were sighted, where they passed through, what was damaged/attacked/targeted, how they ttravelled, what they brought etc...
Areas should already be pre-graded in Strategical Priorities (this is something American government and the like would do) E.g Granaries and Barracks will have verious strategical strat priorites.
When soemthing is assigned to guard a position, that position is stored to Unit Struct, so that any related triggers can perform without fear of messing up the guard position.
If guarding a unit, stores unit.
These kind of maps can be used for almst anything, they are quite useful for household guards. Like perhaps castle guards, if you have a map, whenever anything happens they'll probably all rush to nearest 'map', to find out what to do. Map's will probably almost read like a trigger, like:
If Event Response == Fighting then
call Kick_Some_Butt
else
Blubber_and_Cry
endif
There are different maps for different situations, if a war is declared, town is under attack, sushi prices are razed, or an unexpected bout of Peace hits the land, then appropriate map, or orders will be used.
The Obsidian Guard
Terrifying semblance of a human these dark Guards serve the will of the Obsidian Bastion. A black power that seeks to conquer the Halls of the Dead and supplant the Mistress as ruler of the dead. These are the immortal enemies of the Mistress, greedy for the power she wields, they are a power of otherwordly Death, perhaps from another land, perhaps indeed from another strange alien Realm.
