I was wondering if it's possible to make a unit change the terrain other than restoring it?
I think it would be cool to be able to raise the terrain to build a land-bridge across a river, create a bay to protect harbors from subs, or build a gun island right off an enemy's coast.
Additionally digging a ditch without simply shooting the ground alot would be nice. You could dig of a deep/sharp ditch is that it would prevent movement, but not block shots like dragons teeth do, or dig a path through a mountain.
The list of tatics is almost endless, and the energy/metal cost could be scaled for balancing.
Overall I think that since the terrain is deformable we should take as much advantage of this capability as possible. Of course all changes would be easily removed using the "restore" feature.
Raise/Lower Terrain?
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MONTHLY TOPIC ROTATION... great idead, getting the Devs attention on things like this seems to take GIANT RED LETTERS for some reason... otherwise the last 20 people who suggested it would have been listened to...
Honestly I don't mind people reposting about the same thing all the time because doing a search doesn't always lead you to the topics that all the forum "vets" remember in the back of their heads and sometimes the person posting sparks new discussion on the subjects...
Honestly I don't mind people reposting about the same thing all the time because doing a search doesn't always lead you to the topics that all the forum "vets" remember in the back of their heads and sometimes the person posting sparks new discussion on the subjects...
Sorry if this is a re-post I didn't see anything on it.
Additionally, if the developers thought deformable terrain was "rather pointless" why would they have bothered to put it in to begin with? Modifying terrain in games has always seemed useless at first (thats why most RTS games don't have it), but a good understanding of it's uses can be very valuable and improve the staying power of the game.
I distinctly remember that building psudeo-walls in Populus 3 by raising the ground was vastly valuable.
I don't think balance would be to difficult becasue, like I said, restoring the ground would be easier than deforming it, and the stiffness of the ground would determine the cost (Metal is hard to raise/lower/crater). I agree that the map determines the style of play, but nobody is going to spend the time, effort and resources to drastically change the map (IE land bridge across shore to shore is impractical)
EDIT(Sorry I meant Populus 3)
Additionally, if the developers thought deformable terrain was "rather pointless" why would they have bothered to put it in to begin with? Modifying terrain in games has always seemed useless at first (thats why most RTS games don't have it), but a good understanding of it's uses can be very valuable and improve the staying power of the game.
I distinctly remember that building psudeo-walls in Populus 3 by raising the ground was vastly valuable.
I don't think balance would be to difficult becasue, like I said, restoring the ground would be easier than deforming it, and the stiffness of the ground would determine the cost (Metal is hard to raise/lower/crater). I agree that the map determines the style of play, but nobody is going to spend the time, effort and resources to drastically change the map (IE land bridge across shore to shore is impractical)
EDIT(Sorry I meant Populus 3)
Last edited by TorenT on 13 Nov 2005, 21:41, edited 2 times in total.
I don't want this thread to degrade and become ignored by those who make things happen, so this will probably be my last post on the topic. If Min3mat wishes to continue it's his choice.
However, with the same reasoning we could just say "all the planes but brawlers have limited usefulness so lets just take them out" Obviously this is just an example, but it's the "little" things that make a game stick with you. If I wanted to play "just another RTS" I wouldn't care about spring. It's the implementation of many small things that makes up the big picture. You can never really determine how something small will effect the big picture until you try it.
Who would have thought that a little game by Cavedog that people, at the time, said had "too many units" would become so popular and set a standard?
However, with the same reasoning we could just say "all the planes but brawlers have limited usefulness so lets just take them out" Obviously this is just an example, but it's the "little" things that make a game stick with you. If I wanted to play "just another RTS" I wouldn't care about spring. It's the implementation of many small things that makes up the big picture. You can never really determine how something small will effect the big picture until you try it.
Who would have thought that a little game by Cavedog that people, at the time, said had "too many units" would become so popular and set a standard?
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Sean Mirrsen
- Posts: 578
- Joined: 19 Aug 2004, 17:38
There is one game about terraforming - Perimeter, the Real Terraforming Strategy. I thought about a function similar to the ones in Perimeter, Level Ground. This takes a point of landscape and certain area defined by dragging the mouse. The terraforming unit makes the area level with the first point, even if it means raising the ground all the way from sea floor to mountain range level. This would make it possible to build bridges and dig through mountains, but for this to be balanced requires a big energy cost - probably map-defined.
It might be possible to script this in the current system.
In a spring map, the total amount of land area is constant, right? It just gets shifted around. If you had a unit that fired an uber-damage ray (that did no actual damage to units) it could create a dyke for the area specified. If you had two parallel ray and slaved one to the other, you could create a bridge.
It's worth a shot... zwzsg?
In a spring map, the total amount of land area is constant, right? It just gets shifted around. If you had a unit that fired an uber-damage ray (that did no actual damage to units) it could create a dyke for the area specified. If you had two parallel ray and slaved one to the other, you could create a bridge.
It's worth a shot... zwzsg?
POPULOUS 4?!?!?!?!?!?? i have 3 but I didnt knwo any new ones where released, I love that game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I distinctly remember that building psudeo-walls in Populus 4 by raising the ground was vastly valuable.
Otherwise, I think the topics that make the monthly rotation should be made stickys, so that they dotn end up filling entire forums with the same stuff voer and over again and decent progress over time cna be made and good headway rather than starting voer froms cratch on the problem.
But yes zaphod could implement these sorts of thigns in a day but what about the mroe important things? There's that much stuff todo it's all stuck as backlog.
I would rather he fixes the unreliabilities in the AI itnerface which reflect problems deep down in spring that threaten its future.
Afterrall NTAI needs workign attack code, and I or any toher AI dev doesnt want to do what zaphod did with JCAI making ti check every untit o see if ti is actaully doing what tis doing, because it looks like thats what needs doing.
Zaphod needs mroe developers to work on spring. Dont swamp him like this.
Afterrall NTAI needs workign attack code, and I or any toher AI dev doesnt want to do what zaphod did with JCAI making ti check every untit o see if ti is actaully doing what tis doing, because it looks like thats what needs doing.
Zaphod needs mroe developers to work on spring. Dont swamp him like this.
This wouldn't really require any fancy scripting. As long as you did the armor.txt and unitspecific damage properly (say, .0001 damage, since 0=crash)...this should work. Tweaking it to get the right amount of deformation would take time, but it wouldn't be particularly hard.Dragon45 wrote:It might be possible to script this in the current system.
In a spring map, the total amount of land area is constant, right? It just gets shifted around. If you had a unit that fired an uber-damage ray (that did no actual damage to units) it could create a dyke for the area specified. If you had two parallel ray and slaved one to the other, you could create a bridge.
It's worth a shot... zwzsg?
Good idea.