Idea for an option: Pollution

[Wolfword]

I have an idea for something that can be introduced as an option: the pollution. Let me explain:

If this option is turned on, every building will pollute slowly the surrounding earth, sky and water. Bigger buildings means more pollution. Polluted earth will damage units. Polluted air will damage every unit AND slow down planes & gunships. Polluted water will damage ships, slow down them and make amphibious units slower.

What do you think?

[bobthedinosaur]

Can you code?

[Wolfword]

I can try

[zwzsg]

Would eat too much CPU.

[Wolfword]

And if its only air pollution (without visible pollution, only damage and slow-down)?

[Argh]

It'd work fine if it was some global thing, not lots of sphere checks.

As for FX, it could probably be done medium-convincingly with P.O.P.S., maybe with a LUPS cyclic. It'd eat a hell of a lot of GPU for something so trivial, though- this is the kind of global feature where you really should build the game design around it, not just try and duct-tape it to BA.

[Beherith]

Big ass killing robots laugh at your puny air pollution. Then they dump some nuclear waste from their RTGs.

[zwzsg]

It'd work fine if it was some global thing, not lots of sphere checks.

I never envesioned sphere checks.

What I had in mind was to have a huge table of which each cell represent a 32x32 square on the map, then round every building x and z position to 32, add pollution to the corresponding cell, then loop on all cell to diffuse and attenuate pollution, then for all units, round x and z pos to nearest 32 and apply damage corresponding to that cell pollution. And do that every second or so.

And I said "Would eat too much CPU" because it reminded me of my alternate metal map widget. But yeah, I still spoke too hastily when saying that.

[Argh]

That would be worse than sphere checks for everything that can pollute once every 16 gameframes, staggered randomly over the half-second.

Assuming that everything in the game doesn't pollute, net effect would be about the same- more polluters per area, more damage. Maintaining that kind of table would be very expensive, that's why I wasn't thinking about that.

It might be funny to do a nuclear-war sim where radiation from fallout eventually kills everybody, if you don't win the war fast enough.

[zwzsg]

pollute slowly the surrounding

It's to get that effect of slow diffusion through the earth that I wanted the pollution to remain stored in some map-sized table, instead of just getting the instant building list.

What do you think?

What I think of it is: Did you actually try to envision to consequence it would bring to gameplay, or did you just come with this idea and went "oi cool an idea that hasn't been done yet, let's ask for it!", regardless of any effect it'd have on the game flow?

[Argh]

Yeah, you're right, that doesn't meet the specification. I guess the sphere checks could build up and iterate X damage, so that it'd "build up" per Unit in the effected area. That'd be pretty cheap. Still a pretty silly idea without a game design to build around it. Sounds like something I should pitch to Greenpeace, or something- the Cleanup Crew vs. Corporate Zombies.

[Wolfword]

I tought that it could be a nice option to do the gameplay a bit more interesting. Because, people will not build so many big structures. And will NOT build a lot of structures. (I see a lot of people that full the map with kbot labs, turrets, and so on... That would do a very large severe and extremely hazardeous polluted sector)