As references to BrikWars can be found here:
http://www.brikwars.com/rules/2001/2001-brikwars.pdf
Okay I've done a decent amount of work in designing and building multiple structures and units for the 1st of two races. the player can build only one unit type at level zero, the Minifig, no vehicles are allowed until Minifigs are infantry units are one of muiltiple uses and can be summoned relatively quickly.
Oops yeah summoning I also think it would be sweet if the player "summoned" units (like the protoss in starcraft) and had to wait out their build time but could go about queuing up a series commands and starting their construction. Of course,the player could only do this if the player had enough resources. the player would be given ample resources to start and expand reasonably well if smart queues are chosen. Therefor person could not queue up scouts or moho, fusion, and advanced refinery and go tech 3 in 4 minutes.
After the minifigs, the units can upgrade their commander which subsiquently upgrades their buildteir, radar level, level of los, and tech level for all structures and units, including weapons and defenses. There will be a total of 7 tech levels spanning the different ages of technology (see descriptions at link above, though they have changed slightly, see below):
0 StoneAge
1 ToolAge
2 MetalAge
3 RennaisanceAge
4 ModernAge
5 FutureAge (Combat suits, rocketlaunchers, getpacks, diskguns, machineguns, sniperrifles, c4, suicide bombers)
6 SpaceAge
7 StarAge
Of course, units will be able to build and use vehicles, aircraft, maybe boats if I i get around to it, probably not hovercraft for a long time. but yeah, its a lot. dont expect to play it next week or even next month
In terms of damage, I think we should use the ideas used in the original BrikWars, quoted here:
"Any equipment item or weapon can be broken if it
receives enough damage, or if it is used in a Close
Combat attack and does more damage than its own
ArmorValue. This can often happen if a
superpowerful minifig swings a weapon designed for
lesser mortals, or if one minifig smacks another with
an object that was not designed to be used as a
weapon, such as a porcelain vase.
In general, the durability of an equi ment item
depends on what it is made out of."
this is just a long winded way of saying that different weapons do different levels of damage.
thats about it i think, ive got a sweet stacking effect done for the bricks they sped up really fast, like they all just fall in place a moment after each other.
I'm going to ask about using those great cover designs from the BrikWars manual because i think they're pretty great
I have completed the models and correct proportions for all the pieces shown here
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yu4mfv
I've done a bit of work trying to get melee working and although they can attack most units and structures their movement is broken, the units waste time trying to run in at their opponents at strange angles, I dont know if maybe someone scripted a dodge in but its very difficult to be effective with the attacks in numbers. also, the effect looks terrible, i think it would be possible to add a similar "blur" effect to weapon movement as used in airplane propellers and with some decent scripting would make them look pretty good if I can get the movement problems figured out.
then theres the units, they will all be 3do unless someone else wants to take the time to convert all my units to proper s3o and prove it looks better and worth the time. i'm only using simple colors to manufacture texture the bricks and since the animation style im using requires block-per-piece hierarchy structure:
http://isodomos.com/Color-Tree/Lego-Colors.html
i think this simplistic approach to textures, which as shown here can look perfectly acceptable:
one big question is that of the lego dots, or studs, and whether they should be modeled or textured. in the current version they've been textured though it may not be necessarily too big a performance hit on todays computers (1gb ram, c2d, somewhat recent nvidia or ati graphics)
the player extracts metal from the ground in its raw form and converts it to briks using energy. the player must have both resources plus some sort of smelting structure to obtain them in order to build. smelting structures will be weak (a fire, someone takes it out and you're screwed) and need to be closely guarded
trees will be worth a lot of energy and make them very worthwhile to capture early on for fires.
[edit] fixed, did it wrong
