Glestimals

[ZaggyDad]

Please, let's not get into the treasure stuff. It may be good for scenarios, but we shouldn't have it in for normal gameplay. Having creeps and guardians is annoying, and it makes the game pretty much into just another RPG. Glestimals should just be animals that either attack other species, or  animals that aren't dangerous, and are often attacked by the carnivorous animals, but can be hunted and used for food. perhaps we could make each animal have a list of the other animals in it's xml that each have settings on how often they are attacked.

[daniel.santos]

Thanks for chiming in Zaggy, those are my sentiments

However, they would have in common a lot of traits with "whats its" as well, so perhaps it deserves a good object design that keeps things as clean as possible.  A big part of "whats its" being effective at adding character to the game is to have them do things that those types of animals would normally do -- graze at their favorite tile types, nest in trees, etc.  This behavior is also something desirable for full-blown "Glestimals" or "creeps".

[ZaggyDad]

Yeah, I guess it will take a lot more animating than I thought... And it might be good to make there be animal "homes," like caves, nests and such. Some animals wouldn't have homes, though (deer, for instance). I've got a few animations for the hawk and maybe a few other things, but not enough to make much of a difference. All I've got on the hawk (I think so, at least) is flapping and gliding animations. I think I tried making animations for them diving and killing things, but it's definitely not the best I can do. And I might have tried making a landing animation, but it came out as absolute trash. I tried making an attack animation for the wolf, but it didn't turn out good enough, either. I guess I must be getting out of practice.

[daniel.santos]

practice makes perfect!  

[hailstone]

Perhaps have an option when setting up the game?

[modman]

It has nothing to do with a scenario. The maps would be designed so that an outcropping of resources could be guarded by creeps.  Plus, you could specify according to each individual map how may of each type of creep there should be.

[horusofoz]

Sounds like a good way to go:-)

[modman]

For Winter forest, the Troll could be a yeti.

[John.d.h]

perhaps we could make each animal have a list of the other animals in it's xml that each have settings on how often they are attacked.

That might get a little cumbersome when you add new animals, because then you'd have to go through all the other xmls and change the lists.

How about classifications instead?

They could be tagged as "cowardly", "defensive", "territorial", or "belligerent".  The cowardly ones would run away, while the defensive ones would fight back if they got attacked.  Territorial creatures would attack if you got too close, and belligerent ones would attack on sight.  Additional tags like "stationary" and "wandering" would help, as well as "predator", "prey", and "monster".  These would work in combination, of course, so an ogre could be a wandering belligerent monster (roams around the map looking for somebody to kill) while a buffalo might be a stationary territorial prey (stays in one spot, but attacks if you get too close).

[horusofoz]

I have to say your idea as a capstone to those of others with regards to the Glestimals/Creeps concepts demonstrates a comment I made to someone earlier that being OSS, Glest should in (Hopefully only a short) time be superior to games such as Warcraft 3 and AOE. Here we have brought together "Glestimals/Creeps" like ideas that have been used by various games, extracted the best elements and (with your effort) added an original twist to possibly make a better system than all the games had individually. Thanks mate

[Omega]

belligerent = aggressive
And yeah, that would be nice, but we still need these things to be implimented. So many things to do, so few hours in a day...

[modman]

I'm not sure how many creeps are really needed...I think four is plenty.  If there's more it will make gameplay very complicated for beginners.  They not only have to understand the techtrees and the strategies, but they have to learn how to combat creeps.  How would a noob know a buffalo is going to attack them?

Alright what type of creep should the one that gives you gold when you kill it be in the Winter Forset tileset?  And the two rogues? (powerful and weak)

[John.d.h]

How would a noob know a buffalo is going to attack them?

Common sense?

[horusofoz]

Yeah can't make everything too obvious. Give it some depth that needs to be penetrated through continued gaming.

[ZaggyDad]

It has nothing to do with a scenario. :roll:

Yeah can't make everything too obvious. Give it some depth that needs to be penetrated through continued gaming.

Totally.

[John.d.h]

Brilliant

Thanks, I'm glad you like my ideas. :roll:[/quote]
I was thinking the Glestimals could be defined by the tech tree.  Magitech might have wolves and deer; if anybody ever finished Glest-Life (*crosses fingers and hopes*) it could have head crabs, those dog things with the giant eyes, ant lions, etc; and other tech trees might have ghosts, faeries, giant scorpions, Jawas, or anything else their creator has in mind.  Just a thought.

[ZaggyDad]

Thanks, I'm glad you like my ideas.

You're welcome.

I was thinking the Glestimals could be defined by the tech tree.  Magitech might have wolves and deer; if anybody ever finished Glest-Life (*crosses fingers and hopes*) it could have head crabs, those dog things with the giant eyes, ant lions, etc; and other tech trees might have ghosts, faeries, giant scorpions, Jawas, or anything else their creator has in mind.  Just a thought.

Yeah. I suppose that would work.

[@kukac@]

Dunno, I first thought Glestimals should depend on the tileset, so polar bears wouldn't be on desert tilesets. I dunno how animals affected by different factions.

[Idanwin]

Maybe every tileset should have a cold, normal, hot label and every glestimal should also have one.
If you use the desert tileset all units with the hot label will be used and with winter forest all with the cold label.
And forest all with normal.

~Idanwin

[modman]

That would be brillient, except we only have about ten tilesets.  Just define the Glestimals that can occur in the tileset.xml.

[@kukac@]

And make it in a way, that if a new tileset appears, you won't have to rewrite the whole code...

[Idanwin]

What I meant was adding
<tileset label="normal"/>
to the Glestimal xml and something in the map file which defines its label.

~Idanwin

[modman]

And then you'll end up with a ton of variables that perform the exact same thing.
I don't even see a need for that many tilesets to be included.

There are other tilesets out there; I downloaded a bunch somewhere that seemed to be in a Germanic-type languege (sorry, but I'm unilingual except I'm taking a Spanish class)

They weren't that good though.  It looked like whoever made them just recolored textures, so...

[John.d.h]

Maybe the tech tree should define the glestimals, which would all have climate tags, so they'd appear on different tilesets.  My only concern is that you'd have to make a lot of different glestimals for each tech tree.

[@kukac@]

So in the end, every Glestimal would have a tag like "tropical", and "forest" etc. and the techs would have tags like "tropical,forest" and if they match, then the animals will appear in game. So if the tech will support desert animals in the winter forest tileset, then...