Requirements: new map format

[Idanwin]

I think there should be mines.
No, not mines that explode, altough they might, but mines like gold mines.
Workers would have to go into the mine (disappear from map).
And there would be a lot of gold inside.
(actually just a new resource object)
and maybe they should be 2x2 tiles.

yeah, I played freecraft...

[hailstone]

This should be possible with the "units carry other units" feature and "units hold resources" feature but there would need to be something to transfer resources, to units being held, at a constant rate or even randomly now that I think of it (either all at once or taking turns) and AI to tell units to exit when fully loaded and drop at a location. Also if building mines instead of being preplaced, there would need to be restricted placement (or some kind of restriction anyway).

[How did this come to the new map format? - @kukac@]

[Idanwin]

No I thought of them as a resource like any other.

But I think it's better if mines have to be built on a certain object.
When destroyed it could become a "Abandoned Mine", you can repair them (costs less than first build).

[hailstone]

Sorry, I didn't realise this was in New Map Format.

[ArKabZol]

Saw this thread and was gonna remind you of the tunnels, but the portals pretty much kill that idea. The cliff seems like a really good idea though. If we could get glestimals into the map, you could have a pit of lions or such

[daniel.santos]

Well, this is for the map format, so Glestimals wouldn't be a part of that.  I think those would end up in scenario data or some other map meta-data.  But please feel free to object if you think they belong with the map data.

So yea, I don't mind having resources defined in the map data, but a "mine" sounds like something you build on the map where there are resources, and wouldn't be a big part of this discussion.  The idea has been brought up a lot of times however and I'm not particularly opposed to it.

Trenches...I forgot that one.  No way I'm typing anything for that one though!

Also, pits from splashes would be nice.  A tag could control magnitude, and so a zero (default) value would be considered no effect.

It would also be a hidden variable, so not all XMLs need to be changed.
All tag-effecting things should probably work this way, until XMLs are updated with a major release.

LOL! yea, I'm actually in pretty big favor of these things, although it's more of a factor internal to the game engine than the map format.  I want to be able to dynamically change the map, at least to the point of being able to remove parts of it (as in digging trenches and blowing sh*t up).  Before allowing attacks (presumably with splash damage, it wouldn't *seem* to make sense otherwise) to remove part of the map, or "leave pits" as you put it, I think we need support to knock units around and create wind, which would make this more believable.  But again, it's a bit off topic since it's more of what will happen to the map IN the game engine.  None the less, it's on topic in so much as it's relevant to the possibility of portions of a map becoming untraversable.  So if we use the geological layers idea, we could define portions of the map that are made of a substance that can't be destroyed and, thus, solve that problem for the map makers.  This adds a lot of complication however, so I don't think we'll be getting to that part any time very soon.

[@kukac@]

It would be nice if the tilesets, could be mixed (north and mountains would be snowy, at the south it would be tropical, etc.).

[titi]

Some thoughts about glestimals and map format.

Probably the mapper should be able to add spawn points for the glestimals.
At these spawn points glestimals are randomly created.
But the parameters or whatever for spawning glestimals should be made with a scenario or anything else, but not in the map format.

[wciow]

It would be nice if the tilesets, could be mixed (north and mountains would be snowy, at the south it would be tropical, etc.).

This could easily be done if the number of objects and textures in a tileset could be increased. 5 Types of ground texture is too few. Of course this will increase load time and RAM requirements slightly. If this ever happens then it would be possible to create a 'world' tileset which included many different regions i.e mountain, swamp, jungle etc.

A question to any coders: does the engine load all tileset models or just those that actually appear on the map?

[modman]

I know for a fact that it only loads the tileset you use because it says either at the beginning or at the end "Loading Tileset", and it might even specify which one it is.

[gameboy]

Another thing I wanted was a merging tile, it's not enough for the tile to just fade to another tile, there should be a merger tile specified so that the tileset uses that tile for merging into another, it would also help if an image that supports transparency is implemented for tilesets.