Igor faction

[Grim_weeder]

I've been playing with this idea in my head for a while and decided to throw my thoughts on paper. This is the result of about one hour of brainstorming. All suggestions or CONSTRUCTIVE (no; 'this is stupid' posts, please) criticisms are welcome.

Inspiration: Igors, Frankenstein-type monsters, lightning rods, kites, organ music

Resources: stone, gold, spares, lightning (consumable, similar to food for tech)

Units:

Surgeon: heals units, augments units, builds spares based units

Repo Igor: Repossession, the Igor way.

Spare collector: rummages around the battlefield, collects spares

Igor: collects stone and gold, constructs buildings, costs gold

Junior: Frankenstein-monster, costs spares

Benny: Giant kite vehicle (arcs of lightning?)

Stitches: Flying hamster, has a tendency to gnaw off legs (a Terry Pratchett tribute is a must)

Buildings:

Tower: source of lightning, trains kites and Benny

Lab: trains Igors

Shop: Trains spare collectors, and Repo Igors

Needs more

Techs:

Aerodynamics: allows the creation of Benny

Pet Adoption: Allows Surgeons to make Stitches the hamster.

Needs more

Is it too narrow (should it be broadened to include vampires, etc.)?
Some names need to be changed, I think (Junior, Repo Igor, etc.). Suggestions?
There should be more under Buildings and Techs, and a few more units, but I can't really think of any more at the moment.

For the time being this is just a concept, don't expect it to be finished any time soon. I might start working on the scripting later.

Edit: Fused surgeon (healing) and mechanic (summoning)

[silnarm]

Nice! Another Discworld fan, Yay!
This should be fun, good luck!

[Grim_weeder]

Thanks for the encouragement 

I had a few ideas while working on the scripts:
fusing the surgeon and the mechanic into one (any ideas as to what I should call it?)

some sort of morph for the surgeon/mechanic, not sure what though.

fusing the repo igor and the spare collector into one

I've started on scripting, igor is done (very fast), lab is done (again, very easy), and surgeon/mechanic is done (I might split them up again later).
I prefer to avoid utter parallelism (as is seen in many rts's in which faction 'a' has knight and faction 'b' has a combatant even though both have EXACTLY the same statistics, sometimes even the same model). Suggestions are welcome. 
I'll probably do some more work on it tomorrow.

[Omega]

I like the concept. It has a darker feel than I'm used to, but I think it will be fun to play. Good luck for you too!

One question: what are 'spares'?

PS: Just to check, can you model? There's been a lot of mods started by people who just do the XMLs then leave all the modeling up to other people. No offense to them, but that's not the best idea.

[silnarm]

fusing the surgeon and the mechanic into one (any ideas as to what I should call it?)

Ideally, every unit would be 'Igor'.  Of course Glest wont let you do that and of course it could get rather confusing.

I'd just stick with surgeon, far more Igor like than mechanic.

some sort of morph for the surgeon/mechanic, not sure what though.
fusing the repo igor and the spare collector into one

Yeah... maybe it is too 'narrow' with just Igors.  But it would still be fun 'small' faction

One question: what are 'spares'?

Spare parts... you know... arms, legs, that kind of stuff..

[Idanwin]

Yay!!! Discworld!

I think you should include vampires - they are the mathterth - as the advanced units and igors as the thervantth.
And as a special building the glass clock? (not really the one from the book, but just has the same effect on thing that come close "See what happened to the hammer".
I fear however we'll just have to keep it a short-range attack with nice particle effect and splash.

Of course we need a 'Dark Castle', that's were the vampires live.
When a vampires is killed he should 'burn to ashes' (that's not really true, but it would be a nice effect).

[Grim_weeder]

I like the idea of vampires as 'marthterth', they could have a bat/mist morph. An upgrade could have the ability to resurrect vampires (not sure how to implement that)? Naturally we would need a dark castle to train vampires.

I, sadly, have not read the time thief; could you provide a little more detail on the glass clock?

Yes, I can model (rather slowly, but I can), I think I could even manage the texturing and animation to some extent. What I'm quite certain I will not be able to do is the voice-acting (I can but it would be REALLY bad   :'( ). So far, however, I am just doing the xml's and recycling old models so I can start figuring out balancing and get a rough draft done.

One problem I've run into is: how are the igors going to attack? crossbows? saws? scalpels?

I'm not sure how I should implement spares. xml knowledgeable people, help.

Thanks for the enthusiasm

[silnarm]

I, sadly, have not read the time thief; could you provide a little more detail on the glass clock?

No! The Glest version would not be like in the book anyway, and that would just be spoiling the book for you, read it
We've actually probably got a couple of choices if we want some big Igor like contraption, have you guys read 'Making Money' yet?  Of course the Glooper (is that what it was called ???) would be even less useful in Glest, but it'd sure look cool.

One problem I've run into is: how are the igors going to attack? crossbows? saws? scalpels?

Maybe the Igors can just be the workers/builders then, now that the Marthterth are in, they can probably do all the fighting.  It'd be cool if we could make it so the Igors knew when a big attack was coming, and vanished!

[John.d.h]

It'd be cool if we could make it so the Igors knew when a big attack was coming, and vanished!

For vanishing, you could have them morph into a unit with an empty mesh and a cell map of 0, then morph them back when you wanted them to re-appear.

[Mark]

By cell map do you mean size value?  Because i am almost certain that a unit with a size value of 0 cannot be selected, and that could pose a problem.  If that is not what cell map is, please elaborate.  Also, since i do not understand code, i am not sure if the AI would know how to use that function, and if cell map is size value then the enemy units will simply gather around where the unit should be.

[John.d.h]

By cell map do you mean size value?  Because i am almost certain that a unit with a size value of 0 cannot be selected, and that could pose a problem.  If that is not what cell map is, please elaborate.  Also, since i do not understand code, i am not sure if the AI would know how to use that function, and if cell map is size value then the enemy units will simply gather around where the unit should be.

No, I meant cell map, which is what defines which parts of a unit are empty space and which ones are solid.  For example, the Mage Tower has a cell map that looks like:

01010
11011
00000
11011
01010

Imagine you're standing over the Mage Tower looking straight down at it.  Everywhere that is "empty", (i.e. there's enough room for a person to walk through) is shown as a 0, while everywhere else is shown as a 1.  I know a unit with a cell map of zero can't be targeted by attacks or anything like that.  You might be right about the selection, though.  I haven't tested that out.  The AI probably wouldn't know how to use it properly, but the AI doesn't know how to do A LOT of things properly at this point.  I have no idea if it's possible to have a size value of zero.  All I know is that when I gave one of my buildings a cell map that was all 0 (it was an open plaza-type building, so I wanted units to be able to walk through it freely), it couldn't be built, repaired, or attacked.

[silnarm]

You might be right about the selection, though.  I haven't tested that out.

If you're still rendering a model, it'll be selectable.
If you render a 'nothing' model, it will not be selectable.
OpenGL handles the 'object picking' as well as all the pretty pictures   There needs to be something rendered in order for it to be selectable.
I haven't tested that... but I'm confident enough in it to say "that's how it is"

The AI probably wouldn't know how to use it properly

Yep, that's a safe bet.

An all zero cellmap is always going to cause problems, if a unit does not occupy at least one cell, then are far as a lot of the code is concerned, it doesn't exist... however some other parts of the code do indeed know about it, this disagreement of course has the potential to cause all sorts of problems.

Plaza style 'buildings' would be nice though... (onto the list with you then!)

[Grim_weeder]

'Plaza style 'buildings' would be nice though... (onto the list with you then!)'-silnarm
??? please elaborate.

I've been doing some work on the spares. I was, at first, thinking to make the fallen bodies to be 'harvested' by spare collectors but now I'm not quite sure how I would do that. Now I'm thinking of a graveyard building which is then mined by spare collectors...
any thoughts?

What do think of combining the repo-igor and the spare collector (either way they need a name change, eh)?

I was thinking that repo-igors would gather spares from living things. Is that too morbid? Is it too hard to implement? Will it cause balancing or game-play issues? Should we just scrap repo-igors?

For the glass clock: do you think it would look more like a giant grandfather clock, or one of those clocks with the glass cover?
http://www.made-in-china.com/image/2f0j00IvVtbMuJZRrdM/Glass-cased-Copper-Clock-JG8007-.jpg

P.S. how do you post pictures?

[assassin]

'Plaza style 'buildings' would be nice though... (onto the list with you then!)'-silnarm
??? please elaborate.

What they are refering to is a building which units can stand anywhere under.

[modman]

P.S. how do you post pictures?

Code: [Select]

[img]image_url[/img] 

Right below the italics button.

[Gabbe]

i want to see this through, do anyone want to take this mod into their hands?