Killamike718 said:
WOW When i was going about the days createing the graphics for the MOD, I was planning for a "Civilized" approach But now, You opened my mind man. those are some amazing IDEAS!!!, We could do two versions of the MOD one Starcraft Based and the other Civ based, but that would suck and would like double the work.
I agree. I think finding a happy medium is the best way to go.
Killamike718 said:
I was thinking how are we going to do photon cannons or Zerg sunkens or even zerg spores and the Terran missle turret. are we going to build them as cities or stuff like forts that can be built by SCV or Peon. Actually the Idea of the one city - one Building is awsome, but before I was thinking of building the Buildings like the fort on the map, but we can click on it -
(although we cant click on the fort in the bame, maybe you can use the SDK to give it that property soo we can have a more starcraft warcraft feeling)
- and depending on how much resources we have is how much we can build toward the price and price the Units and buildings the same as they are in the originals.
What im trying to say is, like when we used to play in starcraft and warcraft, we used to select the buildings by a click and have a choice of units, reaserch or Techs to choose from. I was thinking of maing the buildings for the starcraft and warcraft universe on the map as terrain improvements like forts and have the player click on them which will give Him what he wants to choose. We can edit the interface to have it look similars to the starcraft and warcraft style, soo we can click on what we want, like units and so on. We can have the units have a number of turns to be built also depending on the speed they were built in the originals. I think there is a Quota system in Civ IV that we can implament into thses buildings.
What worried me is how were going to make improvements such as the photon cannon and other similar buildings attack units on tiles. are they going to all have different ranges and attack units like 2 tiles away or 4 tiles away. how are we going to do that?
The reason I was thinking make them buildings is to avoid the "how to click on them" problem. When you click on it, the option comes up with buttons for the different technologies.
For sunkens / turrets / cannons / etc, it would 'prolly be easiest to make them forts, then have a custom unit made on each fort when the fort completes, and at the beginning of every turn that the fort is alive. When the unit gets clicked, the user thinks they're clicking the building, even though in the code it's a unit, and the graphic in the lower-left will be of the building. Whenever the player issues a "move" command with that unit that attacks a unit, the battle is done between the unit being attacked and this special unit (call the unit a "Photon cannon" so the battle is between a "Photon Cannon" and the unit, rather than a "Ball of Psi and a unit", but have it's animation be of a flying ball of Psi energy on the game map). All of the battle stats for any building can then be easily put into a unit. Chances are the ball of psi will lose and die, but weaken the enemy unit. If the ball of psi finishes off the enemy, destroy the ball of psi directly after battle also. This would also allow for things such as Photon Cannons (being weaker) perhaps having 2 units per turn, whereas Sunkens (being stronger) having one, but that do more damage.
Building / Unit:
Terran Missile Turret / Ground-To-Air Missile
Protoss Cannon / Ball of Psi
Sunken Colony / Subterranean Tentacle
Spore Colony / Ball of Acid
Reaver* / Scarab
Seige Tank* / Seige Shell
Carrier* / Interceptor
Say a Sunken Colony can attack any unit that is three squares away, whereas a Photon Cannon can only be two. This is as easy as editting the movement range of their respective units. The only problem will be discovering a way for the units not to "stick around". For example, if a user tries to attack a unit in a square, but misses the square and their unit ends it's turn in an empty square. That's no good. Either, A.) When a unit has run out of moves, destroy it and make a new one at the fort to replace it, B.) Give each unit an infinite amount of moves, but kill it if it leaves a certain distance from the fort (this ruins the "change each units range easily" paradigm, however), C.) Disallow the unit to move unless it ends it's move in an enemy-controlled tile.
* While the Reaver, Carrier and Seiege Tank (in Seige Mode) are not TECHNICALLY buildings, they can have their units modified to be able to be a "transport" and work the same way as the above buildings. The reaver has no attack, but can launch it's scarabs that do massive suicidal damage to the unit it attacks and all units in that square (perhaps to units in the surrounding square). The same with the Seige Tank, although I don't think that a Seige Tank Shell should work like a Nuke unit.
The Defensive Traits of the defensive structures could also be a unit (this time, actualy called "Photon Cannon" that has a strength value, but does not attack or deal damage in defense. It's only there to keep track of how much damage the defensive structure has taken). When this unit dies, the improvement is destroyed, along with any remaining "ammo" units on the plot.
I'm not too sure how the bunkers would work. I'm thinking we could get them to work just like normal forts to start, that just add defensive modifiers with railroad-like squares surrounding it so that units can attack surrounding units and return to the bunker. Later on, we could find a way to make it so that instead of a defensive modifyer, any attacks on this tile gets put onto a custom unit called "Bunker" that will, if found in a tile, always take the attacks. At the end of each turn, the "Bunker" units strength is updated depending on what units are found on that tile. This would 'prolly be one of the tougher mods, though.
Killamike718 said:
Edit: By the way thank you SOOOO much for your hard work on everything soo far and thank you soo much for the Civ Wiki!!!!! Your the Best man!
If you want to join the team you are 1000% welcome!!!
Sounds good. I'm not sure how many people will use it, but I've always found that having things in a Wiki is just an easier way of getting things than a page on a forum. No offense of course.
BTW, Anyone else see the comparable nature of how cultures expand to how a Zerg creep expands? I was thinking we can use that for Zerg. Also, make a "City" or "Improvement" (not sure what would be better) called a "Pylon" for Protoss with a pre-defined cultural value, and all other Protoss buildings must be made within those cultural boundries.
Oh, and for how to make probes "Warp In" buildings, once again we could make an unit that is immidiatley put on the map (i.e. takes 0 turns to build) with a unit created on it called a Warp Rift (??). The unit starts off with 0.1 Strength, and must "heal" to full power. A script will check all "Warp Rifts", and any that are healed will become whatever they were designed to become. This also will allow for the building to be destroyed while being warped in, or the unit can be "disbanded".
So basically, here's what I'm thinking for Units / Improvements / City
1.) Anything that can attack or be attacked should be a unit (thus, Cannons would actually be units of movement 0, with it's ammo being units with movement of the range of the building.)
2.) Anything that is typically considered a "building" that "builds units" should be a city.
3.) An improvement can be used where one of the first two rules is not apply.
Okay, those are my brainstorms for the hour. I think I'm going to work on trying to make a demo where a worker creates a unit rather than an improvement, which is 'prolly the first steps to proving that these structures work.
, can sacrifice population to rush production with a minus to happiness
, +1 to 
, + to 
.
to a plus to 
But maybe we should make them improvements, and not cities, since cities can't be made side by side, improvements can.
).
