What was dropped?

FfH2 is in dev freeze. What features where in the game at some point in development /planned but where dropped and why?

The big one was multiple worlds. Kael wanted it so that when someone reaches infernal pact, portals to hell open up and Hyborem lives there. But he couldn't figure out how to make it work so he settled for the "hyborem invades erebus and spreads hell there" mechanic instead.

You have to hope that the Civ5 developers are working on multiple mapped worlds again. Its been talked about since Civ2, so its something they're aware of.

Well, multiple mapped worlds was implemented in Civ 2, test of time. As someone who played that... it worked rather poorly in most cases. They had 4 different primary games that one could play - regular civ, but now you could conquer alpha centauri too, Migdard (the civ 2 equivalent of FFH... FFH is much better however), One space based one, and one more that I don't remember. The problem came because each of the other worlds had different ways to access the other worlds (ex. with migdard, you can enter the seas by being at sea and being the right kind of unit, enter the underworld by going to one of the gates, or enter the sky world by being the right kind of unit). In general however, it made little sense what units were able to do what, and moving between worlds (on the map), was a very painful process, and it was nearly impossible to keep track of who was doing what with it.

From my own experiences, there would have to be VAST improvements for me to want to touch multiple worlds again.

-Colin

Creation, Force, and Dimensional magic were dropped because Kael wasn't satisfied with any ideas for spells for them. They do exist in the lore, though.

And in most modmods, in one form or another.

Adepts used to be upgradable to a unit called the Conjurer as well as the usual Mage. They summoned units, while the Mages handled most other spells. They upgraded to a unit called the Summoner, an Archmage equivalent. They used the Islamic and Jewish Missionary units respectively, but were dropped because it was felt the magic system was complicated enough as it was.

Man I miss the old Archmage Spell - Meteor Swarm, which would summon three Dragon-breath style Meteors. Four Archmagi summoning a total of twelve meteors would demolish virtually anything put in front of it, which I suppose is why it was dropped

In general the greatest killer of ambicious features is the AI. If the feature was going to be big enough to have a significant strategic impact and the AI couldnt deal with it it had to be removed.

Multiple Maps: I would have loved a multiple map model. The big hinderence wasn't really switchign between maps, there were a few ways to do that (though they were always slow and cumbersome) but in getting the AI to understand a 2 map world. How would it be able to balance resources, defense and expansion across two maps simotaneously. How would it be able to path through 2 maps to find out it could use the maps for a shorter path, slip around mountains oceans.

Wilderness Areas: Areas that have to be conquered before they are available to settlement. You may need to clear out the monsters, defeat a boss monster, or whatever. They should be formed by natural borders (such as rivers, mountain ranges and forests) and we would have a few different types with different properties. Some may require units to be a certain level before they can enter them. This idea became explorable lairs, which is a much more realistic vision of it. Though I still dream about the origional idea (i know a lot of the team really liked it).

Player stats: Honor, Intimidate and Bluff were player stats that impacted diplomacy. You may be able to lie and cheat other AI players, get away with things, or be respected because you didnt cheat.

Quests: Larger scale random tasks that could require complex goals to be met before they could be accomplished. This was better done as scenarios or more dynamic quests that the player chooses. For example, instead of a quest saying a player have to destroy a city, then chase down an kill an enemy hero before he escapes, we have a world of enemy heroes and situations that the player can choose how to respond to. If he chooses to destroy a city and chase down an enemy hero thats up to him, and we incent those behaviors through game mechanics, not because a quest specifically says to do them.

Guilds: Guilds just didnt work. We could never find a good enough function for them to perform that melded them smoothly enough with everything else.

Tempus Mor: We originally drafted a design for a 2nd scenario for BtS. Age of Ice was going to be a more introductory scenario and Tempus Mor was going to be an example of spell use, religions, and more of a true taste of what FfH2 was like. We ended up cutting it just because we had so much to do to get AoI ready (and Firaxis was already so kind to allow us to grow well beyond the size limit they initially assumed for us).

I do wish we would have found a way to do multiple maps and wilderness areas. They would have been cool. I feel for the Beastmaster unit who was always designed to hit the game at the point after the Hell area with tons of nasty monsters had opened up as a specialist as defeating and clearing those areas. That unit never really hit his stride because he never had new dangerous areas to explore.

Wilderness really is a good idea, it'd improve the game quite considerably. Look at how many people are trying to find ways to make wilderness last longer as is... No Settlers maps being the best way currently. Age of Ice had lots of wilderness and that was part of what made it so awesome... it'd be awesome if it could eventually be made to work somehow.

Quests... I understand the logic of just leaving that up to the player, but the fact is that it functions and is responded to differently. Being given a small extra incentive and some guidance toward something cool is just plain awesome. The main difference I think is that quests come from an outside source, and if they were implemented, that should be held to.

For example, a quest shouldn't be "your military advisor suggests you raze [city name] and prevent [hero] from escaping," but it could be "A mysterious hermit appears in your city. He says that [hero] has done him wrong, and that if you exact justice for him, he'll repay you with medicine he has gathered over the years." And then killing that hero (which could well belong to a friendly civ) would reward you with 5 Healing Salves in your capital or something similar.

Regarding Tempus Mor, why didn't it get made into a scenario for FfH? Age of Ice was what got me interested in FfH; I'd heard somebody mention it a couple times on the internet, but didn't think to check it out until I played that scenario and was blown away by how much fun it was. I was later kind of disappointed because the scenarios released for FfH, by and large, weren't as good... which seems weird, because clearly you know how to make something cool. Quests actually were part of what made AoI so good, now that I think about it...

I think part of the problem is the sheer amount of work some of those ideas would take to implement. I think wilderness would be awesome, but they're already struggling to get the AI to understand the game as is (and I can see why; there are so many options that a computer cannot properly consider them all, or why).

One day, someone will resurrect the Master of Magic franchise... Then, they'll cal Kael and ask him what they should include.

I'm reminded of an old, very failed, game called "Birthright" which was a port of a failed TSR RPG/Fiction milieu. While the milieu wasn't horrible and the books didn't quite suck.. The game was innovative. Unfortunately, it was horribly bug-ridden and unplayable.

But, one of the chief game mechanics there was you used heroes that went on quests in actual, 3D dungeon environments, on the tactical battlefield. (First person Heroic Quest mode, Isometric Strategic and Tactical modes) A hero would go on a quest, get sent to some dungeon somewhere, pick up some nifty magic item after slaying the bossmob and then, later, they'd be able to use that item in the field, slaying hordes of nasties with it. Unfortunately, what would have eventually been a decent game couldn't cope with finagling this and slit its own throat before you could open the box - Too many bugs.

Populous, Master of Magic, Might & Magic, Civ1-IV (several spinoffs), Master of Orion and plenty of other God games have come out with awesome features. The thing is, they did them right. Anyone can come up with an idea and even incorporate it into a game environment. But, to do it well and to do it so that it actually improves the gameplay experience takes a LOT of effort and forethought.

More things get chopped out of games than ever saw the light of day on the shelf in all published games combined. I imagine one could run their own Mini-Electronic Arts developer simply by using cast-off ideas from other studios that didn't have the time or tech at the time to include them in their own releases.

Strangely, the wilderness thing would be a much better addition to FfH now than it would have been in the early years. Earlygame wars are really, really gay now because of the free XP for AI units, so it would improve the game to have early fights be against barbs and beasts rather than other civs, but that wasn't true for a long time.

horsehockey situation, isn't it? By the time FfH really started to need something like that, it was too late to add it in.

Doesn't Wildmana have guardians that sit on Mana Nodes? That's a bit like a scaled down Wilderness option. Wallop a monster, get a reward. That said, getting the AI to understand the importance of killing Mana Guardians over some over random Barbs might be a little tricky.

Kael said:

Multiple Maps: I would have loved a multiple map model. The big hinderence wasn't really switchign between maps, there were a few ways to do that (though they were always slow and cumbersome) but in getting the AI to understand a 2 map world. How would it be able to balance resources, defense and expansion across two maps simotaneously. How would it be able to path through 2 maps to find out it could use the maps for a shorter path, slip around mountains oceans.

Click to expand...

I'm interested in how you were going to do this. It's the graphics and interface I'm uncertain about because most of that's hidden in the EXE, so I'm not sure what the graphics engine will tolerate as far as switching maps in and out goes. If you're saying it's possible to do, that's certainly encouraging.

AI is solvable, I think. I have quite a few ideas about that already.

Skyre Noktis said:

I'm interested in how you were going to do this. It's the graphics and interface I'm uncertain about because most of that's hidden in the EXE, so I'm not sure what the graphics engine will tolerate as far as switching maps in and out goes. If you're saying it's possible to do, that's certainly encouraging.

AI is solvable, I think. I have quite a few ideas about that already.

Click to expand...

We can package and store the values of the map we aren't using. Then each time to switch between layers all of the current plot, unit, etc values are stored and the values for the new layer are unpacked. We do something similar with the temp terrain's. It would be slow (the graphics engine doesnt like redrawing, look at the pause when genesis goes off).

But getting the AI to path and consider the strategic options on other layers is problematic. Workable, but a task that makes AI spell usage look tiny in comparison.

Weren't unlockable rewards for getting trophies talked about at one point too? As in win a game with the clan, unlock the Eternal Flame as a special wonder for the clan.

Jabie said:

Doesn't Wildmana have guardians that sit on Mana Nodes? That's a bit like a scaled down Wilderness option. Wallop a monster, get a reward. That said, getting the AI to understand the importance of killing Mana Guardians over some over random Barbs might be a little tricky.

Click to expand...

As does RifE... And the concept was revived (Based on an older modmod) by me first.

Really though, Sephi's is more interesting there...

But RifE also has a vastly improved animal civ. Still needs a bit of tuning in the newest patch (will be better in the unreleased patch), but the animals/barbs are enough threat to actually preserve wilderness.

Kael said:

We can package and store the values of the map we aren't using. Then each time to switch between layers all of the current plot, unit, etc values are stored and the values for the new layer are unpacked. We do something similar with the temp terrain's. It would be slow (the graphics engine doesnt like redrawing, look at the pause when genesis goes off).

Click to expand...

Do you have to explicitly tell it to redraw everything, or will it just draw whatever's there at the time?

Skyre Noktis said:

Do you have to explicitly tell it to redraw everything, or will it just draw whatever's there at the time?

Click to expand...

the terrain of plots is cached somewhere, so if you change it, you have to tell the game to update the plot. The game automatically draws any plots that are visible to the current player.

I hope it is using
bool CvPlot::isActiveVisible(bool bDebug) const
Then you could force the game to only draw plots on the current layer and simply make the map twice as big (one half for every layer).

Zifnab said:

Weren't unlockable rewards for getting trophies talked about at one point too? As in win a game with the clan, unlock the Eternal Flame as a special wonder for the clan.

Click to expand...

Yeah, there were hundreds of tweaks to existing mechanics that we tried or considered. At first I wanted to reward players for achieving victories. Such as not having a civ hero, or special equipment available for a civ until you have won a game with that civ. In the end I thought that, although it would be fun to design that system, it isnt really that fun to play and many players would simply have to go through the dumb work of worldbuilder cheating (or sharing trophy saves) to unlock everything.

So it was tossed out, and I think that was a good choice.