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[Gerikes]

Hurray for brainstorming!

First off, if you missed it I sent out v0.3 of Civcraft. There's really no differences, but it now has GerikSpells completely inside of it, and the attack system now uses it. Further enhancements (cloaking, burrowing, special abilities) will all use it, and I hope that this will mean very fast turnaround time for each spell. I'm sure we're much farther along than v0.3, but I'm not good at marketing, so whatever

Ok, back to the brainstorming bit. Currently, I'm working on cloaking. It makes sense that a player can't see another players units that are cloaked, and that's fine. The problem comes with allowing a player to tell if his or her own units are cloaked or not. This is pretty important for telling "at a glance" whether your wraiths or cloaked or not. I'm thinking of temporarily using the promotion "fog" that appears when the unit has leveled up (although that might be better used for templar hallucinations).

I'd like to have something that covers the unit so that the user can tell at a glance that the unit is cloaked. Any ideas?

 

[Killamike718]

Ooo, this is a hard one, but this is my duty to make it appear cloaked, ill figure out something and see into it. when we get to further testing, ill try some stuff.

 

[darkonion]

Hurray for brainstorming!
...
I'd like to have something that covers the unit so that the user can tell at a glance that the unit is cloaked. Any ideas?

ok... an idea... try to make a pop-up (like when u choose to make the game make "pop-ups" of all the resources) that shows a picture of which unit (i.e.- a wraith) is cloaked... just a thought....

 

[Killamike718]

ok... an idea... try to make a pop-up (like when u choose to make the game make "pop-ups" of all the resources) that shows a picture of which unit (i.e.- a wraith) is cloaked... just a thought....

Thats a good Idea! You can go over a cloaked unit and a little window next to the mouse pointer will say cloaked unit, but it says nothing of who owns it or what unit it is. I imagine the cloaked unit can go on any tile until he runs out of energy or a cloak finder unit comes near it. Also if the cloaked unit is on a tile with an enemy and it is revealed, they fight at that turn with every other oppsing unit in that tile.

Also I think there should be a max number of 8 unit on a tile and units cant go on building tiles. I think it will simulate space as in starcraft. tell me what you guys think.

 

[Gerikes]

ok... an idea... try to make a pop-up (like when u choose to make the game make "pop-ups" of all the resources) that shows a picture of which unit (i.e.- a wraith) is cloaked... just a thought....

Hmm. Perhaps we can do something like that, but rather than a popup, we can put whatever we use to represent "cloaked" with the portraits in the selection list (on the bottom of the screen). Such as a texture that overlays the unit's portrait that gives the appearance of being invisible (but not make it looked "greyed out" like units from another player typically do). We could probably do the same for all the other abilities (stimmed, ensnared, plagued, blinded, etc). All of these should in the very least be represented by an "icon" that will rest next to the unit's name in the info pane.

If worse comes to absolute worse, we can have two models for each unit, one where it's cloaked and one where it's not, and somehow make those changes look different. Then when enabling cloaking I just switch to the other model. Of course, I didn't know if there was some trickery with the effects (like the "ping" effect) that we can put on loop around the unit. If there was, we could also make similar things for all the other unit affects.

 

[darkonion]

what im saying is have a cloked unit be similar to a resource when the "resource display" option is on (the one on top of the mini-map...)... it makes little pictures of teh resources "pop-up"!!! make it so that the cloaked unit "pops up" for the controling player and anybody with a detector-unit within range to "see" it... thats what i ment Gerikes...

 

[Gerikes]

what im saying is have a cloked unit be similar to a resource when the "resource display" option is on (the one on top of the mini-map...)... it makes little pictures of teh resources "pop-up"!!! make it so that the cloaked unit "pops up" for the controling player and anybody with a detector-unit within range to "see" it... thats what i ment Gerikes...

Oh. Yeah, that could work. Since the resources are going to be quite obvious I don't think that there really needs to be one for each of the actual resources. And even better that can easily be turned on/off. I just hope it wouldn't get in the way if the user was trying to do anything.

Once I finish up getting the cloaking mechanics to actually work I'll try that out. I hope the code for controlling those is actually available

 

[Gerikes]

Thats a good Idea! You can go over a cloaked unit and a little window next to the mouse pointer will say cloaked unit, but it says nothing of who owns it or what unit it is. I imagine the cloaked unit can go on any tile until he runs out of energy or a cloak finder unit comes near it. Also if the cloaked unit is on a tile with an enemy and it is revealed, they fight at that turn with every other oppsing unit in that tile.

Also I think there should be a max number of 8 unit on a tile and units cant go on building tiles. I think it will simulate space as in starcraft. tell me what you guys think.

Yeah, I really have no idea what's what when it comes to having a unit being revealed inside a tile with enemy units. Anytime you "force" units to do anything you take away an element of strategy away from the player, IMO. Maybe they want to let that unit live because they're letting them watch a diversion?

As for max number of units, I've been helping every once and awhile with the Warhammer mod who recently implemented a cap on the number of units in one plot. I didn't really like it at all, but I can put the code in here anyway for you guys to try. I would think that the collateral damage from scarabs, seige tanks, lurkers and even firebats would be enough to deter large stacks. But, that's Warhammer, this is SC, so we'll see.

One of the things I didn't know how to recreate was the effect that in SC you could actually "see" cloaked units (their outline at least because of the ripple effect it created against the landscape). So, you'd really have to be pretty observant, and you'd need to reveal them to get your units to actually attack them (aside from special abilities and splash damage, thank you gosu replays). But your idea of just putting "cloaked unit" on the plot info is a neat idea. Like in SC, it's not obvious, you would need to actually be looking for them to find them (unless one happens to be directly under the plot you're working at, as in SC). It doesn't deal with the fact that they're tough to see when not moving, but that isn't a big deal with me. Perhaps later I can make it so the message only shows if the unit had moved in it's last turn...

 

[Gerikes]

This is your enemies army with an Arbiter:

This is your enemies army with an arbiter when you have an observer like a Science Vessel around.

Any questions?

For anybody who is viewing this thread that hasn't played Starcraft, arbiters make units that surround them cloaked (invisible). All those units in blue are invisible until I brought the Science Vessel over (which has the ability to view cloaked units).

---


I'm not sure if the pointer popup message will work. The code that actually points to all the resources in not in the SDK. To make my own pointer, I would have to put them on a time limit. I could make that limit forever, but if a second later the person moves their arbiter from view. Then they will be tagged as cloaked when they're really not, and I don't think I can manually "close" the popup pointer tag thingy (I wish there was a real name to it).

Still need to make sure that having enemy units in the same plot with invisible units work. I think the default action for Civ4 is if the unit becomes un-invisible to kick it out of the plot. I'm going to code it for now just to stay put, and maybe do the little pop-up thing whenever an enemy unit get's decloaked. Any other ideas on this?

 

[Gerikes]

It's been too long since I've said this..

All of cloaking goodness is included in this patch. Many of the cloaking numbers are found in the GlobalDefines XML if you want to take a peeksie. I just realized now as I'm typing this that I forgot to put the how much energy "Cloaking" costs when you hover over the "Cloak" button. I'll add that into the next version.

As for bugs, if you find any show stoppers, just note I'll be away for the weekend, so if you post it before tonight I might have a shot to look at it. Otherwise, oh well

Oh, anyone have any good ideas for the HP, Shield, and Energy icons that we can use to replace the Civ4 ones? I was also thinking of having one for each of the different abilities affects as well (ensnared, parasited, plagued, def-matrixed, etc.). This would go in the infopane (think around where the promotions are located for each unit), and be in additition to overlays for the unit portrait in the selection list and also possible graphical enhancements to the actual models, if that's at all possible.

Files Here.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
v0.31:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------
Fixes:
------

- Placed Shield bar back into unit-selection popup. Also added Energy bar.

- Added energy info into unit pane for unit along with hit points and shield.

---------
Changes:
---------

- Implemented "Cloaking." Units can only be cloaked if they have researched the proper cloaking research or if they start cloaked (Observer, Dark Templar). Also, if a unit is within two spaces of an arbiter owned by the same player it is automatically cloaked (with the exception of arbiters which can't be cloaked by themselves or other arbiters).

- Cloaked units are invisible to enemy players and will not be seen nor can they be targetted in an attack. They will be hit by splash damage however. If an enemy unit is a detector and the cloaked unit is within range of the detecting units visibility, then the cloaked unit is considered visible to the detecting units team.

- A cloaked unit (either yours or an enemy who you have revealed with a detector unit) will have the Civ4 "promotion" effect to signify it's cloaked (to hopefully be later replaced by something else).

- Ghost and Wraiths have the ability to cloak themselves once their correct researches are made. Whenever they cloak themselves, it costs 25 energy. Their energy will slowly degrade so long as they are cloaked. They can uncloak at any time.

 

[darkonion]

It's been too long since I've said this..

All of cloaking goodness is included in this patch. Many of the cloaking numbers are found in the GlobalDefines XML if you want to take a peeksie. I just realized now as I'm typing this that I forgot to put the how much energy "Cloaking" costs when you hover over the "Cloak" button. I'll add that into the next version.

As for bugs, if you find any show stoppers, just note I'll be away for the weekend, so if you post it before tonight I might have a shot to look at it. Otherwise, oh well

Oh, anyone have any good ideas for the HP, Shield, and Energy icons that we can use to replace the Civ4 ones? I was also thinking of having one for each of the different abilities affects as well (ensnared, parasited, plagued, def-matrixed, etc.). This would go in the infopane (think around where the promotions are located for each unit), and be in additition to overlays for the unit portrait in the selection list and also possible graphical enhancements to the actual models, if that's at all possible.

Files Here.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
v0.31:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

------
Fixes:
------

- Placed Shield bar back into unit-selection popup. Also added Energy bar.

- Added energy info into unit pane for unit along with hit points and shield.

---------
Changes:
---------

- Implemented "Cloaking." Units can only be cloaked if they have researched the proper cloaking research or if they start cloaked (Observer, Dark Templar). Also, if a unit is within two spaces of an arbiter owned by the same player it is automatically cloaked (with the exception of arbiters which can't be cloaked by themselves or other arbiters).

- Cloaked units are invisible to enemy players and will not be seen nor can they be targetted in an attack. They will be hit by splash damage however. If an enemy unit is a detector and the cloaked unit is within range of the detecting units visibility, then the cloaked unit is considered visible to the detecting units team.

- A cloaked unit (either yours or an enemy who you have revealed with a detector unit) will have the Civ4 "promotion" effect to signify it's cloaked (to hopefully be later replaced by something else).

- Ghost and Wraiths have the ability to cloak themselves once their correct researches are made. Whenever they cloak themselves, it costs 25 energy. Their energy will slowly degrade so long as they are cloaked. They can uncloak at any time.

why where u up at 5:30 in the morning doing this?

lol... another idea (great... )... why not just make it a promo... cloaked... which has an icon and everything... i liked the blue "mist" surrounding the cloaked units... and make the arbitor or spell/ability give them the promo "cloaked" untill they de-activate it... and detector units can "see" units that have the "cloaked" promo... as for units ont the same tile... leave it... GJ goodjob man... gl hf and ka (some old starcraft abbreviations...)...

 

[Gerikes]

why where u up at 5:30 in the morning doing this?

'cuz when you don't have a job, day and night become one

lol... another idea (great... )... why not just make it a promo... cloaked... which has an icon and everything...

Looks like we were thinking on the same wave-length

I actually plan on using promotions as the way to determine if a unit has any affects cast upon on it (ensnared, parasite, etc.). If there was no such thing as an arbiter, I would have done cloaking the same way. However, the arbiter brings into play the fact that a unit might be cloaked by multiple arbiters, and if a unit steps out of range of one arbiter, I can't remove the promotion because it might be within range of another arbiter. In the end, I get the same affect where whenever any unit moves it has to check whether it's "cloaked" or not, so giving it a promotion will just add more code than necessary..

However, for all other affects, it will be a simple "yes/no" as to if a unit has them, so I'm planning on using promotions like you said.

 

[Gerikes]

Ok, I'm starting to work on burrowing units. Everything in terms of making them burrowed is set, for now it will look like they're just cloaked. Later I'll probably have to change it a bit depending on what we do for the animations or whatever, but I'm not too worried about that. I'm also going to work on the lurker attack during this update. Once that is set and done, I'll release v0.32.

I've also updated the "Future" post in the Modpacks thread (found here) for what my exact plan of attack is. If you want to have me add anything to it, feel free.

Edit: P.S. I'm also thinking of making the plot-size smaller. This will allow more detail to go into the plot arangements because you'll have many more plots that take up one part of the map even though it's the same size. This should help unclutter the bases a bit, as well as allow for more open-field battles where units can still be spaced out. Of course, in order for this to happen the map sizes will have to increase too. So, maps will have more plots, but each plot will take up less space. The problem is that because there will be more plots, then walking from one side to the other will take longer. I'm thinking the way to fix this is to up the movements of each unit (probably doubling that too). However, I think that we should keep the attack range the same. The reason I was thinking this was because I put a lurker down and checked out it's attack range. Put into the middle of the challenger main base, it could basically cover the entire peninsula. That, plus I could sit outside one of the island expansions and basically have it at my mercy.

So, while the Lurker ideas are being flushed out, I'm going to work on this change. This involves changing the maps as well. I'll have everything backed up, so for the next release if we come to the consensus that it's horrible we can easily go back.

 

[Gerikes]

One problem I'm running into with the Lurker attack is how to make it fair while still easy.

The lurker typicaly attacks in a straight line, starting from their position, passing through the position of their main target, and continuing until the distance of their range. This is how it is in Starcraft.

In Civilization, because the plots are much bigger, it's tough to get a "straight" line. Of course, there are eight directions (two verticals, two horizontals, and all the diagonals) that can be straight, but then if an enemy knows where the unit is, they can just put their units into the plots that those angles can't cover.

On the other hand, we could give the user direct control over where their attack goes by clicking on all the plots to "draw" the line, but that would mean that it would take multiple clicks just to make one attack on one plot. This would probably also make the lurker way too powerful.

Now, hopefully you're all big fans of geometry...

One idea is to draw a direct line from the lurker's position to the enemy (and passed it if there's more range). Then, we can determine how much of the line is inside the box. For example, imagine this setup:

[U].                   .
| F |   |   |   |   |
| + |   |   |   |   |
| + |   | * | * | M |
| L | * | * |   |   |
|   |   |   |   |   |[/U]

L = Lurker
M = Marine
F = Firebat

Say the Lurker is attacking the marine. If you were to draw a straight line from the Lurker to the Marine, that line would intersect all the plots with the stars (four total). Now say that the lurker attacks the firebat. Drawing a straight line, we would be intersecting only the plots marked with plus signs (two plots). As you can see, attacking a plot that isn't on one of the eight straight lines (the marine in this case) would result in more plots being able to be attacked. This, to me, would make no sense, as that means it's more advantageous to attack a plot simply because of the direction it's in, not the units that are on it or in the line of attack.

One idea would be to use this idea of affecting all plots intersected by the line, but vary what happens in each of the intersecting plots by how much the lines overlaps it. For example, if the line just barely touches the corner of square, that square isn't affected as much, whereas if a line goes right through the middle of another square, it is affected fully. This is the same idea used to draw anti-aliased fonts, where if the line doesn't go right through the middle of the pixel, the pixel is still lit but not as brightly as normal.

So, using the example plots above, we have line F1 and line M1, where line F1 is the line that is drawn to go from the lurker to the firebat, and line M1 is the line going from the lurker to the marine. All the plots intersected by line F1 go right through the middle, meaning that each of the plots will be affected fully. However, the plots intersected by M1 are not right through the middle, and so each of those plots will only be hit at a percentage of the full effect.

This "full" effect could be damage, or it could be units affected. For example, a plot that has a line pass through at only 50% what would be considered a "direct" hit might do 50% of the normal 20 damage to all units, or it might only damage 50% of the units in the plot.

---

That's just the one idea I had anyway. There might be a better way to do this that's less confusing. The idea I would like to see anyway is that you can use the Lurker attack only by selecting one plot, and the math does the rest, so that a player doesn't have to select multiple plots to make an attack, nor do we restrict what plots that a player can select to attack just because a plot isn't in a straight line.

 

[Killamike718]

Wow thats complex, I got a couple ideas in my head, but yours is better, Way better!! We will let time tell.

 

[Gerikes]

Wow thats complex, I got a couple ideas in my head, but yours is better, Way better!! We will let time tell.

Well, throw them out. They may be WAY easier to program

 

[Killamike718]

well I was thinking, if the attack goes right through a tile (Diagonally) then thats a direct hit. Soo the farther away, the less damage right? Well lets say that we see how much the attack goes through the tile and the farther it is from the diagnal line, the less it effects on the tile. I mean, lets say you have 3 marines on one intersected tile, That tilewill see the percentage that its farther from the diagnal line and if its less than 33% it will only attack one marine. But if its higher, it will still attack the one marine but with more damage. Now when it gets to 66 percent it will attack 2 marines, and so on. Now lets say there are 4 marines, Again lets say it hits the tile at 25 percent, it only attacks one of the four marines soo when it gets to 50%, it attacks 2 marines.
Soo depending on how many units is on the tile (kinda adding space), The percentage will change. Heres a diagram:

***********
        / *
      /   *
    /     *
  /       *
***********

That is the tile and that is the diagnal line, It could even be a horizantal or vertical line, but it ha to cut the tile into two parts. and fron the center to the edge is 100% soo the tile is 200% altogether. Do you understand my jibberjabber???? Sorry i might be explaining it wrong.so half the tile (diagnal line) is 100 percent to the corner.

 

[Gerikes]

well I was thinking, if the attack goes right through a tile (Diagonally) then thats a direct hit. Soo the farther away, the less damage right?

I might have confused you with my ill-worded line-idea. The plot is considered farther away depending on it's distance from the imaginary line we're drawing, not the distance from the plot we're attacking from. But judging by the rest of the post I think we're thinking the same thing...

Well lets say that we see how much the attack goes through the tile and the farther it is from the diagnal line, the less it effects on the tile. I mean, lets say you have 3 marines on one intersected tile, That tilewill see the percentage that its farther from the diagnal line and if its less than 33% it will only attack one marine. But if its higher, it will still attack the one marine but with more damage. Now when it gets to 66 percent it will attack 2 marines, and so on. Now lets say there are 4 marines, Again lets say it hits the tile at 25 percent, it only attacks one of the four marines soo when it gets to 50%, it attacks 2 marines.
Soo depending on how many units is on the tile (kinda adding space), The percentage will change. Heres a diagram:

***********
        / *
      /   *
    /     *
  /       *
***********

That is the tile and that is the diagnal line, It could even be a horizantal or vertical line, but it ha to cut the tile into two parts. and fron the center to the edge is 100% soo the tile is 200% altogether. Do you understand my jibberjabber???? Sorry i might be explaining it wrong.so half the tile (diagnal line) is 100 percent to the corner.

I got you all up until the diagram, but I think we're thinking the same thing.

I've just finished writing the code that starts to determine what plots have what values between 0 - 100. I've used the alpha values to show how the plots differ. A very bright red is closer to 100 (perfect), where a duller, more transparent red is closer to 0. You can see that the starting plots and ending plots are always both bright red.

Here is a directly-diagonal attack. Notice that because it is a straight diagonal attack all the plots inside recieve perfect damage:

Here is a slight-off diagonal attack. The middle plots have the damage spaced out.:

Here is directly inbetween a diagonal and horzontal attack. There are some spaced out plots, but also one plot directly in the middle that is perfect.

One last one, for the sheer fun of it:

Also note that typically the plots after the final plot would be highlighted to, it's just that I haven't coded that in yet. Even if you select the plot directly next to you you'll get the full attack.

The beauty of this is that the lurker attack animation can be easily constructed so long as we make an effect for it, because I can just plant the effects to go off directly on the line I've calculated.

But what you're saying about affecting units is interesting, where it combines the two other ideas. I was thinking about doing what you were saying with at 50% you only affect half of the units, but there is no different damages, it's always the base damage. However, I like your idea too. Right now, the code just draws the plots, I haven't done anything about what happens when the attack actually happens, but because I have the values for each plot we can easily use the numbers to figure out what we want.

Note: Those values I put in with paint

Edit: Reason number 315 why I love working on Civcraft.

 

[Killamike718]

WOW that looks soo AWSOME!!! I really like what you did. I just read over you post and we were thinking about the same thing.

 

[Gerikes]

Ok, I released what I've done w/ Burrowing and Lurker attacks. Sooner or later those explosions will have to be replaced by an effect that looks like the lurker's spine.

I'm thinking for battle animations, if at the very worst unit animations is gonna' be too big a chore, we can maybe figure out the effects and how they work. Some, like the seige tank explosion, can be done easily since the amunition doesn't show (just the explosion effect on the plot). Same with the marine rifle rounds (we can probably just use directly one of the "gunfire" effects from the original game). Stuff like the firebat or dragoon weapons will be a bit more tough, though perhaps we can take a look at some of the ranged animations that come with the game for clues.