What was dropped?

[Valkrionn]

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.

Two things:

1. It's entirely possible to block achievement gain after you've been in worldbuilder.
2. It's also possible to design a game option which would ignore achievement requirements for 'basic' things, while blocking the 'advanced' unlocks and any chance at earning achievements in that game.

 

[Neomega]

To me it would have been enough for dungeons/barrows/goblin forts to be the only "multiple map levels", using terrain that could not be improved, and having access to the map ended once the dungeon had been cleared... and possibly even a limit of one unit at a time exploring the dungeon map, so tactic like hiding an army in the dungeon would not have to be considered/coded.

I mean, yah, I would have loved to have an entire realm of the underhome, with drow, dwarves, and gnomes and abyssal demons, but I know that would have been an AI coding nightmare. The Test of time model was a horrid micromanaging nightmare. Every unit you had that could go through multiple levels, you had to seek each level every time. If air units were above you, you couldn't see them unless you went into the air map... blah, it was so terrible. I though tit would be cool until I tried my first game, and then I was like... screw this.

Still the hell mechanic is all and all a pretty neat consolation prize, and I always love to have Hyborem join the game because of it.

 

[Skyre Noktis]

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).

Doesn't work. Units disappear but the terrain stays the same. Doing it this way would screw up the mini-map, anyway.

 

[deanej]

What was the Tempus Mor scenario intended to be like? Or was it not yet designed when it was scrapped?

 

[cyther]

I think it would have been like the wages of sin. The tempus mor is the location of that scenario.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

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.

I applaude you. now if only Nintendo could understand this...

 

[Sephi]

Doesn't work. Units disappear but the terrain stays the same. Doing it this way would screw up the mini-map, anyway.

I forgot, you also need to modify CvPlot::isRevealed. mini-map would look odd indeed. One half black depending on which layer you currently are.

If you create a copy of the map somewhere else and swap the information everytime, is there a way you don't end up having to modify all loops over getNumPlots() from CvMap and making sure it also loops over the copy?

 

[orgonebox]

I really like the wilderness idea, and understand the difficulty in implementing the dual map deal. But there's another way to make Beastmasters (and dragonslayers) useful beyond being just another high-strength unit - make AI city maintenance equal to the players no matter what the level, and start introducing bigger and badder beasties later in the game. A Gurid and a Margalard just aren't enough. We could have lesser drakes, dragons, saber-toothed cats, etc., all for the Beastmaster to subdue. I hate ending up with tons of tigers and wolves just because the AI threw a stack of them at my Beastmaster.

 

[Valkrionn]

Try either RifE or Wild Mana.

Both introduce more animals, RifE goes a bit farther I think.

 

[Maniac]

The Planetfall take on wilderness areas:

1) By default all civs start evenly spread out, covering the entire world. This means that wherever you go, you will meet other civs. Doesn't give much of a wilderness feel. As a solution in Planetfall, factions start close to each other, covering only one third of the map or so. This means it will last much longer before any faction will start colonizing the other end of the map, and the wilderness there remains longer.

2) Two rule changes: land units can blockade too, and settlers cannot found cities on blockaded terrain. So if you desire it would be possible to have a single boss unit block an entire area from expansion.

 

[Randolph]

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).

That reminds me of one thing that I still think FFH could really benefit from: a big (probably huge sized) epic scenario map. There's a lot of things that can be done with a hand made map/scenario that would be extremely difficult to implement with random map generation. Wilderness areas that are hard to break into could be one of the many neat features that could be included.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

What was the Tempus Mor scenario intended to be like? Or was it not yet designed when it was scrapped?

All we had was high level design that wasn't set in stone. This was the last idea we were tossing around:

It'd be a big change, so it's up to you, but I'd like it. What if rather than be at some arbitrary point in the Age of Rebirth, we set it at the same time as Age of Ice? Say, it occurs fairly distant to Mulcarn, so we could have blizzards be few or not in this map, but otherwise fairly cold terrain. It could be set immediately after the arrival of the Bannor, and be about their conflict with the Orcs. The Sheaim can be a small tribe that founds the veil by meeting a demon that follows the Bannor from hell. The Kurios can be several small tribes banded together to survive the orcs attacks. Orthus could be the Orcs leader, jonas & Capria heroes.
At a given time, we could even have the Ice age end (vitalize every space).
This approach would give our two scenarios a unified theme (what came before FfH), and the back story for the scenario is already set, more or less, but an exciting one to tell in game!

 

[thomas.berubeg]

that would have been fun, I think.

 

[drekmonger]

This is just daydreaming:

I think best way of doing two worlds with the existing engine would have been to separate them by ocean and push the tech for crossing the ocean into the late, late game. The AI does (sort of) understand the idea of continents.

So Hell would be a physical place on the world, which sounds about right from a fantasy perspective. The big disadvantage is that it would require a custom map script -- wouldn't be able to use the normal scrips for FFH. Also, one would have to give up on the idea of an Erebrus with multiple normal continents on smaller maps.

There'd be other challenges -- figuring out how the normal continent interacts with the Hell continent prior to ocean-faring ships, forcing the correct kind of barbarian to pop on the correct landmass.

 

[xalien]

Try either RifE or Wild Mana.

Both introduce more animals, RifE goes a bit farther I think.

Too far I'd say. Too hostile wilderness tends to shutdown pretty much all interactions between civs except for occasional tech trade.

 

[Skyre Noktis]

I forgot, you also need to modify CvPlot::isRevealed.

I tried that. Sadly, it doesn't work as intended, either. Exploration becomes all glitchy. If you can get it to work, let me know.

If you create a copy of the map somewhere else and swap the information everytime, is there a way you don't end up having to modify all loops over getNumPlots() from CvMap and making sure it also loops over the copy?

I think we can forget about swapping maps out, unfortunately. When Kael said it was slow, he wasn't kidding. Took about a minute on my PC.

 

[Maniac]

Does anyone know if it's only terrain graphic swapping which takes a lot of time, or any type of graphic? For instance what if a lot of improvement graphics changed during the interturn? Also is it only the graphics swapping displayed on the screen that causes a slowdown, or any graphic anywhere on the map?

 

[Sephi]

I tried that. Sadly, it doesn't work as intended, either. Exploration becomes all glitchy. If you can get it to work, let me know.

switching to Hyborem basically changes the map, as does the debug mode, so I hoped there would be a way to hack it in. Another problem would be automated human units as some AI checks rely on isVisible.

 

[deanej]

Does anyone know if it's only terrain graphic swapping which takes a lot of time, or any type of graphic? For instance what if a lot of improvement graphics changed during the interturn? Also is it only the graphics swapping displayed on the screen that causes a slowdown, or any graphic anywhere on the map?

Any graphic on the map. The game renders every single tile weather you can see it or not. Terrain takes the bulk of the time due to the fact that civ isn't smart enough to realize if it's changing one tile or many. When a terrain (and some features too) changes, the game doesn't just redraw the tile it's on - it redraws all the surrounding tiles too.

 

[Valkrionn]

Jean Elcard did some work on this for FF; Once a certain threshold of tiles needing to be updated has been reached, the game instead redraws the entire map. Actually faster.