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- - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-25 08:09
Let's start with something we haven't discussed so far:

Problem: The Start position in dynamic maps sometimes was awful in CR (sometimes no base was generated at all). As well: If the player starts with more than one building, CR placed them adjacent to the base which normally wasn't wished for. Especially elevators or towers proved to be horrible for starting buildings.

Solutions: The players place their start buildings with mouse klicks in a player or team specific area. If we use Peters and Zappers flag system, it will be wise to build them close to each other for protection. Power connection will be done automatically at the start (Sawmill will connect to Windmill e.g.).
A really big advantage of this system is that newbies which are unfamiliar to script can build big scenario bases into their scenarios with the start menu.

Starting area: The player specific areas also exist in ClonkRage - the left players always starts in the left 1/PlayerCount of the map. They seperate the players from each other. In Open clonk, the teams should get seperated areas. In those areas the fog of war should be temperally lifted, the players might now choose a valuable starting position (with a forest or some mine nearby). A player shouldn't be able to start too close to an enemy.

But with the lifting of that fog of war, several adjustments will be necassary:
Problem a): A player might camp inside the startmenu, where he is invincible. Or he might wait to catch a glimpse of the enemies at his boarders and build the towers into that direction. The FoW therefore should only uncover a very limited part of the map, without showing too much underground structure as well, so that explorations still have to be done. We might estabilish a counter to prevent camping inside the start selection screen, what ya think?

Problem b): Player joins during a fierce battle: Now where does the player place his base? If he has allies then he can join at their places. But if he doesn't the map simply might be full already - no space might be left for the new player (since his base can't be placed near enemies). he might ally with someone to join - it's not like it's impossible.

This method should be selectable in the scenario.txt. Developers might prefer building the bases per script and joining the players into them, just like CoFuT for example.
Parent - - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-25 08:23
I actually wrote a big german building concept, which is still not finished. But gives me much trouble translating and I also sort of lost track of all those words O_o.

A summary:

Part 1:
1. Starting position and placement: With mouseklicks and a starting area
2. Basic properties of buildings: Room for materials and clonks, resistance against fire and disasters
3. About materials in buildings: Substitute Materials for buildings - build a hut out of stone, wood, loam or whatever without 100 different building types.
4. The building menu: The old one sucked - I propose a new one.

Part 2:
5. Tools: Axe, Hammer, Shovel, flints: In theory it should be possible to settle without buildings, but very slow.
6. The Base and it's functions: Which we discussed already: Shelter, trading, healing, claim ownership, etc. etc.
7. Trading, Money, Gold: Aid settlement, value gold, no transport beaming.
8. Transportsystems: pretty much like clonkonaut, see my rail system posting.

Part 3:
9. About ressources, mining and energy: Improving materials - all that transport building, and the mine is worn out in 5 minutes? No way!
11. Attacking and defending buildings: Buildings and their defence, explosions - rockets, fire concept from Zapper, ownership concept from Zapper and Peter.
12. Strategy: Rush, Air bases, underground bases, bases against disasters, big castles, mines... It's all there!

------------------------------------------------------

So Point 1 for starters. I hope motivation will let me write all of it down.
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-04-25 10:50 Edited 2011-04-25 10:52
Here's my "from afar" view:

> 2. Basic properties of buildings: Room for materials and clonks, resistance against fire and disasters


Yes, that's what structural buildings are for. Not sure what your reference point is, though - we are talking more or less castles.

> 3. About materials in buildings: Substitute Materials for buildings - build a hut out of stone, wood, loam or whatever without 100 different building types.


Makes sense for structural buildings (= walls). I still think it would be great to bring the camps and castles from CR under the same hood. We could add loam stuff while we're at it as well (less strength, but also less likely to catch fire?).

Most features would probably either have their own material - drawbridges should e.g. always be made of wood. Others might take over the material from the wall, like side walls.

For production buildings, this seems unnecessary?

> 4. The building menu: The old one sucked - I propose a new one.


As do I. Details?

> 5. Tools: Axe, Hammer, Shovel, flints: In theory it should be possible to settle without buildings, but very slow.


Not sure about this. The basic production buildings should be small and cheap enough to just build them in the field, so it might be in the same spirit.

> 6. The Base and it's functions: Which we discussed already: Shelter, trading, healing, claim ownership, etc. etc.
> 7. Trading, Money, Gold: Aid settlement, value gold, no transport beaming.


Anything new here? :)

My position is still mostly defined by buying-at-buildings and sell-just-gold (and-other-valuable-stuff).

> 8. Transportsystems: pretty much like clonkonaut, see my rail system posting.


I still think this is one of the areas where it's actually a bad idea to streamline. Transportation was interesting in CR no matter what scale you did it on (at least once you couldn't do it by base teleport), why bulldoze all over it? :(

> 9. About ressources, mining and energy: Improving materials - all that transport building, and the mine is worn out in 5 minutes? No way!


Details?

> 11. Attacking and defending buildings: Buildings and their defence, explosions - rockets, fire concept from Zapper, ownership concept from Zapper and Peter.
> 12. Strategy: Rush, Air bases, underground bases, bases against disasters, big castles, mines... It's all there!


Let's hope so. I think we have dropped 10 somewhere on the way, though?
Parent - - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-25 20:37 Edited 2011-04-25 20:40
Well - I'm a little bit drunk. So if you wouldn't mind: German ;)

>For production buildings, this seems unnecessary?


Jep, your thoughts match mine exactly :).

"
Bausubstitution:
Im Grunde der Aufgriff, einer Idee eines Neulings im OC Forum, merci hierfür :)

Nun gehts ans Detail:
Wir sparen Baupläne, in dem wir eine Hütte in mehreren Varianten errichten lassen, oder auch einen Turm: Man wählt einfach Bauplanturm, und bekommt mehrere Materialsätze zur Verfügung gestellt: Bringt man nur Holz auf die Baustelle, wird das ganze Ding ein Holzturm, kann man sich Steine leisten ein widerstandsfähigerer Holzturm! Hütte: Bringt man Lehm zur Hütte, so erhält man eine Lehmhütte, alternativ dazu Holzhütte, Steinhütte - 4 Baupläne in einem zusammengefuchst, das ist höchstes Maß an Komfort.
Nun muss nurnoch kurz einem Neuling beigebracht werden, dass viele Baupläne mehrere Materialkombinationen zulassen - wie man das dann genau anzeigen könnte erklär ich im Punkt Baumenü.

So, folgende Eigenschaften für Baumaterialien:
Holz: brennt natürlich sehr leicht.
Lehm: Nicht Wasserfest, sprich nimmt direkt schaden durch Wasser vor der Haustür oder ähnliches dafür Feuerfest.
Stein: Feuerfest, nicht explosionsfest.
Metall: Einigermaßen Stabil gegen Explosionen, dafür Teuer.
Kristall (für magischen Krams): Zieht Blitze an, nicht explosionsfest."

>building menu


Simple and clean:

"Das Baumenü:
Ums kurz zu machen: Das alte Baumenü war katastrophal schlecht. Die Beschreibung war nicht einsehbar, Fatal bei z.B. Zugbrücke Links, wenn man stattdessen eine rechte wollte... :x, die Gebäude waren selten an der gleichen Stelle bei unterschiedlichen Szenarien... und bei vielen Gebäuden hatte man 0 Überblick mehr.

Ich bin stark für ein Fantasy-Kombomenü ähnliches Menü, geordnet nach Kategorien! z.B. hoch drücken => Produktionsgebäude. Satt den bisher üblichen Manakosten werden die Baumaterialien direkt am Icon angezeigt... Mensch hierfür müsst ihr nichtmal etwas neues scripten, traumhaft.

Die Beschreibung so wie direkte Baumaterialalternativen werden direkt in einem großzügig breiten Fenster, zentriert unter dem Kombomenü - wie ein Chatfenster dargestellt! Bingo, la banga. So siehts aus."

>Tools


"Die Werkzeuge und der Weg zu den Grundrohstoffen:
Konzeptmäßig verfolge ich den gewünschten Ansatz, dass es theoretisch möglich ist mit den Werkzeugen alleine ein Schloss zu erschaffen, allerdings birgt jedes Werkzeug eigene Risiken, und manche sind schlichtweg zu langsam - sodass sich großflächig auf jedenfall die Produktion lohnt.

Schaufel: Mit ihr kann gegraben werden, sie dient zur Erkundung der Map und zur Erschließung von Ressourcen. Das ausgraben einzelner Steinklumpen z.B. ist jedoch aufgrund des immer weiter werdenden laufweges sehr mühevoll. Mit zusätzlichen Gefahren in der Map - das kann das vorgeschlagene Grundwasser, die diskutierten Erdrutsche oder auch ein Monster sein - auch der Gegner, oder einfach eine Schlucht die man nichtmehr hochkommt machen die Schaufel als einzigstes Grab und Erkundungsinstrument langfristig zweitrangig.

Axt: Mit ihr kann Holz gewonnen werden, aber lediglich Büsche und Gestrüpp - das sehr ertragsarm ist kommt anfangs dafür in Frage, Bäume lächeln nur müde über die Axt.

Hammer: Dient zum bauen, außerdem könnten mit ihm Startmaterialien gewonnen werden. Ich denke da an Steinblöcke die wie im Golempack oder in flgrs "Gelände" in der Map herumstehen und aus denen mit etwas Geduld eventuell Steinbrocken herausgesprengt werden können.

Flints: Einzelne Flints und Startsprengstoff (z.B. Dynamit), dienen anfangs zur Gewinnung von Stein und Erz und sind überlebenswichtig. Wie kommt man ohne Chemielabor an neue Flints? Da die Erdplatzierung mehr oder weniger Zufall ist, würde ich die festen Flintbrocken aus dem eben zitierten Golempack hinzuziehen, jedoch sollten die Steinblöcke natürlich nicht aus reinem Flint bestehen. Das herauslösen der festen Flints wäre riskant oder könnte eine Flüssigkeit oder irgendetwas anderes cooles benötigen womit es erst möglich wird.

Weitere Erkundungswerkzeuge: Der Kletterhaken, Lehmklumpen etc: Über sie wird weiterhin Map erkundet. Sie sind auch nicht von großer Bedeutung bei Spielstart und können später zum Einsatz kommen.

Als Basisrohstoff fehlt nun nurnoch Metall, das ist durchaus etwas tükischer - denn in OC brauchen wir es eventuell auch für Werkzeuge. Wer sein Startmetall also verschwendet, könnte in der Tat alt aussehen. Für Metall muss wohl oder übel ein Produktionsgebäude her. Vllt. geben wir dem Clonk daher lieber einen weiten Satz Werkzeuge zu Spielstart, aus einem Stein-Holz Ofen sollte dann problemlos Metall gewonnen werden können. Erz ist ebenfalls etwas tükisch, dafür muss man dann eben ein wenig buddeln und sprengen :)"

-----------------------------------------------------

>Base/trading
>Anything new here? :)


I settled for a sort of compromiss. The text may appear confusing. I propose no beaming, and local sales, scenario local request-based (Nachfragebedingt) items for a scenario - a desert scenario buys oil and sells wood. I also sort of tried to make it more human by introducing script based traders. Trade stations/harbours at: The sea (ship), sky (balloon), side of the map (rail/station), or with the Elevator might introduce new trader characters to your settlement which might sell other goods, and demond other products which they would buy from the player. Buying certain items would only be possible at certain trade station - if you sell an item at the far left station, it's in the hand of a trader in that region. This trader might sell it to another trader at the other end of the map and you can rebuy it (beam) - but that only will be possible if the scenario features this (one side oil buyer, one side seller) or with much much time, and the trader not getting rid of his items.
I'll post more detailed in one of this days.


>I still think this is one of the areas where it's actually a bad idea to streamline. Transportation was interesting in CR no matter what scale you did it on (at least once you couldn't do it by base teleport), why bulldoze all over it? :(


Building transport routes should be a really big project! And it will take us to other map sections, where we might do stuff which we currently can't. We will not ruin the fun of those transport missions in CR. Actually this is a major focus of the concept: Making Clonks more mobile, and making them use the map instead of just raping over it. A running industry is nothing bad - but building it should take a lot time. Even in CR I usually play like this kind: I dig routes which the ki can master and usually settle with 3 clonks. BUt digging those routes takes forever. Securing and building lorry and rope ways is a major task - nothing which will make settlement boring.

As well, that's the reason I don't like your building beaming and buying items at buildings. Because it ruins transport. You're system as I remember it works as well (especially in combat), but favours the opposit direction: less transport.

Look at my settlements in CR: I usually build kind of roads: You can climb from one building to another, and the buildings control a big map zone: http://www.cc.striver.net/shots.php?action=sh&id=2462 - left side (mine): You could climb from the wizard tower up to the base without an elevator. Right base: if the elevator is broken you are basically fucked (in the early game without the castles). Another example: You can climb this base without an elevator as well: http://www.cc.striver.net/shots.php?action=sh&id=2234 - I usually already do populate important mapways with this - because I don't want to loose them to earthquakes, the enemies or a moving water lake. I prefer roads, and transport systems - without them I'd just would play Clonk like I play Goldmine: build a base under each mine and mine it up. A chemical plant should get the focus of beeing a chemical plant. And it shouldn't be wasted just because the sulphur nearby is used up. This way settling is just a waste, and it's boring building always the same buildings at the same ressource points. Transportways however provide a new challenge to it all - and I love it.
Parent - - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2011-04-25 20:45

> So if you wouldn't mind: German


In respect for our international readers: We should mind. Such matters may wait then until you're sober again.
Reply
Parent - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-25 22:23
Even sober, my english rusts as hell and it may take me a great while to translate all of it correctly. I usually do, but since Peter is concepting as well he might be interested in some of the concept now, and not in 3 weeks. I usually discuss a lot in german with Zapper as well, and a lot of my toughts on papers are in german, only about a third is in english.

With music it's the same by the way - my notation papers are sometimes english and german on the same page. That's actually pretty weird and may resemble to the books I read, some of the theory is german - some english.

[Edit]
I see your point of course, but today translating big passages of text won't do for me :)
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-04-26 11:30 Edited 2011-04-26 11:33
(I'll just paraphrase in English as I go along)

> Bring wood to the hut...


First off, I'm not really planning on having huts :)

As noted above, my plan is to replace all the "shelter" stuff by castle-type walls. That's pretty convenient for your concept, as it means that we only have one building with switchable material - but it's the most important one. I like it.

A few notes on the mechanics: The way I would do it is have a wall construct from one wood and one fortification material (wood, stone, take your pick). One nice feature we could add on top would be to change the type of fortification afterwards. We could probably throw that in with repairing: You need to bring a fortification material in order to repair your wall, and if it doesn't match the material of the wall, it changes over after full repair.

> Metal: Stable against explosions, but expensive
> Crystal: Catches lightening, not safe against explosion


I like it - but crystal seems a bit weak. It would be pretty hard to build (and repair), and aren't that only disadvantages you list?

> Old building menu was bad: Hard to distinguish for example the drawbridge variants "left" and "right"


Note that my plan is currently to not have drawbridges as real buildings, but rather as "features" that you attach to walls. That might clear up this problem as well.

> Fantasy-style building menu, with categories.


Well, I wouldn't make it go all around the Clonk. That would seem excessive. I'm with you on having categories, though - that's also in my concept.

> Always prominently show description of building


Not quite sure. We are talking about a lot of space here. That could get annoying quickly. I would really prefer it if we managed to give each item a name that is descriptive enough that you don't have to clutter the interface up with even more words.

> Tools and base resources


Not much thought put into that one yet, good idea.

> Axe: Chop bushes, but not trees


This seems like limiting its usefulness too much. I would let it continue chopping trees - and make it a good entry-level weapon on top of that. Think base defense against monsters.

> Hammer: For building and making stone blocks


Hm, building (and repairing!) is already quite a complicated business. Also not sure about stone blocks: Wouldn't it be easier to have mining stone give stone blocks directly?

> Flints: Have the flint rocks from the golem pack


Hm, maybe we could even have some sort of flint material? It could be a fun element to have. We'd have to decide how to mine it, though. Maybe allow the shovel to make (slow) progress, yielding flints?

> Metal: ... more problematic ...


I would not call metal a base resource. We could make it second-tire, in the sense that none of the basic buildings require it.

> If you waste your start material, you have a problem


I won't get tired pointing out that buying buildings makes all this much, much easier to manage :)

That way you always have the additional option of finding something to sell, bringing it to your flag, and then you can have your foundry.
Parent - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-27 08:24

>A few notes on the mechanics: The way I would do it is have a wall construct from one wood and one fortification material (wood, stone, take your pick). One nice feature we could add on top would be to change the type of fortification afterwards. We could probably throw that in with repairing: You need to bring a fortification material in order to repair your wall, and if it doesn't match the material of the wall, it changes over after full repair.


Sort of like this. Also the external features from your concept like drawbridges , nice thoughts.

>The Hammer


The thing is, that I searched for an alternitive for flints for the scenario start. A pick would be my second guess. Without another tool, it's still possible - but more flints will be needed at the begining.
Parent - - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-27 09:13 Edited 2011-04-27 09:16

>building menu
>Not quite sure. We are talking about a lot of space here. That could get annoying quickly. I would really prefer it if we managed to give each item a name that is descriptive enough that you don't have to clutter the interface up with even more words.


Ok, decent naming and icon-showing for material costs and alternatives but: No description? Are you serious? Perhaps optional description would be the thing we want: Hold the mouse on the icon for several seconds, and the description pops up. As well a question or an help icon could be attached to each building symbol. Klicking on that will open the text.

Ah one question about the drawbridges: How do you plan on building those features? In a seperated menu?
I planned on building them like this:
Open combo menu -> select castle buildings -> defence -> There's the tower -> drawbridge/direction or nothing? - choose one combo menu entry.

>Hm, maybe we could even have some sort of flint material? It could be a fun element to have. We'd have to decide how to mine it, though. Maybe allow the shovel to make (slow) progress, yielding flints?


Flint as a material is actually quite fun but very dangerous currently ;) - yes I speak of mining flints, yielding flints should be the natural approach to it.
Ah I also thought about loam: One possibility is to make wet earth = loam. The other one is to make loam be a product from water + earth in the foundry.
Parent - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-04-27 09:28

> No description? Are you serious?


Quite so. Players want to discover what stuff does themselves. You buy one, and play with it until you figure out how it works. Only if that doesn't work (= first frustration) you go look for a description. Don't tell me you ever read the CR object descriptions. And if you did: Well, let me tell you that the majority of players is way more impatient than you are ;)

> Ah one question about the drawbridges: How do you plan on building those features? In a seperated menu?


You don't really need a separate menu, as you can't build anything at that spot anyway. So you can switch everything out for "maintenance" options - repair, change left wall, change right wall, change floor.
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-04-26 12:23

> scenario local request-based (Nachfragebedingt) items for a scenario


Not sure. When we define the production trees, it would be a lot easier if we already knew which items we should be able to sell in the end. This way we might get a different infinite-money-loop in each scenario. Gold is always valuable, (refined?) oil is always valuable.

> I also sort of tried to make it more human by introducing script based traders.


Uhm, I am sort-of against making anything human. I always feel like it raises unhelpful expectations with the player :)

In my mind, if it has two legs, stands upright and talks, it should be player-controlled.

> As well, that's the reason I don't like your building beaming and buying items at buildings. Because it ruins transport. You're system as I remember it works as well (especially in combat), but favours the opposit direction: less transport.


Building beaming? Not sure what you mean there.

And phew, "ruining"? Let's step back here. Well yes, having a system without transport is one part of the plan. Let's face it - not every scenario wants players to have to bother about buildings cables. If we don't build it in, every such scenario will have their own hack to allow players to get around it. Just look at Floor Fight: So many "manaless" variants, even though it doesn't really make sense. We can't just ignore this because we might like high-minded long-winding settlement scenarios ourselves.

So yes, having money is meant to be OC's "easy" mode. Where you can just slap your base wherever you want it. Where you don't even have to care about base resources. Where you can make another base all across the landscape without having to worry about transport. Which is its own brand of fun.

But this isn't ruining anything. The basic idea is that the if you want the player to go to the full length, you just have to limit his money. Now you have to be careful about placement. Now you have to see trees as more than decoration. Now you have to worry about how you could get a lorry full of useful stuff to your second base.

I just get the feeling that people keep misunderstanding that part of my concept. What you describe is exactly where I want to get to - in the "hard" "no-money" mode.

> Region-based trading


Well, if you and Zapper insist. I do like trading games in principle, but it feels rather out-of-place to me in Clonk. Especially following the train of thought from above: Money should be easy. The goal of a big settlement should be to stop using money at all. This seems like the opposite direction.
Parent - - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-26 14:06
Buying buildings vs transport:

With the "ressource money" magically healing buildings, constructing them from out of space and with buying ressources from buildings... the whole warfare will be fought on money and on nothing else.

Currently players attack a tower because they want access to a base part, or because it's in their way. With your system I personally would only attack valuable enemy buildings - because the tower will rise anew if it's destroyed. Attacking it is just a waste of time if I can find something better on which my enemy shall waste his money on. This system jsut kills strategy and transport... I'm just completely against it.

Imagine the thing with transport. If my team wants a fast tower, they have to risk a lot to gather the ressources together really fast. Attacking their tower is actually worth a lot, because it drains money, and time from my enemies - and during construction I can attack them really hard, gaining an advantage other than money! It's so much more realistic than the money thing.

That's why all of these ideas: Transport, placing buildings and constructions are necessary in my opinion. Especially in melees.

Ok, ala out. Little fast mana kid in. Some players, like you said might hate building things and would want to get a fast castle in no time. For this approach my place building concept for the start position is just the right thing. Each player can construct his castle with klicks at the start, but once the game is started he really will have to defend his buildings well. Money won't save his lifes if he plays crappy, and it should not do.
Buying buildings during the game is a really really strong feature, and if the kido has that much money to waste it should take just 5 clonks - collect all the building materials and build that tower really really fast. There is nothing wrong with this.

The trade conflict:

Basic aims:
a) One aim is to provide supply which the scenario can't provide - or supply for which the player simply has no time, especially weapons in Melees.
b) On second thought this was faaar to powerful, and was limiting a lot of settlement strategies in CR, that's why we all proposed limiting the ability to sell, some of us only wanted gold to be saleable because of that.
c) Base beaming ruined transport in CR, and because we want to focus on transport this method has to go.

Zappers approach was a global market which naturally limits the prices of submarines for example if a great deal of them got sold already. And beaming with this was still possible, at the cost of money. The contra of this, is that it will mostlikely create a whole new conflict area, example: Buying metal, so that your enemy can't buy it! Victory by buying, yeah!! Zappers approach weakend b and c, but maybe not enough.

My approach is to "local" market. Not each player has it's own market, noo! Each map section! This way tranport is enforced as well: take the materials to a station afar and you might get better prices there.

To simplify those sections I would introduce trading characters with their own buying profile (needs oil, gold, sells: wood - desert trader).
On Top of that: Those trader characters interact with each othere (dividing the materials they have, and those they can't sell to the players in their areas, the system can work really simple - overstuffed offers will get divided on the maps traders for example). This will enable a sort of global market which arranges itself after prieces, offers and requests, but with a delay - so that beaming stuff won't be possible at all.

One example:
Cofut Team 1 vs Cofut Team 2:
Team 1 sells all their fire arrows, which will lower the price for fire arrow in map section 1 (left half) because the offer got increased. Fire arrows are quite expensive on the right players trade menu, since they are very rare. After some time the trader of the right map buys items from the left maps trader to increase his offers and the fire arrows will now get divided, each side will hold similar amounts and prices.

This concept finally solves the base beam - while still providing a global market!, and it's ideas will give us new intresting things to build for scenarios and missions :).
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-04-26 14:28

>once the game is started he really will have to defend his buildings well. Money won't save his lifes if he plays crappy, and it should not do.


This scenario could just use Peter's approach and only give the player 100 gold for the start and no gold ore in the landscape. :)

I think there is one thing to emphasize about Peter's concept:
Yes, you can do nearly everything only with gold. That does not mean, however, that you HAVE a lot of gold.
Easy scenarios (Goldmine-like) could have a lot of gold in the landscape so that a new player can easily save things he messed up with money.
Every other scenario for experienced players will most likely NOT have enough gold in the landscape that you can fix every mistake with gold. And since you can only sell gold, you can not use for example wood to "buy" everything like in CR.

The traders:
The idea behind the traders was to enable the player to get certain stuff which he needs in certain scenarios.
For example: You could have a landscape without any wood (desert). And of course you do not want to compensate that with more money for the player so that he can buy wood (because he could also buy metal).
The solution would be a trader that either sells discount wood and buys oil - or, and that is the important point:
He could TRADE things! Without any money involved! "One oil barrel for two pieces of wood? ROBBERY! I call that - I take four :(("

And the trader does not have to be a constructable building (thinking about your region based trading):
The trader could just sit at a location in the landscape and wait for you to bring your stuff to him! Either scenario defined positions (your CoFuT example) or random ones (a trader deep down in a cave is not weird! it's clonk-ish!)
Parent - - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-26 16:11

>This scenario could just use Peter's approach and only give the player 100 gold for the start and no gold ore in the landscape. :)


I don't know why Peter likes this money approach so much. This system would need hard scenario based balancing in every round - and to much hassle for the scenario designers was one of his major contra points for several ideas I proposed over time.

You can build decent games with just gold as a ressource, like Simcity (well gold and electricity, later water and garbage as a negative ressource). But why? Why not focus on transport, even in melees?

Yes, about region based trading: I actually thought we might use this in a few missions: Build a harbour, so that a new trader will arrive (which might sell the crystals you seek for power).
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-04-26 16:37

> This system would need hard scenario based balancing in every round


Actually, the idea is just the opposite: I see just about every point in between the two extremes working just fine. This isn't balancing, this is the scenario designer deciding what kind of game speed he or she wants.

> But why? Why not focus on transport, even in melees?


Uh, because it simply won't work? At least not in general. Transport is very interesting, because it is a hard problem. When you add an enemy to it, a lot of it passes over into the realm of "impossible" and "frustrating". How would you ever make a flint in CoFuT with enemies jumping all around you while you're trying to mine sulphur? Do you think somebody would let you chop down that tree so you can make a bow?

You need long attack distances to make this work, and not every scenario will want to have those. There's a place for interesting transport gameplay, and there's a place for "just give me that damn thing already, the enemy is knocking". Note that my proposal is already more complicated than CR in that it requires you to build (and protect) an additional building.
Parent - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-26 17:50
I speak about transport, you speak about production.
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-04-26 16:42 Edited 2011-04-27 14:41

> Traders


Hm. Could work the Settlers-of-Catan way: Each trader provides you with some kind of resource, in exchange to just about anything. Would work well with my idea of how money should work - but I'm not sure how practical it would turn out to be in actual games :) [edit: fixed stupid typo.]
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-04-26 17:32
Yes, like that

>but I'm not sure how practical it would turn out to be in actual games :)


Me neither, but I think that it actually might work well in your moneyless environment compared to buy&sell traders.

A dynamic enough trader system would then allow scenarios to do whatever they want to do with the traders (CoFuT could have it's weapon trader, some other settlement melee could have a global market and some other settlement scenario could use the traders as Dwarf Fortress-like caravans)
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-04-26 16:19
Hm. Here I was so proud of having explained my philosophy more clearly than ever before. And it still doesn't seem to get the message across :(

> With your system I personally would only attack valuable enemy buildings - because the tower will rise anew if it's destroyed. Attacking it is just a waste of time if I can find something better on which my enemy shall waste his money on. This system jsut kills strategy and transport...


Uh, what? Here's how I would break down the basic "attack a building" mechanics:
* Hard mode: No gold at all
  => Attacker side: Chop wood. Mine stone. Transport to base. Build a chemical plant. Find sulphur. Transport sulphur to base. Transport flints to building. Blow stuff up.
  => Defender side: Chop wood. Mine stone. Transport to base. Build foundry. Chop wood. Mine ore. Mine coal. Make metal. Transport everything to building site. Build/repair.
* Easy mode: Start with moderate amount of gold. Can buy initial infrastructure, but sooner or later have to support yourself.
  => Attacker side: Buy chemical plant at base. Find sulphur. Transport sulphur to base. Transport flints to building. Blow stuff up.
  => Defender side: Buy foundry. Mine ore. Mine coal. Make metal. Transport everything to building site. Fortify/repair.
* Super easy mode: Gold per minute. You can afford anything sooner or later.
  => Attacker side: Buy chemical plant. Buy flints at plant. Transport flints to building. Blow stuff up.
  => Defender side: Buy foundry. Buy tower. Buy metal. Get hammer to building site. Repair.

I see all of these modes working. Does the defender side look to easy to you in "super easy mode"? I'm not sure that this isn't outbalanced by the sheer power of being able to buy dozens of flints. Where necessary I don't have a problem with buildings costing so much gold that attacking with flints is actually cost-effective even in "super easy" mode.

And this might be a cheap shot, but:

> With your system I personally would only attack valuable enemy buildings ... This system jsut kills strategy


Having to select your target carefully is exactly what strategy is about, isn't it?
Parent - - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-26 17:49
Hm.. I certainly did understood that before. But perhaps, my own explaination was weak, here is why we shouldn't do this:

a) Gold can do nearly anything. So the player might build a tower, and one could balance it to the cost of flints. Ok. But he might do something completely different with all that gold - and we simply can't cost-balance every game aspect of clonk against each other. The scenario designer has to do additional balancing work, since much money could mean much much trouble and not intended strategies or lame strategies which no one likes. Just because the money is there.

b) Availability and time for building things up autobalance most of our stuff. I already explained to you once that buying flints at a chemical plant is powerful like hell. Every object beeing available just for money is also tooo powerful. Games like worms only grant 1 or two strong grenades in a game round - weak weapons are available all the time. Even in clonk the teraflint is limited to a few of it's kind, no matter how much money you invest.

c) Production is rather weak, yes. But transport is still powerful and we even use it in CR - it can't get much worse. Believe it or not I'm actually building catapults, crossbows and bows in cofut - arrow packs take to long to make, sadly - but even without. Fill a lorry of arrows and loam and take it from the base to the front -> transport.
The more CR favored way is using a tentpack and buying the equipment there.

A super easy melee might feature a second base at the front if transporting stuff to the tower is such a big hassle. But I don't think that's necessary.
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-04-26 18:37 Edited 2011-04-26 18:40

> a) Gold can do nearly anything.


Yeah, that's the idea. And yes, we have to do a rough balance pass here - but hey, CR had the same "problem". Yet I saw nobody really getting worked up over that the Tera flint should actually be five gold more expensive or whatever. I really doubt adding buildings into the mix changes anything. Like before - if we really have a problem with a strategy, we just double the price of whatever is involved. I think balancing this is easier than it sounds.

Also note that I can't take your "CR had limited supply" argument for full here: Team games of type CoFuT had people switching flags around all the time. There were effectively no limits apart from the amount of gold everybody had.

> Fill a lorry of arrows and loam and take it from the base to the front -> transport.


And which part of that wouldn't work with buying at building? You actually have to walk around more, as you might have to visit multiple buildings in order to get geared up. Which some people might actually not like, but it is putting more transport into the mix.

> The more CR favored way is using a tentpack and buying the equipment there.


Which I want to kill as well. I mean, buying buildings is essentially like a vastly less useful tentpack which you have to pay to use.

I still fail to understand why you aren't all for it...
Parent - - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-26 21:54
Imagine the impact especially buying at production buildings would have on it. Offensive chemical plants - better than a cannon tower! better than a ram, vehicle! Especially this item creating is dangerous, it's like another base beam. Even on the backpack this will have a big influence - "Why should I bother with lots of ammunition? I use it, and rebuy it at the front!" - it changes a lot, it's risky and I don't like it.

Buying buildings at the start of a round seems reasonable to me (even if inferier to other systems, imo). But in the middle of the combat leaves that big no go. A burning castle should burn! And not refresh anew out of the earth. I know this feeling from Clonk rage. I battered a tower of the enemies base, and some defender just extinguishes the whole burning building with a water barrel. He then repairs the damage with one wood and one stone, and the whole tower which took 12 to 14 hits, it's back to full health! This is one of those moments, in which you know that this round will take hours to finish.

On contrast to this: What's so bad with normally building a building? What's so bad with the focus on transport and the base? Your flag system even supports weapon storages on the front line, which could be established during peace!
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-04-27 09:42

> "Why should I bother with lots of ammunition? I use it, and rebuy it at the front!" - it changes a lot, it's risky and I don't like it.


Man, you must have *hated* tents :)

Note a chemical plant will
a) Require quite some time to be built. I would suggest build times to be quite a lot longer than normal, in exchange for not requiring a Clonk to babysit it
b) Only allow you to buy stuff in your own base region. Sou you must bring (and install!) a flag, which is a huge risk, as an enemy might just take it away

> A burning castle should burn!


Yes, fair point. That has absolutely nothing to do with buying, though - it's about how fire and repairing works. My proposal would be to not have instant extinguish - it's not realistic to extinguish a whole building with just a water barrel. Instead this should just make the building extinguish faster. Also repairing should obviously take some time. Tricky to work out the details, though. I'll think about a design.
Parent - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-27 09:59
Ah the flag pole, yeah :)

Well ok, since the buying features are crucial for I-swim-in-money rounds only, we might just build them into the concept and try them out.

I'll try to write a summary on  my 4 hours train travel today.
Parent - - By Newton [us] Date 2011-04-26 20:30
Just dropping in:

>My approach is to "local" market. Not each player has it's own market, noo! Each map section! This way tranport is enforced as well: take the materials to a station afar and you might get better prices there.


Thats is very interesting idea - instead "bases" per player, there are 0-x trading outposts (dunno, some small hut where a blimp drops some wares sometimes) scattered on the map which can be used by all players. The price and offers differ from trader to trader. Of course players can build their base around it and fortify it so that other players dont have access to the market. That was your idea right?
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-04-26 20:50
I think that was not his original idea - but that's what I also would make of it
Parent - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-26 22:04
Actually the idea of traders is from a Clonk Mars concept (where you would have to build harbours, with which traders would visit your base along with the possibility to trade ressources).

The idea would work as well with market buildings like harbours or trails to the map boarders in clonk settlement scenarios. But for melees building such trade routes just simply won't do (and that's why I would handle the system from the normal base). Finally the rest of the idea is from Zappers (or Age of Empires) global market system.

I didn't thought about real trading posts on the map like you, maybe because of the trouble with dynamic landscapes, but yeah if placement would work it's worth a try.
Parent - By Atomclonk [de] Date 2011-04-29 09:29

>Wood: burning easily
>Loam: Not waterproof, so takes direct damage from water but is fireproof
>Stone: fireproof, but not "explosion-proof"
>Metal: Somehow resistant to explosions but expensive
>Chrystal (for magical stuff): attracts lightnings, not resistant to explosions


[Oh, at the end of this post I thought it should be possible to mix materials for a building... but I dunno. If isn't so just... ignore this]

But that would make wood completly unneccessary because it would give no bonus to your structure, so you'd avoid it as soon as you can. But I have an idea!

Wood does only add a bit "HP" to the building where stone or metal give huge amounts, but as you know, wood is nearly everywhere used to form the skeleton (?) of a building. It is elastic. So, a certain amount of wood IS necessary to make (classical, not modern) structures stable. What about if wood gives a percentual advantage to the building? Like, we say like this:

Watchtower consists of:
- 5x Rock: 5x50 HP
- 2x Wood: 2x25% of standard HP (250 + 125)

Too much wood wouldn't increase it's durability too much and by not using wood you would loose a lot of potential. Later, if you can afford it, you could also replace wood with metal, which gives the percentual advantage, is fire resistant, and adds some absolute HP. A building purely out of metal would be... indestructible, huh.
Reply
Parent - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-27 09:01

>2. basic building properties


As I assume your basic building properties are: No entrances and a container for produced materials? And do you propose castles - I mean: Only castle buildings?

My basic building properties would be:
-Entrances with limited room (no entrances where we don't need them, e.g. sawmill), but external warehouses (schuppen) if too much stuff should be stored.
-Entrances provide shelter - but the flag on the outside is the thing which needs protection (see my post in the flag discussion)
-Castle buildings as fortifications, and standard buildings for starters.

Ah you talked about not having a hut-base: Well a hut base would be the building where your startmaterials are, a kind of warehouse, shelter, clonks and clonk supply, enery supply - perhaps trading. Well, base is another discussion

>3. substitude materials


About materials in building: I tried to give every material of which the building contains automatic properties. Building is made of 50% wood -> burns pretty well. Loam? Well water might be dangerous. And metal would be the best, but the rarest. I'd also usually raise the base costs of buildings so that a Hut now is not made out of 3 wood, but out of 8 instead. I want to raise basic settlement materials altogether, along with the mines, see 9.

Ah and no, not for all of them - just for Towers, walls, bases, and those types of them which come in several power levels.

>9. Ressources


The thing with clonk is that it's landscape is worn out pretty fast. A mine might be mined up with 2 or 3 tera flints. That acutally sucks - imagine if the player would have build a big rail to this mine, and it's already closed once the trail is finished. We need some sort of change here. More consistence. If we multiple the scattered material and fortify the ressources we might already have a simple solution. As well as this, the actual material mines in the maps could be much bigger.

In consequence of that the building costs must be raised. I think we might go well, with cheap item production.

>11. Attacking and defending:


Well this is more or less on attacking, defending worked quite well in CR already ;)

In my damage concept there are currently this damage types: Normal, explosion, fire, frost/ice, magic. Only fire and explosions do harm to buildings! Earthquakes are a special case, and could damage buildings per script. Only if we build an inclined building concept we might think about a sort of falling or logistical damage for buildings which lost their angle.

Air bases have got a new weaknes with the introducing of fast but inaccurate rockets. These rockets are basically silvester rockets with various flint effects. You stick them into the earth and set them on fire, they then will flow to the direction their direction (from SetDir) is pointing to. They actually should do explosion damage like flints, no normal damage - so a clonk which might get hit will take no crucial damage from this, just the explosion damage. But for buildings the rockets are deadly, because they can't avoide their hits.

Rockets for production should be rare weapons.

Another thing is the fire: A burning base is a nightmare (if the enemy has scattered oil around and set the whole thing on fire) - we might need additional water power like the CR water cannon or a well.

Da sich Feuer ausbreitet ist eine brennende Basis diesesmal um einiges mehr ernstzunehmen als in CR - außerdem können Brände mit Öl sehr schnell vom Feind angeheizt werden, oder mit Wasser gesichert werden (siehe Schadenskonzept).

If you look at the post with the flag/base discussion again I'm still all for flags per areas instead of flag poles, which are a nice thing to take focus from the actual building to the flag. Not every building needs to be destroyed, like in real life - the more crucial worries are lifing thinks and well flags ;)
Parent - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-04-25 10:24 Edited 2011-04-25 10:30
Why not give the player a flag, a hammer and just enough money to buy the buildings himself? That's what I would have done. Works nicely without any extra menus, and allows the player to open up with different building mixes depending on terrain and game strategy.

If people think that's too slow, we could give each player a massive boost to auto-construction speed on first spawn.

> Power connection will be done automatically at the start (Sawmill will connect to Windmill e.g.).


I still think flags should work as power connectors.
Parent - - By Newton [us] Date 2011-04-26 20:19
I am generally very critical of any pre-start options that have to be selected before the real start of the game but after the round has started. I already didn't like that in Hazard.
Parent - By ala [de] Date 2011-04-26 22:08
I usually agree (especially with rules, goals and weapons like in Hazard), but the players might be interested in melees and missions, in which they don't have to start at the very start of settling every time. Since dynamic placement of buildings at the start are troublesome I thought of the mouse system. Tyron actually build a dynamic castle system for CP (I think it was called Dyn Knights) which wasn't that bad. That could be an alternative.
- By ala [de] Date 2011-04-27 08:18
Fire concept:

-Fire has a percentage value. Above 50% it grows, below 50% it blews out.
-Objects can be wet, which reduces fire. So if a object is wet, the percentage is reduced..

-I propose oil for an opposite effect.

For buildings:
-Buildings and features out of wood (like drawbridges) burn pretty well. The fire, if the left alone - might destroy wooden buildings completely.
-Wet buildings are more unlikely to catch fire
- - By ala [de] Date 2011-05-01 07:15 Edited 2011-05-01 07:18
Ok Peter,

I've finished my parts on the menues :), I used your concept as a base and will only post the changes I propose and which we discussed about:

>1. Context menus

>When the player presses the interact button, a menu may open for each vehicle, building or construction site that is currently behind the Clonk, as well as an inventory menu for the Clonk and its backpack. Another press of the interact button closes all menus.


>Menus can also be opened by clicking on the building. This will open all menus of vehicles, buildings or construction sites that are at the position of the mouse click.


All? Imagine the trouble of 5 lorries at the same position. As well: Imagine klicking on a building in combat with a bow.

Solution:
I acutually had a big discussion with Zapper about Fantasy-controls. I wanted to introduce right klick, Zapper got a different solution: Press down while klicking left. This combination is in fantasy reserved for actions which interact with the controlled clonk directly (for example extinguish the caster rather than extinguish a object which the player klicks on, this saves time in emergencies).

I'd love to see this solution here as well: interact + Klick: Opens Building Menu at the specific klick point. Interact + Down or + Down+Klick: Opens Building Menu at the clonks specific position.

>As many context menus might open at the same time, it is important to make the origin clear for each of them. The menus should be stacked in the following order:


>   1. Building / construction site menus
>   2. Vehicle menus
>   3. Clonk / item menus


We need a very fast way to change menu's. Once the menues are opend numbers could do:
Numbering starts with 1, and ends with 0 - the inventory should get his own inventory button (Q) like normal. So:
Imagine we have a the specific point: 1. A workshop, 2. a construction side of an anvil. 3: a lorry with items, 4: An empty lorry; 5: A catapult, 6. A Clonk trader from an rpg! Or a second clonk of yours with his inventory.

Order (and Shortcut, numbering):
Press 1: A building? Ok: 1. building Building
Press 2, no second building? Ok: Construction Side
Press 3, no second construction side? Ok vehicle.
Press 4: Offensive Vehicle: The catapult - the ones with content should be selected before the other ones. If 2 catapults would have 3 objects inside them the value should set the priority: The catapult with a tera flint and two flints would be in front of the catapult with 3 flints.
Press 5: No other offensive vehicles? Ok defensive vehicles: Any filled lorries? Yes: Lorry A.
Press 6: No other filled defensive vehicles? Ok unfilled vehicles!
Press 7: No other vehicles? Ok clonks - as with vehicles in Inventory order.

Buildings should get an order which is not associated with their content because their function usually is more important as beeing a container. I'd propose: 1. Bases, 2. Melee functions, 3. Settlement functions 4. Anvil etc.

Normally buildings won't overlap, but they sure can do, for example if they fall on each other.

>2. Actions

>A menu might containing "actions" that the vehicle, building or item might be tasked to execute. An example would be "open" for drawbridges, "produce flint" for a chemical plant or "build wall" for a hammer.


>An action is requested by clicking on the menu item. While an action is executing, it should be marked as such in the menu. This mark should update when the action was performed to completion (e.g. the drawbridge has opened).


>Generally, action menus can only be used when the Clonk has access to the object generating it. This might mean standing directly in front of it or holding it in the hand. Zapper: Additionally, structural buildings covered by a flag of the player's team always count as accessible.


Zapper speaks about a local flag pole?
There is still this post of mine: http://forum.openclonk.org/topic_show.pl?pid=12357#pid12357 - where I propose flags, which are like the CR flags but can be attached to buildings, the attacher gains access to the building temporally, although an enemy flag pole is near. Ignore the word "instead" in my posting, in addition is far better.

As well: Vehicles should be free of owner issues - free to use for all of the clonks, or what do you think?

>4. Inventory Usage

>An inventory menu can be used to transfer objects between different containers. This generally requires mouse usage. There are two methods:


>    * Drag & Drop: Click the item in the inventory, then hold mouse while moving it to the menu of another object.
>    * Simple click: Clicking an item in an inventory transfers it to the most likely target that is not the source inventory. This means, in order:


>   1. An inventory with a restricted item set, which matches the item type (e.g. production buildings requiring it)
>   2. A mobile container (lorry)
>   3. The Clonk's backpack


1. could be confusing: Why was my sulphur not put into the lorry (for example if I'd put sulphur out of the chemical plant and there also is a lorry), but into the plant?
3. We should use Down+Klick for the Clonk like explained in the menu order comment.

Order I'd propose:
1. Other clonks - swap objects between clonks - since they are the most mobile objects, they should get priority - it's easy to avoid klicking them. A KI trader is more tricky, since he won't moves - loading a lorry at the point of a KI trader would be not possible than, the lorry would have to be moved aside.
2. Vehicles: full vehicles as in the menu order concept  get priority if several vehicles overlap - as well as offensive vehicles over defensive ones, nice: Lorry: Put a lorry in front of a catapult and another vehicle: and by klicking the objects will be loading the catapult instead of what ever will not suit.
3. Constuction sites
4. Buildings
5. Only with Down+Klick: The controlled clonks backpack.

5. Construction:

If you open a construction menu (with a conkit for example), a menu pops up which sorts the buildings after category. These categories could be displayed in ring menu order. I propose: Base builings, Transport, production, function buildings (pump, power plants etc.), Offensive/defensive buildings.

After the Category has been selected they should appear in fixed order!!! You perhaps know age of empires two or stronghold - or nearly every other strategy games. All buildings usually have fixed positions. Even if only the last building in the list is available in the current scenario, the whole building list is shown - with the unavailable positions erased.

I attached a dungeon siege 2 screen so show you the Iconing on the character portraits. A description button should be put on or adjacent to every buildings icon, klicking on that button will show the building descrition. It also could show alternatives for the the materials,  A loam a wood and a stone symbol should be pretty clear there. Klick on them and the buildings requirements display will change.

Ah the requirements.. unlike the description this is very important, so I am all for showing the material requirements, we can't save space there.

You also plan on having drawbridges, doors etc. as real buildings. I second that, it should however appear reasonable that such features are logically linked to building types. As I certainly can imagine that a drawbridge might be put at a tower, the feature could get confusing: Imagine the trap door from Clonkrage, which only can be build at normal walls (not one with features like a chamber), such things we shall never do again.
Attachment: IconsampleDungeonSiege-1.jpg - I referred to the icons on the portraits. It would be nice to use them :) (168k)
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-01 14:49 Edited 2011-05-01 15:10

> All? Imagine the trouble of 5 lorries at the same position. As well: Imagine klicking on a building in combat with a bow.


I don't really understand those "and what if there are many objects at that point" arguments. How often do you really have 5 lorries at the same position? That's a bad idea no matter how, I think it's fair to expect the player to move them away. Note that in CR it was impossibly to interact with them - now it is "just" a bit less convenient.

Alternatively, I would suggest that you'd walk a few pixels further, and then use interact-click to open exactly the menus you want.

Oh yeah, and after playing a bit of OC I think I'd really like if the menu was open only as long as you hold space (= interact?). That works well with Zapper's interact+click approach, and makes for an easy way out if you get "stuck" in menus. Just think about the newbie seeing an enemy approach: I think it is a bad idea to have to press a key in order to close menus.

(Also you should still be able to walk around with open menus, I'm not sure that was clear from my text. Say, get something from a lorry while pushing it around)

> We need a very fast way to change menu's. Once the menues are opend numbers could do:


Huh? Not sure I understand what you want. Why do we need buttons and numbers? Why not just open all of them?

> where I propose flags, which are like the CR flags but can be attached to buildings, the attacher gains access to the building temporally, although an enemy flag pole is near.


Still not very enthusiastic. It goes directly against what I'd want to achieve with the flags: Large base areas, where the player does *not* have to worry about something working for the enemy.

> As well: Vehicles should be free of owner issues - free to use for all of the clonks, or what do you think?


Hm, that's tricky indeed. An enemy emptying your loaded catapult into your own base is a problem. On the other hand, it seems wrong to just lock them. I'd be tempted to say that we leave them unlocked in the first design, hoping that powerful structural buildings balance it out.

> These categories could be displayed in ring menu order.


Well, as said earlier, I would only use the quarter above the Clonk for a ring. But that's more than enough space for 5 or so items. Construction isn't really a time-critical job either, so we don't have to be super-efficient here.

> 1. could be confusing: Why was my sulphur not put into the lorry (for example if I'd put sulphur out of the chemical plant and there also is a lorry), but into the plant?


Would it? Obviously if you're taking sulphur out of the plant it shouldn't end up in the plant again, but in the lorry. Can't really think about many problematic situations, to be honest. Also note that this is just for the shortcut "Single-Click" interface. If you want more control, you should use drag & drop.

> You also plan on having drawbridges, doors etc. as real buildings.


Not real buildings, more building attachments ("features").

> As I certainly can imagine that a drawbridge might be put at a tower, the feature could get confusing: Imagine the trap door from Clonkrage, which only can be build at normal walls (not one with features like a chamber), such things we shall never do again.


Huh? Just to make it clear again: The idea is to roll all structural buildings into one (the wall). So we don't have "towers" or "chambers" anymore, just walls with different attachments.
* CR tower = wall with two doors left & right, trapdoor roof, fundament
* CR drawbridge = wall with drawbridge left and/or right, normal roof, fundament
* CR chamber - we don't have those anymore. Use a lorry to store objects. Edit: Or more realistically, build a chest. For those it would make sense to lock in enemy base regions.
* CR hall = walls, with removed roof
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-05-01 14:56

>That works well with Zapper's interact+click approach


Except that you might not be able to click somewhere when your screen is full of menus ;)
But since I am also not 100% sure if I really need that, I can't really say anything against only keeping menus open while you hold the key
Parent - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-01 15:15
Hm, just heads-up: I've come to the point where I really need to draw some pictures, otherwise nobody will understand me (Newton: have a cookie). I'll post a few pictures of how I imagine the menus to look like once I've located a scanner.
Parent - - By ala [de] Date 2011-05-01 17:04

>Also you should still be able to walk around with open menus, I'm not sure that was clear from my text. Say, get something from a lorry while pushing it around


Ah, yes. Totally forgot about that.

I think the best thing is just to implent your system without further bigger discussions.

Once it is finished we can play and adjust it in various directions, as it always reoccurs we are planning in different directions here. And the discussions seem to become bigger as the actual work.
Parent - - By PeterW [gb] Date 2011-05-01 21:40
Yeah well, if everybody stopped questioning my ideas it would be much easier! ;)

But agreed, I have also been thinking about how we could get things started. I'll probably start implementing a scenario with:
1. The flag mechanics
2. A chemical foundry (buy it, buy flints there)
3. An anvil (buy it, buy weapons there)
4. Respawn mechanics
5. A way to earn gold (by controlling certain points?)

In a more or less random landscape, give each team 3 flags, make the goal "capture the flag" - that should be the easiest scenario that should work if the concept's worth anything.
Parent - By Newton [mx] Date 2011-05-02 03:01

>Yeah well, if everybody stopped questioning my ideas it would be much easier! ;)


I might question them again if someone implemented it.
I have to admit, I dont even read the long discussions about building concepts anymore cause out of the last ones, never something solid came out. I am kinda waiting for a ... "Venga, vamos!" (OK, lets go!) to set the OC team in motion, the rest will be designed on the way.

I know, this comment is not exactly fruitful for the discussion but just in case you wondered why its always only (the same) 2-3 people talking about it, I am not the only one who grew wary of those discussions - as interested as I am in the development of the production lines and buildings.

That is why it I reckon it is a excellent idea to propose to first implement a prototype scenario (yourself) to show of how the system would look like and build the basics of it.
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2011-05-02 05:39
If you have smaller parts that you can let someone else do, just tell us.
I like the idea of finally getting started (because at least we two nearly agreed on each other after the last fruitful discussion!) - I cannot promise how much time I will have, but whatever. Who can..!
Up Topic General / General / Building concepts

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