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Up Topic General / Help and Questions / Reparing buildings
- - By Luchs [de] Date 2015-04-12 18:11
How do I repair buildings? After a careless flint, our windmill burned down a bit, leaving a construction site just like in CR:



We couldn't figure out how to repair it though. Digging around it sometimes created some of the yellow triangles which was weird.
Parent - - By Sven2 Date 2015-04-12 18:23
That is not supposed to happen I think.
Parent - - By Clonkonaut [de] Date 2015-04-13 09:53
Best answer! :D
Reply
Parent - By Nachtschatten Date 2015-04-13 17:02
Not really.
Reply
Parent - - By Pyrit Date 2015-04-12 19:40

>Digging around it sometimes created some of the yellow triangles which was weird.


The energy radius has to be updated when it moves around. Maybe the triangles should use an attachement procedure.
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-12 19:54
There is a reason the flag is static and cannot move. The power nodes were never supposed to move.

Maikel, did you implement anything in the direction of updating the power system when objects move?
Parent - - By Sven2 [de] Date 2015-04-12 21:10
I think it's updated on Hit, isn't it?
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-13 07:52
I can imagine that there are several issues with updating ownerships etc that just didn't really play a role in the current scenarios and will only be noticed once you have a melee where you can't use enemies' buildings
Parent - By Maikel Date 2015-04-13 07:55 Edited 2015-04-13 09:19
It is updated on movement stop. With an effect, as it was before.

Edit: Maybe the object should loose its radius when not with con of 100% any more.
Parent - - By Armin [de] Date 2015-04-13 15:02
It is not possible to repair buildings. From my point of view, it is not 100% clear whether the repair possibility is wanted. There was a good argument against it.

>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


If wanted:
Here is some concept about it which hasn't been tested. Also, the construction site sign in the image is the wrong one.

If not wanted:
Then it is even more important to have a burned sprite graphic for every building, isn't it? Because if you or the rain or whatever extinguish the fire, there is a decorative but "useless" ruin left. I think that ruin should always be very easy to burn down again. And maybe updating the "Destroy function for contruction sites" in the hammer would be useful to make place again if the rain extinguished a destroyed base?
Parent - By Armin [de] Date 2015-04-13 15:06
Oh I just noticed bonis concept was about being able to repair damaged buildings and not destroyed buildings...
Parent - - By Nachtschatten Date 2015-04-13 15:12

> There was a good argument against it.


It's a good argument against the rebuilding like it was in CR, but a pretty shitty one against rebuilding in general, to be blunt.
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Parent - - By Armin [de] Date 2015-04-13 18:18
Yes, ala was talking about Clonk Rage. Still, the general concern that necessary (rebuild) repair costs lower than 100% of the original costs of construction can lead to very defensive gameplay is imo reasonable. The current basic OpenClonk buildings need a bit less materials than in Clonk Rage, the Clonk will be able to hold 5 materials at once and the building builds up itself automatically if enough materials are in it. These points would make the insta repair even faster/easier. If you rebuild the building from scratch you would at least need a hammer and wait until the old, destroyed building is burned down. Another argument is that a procentual amount of needed Components is a little bit weird, isn't it? How much is 50% of the Foundry Components - 2 wood and 1 rock or 3 rocks?

However, I'm not voting for or against being able to repair destroyed buildings. Mostly because I've never defended a castle in OpenClonk, yet.
Parent - - By Nachtschatten Date 2015-04-16 20:04
I'm convinced some formula for repair costs can be found. However, this is not the level of detail at which I disagree with the argument. Actually, I don't agree "no repairs" is even an option. There's too many games that do it.

Anyway, I'm going to shamelessly pull out some ideas that emerged during Clinfinity's development - we faced similar challenges there. (Rather even worse, because constructing was much quicker, maybe even instant. Not sure.)

The basic idea is: Make it not insta-rebuild. For example...
* Limit how/when burning buildings can be extinguished (needs more water/can only be extinguished at 75%/50%/... completion)
* Literally a cool down time: After extinguished, make the building emit smoke for a while before it can be rebuilt.
* Make "cleanup" of the ruin required before it can be rebuilt.
* Make rebuilding more expensive/take longer

It's also important to put this into perspective: In a perfectly peaceful settling round, we were stuck with a windmill at 99% completion. And the only choice is to burn it to the ground and rebuild it completely? That's insane.
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Parent - - By Maikel Date 2015-04-16 20:23
Agreed, with all the above, making this work without burnt graphics is a bit hard at the moment, though.
Parent - - By Pyrit Date 2015-04-16 21:01 Edited 2015-04-16 21:05

>making this work without burnt graphics is a bit hard at the moment, though.


Maybe a shader would be sufficient.
Make the graphics 50% darker, cover it with black stains... Erase some random faces. Maybe use TransformBone to bend some parts.
Is it possile to get an effect like this with the new shader stuff?
Parent - By Matthias [de] Date 2015-04-17 11:23
Shading burnt buildings differently sounds like a reasonable, low-effort-solution to me. Removing random faces and transforming some bones has some points to consider, though. For one, you never know how a face contributes to the visual of the buildilng. Maybe it was a rather huge back wall? Maybe it sat right at a corner, and now stuff starts to look odd because of backface culling? With bones, its the same. There might be some master bones in objects, which transform the entire object with them. Bending them could cause floating building parts or something.
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Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-16 20:41
I can also give some insights from the old Caedes where melees didn't work out BECAUSE of the rebuilding.

In Caedes I learned the valuable lecture that the fun and interesting part of a base melee is NOT try to destroy the enemy base with all means and trying to rebuild your own base. The fun part are the little skirmishes with the enemy Clonks and maybe breaking through a defense line (of Clonks / towers, that is).

I'd go so far and say we should give very, very little incentive to destroying buildings. And the incentive should NEVER be "to annoy the enemy player because he has to rebuild them". I'd rather give a possibility to take over buildings and then make THAT the part worth fighting for.
For example, flags could be taken over somehow. Then the players would rather take over the flag and only destroy buildings if it is REALLY necessary or helpful (f.e. towers that are in the way, etc.).

With the way construction currently works in OC, I'd opt for not making buildings repairable. When taking too much damage they could turn into debris and burn down. If extinguished, you'd still have to build a new building in front of the debris.
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-19 20:35
I agree, repairing is part of the strategy of base maintenance and collateral damage.

Not to mention, repairing is also part of economics.

But, I have a suggestion...
Have you ever been in a situation where you place your windmill in a bad place, and you have to blow it up?
Well I think that is just annoying... we need a dissemble option, a way to take apart your buildings for convenience.

What do you guys think?

Also I liked the ability to build custom walls with iron in CR.
Even if we choose a different resource to do it with.
Static walls are less fun. Player built walls are way more interesting.
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-19 20:45

>What do you guys think?


I think that could pose major problems when having team-melees in which you are able to overtake enemy buildings (by overtaking a flagpole, f.e.).
Then, you would just quickly conquer the flagpole and, before the enemy can re-take it, disassemble all enemy buildings without effort.
Parent - - By Sven2 [de] Date 2015-04-19 20:56
That's what you always did in Settlers 2. Just as the enemy soldier went into your building, you could destroy it and prevent some enemy land gain.

Anyway, I don't see how this is a problem.
Parent - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-19 21:02
Yes, it is also a matter of perspective.

Dissembling a base could be considered a form of strategy.

Clonk is a game of many options, I don't like limiting options too much.
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-19 21:03

>Anyway, I don't see how this is a problem.


It potentially makes destroying buildings a lot easier than constructing or repairing them. That usually leads to constructing buildings becoming a waste of time.
If the scenario then tries to be a base melee that FORCES the players to construct buildings (because they need to produce weapons etc.) then it essentially forces the players to waste their time on extremely frustrating tasks while detering their attention from the fun parts of melees: fighting opponents or strategically attacking a base.
Parent - - By Pyrit Date 2015-04-19 21:12
There could be other ownership defining structures as the flag.

A tower could have an ownership radius and be very difficult to destroy. And expensive to build. Or you protect your flag so good that the enemy can't easily destroy it.
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-19 21:17
Uh, I WANT the players to take over parts of enemy bases. I WANT a more dynamic game where conquering and re-taking parts of a base happens quickly.

If I wanted the opposite, I would not give the players some sort of tower building, I would just disable overtaking flags..?
Parent - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-19 21:21
I agree.

Or the flag could be smaller and mounted on a cabin (does this sound familiar)? :D

Sometimes CR isn't given enough credit...
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-19 21:15
Personally, I find the current insta-build set up to be a bit odd.

I think buildings need to take time to build after you have gathered the resources, even if it doesn't require a clonk to be present.
Then it would follow that disassembling a building would take time, at least as long as building it.
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-19 21:19
Waiting ten seconds instead of instant deconstruction would not change that destroying buildings would still be a lot easier than constructing them (where you have to put in material).

One possibility would of course be that you would get all the resources back so that the attacker would also have to steal the resources because the defender could otherwise just reconstruct the building just as quickly.
Parent - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-19 21:48
That is what I was thinking from the beginning, sorry if I wasn't clear on that. :P
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-19 20:58
That does seem to be a possible downside.

Perhaps if there was a way to leave a player marker on the buildings, so that only the original builder can take them down?

What do you think?
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-19 21:07
Making buildings only deconstructible by their owner is a given. But on the horizon I can still see base melees (two teams with real bases fight). And I also see overtaking buildings (by conquering flagpoles) as a mean to both make strategical advance possible without destruction as the only option and to give some focus on key-points of a player's infrastructure that they should defend (the flagpoles).

That's one of the parts where I see OC base melees better than CR base melees (which essentially never worked...).
Parent - - By Armin [de] Date 2015-04-19 21:26

>conquering flagpoles


Easy idea: What about making the flag Touchable. And if the Clonk who touches the flag is hostile, the flag itself goes down slowly, changes its color at the ground and then goes up again.
Parent - - By Pyrit Date 2015-04-19 21:30
Capture the flag! Awesome! :D

Is just the question is it easier to destroy an enemy flag and insta-rebuild as your own or take the time and conquer it...
Parent - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-19 21:40
My thoughts exactly.
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-19 21:36
Yupp, something like that was the idea. Whether it's destroying the flag with flints (and then build your own) or just taking it over by grabbing just has to be tested, I guess
Parent - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-19 21:44
Indeed...
Parent - - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-19 21:34
I agree.

But, what did you find faulty in the old CR base melees?
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-19 21:46
For one, they only (partly) worked when you disabled the basic rules of CR settlement: construction material and energy.
When you enabled it, it became illusory to have a working melee: (re-)constructing a base would be too much of a hassle.
But without construction material you had new issues: extinguishing (water barrel / spells) and reconstructing a burning tower (knight pack) became way too strong - you basically made it impossible for the enemy to break through a wall.

So you could either disable building material and play without the knight pack (or towers in general, the landscape needed to allow bypassing towers in that case) or with building material (to prevent reconstruction) and without actual building.

IMO base melees in CR were never really balanced and never felt like the game was meant to be played that way. I think we have the chance right now to change it for OpenClonk and actually make settlement melees or base melees work and feel right WITHOUT inventing an extra set of rules just for them.
Parent - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-19 21:59
I thought the basement burnt with the tower making it impossible to repair the tower in CR?

I disabled the magic stuff, whenever I played CR...

All your points about CR do seem to be valid.

Open Clonk could be way better, but it needs more game content.
That should happen eventually. ;)
Parent - - By Sven2 Date 2015-04-20 10:30
Yes, base melees CR without construction material was broken because building something was so much cheaper than destroying it. Base melees with materials did work in my opinion, assuming proper scenario design. You need to have a landscape that allows people to build up early defenses easily, so heavy weapons are needed. Problem is that a round could take three hours or more which is just too long. Big melees would always end with people getting bored and/or having to leave.

ala made some non-material scenarios that worked by limiting construction kits and disabling water barrel extinguish. They worked, but the downside was that you never really built a big base because of the limits. It was more like a "classic melee with buildings" than a proper base melee.

I think for base melees, it's important to have some mechanisms that ensure that rounds end somehow. For example, like in HoN where you gain strength over time and can knock over all defenses. Or like in scenarios that have a set goal other than elimination. Or there is some resource in the center of the map that helps you win easily if you hold it for long enough to build a base around it.
Parent - - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-20 11:09

>Problem is that a round could take three hours or more which is just too long
>They worked, but the downside was that you never really built a big base because of the limits
>Or there is some resource in the center of the map


For me, this is where flagpoles and base-conquering come into play.
Imagine building up a base would be comparatively cheap and easy (like it is atm - if you have the building materials), but the bigger your base, the harder it is to defend, because the enemy could take over parts of your base. This would naturally limit the size of a base from the players' strategical viewpoint - not through some arbitrary rule (you can only build X flagpoles, blabla).

Additionally, this would give use a natural way to ensure the game ends at some point. For example, we could set the goal of the scenario to conquer/destroy all enemy flagpoles. If a team does not have flagpoles, it loses in X minutes.
And the time you need to relaunch could increase with every relaunch (up to a certain limit). This would mean that eventually, if you'd win a fight in the enemies' base, you'd have enough time to conquer two or more flagpoles. Which could show some snowball effect, because the enemy would most likely have to conquer them back before advancing themselves.

I can really see the whole flagpole & base-conquering dynamics turn out great for natural base/settlement melees. And I don't want to ruin that by repeating the same mistakes CR made.
Parent - By J. J. [py] Date 2015-04-20 16:16
Agreed.
Parent - By Zapper [de] Date 2015-04-20 07:44

>Here is some concept about it which hasn't been tested. Also, the construction site sign in the image is the wrong one.


Mh, after reading through that, this could be integrated nicely into the interaction menu in the Controls branch, I guess. That would also be exactly where the player expects it.
Up Topic General / Help and Questions / Reparing buildings

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