Changing the game-play

[svenskmand]

Right now we have 6 factions: Humans, Undead, Constructs, Corpars, Elves and Mercenaries. The player gets creatures based on the alignment system, which means that the player can get creatures from many different factions. One major flaw this makes is if the player plays a mission where he (as the commander/keeper for faction A) has to destroy faction B and he gets creatures from faction B, because of his alignment, which he uses to destroy the other commander/keeper of faction B. That would be pretty stupid, and would destroy the story for the mission.

Another problem is that because you need to have workers to build you dungeon, and your portals only allow you a relatively small number of creatures, and you cannot choose youself which ones you get. This gives problems if you need to build up your dungeon fast, as you need to throw out creatures just to get more workers. Then later when you have collected ressources, you then need to throw out the workers to get more fighters to train them. This cycle continues if you run out of money and need to get more fast. Which is very inflexible.

I have thought about some changes to the game-play to make the game-play and story elements make more sense, the idea are described in the following three sections:

Control and Interface

The following describes the most important interface elements.

* The keeper builds rooms and traps, like in DK 1 and 2, but the triggers for the traps are setup as in Evil Genius.
* The keeper spawn as many kobolds as he want, each will drain mana at a rate, so the keepers mana generation rate will limit the number of kobolds, this is the same as in DK 2.
* You do not pick up creatures, instead you click to mark them for moving (they could get a colored aura to show that they are marked), doing this puts them in the cursor stack (as in normal DK 1 & 2). You do not drop creatures, you instead right click on the ground and you will teleport the marked creature at the top of the stack to the new location, and the creature gets unmarked. You can still only drop creatures on your own claimed tiles, except for kobolds which can also be dropped on unclaimed tiles, but not the claimed tiles of the enemy.

Game Tasks

The following are the tasks that the keeper will perform throughout the game:

* Build rooms, traps and tunnels.
* Select creatures from the portal in a panel (like in Evil Genius, there is a counter for each available creature, which displays the number of creatures that you would like of that type), if the keeper have room for more creatures a new one will spawn every once in a while from each gateway the keeper controls.
* Train creatures.
* Research creature spells (keeper spells are not researched see Keeper stats).
* Build traps in the workshop and place them (traps are not researched see Keeper stats below).
* Fight enemies.
* Capture gateways, to get more creatures. Gateways provide control over creatures, if one of your gateways gets claimed by the enemy, then you will not be able to control any of the creatures from this gateway, they will not die. You can regain control over them by reclaiming the portal.

Keeper stats

The keeper is still a free agent that will take missions for each faction (think Sacrifice), he has his own personality which the player can customize throughout the game, these stats are

* Spells: the keeper spells (not creature spells) will be obtained by spending points on upgrades in a hierarchy (like in Diablo 2), these points will be earned by gaining experience from researching creature spells, and by using the keeper spells in the game.
* Traps/Doors: the traps and doors will be obtained by spending points on upgrades in a hierarchy (like in Diablo 2), these points will be earned by gaining experience from building traps/doors in the workshop and using them in the game (that is setting them up and getting the enemy to trigger them)
* Creature combat bonuses: upgrade in a hierarchy (like Diablo 2) to get certain bonuses - points for this are obtained by gaining experience from creature combat with the enemy and by training creatures in the training room. The bonuses affects

* effective fighters
* effective spellcasters
* effective rooms

* Rooms

* faction specific rooms

* Reputation among the factions - this determines if you (the keeper) is allowed to take missions for a given faction

So these where my suggestions, say what you think about them and ask questions

[andrewbuck]

I think there are some neat ideas here. First of all, the way you describe the kobolds working is how I planned to do it anyway, i just don't have that working yet so now they spawn through the portal like everything else.

Regarding your idea about the teleporting of creatures rather than picking them up, there is no fundamental difference between the mechanism we currently have and the one you propose, other that creatures would continue fighting while they are marked. The disadvantage of that system is that you would not be able to see what creatures you have marked when you are somewhere else in the dungeon, with the creatures in your hand you can always see them.

Regarding the portal idea where you get to pick the creatures that come through next, I think that is a pretty good idea. It would give you a much finer control over the spawned creatures. Would we still use the alignment system to pick creatures when the keeper does not make a selection or would we just abandon this altogether?

I also like the idea of the keeper stats, I had planned to do something like this with the spells and I like the idea about the other things too.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

I think there are some neat ideas here. First of all, the way you describe the kobolds working is how I planned to do it anyway, i just don't have that working yet so now they spawn through the portal like everything else.

With this idea we will be dropping the worker units entirely and only have Kobolds. This should be different from what we have now?

Regarding your idea about the teleporting of creatures rather than picking them up, there is no fundamental difference between the mechanism we currently have and the one you propose, other that creatures would continue fighting while they are marked. The disadvantage of that system is that you would not be able to see what creatures you have marked when you are somewhere else in the dungeon, with the creatures in your hand you can always see them.

I did not see that coming, that is correct and a serious problem. Well I guess it is best sticking with the hand then.

Regarding the portal idea where you get to pick the creatures that come through next, I think that is a pretty good idea. It would give you a much finer control over the spawned creatures. Would we still use the alignment system to pick creatures when the keeper does not make a selection or would we just abandon this altogether?

I also like the idea of the keeper stats, I had planned to do something like this with the spells and I like the idea about the other things too.

-Buck

The alignment system will be dropped. But I was planning to make the mood system for the creatures which can use some of the ideas of the alignment system. So yes we will drop the alignment system an instead be using the skill hierachy for the keeper, where he gains experience and skill points in each of the 3 branches of keeper spells, traps and creature bonuses.

I am glad you like the ideas

Right now we have 6 factions: Humans, Undead, Constructs, Corpars, Elves and Mercenaries. The player gets creatures based on the alignment system, which means that the player can get creatures from many different factions. One major flaw this makes is if the player plays a mission where he (as the commander/keeper for faction A) has to destroy faction B and he gets creatures from faction B, because of his alignment, which he uses to destroy the other commander/keeper of faction B. That would be pretty stupid, and would destroy the story for the mission.

From the problem above we should also not let the keeper get creatures from other factions than the one he is currently working for. If we in a mission have a story set-up where two or more factions collaborate, we can allow the keeper to get creatures from both factions, if the story for the mission permits it. But as a default the keeper can only get creatures for the faction that he is working for in the current mission.

[Bodsda]

Regarding your idea about the teleporting of creatures rather than picking them up, there is no fundamental difference between the mechanism we currently have and the one you propose, other that creatures would continue fighting while they are marked. The disadvantage of that system is that you would not be able to see what creatures you have marked when you are somewhere else in the dungeon, with the creatures in your hand you can always see them.

Well, its only a problem if we keep the current way of picking up creatures. At the moment the creatures models dissapear from the map and the icons are next to the hand. If instead of the models disappearing, they just had an aura placed on them, you would still be able to see whats 'in your hand'. If you did it this way round, it wouldnt be that much of a code change either.

Bodsda

[svenskmand]

It is not that "problem" Andrew is talking about. You are correct that it will work the same way in that respect. The problem is that if your creatures are being attacked you cannot just pick them up to save them. You have to mark them, and then dump them somewhere else, and the creatures can still be harmed while they are marked, they are only safe when you teleport them to the new place.

[Bodsda]

It is not that "problem" Andrew is talking about. You are correct that it will work the same way in that respect. The problem is that if your creatures are being attacked you cannot just pick them up to save them. You have to mark them, and then dump them somewhere else, and the creatures can still be harmed while they are marked, they are only safe when you teleport them to the new place.

I was referring more to the end of Andrew's paragraph

The disadvantage of that system is that you would not be able to see what creatures you have marked when you are somewhere else in the dungeon, with the creatures in your hand you can always see them.

Bodsda

[svenskmand]

Ok, I imagined that the marked creatures should still be visible in the hand, as a icon. But the other problem is a major one, which is why the system will not be good.

Bodsda: While I remember it, take a look at the backstory sections of the wiki. Some of it might need your touch for improving the language, like last time (I will merge them at some point, as we have dropped the aligment idea in favor of a skill-tree like Diablo 2)

[VinWij]

The keeper is still a free agent that will take missions for each faction (think Sacrifice), he has his own personality which the player can customize throughout the game, these stats are

* Spells: the keeper spells (not creature spells) will be obtained by spending points on upgrades in a hierarchy (like in Diablo 2), these points will be earned by gaining experience from researching creature spells, and by using the keeper spells in the game.
* Traps/Doors: the traps and doors will be obtained by spending points on upgrades in a hierarchy (like in Diablo 2), these points will be earned by gaining experience from building traps/doors in the workshop and using them in the game (that is setting them up and getting the enemy to trigger them)
* Creature combat bonuses: upgrade in a hierarchy (like Diablo 2) to get certain bonuses - points for this are obtained by gaining experience from creature combat with the enemy and by training creatures in the training room. The bonuses affects
* effective fighters
* effective spellcasters
* effective rooms
* Rooms
* faction specific rooms
* Reputation among the factions - this determines if you (the keeper) is allowed to take missions for a given faction

This contains some interesting ideas. I've been thinking about them for a bit, and this is what I think:

Basically you are dividing all aspects of the game between two parties: the keeper and the dungeon. Therefore you make certain things belong to the keeper and others to the dungeon. The keeper, being a free agent, does not own the dungeon, he only influences it with his power.

I like the separation between keeper spells and creature spells. You have to re-train creature-spells everytime you have a new dungeon. This is almost like the level-based spellbooks from dungeon keeper. This will ensure you have a goal each game that is (I think) fun to pursue and gives a level of challenge. A skill-tree based approach for the keeper allows a player to choose a speciality and specialize. This way people can develop a certain style of play and have a keeper that matches it. Good one.

I don't like the idea of traps and doors being "keeper skills" however. These are obviously objects, and they are made by the creatures. Making them keeper-based implies some way of transfering the knowledge of your arcane tesla-coil of death trap to a troll that just wandered in your dungeon so he can make them. I think traps and doors should be dungeon-related and also faction related. Some factions will be creature-based, with better skilled creatures, while others could be a bit weaker but compensate for that with better traps. Therefore, the types of traps and doors you can create should depend on the faction of the creatures that are present in the dungeon. If they want to learn new ones, they have to learn (research) how to make them. That knowledge is lost if you move to a different dungeon. This will also give you a goal each game and requires you to build and plan the facilities for them.

As a side note: I think the challenge of researching stuff adds to the experience, because it requires infrastructure and a goal, and gives you extra purpose. If the traps and doors were keeper-based, you wouldn't have to build any research facilities for all of them after a while, effectively removing a part of the content.

Something that you could do is have skills that influence the quality of the traps. For instance, if the keeper is specializing in trap-use, the creatures could research them faster, build them faster or make the traps do better damage or reset quicker after a trigger. This way, you can specialize in deadly traps without removing the challenge of actually gaining access to the traps. This system, influence-skills rather than enabling skills, also applies for the creature bonusses. If the keeper "knows" a creature better, he can influence it's abilities. This allows you to specialize even further towards using certain factions or creatures better.

It's really about what a keeper is and how that translates to the dungeon he is running. It is also about what he carries with him to a next level/dungeon. I think a keeper should only carry over his influence-skills and his own spells, not anything related to something that can be physically created in the game. Creatures basically have to run their own dungeon with the keeper bossing them around, so they have to learn their own skills, their own traps and door and their own rooms. After all, they and they alone are the ones that have to use them, so it's only natural they have to learn how to do so. The keeper CAN influence their ability to do so by his own powers (skills).

The teleporting issue can be solved by some gimmick. Let's say the keeper has a special skill or object that relates to moving creatures. "Grabbing" a creature zaps it into some void, and the creature can be seen floating in small form around the hand. When you want to drop it somewhere, a portal opens quickly and the creature falls/flies out, stunning him for a bit (just like in dungeon keeper) but otherwise not harming him. Also, creatures don't like spending too much time in the void, so you'll want to drop them as soon as you can. A fun way to depict this is creating a small glowing hole underneath the creature you want to grab, and it falls in, placing it into the void. Putting them somewhere else creates that portal on the ceiling, and they fall out. Flying creatures would be sucked into the portal, and come out upside down, causing them to fall none the less. Just some ideas

About the alignment system: I just don't know. I liked the complexity of the system, but more direct control might just make it easier. You could also still use that system but impose limits onto what creatures can enter. This saves the hassle of throwing them back in when they're unwanted.

I definitly do not like the idea of losing control when you lose a portal. The creatures still belong to your dungeon, you just can't get any new ones. When they die/get captured/converted you just can't get others back again. Losing control makes it a major weakness to capture more portals you might not be able to defend: lose it and half your army is wiped out in a single swipe...

[svenskmand]

I don't like the idea of traps and doors being "keeper skills" however. These are obviously objects, and they are made by the creatures. Making them keeper-based implies some way of transfering the knowledge of your arcane tesla-coil of death trap to a troll that just wandered in your dungeon so he can make them. I think traps and doors should be dungeon-related and also faction related. Some factions will be creature-based, with better skilled creatures, while others could be a bit weaker but compensate for that with better traps. Therefore, the types of traps and doors you can create should depend on the faction of the creatures that are present in the dungeon. If they want to learn new ones, they have to learn (research) how to make them. That knowledge is lost if you move to a different dungeon. This will also give you a goal each game and requires you to build and plan the facilities for them.

So you like to have bonuses for the traps, like for the creatures.

The teleporting issue can be solved by some gimmick. Let's say the keeper has a special skill or object that relates to moving creatures. "Grabbing" a creature zaps it into some void, and the creature can be seen floating in small form around the hand. When you want to drop it somewhere, a portal opens quickly and the creature falls/flies out, stunning him for a bit (just like in dungeon keeper) but otherwise not harming him. Also, creatures don't like spending too much time in the void, so you'll want to drop them as soon as you can. A fun way to depict this is creating a small glowing hole underneath the creature you want to grab, and it falls in, placing it into the void. Putting them somewhere else creates that portal on the ceiling, and they fall out. Flying creatures would be sucked into the portal, and come out upside down, causing them to fall none the less. Just some ideas

I definitly do not like the idea of losing control when you lose a portal. The creatures still belong to your dungeon, you just can't get any new ones. When they die/get captured/converted you just can't get others back again. Losing control makes it a major weakness to capture more portals you might not be able to defend: lose it and half your army is wiped out in a single swipe...

Your right, that is also a major problem with that solution.

[Bodsda]

I agree with most of the points that VinWij has brought up.

I don't like the idea of having to start all over again every mission. Some games get really tidious because you are constantly doing the same thing for the first 10 minutes every mission.

I think the traps should be keeper based and creature based. Depending on the skill set and speciality of the keeper, certain traps should be available/unavailable. When you get creatures capable of creating traps, they should have a few blueprints for traps that they know how to make. The keeper can obtain blueprints from creatures or dead enemy keepers through a process of torture/possesion.

So say one of your creatures knew how to make a fear trap of some sort, the keeper could purchase or torture this blueprint from the creature. Then on the next level, the keeper is aware of how to make a fear trap, but his new creatures are not. He then passes this information (through some gruesome process) onto the new creatures allowing them to create the fear trap. This would allow you to also steal blueprints from captured enemies, but the higher the level of the enemy creature, the less likely he is to give up his blueprints before death.

I also think that it may be a good idea to bring some of your more loyal creatures with you to a new dungeon. This would have a cap limit of 5 or something. This way, you still retain some of the knowledge you gained last level, but not everything, you have to pick and choose which creatures have the skills necessary for the next fight.

What do you think?

Bodsda

[svenskmand]

I like the idea of stealing blueprints from the enemy

Some of you said that it was a bad idea to let the keeper know how to build the traps depending on how many points he put into trap knowledge, because he can then just build them right from the start of a new level. But how if we keep it that way, and then he has to educate his creatures on how to build the traps. That is he trains some creatures in making the traps the keeper knows. Then if a creature dies, and it was the only one able to construct a certain trap, then the keeper has to educate a new creature about the particular trap, to be able to build it.

[Bodsda]

I like the idea of stealing blueprints from the enemy

Some of you said that it was a bad idea to let the keeper know how to build the traps depending on how many points he put into trap knowledge, because he can then just build them right from the start of a new level. But how if we keep it that way, and then he has to educate his creatures on how to build the traps. That is he trains some creatures in making the traps the keeper knows. Then if a creature dies, and it was the only one able to construct a certain trap, then the keeper has to educate a new creature about the particular trap, to be able to build it.

Yeah. You could also have a level requirement for the creature to learn how to make certain traps so that the keeper cant build them straight away.The learning process may take some time (5 mins?)

Bodsda

[andrewbuck]

I like that idea, where you acquire blueprints either through espionage or research and then once you have the knowledge you train a workforce to build them. I think the level requirements to learn to construct traps is also an interesting one. That is something that could carry over to other skills to. For example wizards may start with only one spell but could learn other ones from the library as they get to higher levels. The spells in the library could be handled the same way as the blueprints, i.e. you research/steal/torture to get them.

-Buck

[Bodsda]

I like that idea, where you acquire blueprints either through espionage or research and then once you have the knowledge you train a workforce to build them. I think the level requirements to learn to construct traps is also an interesting one. That is something that could carry over to other skills to. For example wizards may start with only one spell but could learn other ones from the library as they get to higher levels. The spells in the library could be handled the same way as the blueprints, i.e. you research/steal/torture to get them.

-Buck

This would also allow you to obtain certain faction specific spells/traps from other factions which would add nicely to the dynamic gameplay.

Bodsda

[VinWij]

Fun idea. How about structuring it in this way:

Spells, traps, rooms and doors have blueprints. Those are normally contained in the keeper, so they are keeper knowlegde. In order to get blueprints to your creatures, they need a library. In there they can study the blueprints and learn how to create them themselves. Separate it into a library for spells and maybe a school for doors, traps and rooms. Spellcasters research in the library, while builders study in the school. That way, these buildings still retain a study-function, but they allow you to build your keeper-character with an impressive array of spells, rooms, traps and other knowledge.

Acquiring new blueprints can be done in the laboratory. When you "extract" a certain new blueprint through torture or find it as a bonus on the map, it becomes a concept. Concepts have to be researched in the laboratory by smart creatures. When a concept is cleared, it becomes a blueprint, added to the keepers knowlegde and available in the library and the school so creatures can learn them.

All knowledge available to your creatures is physical, so it can be stolen. Blueprints can be stolen from the school in the form of scrolls or drawings, spells as books from the library. Concepts can be "confused" in the laboratory, and they get lost or the research time is reset to 0. Imagine being able to bribe an enemy creature into taking a scroll from the school and brining it to you. You'd have to keep an eye on your creatures all the time, making for a tense moment to see if the creature succeeds. Stolen stuff becomes a concept in the laboratory, because they have to be "uploaded" to the keeper through there.

About learning blueprints by creatures, the level could cap the amount of spells a wizard can learn, or the tier of traps and doors a troll can understand. Keeper skills could boost this (wizards can learn an extra spell-skill and smarter trolls skill and so on) to have some control over what can actually be used. Room blueprints should be different in a way that once they are available, your magical kobolds can create them through some magical way. That prevents you from losing the ability to build a certain room when the only kobold who knows how to make it gets killed/captured.

Interesting stuff

[Skorpio]

Yes, this sounds really interesting. I think this screams for the introduction of a new creature class: the spy. The jobs of the spy could be sabotage (delay of the production or destruction of blueprints), assassination of skilled creatures and of course acquisition of blueprints. Maybe they could also persuade enemy creatures to change allegiance. We would also need creatures which can debunk spies and the number of spies should probably be limited.

[svenskmand]

Hehe creativity flows in here

I like the idea Vinjii and the spy class, Skorpio

[Skorpio]

We also need engineers who can build sentry guns, then the spies can sap them.