FreeGameDev

Hi Danimal,

Could we work without normals until we have better support for them?
May I suggest you to work on the training hall, that looks rather boring atm?
Ah, and weren't you working on the portal?

Regards,

Training hall, sure. This is what happens when you try to do many things at once, you end up doing nothing , ill keep centering on rooms and work on portal whenever i can.

Ill prepare 2 packs from now on, one with normals and another without them (i wont loose hope in their future use).

How should i call the animation for the training hall models? i think just one animation thats activated when the active spot is used should be enought

Hi,

Ill prepare 2 packs from now on, one with normals and another without them (i wont loose hope in their future use).

Sounds smart. I hope to get the time to ask on Ogre forums soon.

How should i call the animation for the training hall models? i think just one animation thats activated when the active spot is used should be enought

Indeed. "triggered" is the most generic name I can come up with.

Regards,

Ok, "triggered" is fine, besides "training hall" other rooms will have animated active spots, "torture room" and "forge" being sure ones and possibly some of the ones in planning phase.

Cool
Just to say, I'll be in holidays for the next two weeks, so I'll be out in the sun (or rain) much more than in front of a screen. I'll try to answer when back at the HQ, but I won't likely commit code during that time, except for simple tasks, I suppose.

Regards,

Have a nice time , i live in a coastal city in the south of Spain so i can go to the beach all year round

How lucky for that!

Don't forget the

Hi guys, while i prepare the basic rooms i think we can discuss the planed ones and if they fit or not:

“Arena”: your creatures do a battle royal here, free training but creatures get injured and near death
“Hell pits”: While creatures are here they will summon weak but mindless hellish drones that rush to attack enemies in a range (by bomb suiciding). This would be the fantasy equivalent of a maned missile battery.

“Dark temple”: creatures generate mana by praying
“Hall of the dead”: place to sacrify creatures that grants new creatures, gold, mana... depending on the combination

"Recreation room"(Casino):creatures spend their money here, increases morale
"Sweatshop": where any creature dropped (enemy or owned) does forced labor to win a bit of money over time but cant be recovered and dies after some time.

Danimal {l Wrote}:“Hell pits”: While creatures are here they will summon weak but mindless hellish drones that rush to attack enemies in a range (by bomb suiciding). This would be the fantasy equivalent of a missile battery.

I'm not quite sure about this one. from what I've gathered from your description, it's more or less a minion controlled cannon trap, but in room form?

However, I do like the idea of a room that's used for creating "special forces" minions.

Example:
with this room you'll be able to trade in a normal Kobold for;

Suicide Bomber Kobold:
Pros:

• Does a massive amount of damage to enemy traps and dungeon hearts.
• Does a small amount of AOE damage nearby minions

Cons:

• Slower then a normal Kobold.
• Can hurt your minions too.
• You loose a valuable worker.

Danimal {l Wrote}:"Sweatshop": where any creature dropped (enemy or owned) does forced labor to win a bit of money over time but cant be recovered and dies after some time.

My only concern with this one is instead of making the creatures unretrievable, I think the player should be given a time period to retrieve the creature. if the player fails to do so, the creature should rapidly become unhappy(that way if the creature was a friendly minion and the player releases it from the sweatshop, it should try to leave the dungeon as normal) and enemy creatures should become unconvertible with a much lower chance of divulging information from torturing.

Hell pits: a bit more of information

agressive oriented approach, each 3x3 could contain an altar, your minions would need to summon (work) the kamikaze demon drones, only 1 drone per altar allowed, the drone rest in the altar until an enemy is detected and they launch themselves at it. They constantly lose health after leaving the altar so they migth die naturally before reaching long distance enemies (exploding wherever they are); "working" on an already summoned drone makes it win xp/level up so its more effective, also high level creatures can summon stronger drones from the go. No new drone can be summoned until one dies nor can they return to the altar.
Of course more intelligent creatures would summon better, so the innate research value of creatures could be used here, being mages better summoners than an orc.

This would be an expensive and advanced room but its a mana free alternative to the cannon trap, also we could add upgrades (in the path tree) to it, so stronger warrior demon-drones are summoned instead of kamikaze ones, they would still die after leaving the room, but that room could become a fortress in itself if properly stocked of summons.

However, I do like the idea of a room that's used for creating "special forces" minions.

That would be the "Halls of the Death", where you sacrifice minions to get others with the proper combination, also serves as the reclaim for "Necromancer" minions, and you can pray here for mana as well. So this would be a high tier room opposed to an early "Dark temple" used for attracting basic minion "Cultist" and praying for mana.
I really like the idea of unique units given by combinations: mix a kobold and a goblin and you get a Suicide Bomber Kobold

My only concern with this one is instead of making the creatures unretrievable

The reason for this is that i want to avoid to create an infinite, friendly and safe gold source. We have to add Gem blocks later, they are the same as gold blocks but infinately minable, but they will be situated in the middle of feral or rogue creatures, at the reach of everyone. I want there to be WAR to get to one of those before everyone, a non lethal sweatshop would eliminate that tension and make people do the so hated micromanaging of creatures and forget about gem blocks.

Do you have any original ideas for new rooms? we could use a few more

Ahh, that's much better! Is there a design doc or thread with all the current design information you can link me to? I've only found the information on the wiki and this http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=5421 thread(Both appear to be outdated).

Danimal {l Wrote}:The reason for this is that i want to avoid to create an infinite, friendly and safe gold source. We have to add Gem blocks later, they are the same as gold blocks but infinately minable, but they will be situated in the middle of feral or rogue creatures, at the reach of everyone. I want there to be WAR to get to one of those before everyone, a non lethal sweatshop would eliminate that tension and make people do the so hated micromanaging of creatures and forget about gem blocks.

the way I suggested basically accomplishes the same thing, except it doesn't take control away from the player.

[Clarification]
The current sweatshop ideal handles the infinite gold source problem by removing all control over the creature once it's dropped in. in other words, once the creature's in, it's in until it's dead. so, for instance, if you have your uber[leet] level 40 wizard in your hand and you accidentally drop him into the sweatshop.. bye bye gandalf.

With my suggestion, the player can pull the creature out at anytime. but if they choose to do so after the "grace period"[1 ] ends, the creature is going to leave the dungeon in anger(effectively killing it and losing all the gold it could've generated if the player would've left the creature in the sweatshop).

[1 ]the "grace period" is a length of time where no gold will be generated by that creature and the creatures mood stays the same. once this time period ends, the creature will become angry and gold will start being generated. this gives the player a second chance to grab his uber[leet] level 40 wizard, before he loses it for good, but also handles the infinite gold exploit.

Hopefully I've made that more a bit more clear.

Danimal {l Wrote}:Do you have any original ideas for new rooms? we could use a few more

I think I might have a few, but I'm going to hold off until I get caught up on the design side of the project to finish hashing them out.

A cooling time is a sensible proposal, i like it, anyways that room is intended to be either a last resort for money or a way to dispose of useless troops when you have too much of them. I wouldnt consider it to be a core room.

You are rigth, all room info is pretty spread, here is a list:
Core rooms:

Dormitory (lair): place for creatures to make a bed to rest and refill their HP, nothing will join you without a few blocks of it
Farm (hatchery): creates chickens for your creatures to eat, basic room to attract creatures
Treasure room: stores gold, basic room to attract creatures
Training room: Your creatures train here to rise its levels, it cost a bit of gold to train them. it attracts warrior minded creatures
Library: Place to research rooms and spells; it attracts inteligent creatures like the warlock.
Forge: this room is needed for traps and doors to be crafted, it attracts blacksmith type creatures to work on it.
Prison: Defeated enemy creatures are locked here, when they die of hunger they return as an skeleton
Torture Chamber: captured creatures can be tortured here to reveal information on their keeper or join your side, it attracts a S&M creature
Guard Post: any creature dropped here stands on guard until it gets tired, attracts something
Graveyard: corpses are stored here, when enougth of them have rotted, a creatures appears.
Dark Temple: Creatures pray here and generate mana, attract cultists.

Advanced rooms:

“Arena”: your creatures do a battle royal here, free training but creatures get injured and near death
“Hell pits”: While creatures are here they will summon weak but mindless hellish drones that rush to attack enemies in a range (by bomb suiciding). This would be the fantasy equivalent of a missile battery.

“Hall of the dead”: place to sacrify creatures that grants new creatures, gold, mana... depending on the combination

"Recreation room"(Casino):creatures spend their money here, increases morale
"Sweatshop": where any creature dropped (enemy or owned) does forced labor to win a bit of money over time but cant be recovered and dies after some time.

One of the rooms from DK was the Scavenger room, would it be a good addition?
http://dungeonkeeper.wikia.com/wiki/Scavenger_Room

Do you think some other can be added that brings something new to the game? if creatures can work in there all the better

I think it could be a good idea to choose a number of rooms we aim for. Then we will decide which to keep or not.

I also think that we should decide long term objectives (what we want in the beta version) and short term ones (what we want for the next alpha). Then, everybody knows what are the priorities. Even if as OD is a free time game, everyone is free to work on whatever he likes, even if it is something not even planned

Concerning the rooms, I think that most of them are interesting. Concerning Scavenger, I think I never used it in DK...

But I believe that the most difficult task will be to level the creatures so that one is not too strong. I remember that in the first DK, vampires where just too good (they owned horny in 1v1 if both level 10...)

they owned horny in 1v1 if both level 10...

They did?
Once the new creature definition that bertram plans is done we can create some spreadsheets with real data about their stats and growth and balance, rigth now i dont even know the basic stats of a spawned creature, much less of a leveled one.

Then, everybody knows what are the priorities

The core rooms need to be at all costs, the others would be nice additions and some way of giving the player a few ways to play the same map depending on the order they are researched.

I also think that we should decide long term objectives (what we want in the beta version) and short term ones (what we want for the next alpha)

Graphical implementation of core rooms is the short term objective, their coding and the advanced rooms are long term. It depends at which speed the rooms functions are coded if they are added or not to alpha, i would personally love to see the training hall working and creatures leveling up on it.

Yeah the spreadsheeds , we coudl use the calcsheets from the OpenOffice for the statitics , so the people have nice way of editing their stats ... the problem is only to find a suitable CPP lib which would read and write them ·...

i use excel to edit Creatures.def, it wouldnt be so different with the future format, we would only point increments, for example: base health, + health per new level

arf,

Yeah the spreadsheeds , we coudl use the calcsheets from the OpenOffice for the statitics , so the people have nice way of editing their stats ... the problem is only to find a suitable CPP lib which would read and write them ·...

Please, no addition of a lib reading/writing xls/ods files. Let's concentrate on the core mechanisms instead of adding such things.

Regards,

Exactly, it can be done with a very simple excel file and then modificating creature.def by hand.
I hope you guys had a good holidays ,so whats in your OD pasta code plate next? (translated: what will you tackle next? )

Thanks Danimal,

As for me, I've promised hwoarangmy to create an in game window skin so I'll do that right after I've merged his code back to sourceforge.
Then, I'll try to finish my fixes about making workers more responsive about fleeing/fighting, seek far away claimable tiles and walls, and make creatures able to move between narrow passages.

What's next on my todo list is adding the hatchery room, the two models you've added so far, ask on the Ogre forums about normals support and such, and start adding support for creatures spawn conditions and room build conditions, too.
Once all that is done, I guess the next release will be the most interesting in a while.

Regards,

oh? only that? you should be done by tomorrow , seriously, i dont even know how you posted all of that at the same time... *shudder* , ill do what i can from my side as well

Once all that is done, I guess the next release will be the most interesting in a while.

No doubt it will a be milestone for the project, we will make at that time a bit of recruitement effort since there is finally something to show

I put the star into the wall tile, the results are mixed since the wall is streched up and the battlements use the same texture, it would be better if the wall used one texture for side and other for top, and didnt we agree to remove battlements?
I notice the walls and dirt/gold uses normals correctly, how so?

Hi Danimal,

I put the star into the wall tile, the results are mixed since the wall is streched up and the battlements use the same texture, it would be better if the wall used one texture for side and other for top, and didnt we agree to remove battlements?

Lol, I forgot the latest binary had the new ground textures. XD This alone proves how stupid I can be.
I think yes we agreed to remove the battlements, but nobody had the time to redo the models yet.
As for the texturing, there is indeed improvement to do, and as a first step the wall material file should be adapted to not color the wall texture anymore, but the arrows only.

Do you think this could be added anyway while we're waiting for better models? With the material fixed, the overall result will look better already, I think.

I notice the walls and dirt/gold uses normals correctly, how so?

Yep, I noticed that some time ago when testing on Windows. The fact is, if I'm not wrong of course, the RT shader system has been hard-coded to work with certain models here.
https://github.com/OpenDungeons/OpenDun ... .cpp#L1312
What I'll need to do it to make this automated for every models somehow, and see whether things are better on Windows. (On linux, I don't see actual differences with my drivers atm.)

I can't promise anything yet, though.

Best regards,

Off-Topic: Valyria Tear Episode I RC1 out! Yeah!!

Yep, I noticed that some time ago when testing on Windows. The fact is, if I'm not wrong of course, the RT shader system has been hard-coded to work with certain models here.
https://github.com/OpenDungeons/OpenDun ... .cpp#L1312
What I'll need to do it to make this automated for every models somehow, and see whether things are better on Windows. (On linux, I don't see actual differences with my drivers atm.)

Yep, I couldn't find out how to add those textures in the material files when using RTshader without hard-coding, though it's probably possible, the RTshader thing wasn't very well documented.

Hi oln,

Yep, I couldn't find out how to add those textures in the material files when using RTshader without hard-coding, though it's probably possible, the RTshader thing wasn't very well documented.

It's cool to have the code author around.

Here are a few questions:
The RT Shader system is initialized here now. (I moved back its initialization from the ODFrameListener back to the render manager as it looks more appropriate.)
https://github.com/OpenDungeons/OpenDun ... er.cpp#L81
and here:
https://github.com/OpenDungeons/OpenDun ... r.cpp#L116

As I can see you've started working on making the shader do its job when creating entities:
https://github.com/OpenDungeons/OpenDun ... .cpp#L1336
https://github.com/OpenDungeons/OpenDun ... .cpp#L1355

But here, a TODO says it's not the right thing. Do you know why?
https://github.com/OpenDungeons/OpenDun ... .cpp#L1340

I say this because if i can add support to specify the normal texture of creature, rooms and tiles at load time,
I do think it would resolve the problem. What do you think?
- Creature normal texture name could be added in the creature definition.
- Room/trap objects and tiles could be hardcoded within the class for now, while waiting for a tileset definition file and such.
- Equipment normals could be defined in the future equipment catalog file.

Also, why did you invalidate the default scheme there?
https://github.com/OpenDungeons/OpenDun ... .cpp#L1333

Best regards,

Do you think this could be added anyway

I guess its better than nothing, i attached it below

I think yes we agreed to remove the battlements, but nobody had the time to redo the models yet.

Yes, i remember it, when we are in a better position we have to rethink the way walls are used and create a new more simple set

Off-Topic: Valyria Tear Episode I RC1 out! Yeah!!

Will try it