Game mechanics of portals

[andrewbuck]

I just pushed a commit which adds functionality to the portals as well as adds the probability coefficients for creature choices to the level file. Currently the probability coefficients are not being used, all creatures still have the same probability of appearing, but I wanted to get the portals working and debugged before I started worrying about the probabilities, etc. I may get around to coding up the probability stuff tonight, although it will more likely be tomorrow before I get it done, adding the portals brought to light several previously hidden bugs which took a while to fix.

The portals currently roll a dice every turn to see if they should spawn a creature and this probability is currently just a flat 10% no matter how many creatures you have, etc. Note that this is a separate probability from the probabilities we have been discussing; those probabilities pertain to the how likely one creature is relative to the others that it will be the one to come through the portal, whereas the probability I am talking about here is how likely that the portal will spawn a creature this turn. We should try to come up with some criteria for determining how likely it is that a new creature will come into your dungeon. I will list below some things we may want to use in this probability calculation for ideas:

* The number of creatures you already have (creatures don't want to be too crowded)
* The amount of available sleeping space you have left
* The amount of gold you have in your treasury (so creatures have faith that they will be paid)
* The amount of mana you currently have (maybe creatures like more powerful keepers, this would also provide an incentive to try to avoid excessive spell use)

There may be other things we want to use in the calculation, I am just putting these out there as a suggestion. We should probably start a new thread for this if we wish to further discuss this, so this thread can be used for code updates and discussion directly pertaining to the updates.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

* The amount of mana you currently have (maybe creatures like more powerful keepers, this would also provide an incentive to try to avoid excessive spell use)

I do not like this idea. I do not see why you would like keepers to use less spells. That creatures want a rich keeper is understandable because they want to be paid, but as they do not have access to you mana resources then I do not think that this should be enforced.

[andrewbuck]

* The amount of mana you currently have (maybe creatures like more powerful keepers, this would also provide an incentive to try to avoid excessive spell use)

I do not like this idea. I do not see why you would like keepers to use less spells. That creatures want a rich keeper is understandable because they want to be paid, but as they do not have access to you mana resources then I do not think that this should be enforced.

Thats fine, it was only a suggestion. I should point out though that I kind of phrased it poorly; what I meant to say was not that you want the keeper to use fewer spells in general, rather that you want to wait to use your spells until you have a buffer of mana built up and then try to keep it fairly high. As I said though it was just a suggestion and I have no particular attachment to the idea.

-Buck

[Keldaryth]

* The amount of mana you currently have (maybe creatures like more powerful keepers, this would also provide an incentive to try to avoid excessive spell use)

I do not like this idea. I do not see why you would like keepers to use less spells. That creatures want a rich keeper is understandable because they want to be paid, but as they do not have access to you mana resources then I do not think that this should be enforced.

Thats fine, it was only a suggestion. I should point out though that I kind of phrased it poorly; what I meant to say was not that you want the keeper to use fewer spells in general, rather that you want to wait to use your spells until you have a buffer of mana built up and then try to keep it fairly high. As I said though it was just a suggestion and I have no particular attachment to the idea.

-Buck

Well, actually it would depend on whether a creature is paid in gold or mana. For some undead, such as wraiths, it would make sense for them to be attracted to mana rather than gold. Although I suppose this is less of a 'chance to spawn random creature' and a potential threshold requirement (must have 'n' mana)

[Keldaryth]

I just pushed a commit which adds functionality to the portals as well as adds the probability coefficients for creature choices to the level file. Currently the probability coefficients are not being used, all creatures still have the same probability of appearing, but I wanted to get the portals working and debugged before I started worrying about the probabilities, etc. I may get around to coding up the probability stuff tonight, although it will more likely be tomorrow before I get it done, adding the portals brought to light several previously hidden bugs which took a while to fix.

The portals currently roll a dice every turn to see if they should spawn a creature and this probability is currently just a flat 10% no matter how many creatures you have, etc. Note that this is a separate probability from the probabilities we have been discussing; those probabilities pertain to the how likely one creature is relative to the others that it will be the one to come through the portal, whereas the probability I am talking about here is how likely that the portal will spawn a creature this turn. We should try to come up with some criteria for determining how likely it is that a new creature will come into your dungeon. I will list below some things we may want to use in this probability calculation for ideas:

* The number of creatures you already have (creatures don't want to be too crowded)
* The amount of available sleeping space you have left
* The amount of gold you have in your treasury (so creatures have faith that they will be paid)
* The amount of mana you currently have (maybe creatures like more powerful keepers, this would also provide an incentive to try to avoid excessive spell use)

There may be other things we want to use in the calculation, I am just putting these out there as a suggestion. We should probably start a new thread for this if we wish to further discuss this, so this thread can be used for code updates and discussion directly pertaining to the updates.

-Buck

I personally liked the DK2 system where creatures would come through if the portal limit had not been reached at time intervals. The reasoning here is that creatures should come through regardless of things like the above. This way keepers who don't sort out their dungeons could find themselves facing a bunch of cranky, hungry and sleep deprived minions that decide to leave, or turn rebel and join the enemy, or finding they have a lot of creatures, but no gold...

It also means that in a multiplayer match everyone will get creatures - the difference is going to be the mix and the organisation, rather than whether or not a player has built the 'right' set of rooms to get the maximum inflow of creatures in the fastest time.

[andrewbuck]

For all of these things (gold, mana, etc) they were not the only things influencing creature arrival rates and creatures would still come through if you didn't have gold or mana, you would just get more if you had those things. I was thinking of it from the perspective that the creatures would be impressed by your power and wealth and thus would be more likely to join you. It's kind of the "join the tough guy" mentality, or sort of the "bling bling" attitude, where people are drawn to wealth and power.

A separate issue that you brought up was the issue of paying some creatures in mana. Although in my discussions above I was not referring to the idea of paying them with mana, just pointing out that it could act as a bonus draw since your power impresses them, I had previously though about paying some creatures with mana. I figured each creature would have two pay rates, one in gold and one in mana. The creatures would need to have both of their pay criteria met to be happy (most creatures would want all gold an no mana but a few would want both or even all mana in the case of ghosts, etc). I want to stress though that this is a separate discussion than the one above about how likely creatures are to be drawn in.

-Buck

[Keldaryth]

Oh yeah - the pay rate /= probability of a creature (any creature) appearing, I guess the issue is that I understand the 'join the tough guy' mentality, but I'm worried about a situation where one keeper would have 50 creatures where another would have 10 in the same length of gameplay, purely based off things like starting rooms. Is there a planned cap on how many creatures your initial portal will attract?

[svenskmand]

I DK and DK2 I think the limit per portal was 20 creatures.

[Keldaryth]

Well some maps was 20, the default was 15+5 per extra portal.

[andrewbuck]

I thought rather than having hard caps we use the number of creatures in the dungeon to subtract from the probability of getting a new one. Eventually you subtract so much the number becomes negative and there is 0 chance of new creatures. This way you don't have an arbitrary limit like 20, but rather you have a limit based on how well you manage your resources and how good you are at mining, etc. Regarding the issue of one player having lots more creatures than the other, if you make the bonuses from having lots of gold and things like that fairly small compared to the negative count imposed by the number of creatures, then the 0 probability point only moves up slightly. We could set up the values of these adjustments to so that a player with no gold or other bonuses, is limited to ~20 creatures whereas a player with all the bonuses maxed out is limited to ~25. Of course the numbers here are just for demonstration purposes but I think we should have some kind of bonuses like that since it makes it seem a bit more realistic. I don't think DK ever provided an explanation for why the number of portals limited your creatures to a hard number, that was always something that kind of bothered me.

NOTE: By the way I am going to split off these last few posts to a new thread since I want to keep this one for code development announcements and discussion. It is already long enough as is.

-Buck

[VinWij]

Well, having a higher rate based on your performance in dungeon-building is great for single-player, as it will reward the player with a quicker build-up against the enemy forces. In multiplayer however, it would mean that it becomes a rush-game, where you build template-dungeons that are most effective to get creatures quickly and attack early when the other keeper has less creatures. Not my style of play.

Fixed interval for beasties entering, type of creatures based on what your dungeon has to offer. I think that will work the best. If you have a lot of mana, more chance for ghosts, if you have a big treasury, more chance for a gold-interested character, and so on.

[svenskmand]

I do also definitely not like a game-play where doing a rush benefits you, like in various RTS from Blizzard, like the WarCraft and StarCraft series, or Command & Conquerer series.

Nice to see a new face here, welcome aboard VinWij you should also introduce yourself in the "where do you live?"-thread.

[VinWij]

Thanks . Posted the introduction too. How will you handle sending away creatures? Throw them onto the portal or a button to send away the creature on it's interface? Maybe have him commit a few acts of vandalism on his way to the portal for revenge ^_^

[svenskmand]

I like the way it worked in DK where you throw the creature into the portal to send it away

[andrewbuck]

That was a good way of doing it, however I like the "your fired" approach where the creatures are stealing "office supplies" on the way out the door. It kind of balances nicely with the idea that they are "employees" in your dungeon.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

That was a good way of doing it, however I like the "your fired" approach where the creatures are stealing "office supplies" on the way out the door. It kind of balances nicely with the idea that they are "employees" in your dungeon.

-Buck

Some of that was also in DK, when your creatures get angry, then start to trash you dungeon

We could make a variation, first the creature joins you dungeon, it visits the dungeon temple and allows the keeper to control it (in DK there was a red cloud when the creature touched the dungeon heart). Now the keeper can throw the creature into the portal if he does not like it just like in DK. And if the creature gets angry, and is angry long enough, it goes to the dungeon temple and disallows the keeper control over it, it could then wreck your dungeon on its way to the portal to leave, or it could be a permanent enemy of you and begin to attack you dungeon and creatures by going postal

I think a "your are sacked"-button is too boring :S If you are allowed to control the creature by picking it up you can do that, but if the creature decides to disallow you to do that it can, and then it can go postal if it likes -- or maybe even rejoin you if you make it happy (e.g. by giving it a shit load of money or something).

[Keldaryth]

Can't we use all of them?

I mean, you can throw them out, fire them (if you don't have time), throw them in prison, stick them on the torture rack... dump them in the temple font...

there were SO many ways to get rid of creatures in DK2

But yes, my initial thoughts were with VinWij - a rewards based system promotes a rush strategy, which was what I was hoping to avoid.

[andrewbuck]

But yes, my initial thoughts were with VinWij - a rewards based system promotes a rush strategy, which was what I was hoping to avoid.

Sounds fine by me then. I was never much of a fan of rushing either and I had forgotten about that issue when I first proposed the idea of bonuses.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

Yes rushing sucks

[Skasi]

Yes rushing sucks

No.. actually.. not at all. It helps keeps games interesting and skimping boring repetitive starts - that's my point of view. You just have to keep them unpredictable, allowing players to use rushy opponents to their advantage, eg:
Killing a lot of creatures build up your reputation => more powerful creatures willing to join you.
Putting their bodies onto the graveyard => skeletons, ghosts, or simply sacrifice them.
Similarly putting them into a prison => information, or even convert them.

I can think of several disadvantages for players which aim for a lot of creatures early on. Lack of gold due to high wages, lack of work power because of that early long tunnel you need to dig to reach your opponent, maybe even trouble with nasty creatures you get to fight with from all the digging. After all these drawbacks, when your creatures finally reach your opponent, half of them will be slaughtered by the first few traps and the other half will have to fight, being hungry and sleepy because you just don't have the money or captured tiles for the farm and beds you need to set up somewhere close to your enemy. Oh, I mustn't forget about the negative effects all this will have on your reputation and thus the arrival of new creatures.


Err.. another reason I like the idea about things affecting the probability/time of arrivals is the very first one mentioned:

* The number of creatures you already have (creatures don't want to be too crowded)

This and many other things will help balancing out games - prolonging them.


It seems to me some people here get scared already when hearing the term "rushing" - even though some scurrying can always be fun - just because they may have played the wrong games.

[svenskmand]

Skasi are you by any chance playing Spring? I am pretty sure i talked to you in the chat yesterday.

A comment to your comment regarding rushing. As you do not have direct control over your creatures a rushing is not really possible anyways in games like DK and OD, as you would have to have a "call to arms" spell and put it into enemy territory to actually get your creatures there, and there is a long way to the enemy base, so you need to dig allot, and also the "call to arms" spell in DK costs you gold every second, and if you are low on that already it is not really a good idea to send a bunch of low level creatures the enemys way, to just get killed so that you can spend more time on training some new creatures. Or even worse the enemy gets some of the better creatures that you did not get because he now has a much more attractive dungeon to get even more powerful creatures.

[Skasi]

That's exactly what I wanted to say, svenskmand. Still you wrote "Yes rushing sucks" instead of "That wouldn't really be a problem".

Also, I might be wrong, but wasn't the player able to pick up and drop creatures? I think so.. not sure though. Not that this would make things any worse.

edit: Also yes I am the same "Skasi" as I have been yesterday.. or rather the day before. Anyway, for some reason DK2 came into my mind yesterday. So I was looking for all the clones I had found a year ago or so. When reading through the forum I thought "hey.. I think I know that nickname", then quickly checked through my friend list.. "oh it really was that new players name". I just didn't want to ask in my very first post. It's such a very very small world!!
Maybe.. just maybe I read your nickname a year ago when I found out about OD and.. reading that name yesterday made me wanna be a dungeon keeper once again.. just maybe.

[svenskmand]

That's exactly what I wanted to say, svenskmand. Still you wrote "Yes rushing sucks" instead of "That wouldn't really be a problem".

Also, I might be wrong, but wasn't the player able to pick up and drop creatures? I think so.. not sure though. Not that this would make things any worse.

Yes, but he can only drop creatures on his own claimed land, except kobolds, these can be dropped on the players claimed and unclaimed land. So to invade a enemy by dropping creatures nearby you need to have a claimed path to his dungeon. So rushing is really not possible, fortunately

edit: Also yes I am the same "Skasi" as I have been yesterday.. or rather the day before. Anyway, for some reason DK2 came into my mind yesterday. So I was looking for all the clones I had found a year ago or so. When reading through the forum I thought "hey.. I think I know that nickname", then quickly checked through my friend list.. "oh it really was that new players name". I just didn't want to ask in my very first post. It's such a very very small world!!
Maybe.. just maybe I read your nickname a year ago when I found out about OD and.. reading that name yesterday made me wanna be a dungeon keeper once again.. just maybe.

It seems smaller than you would think Could be, I have been part of OD from the start