But IMHO, the biggest problem with DK was that it was too flat. Usually, when I played a game, I started to check for wizards/dragons to search in the library. As soon as I had Cimetary, I used to kill the wizards by slapping them and after a while, I got a vampire. Then, I just add to level him as much as possible and he was so powerful that he could almost finish every level by himself. He could even beat horny in 1v1 both level 10.
Eh eh. Well, I had a similar technique with black mistresses.
DK was a stone breaker in itself, but the guys could handle it all at once, I guess.
That's why I believe we should find a way to make OD more different and to not have one big creature that beats all the others. I also believe we should try to add risk to the player actions. For example, we could make a bit long to recover from wounds. That way, if a player puts too much of his creatures in the arena, he will take the risk of being attacked and loose his precious leveled wounded creatures
I agree with that point. That's why I believe we should make OD the most configurable possible concerning creature stats, room effects, and even effect per turn, such as awakeness lost per turn, and the like.
This way, it will be a matter of tweaking the values until obtaining the desired effects and try many things without recompiling the game endlessly. This could also help tweaking those values for mods, or different difficulty levels, like in campaigns.
As a first step, I'd propose that stats/level configuration support should be added to creatures.def.
E.g.: hp (when spawned at lvl 1)/ hp per level / max hp (can't be higher than that whatever the level)
Repeat for every stats.
I'll work on a XP scale, and earning values and conditions sheet based on the time a lan should last also.
Also, on the whole design plan, now we have functional basic rooms thanks to a developer which name starts by a H ;], what is next is to add creature spawning conditions and maybe room build availability conditions along with streamlining creatures stats.
In short:
- Creature spawning conditions (basic): A creature only has a chance to spawn if a room R with at least X active spots exists when rolling the spawn dice.
This way, building a room the fastest possible will have a reason.
- Room build availability conditions: 2 different things:
1. A level parameter, telling which rooms can be built in this map. Note that I said 'built', not already built when starting the map. It will be useful to later create a certain challenge on certain maps, will make possible to disable certain rooms at the beginning of the campaign for tutorial purpose, and will permit to disable unfinished/useless rooms when doing a release.
2. A separate concept from 1 but has the same effect: The Keeper can only build a room if certain parameters are gathered.
E.g.:
- The (new and shiny) Hatchery becomes available once you have at least 4 creatures.
- The Library becomes available once you have at least one Wizard.
...
In both case, the corresponding room button is hidden if not available.
Feel free to complete me would I be wrong. We should also try to complete the list of conditions for 2. so we can think of a configuration that handles it.
Note that 1. would be great for the release, if certain rooms are useless. 2. would be for after the next release, unless someone holds on it fast.
If we can come to an agreement here, I'll open corresponding issues on github.
Best regards,