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Re: A more sophisticated demonstration of change-type


On Sun, 2004-06-06 at 22:18, Elijah Meeks wrote:
> > Current total is 116 (and rising!).  
> 
> Oh good, so I don't have to feel guilty with 800?

I guess I can see how a game could include 800+ units, but it would have
to be a *really* complicated game!

> 
> I mean, it's important to differentiate between a
> veteran understrength 3rd generation armor group and a
> crack understrength 3rd generation armor group and a
> crack reinforced 3rd generation armor group and an
> elite reinforced 3rd generation armor group and, and,
> and...

Sounds just like the thing with my knights, although if I was to go into
as much meticulous detail as you seem to be going into, I could set up
20 levels of archers, allow lots of humanoid races (dwarves, elves,
orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, gnolls, troglodytes, et al.) to
gain levels...

Add to that that not all knights use swords and shields (some use
two-handed swords and no shield, some use warhammers instead of swords,
some use polearms), and that number at least quadruples.

Given the current capabilities of Xconq, I can see at least 1,280
distinct units required to do all of that (and I haven't even counted to
the 48 dragon units!).  At that point, I'd want to start writing some
Perl scripts to generate this stuff.  Although some day Xconq might be
able to provide all of this flexibility *without* using 320+ distinct
units.

> 
> It looks pretty good in SDL, so I assume it'll look
> fine on the Mac, too, but after about a hundred units,
> I have my doubts any sane player will put up with the
> TCL interface.

With 116 units, I've already noticed that it's a little painful with the
TclTk interface.  Especially when, for example, you're looking at all 12
varieties of red dragons and all of them have the same icon (I'd make my
own images, but I don't consider myself much of an artist).

The last time I used the SDL interface, it seemed to be missing a lot of
functionality that I find essential to this kind of game, such as a Help
screen (so that I can verify that my code is actually going to do what I
think it will!).

> 
> And now that Eric's introduced tabled wreck-types,
> that'll allow for an exponential increase in units... 
> First to 10,000 wins a donut.

I haven't even considered how I'll incorporate the new wrecking code
into this game, although it would certainly open up possibilities (this
game also has vampires).  I could conceivably try to create variants of
the aforementioned humanoids, such as half-celestials, half-fiends,
half-dragons, liches, vampires...

On the other hand, I don't want to define any more units than I have to
in order to get the desired results; most players would go crazy trying
to figure out a game with 10,000 units.

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln@sbcglobal.net>

Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever
depths they were once able to plumb.
		-- Stanley Kaufman


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