Terrain

[Groovy]

Surface terrain

Canyon:


Cliff:


Desert:


Dirt:


Forest:


Forest in snow:


Grassland:


Hill:


Hill in snow:


Ice:


Lake:


Lava:


Mountain:


Mountain in lava:


Rock:


Rocks in sea:


Sea:


Snow:


Swamp:


Underground terrain

Submarine:


Sumterranean:


Sky terrain

Cloud:


Sky:


Plane terrain

Darkness:


Dream:


Fire:


Firmament:


Rainbow:

[Panda Tar]

Ah, this is something I needed to see in order to propose you some arrangements on animal-terrain relation. I was doing it already, more like imagining which terrains to focus on.

[Groovy]

Here are the terrain types that I'm using for the first battle scenario that I'm working on. It is a minimal set that I'd like to expand on as we experiment, but definitely not to the full set from my first post.



Of the above information, the resources produced is the most tentative. It's something else that I'm planning to refine significantly through experimentation. The basic idea is that mines will produce different kinds of resources depending on the surrounding terrain.

PS: I love your signature, Panda.

[Groovy]

The four terrain classifications from my opening post (surface, underground, sky and plane) were intended to correspond to different layers of the adventure map in the PC version of the game. The reason for adding planes was to support storytelling by providing exotic locations that the player wouldn't encounter while exploring the adventure map itself, but only when transported there through planar rifts that the mapmaker could place on the adventure map.

I'm planning to restrict the tabletop version of the game to the surface layer only, and probably not all the surface terrain either (canyon, cliff and dirt look like good candidates to drop).

[Panda Tar]

Well, while working with those 4 starting factions, it won't be needed many of those terrains.

Q: Ah...will there be roads?

I like the idea of terrain-bound mines, which is simply logical. The ability to build mines and resource production buildings is, I gather, dependable of faction technology/research or players won't have this power?

Regarding resource type, for a start, I'd suggest:

• Food: how does this one work?
• Wood (crafting, structure): only for building and hiring?
• Gold (currency)
• Ore(crafting, structure, equipping): crafting would be item-making, and equipping would be making troops available (when they require a certain specified equipment)
• Gemstone (crafting): craft elemental properties into items
• Mana (crafting, imbuing): liquid essence of the terrain (replacing sulphur, mercury and the likes so as to detach from HoMM) used to craft magical items and to imbue magical properties into units

How does this sound to you? I think Food and Mana could be found in any terrain, although the production amongst them could be pretty different regarding Mana. Gemstone is a resource related to elemental capabilities or a certain terrain, whilst mana would be related to magical capabilities in an general view. Combining Mana and Gemstone to craft an item would generate special magical effects.

P.S.: you're welcome! hoho This way the signature might grasp someone's attention.

[Groovy]

I'm thinking of enabling some units to build roads, akin to Roman legions. The effect of the road would be to reduce movement cost of the underlying terrain by 50%. I'll see whether it works while experimenting with combat.

I'll comment on buildings and resources in separate threads.

[Panda Tar]

In AoW 3 you can build roads, Watch towers and Forts with one of your building units (you can also walk over trees and mountains, although your movement points are spent pretty fast. Impassable terrain is shown like a strange darker gray mist).

[Groovy]

Here are the terrain cards. I'm only using the first and the last row at this stage of prototyping.

[Panda Tar]

[Panda Tar]

So, you said in Facebook that you were feeling like there could have a bother in future due the current layout of the PC format for the intelligent terrain layout. Can you give further info on why you were concluding this?

[Groovy]

I didn't post the question here because it had to do with the browser version of Heroic rather than the tabletop one. Anyway...

The question is how to model terrain so as to enable close integration with other game features, especially spells and other unit abilities. Basically, I want the terrain to change based on what the player does. If he uses a fire-based spell or ability, flammable terrain like forests should burn down. Cracking ice should reveal lake/river/sea. Avalanche should deposit a layer of snow, and volcanic eruption a layer of lava. Things like that.

Of course, this can all be implemented with a completely primitive design where no intelligence is built into different terrain types and all game rules simply spell out the list of terrains that are affected by them instead of looking for compatible terrain features. I don't like this approach at all and would rather group things in various ways to simplify rule definition. For example, define the concept of fire, classify various actions as fire-producing, and then define rules that cause forest to burn down in terms of the fire category rather than in terms of each individual action that produces fire.

Which leads back to the question: how do we model terrain?