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Author Topic: Creature Variations  (Read 11755 times)

Toady One

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Creature Variations
« on: April 14, 2002, 07:11:00 pm »

As I said elsewhere, I'm now working on individual creature variations since I need to have them before I start editors.  I'm having a little trouble however -- basically, I'm not sure how to display the creature variations without doing one of the following:

1) making it slower
2) making it take up more video memory
3) destroying the detail I have already

The only alternative I can think of is not to display the new creature variations at all.  This is the alternative I'm mostly going with -- I'm going to make YOUR creature displayed with the proper individual coloration.  Later on, when there are very important critters like kings, party members, super-bad-guys and so on, maybe they will also be colored appropriately.  Also, if you (l)ook at a creature, there will at some point be a window that pops up with the appropriate coloration.  In addition, there might be an option to make the faces of creatures displayed appropriately (like eye color and so on), just not the rest of their bodies.

I simply can't do it now -- maybe in a few years when the cards have more memory it'll be made an option :)  It would take about 32Kbytes of memory to store the texture of one creature on average.  It doesn't seem like a lot (which is why I can do it for your character and other important ones), but if you enter a town with a hundred creatures in it, that jumps up to 3 megs of video memory, which is bad, and the numbers only get higher.

Later on if I care I can also do some other semi-tricky things like consider the average skin/fur color within a given town, so that if Voluptuous Vomiters are mostly green in one city, and mostly brown in another, they will be colored according.

For now, it'll just be you.

------------------------------------

Here's some good news, depending on your perspective:  since stock creature editors and motif editors are so similar, the motif editor release will also include a certain other editor.  Humans shouldn't have tails, after all.

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Alanor

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #1 on: April 14, 2002, 09:15:00 pm »

Humans without tails!!!
soon we will have orcs!!
and elves!!
and
get this:!!:!:!:
kobolds!!!

:-)

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Alanor
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Demon

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2002, 11:42:00 am »

And a space game!    :mad:
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Alanor

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2002, 10:30:00 pm »

hmmm
how do i post a picture??
hmm
no idea...
if i figure it out...
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Alanor
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Toady One

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2002, 11:26:00 pm »

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Alanor

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #5 on: April 19, 2002, 12:03:00 am »

See?

This is what I was afraid of..
I go through the trouble of putting something up and I didnt even get ONE response!!!!!
noone said ANYTHING!!
(maybe its because posts havent been working..)
oh well

My space game has little ships that fly around..

as soon as I feel ahh... encouraged?
then i will work on:
1) Radar
2) enemy smarts
(no intelligence yet ;-)

then there might be something silly to play wiht...

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Alanor
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spelguru

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #6 on: April 19, 2002, 03:06:00 am »

Yes... Humans without tails seem like a good idea. While your at it, could you reduce nerve hits in the legs. So annoying when my titans get an nervedamage in the leg and keeps falling over.  :mad:
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Toady One

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #7 on: April 19, 2002, 07:33:00 am »

Demon's at a math tournament, so he can't get back to you on the space game.  I'm sure you'll be praised in due time :)  I have a lot of little clean up issues on my plate, as well as some large missing concepts to add in.  I'll give the nerves a look tonight to see how quickly I could fix them.
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Demon

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #8 on: April 19, 2002, 01:14:00 pm »

Indeed I won the math tournament!    :D   Now all I have to do is beat the Cal. national competitor and my war against Pacific time will be one step closer to completion!

Your game looks awesome!  I want it!  Get a demo out soon!

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Toady One

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #9 on: April 19, 2002, 06:37:00 pm »

Tupac screams: "Cali, where we riot not rally!  West side!  We all know it's the best side!"  You could probably beat him in a math contest, though.  Especially since he's dead.

If you can beat the Cal team (which I know nothing about), I'll set up the next deadline on "Pennsylvania time", whatever that is.  Weren't you supposed to lose the state tournament?  What happened?  There are going to be some very angry mobsters after you now -- way to fix the odds.

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Demon

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #10 on: April 20, 2002, 05:22:00 am »

I guess I was just afraid.  The other people didnt have much of a chance against me really.     ;)   I think that bothered them...  "2 or 3 places is fine..."  Stupid 'close enough' math!

[ April 20, 2002: Message edited by: Demon ]

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Toady One

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #11 on: April 20, 2002, 08:43:00 am »

What about all of those goat-problem solving people?  Where were they?  And do you have pi and sqrt(2) and sqrt(3) and sqrt(5) and all those number memorized to a bunch of places, or were you using a calculator?  And WTF can't you just give exact answers?  Did they want people to use compasses and rulers or something?
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Demon

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Re: Creature Variations
« Reply #12 on: April 20, 2002, 10:17:00 am »

Well, there was the one kid who was pretty kick ass at math...  But this was a tech school related competition, so there wernt alot of calculus masters or anyhting.  I know pi out to 3.1415926535897932384626 but I dont know any square roots really, so my calc was approximating for me.  And as far as the rounding goes we were building towers out of straws and masking tape so "exact" anwers were impossible.  I dont see why they made a big deal about mentioning it though.  It was kinda funny.
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