Quick update: the zoom bug has been squished, i was actually wrong about why it was happening it was simply a redundancy i had overlooked. I put in code to easily swap between looking at the 3 different airlands in the engine demo, with any commands being given affecting the airland in focus. I am now able to have all 3 in motion at the same time by giving each one a movement command.
I'll probably do some work on a smooth camera movement from tile to tile within your airland (the swapping right now is an instant change). After I have that in i'll probably scrap the multiple airlands, clean up my code a bit, and focus on developing the basic gameplay systems of a single airland, along with a simple UI.
Well, after trying the demo, I had only one issue: the window appeared too high and left, making the normal methods of interacting with it hard or impossible(close by taskbar, immovable).
qwertyuiopas what is your screen resolution?
To what extent will Tiles be transformable by absorbing Ambiant Energies? (such as the electrical storm example you gave which is interesting as land)
Also how many elements are you planning on?
I haven't spent too much time on this yet but a quick brainstorm came up with:
fire-ice
holy-demonic
poison-cleansing
stone-wind
radiance-darkness
lightning-water
growth-decay
misery-joy
I haven't had a chance to really consider the implications of the various elemental pairings working with one another. The habituation aspect of picking up ambient energies is something i'd like to happen rather slowly, i'd prefer it is something that the player doesn't necessarily notice occurring, but is rather a consequence of the choices the player makes about other things.
(for instance if a player cuts off a town from their supply of food, and a famine strikes, killing the population the tile they lived on would become haunted by evil spirits, while the tile would be scarred, making recolonization there difficult it would open the opportunity for the player to harness said spirits and bind them into their army.
The other thing that this allows is for tiles to act as sources of particular energies, using the evil spirit example they could spread misery out into adjacent tiles, affecting the goings on in those areas, frightening enemy units and decreasing their morale greatly if they are undisciplined. Or a player could build a tower with a fallen star on the top of it, granting radiance and heat to surrounding tiles, allowing them to continue to grow crops even in the darkest of locations. Glacial tiles would begin freezing the tiles around them, while Volcano Tiles would periodically spread lava over nearby tiles.
I like the idea of normal citizens get experience at doing things... by doing them, like how Dwarf Fortress does it. Are you going to use that?
Yes, you won't be popping units out of a barracks building. My intent is that you'll have to have citizens that are able to go to the barracks and train, you'll need enough horses to provide mounts for your cavalry, resources and artisans to build them equipment, or things to trade other players for these things.
Hm. I do think that it should keep track of your citizens separately, but that might get difficult.
Also, as far as customization goes, I'd like to see the ability to change how your tower and various buildings look at a purely aesthetic level. In an online game, having a unique identity is important. Also, customized units would be really nice.
Of course, that would be a bit difficult, but just a few sliders to determine chaos/order of your tower, and maybe the colors, or something, would be enough. As long as I can make my airland stand out in a sea of other airlands, I'm happy. Ooh, what about flags?
And I don't feel like booting into windows to check it out, but how smoothly can you move in the demo? The controls are one of the most important aspects of a game, for me. I understand that moving a giant flying chunk of rock around in the air might be a but cumbersome, but it should at least move smoothly.
I am very conscious of the fact that a lot of the identification that people feel with their avatar in an online game is its appearance. My hope is that players will be able to make their airland and their tower distinct in many ways. One of these would be the style of atmosphere based on the various types of buildings, races, elements. I would want there to be a distinct difference that could range from having wooden palisades with wooden spikes and pitfalls, granite stone walls covered in moss, smooth marble walls that cast a protective semitransparent dome across the airland.
This is all very very art intensive and is very much far on the horizon at this point.
The other aspect of individuality will be the types of units you are fielding, perhaps there aren't many other players fielding an army of mixed units of holy warriors of darkness along side druids of the cleansing rot .