(09-06-2015, 11:14 AM)David Bacuvka Wrote: still it would not hurt to have skirmish against ai (even with all things not in place), so game could be tested in combat, not to mention it takes testing to have ai with at least half brain. Worst case scenario, you build awesome sim/exploration/managing game, than you add multiplayer only to release its broken as hell and will not work without changing fundamentals of gameplay. I mean game is pretty feature rich to have it right now.
so back to my original question, soon or last thing to add?
Agreed, a skirmish vs. AI could help work out the mechanics prior to the release of true multiplayer.
I'm somewhat unsure as to how multiplayer should be handled, though. I really loathe the idea of simply digging through the enemy dungeon. Though at least you can't pick up and drop an army in an instant, the potential to quickly kill the enemy dark mother, avoiding all of his traps and preventing him from reacting in time, would still be too present.
Digging through reinforced walls should be very hard, but this doesn't help at all against rushes. In a game where we build a dungeon, which is essentially an underground fort, I don't think rushes should be a viable strategy.
An option could be to delimit the map into zones, which are separated by unbreakable stone, but linked together by breakable chokepoints. Perhaps the player hosting the game should be given choices in this regard: 1) no divisions, 2) stone divisions with dirt chokepoints, 3) divisions with cyclotaur maze connectors, 4) divisions with lava chokepoints. With the lava, though, I think that some special kind of technolony/magic should be researched before being allowed to build a bridge over it or in any way remove it. These options are basically 1) free-for-all/rush to attack or fortify your whole dungeon perimeter, 2) rush to fortify your weak spots, 3) military solution, and 4) economical solution.
Extra game modes could be implemented. While I think the focus of the game should remain to be a dungeon lord, versus mode could perhaps allow for some players to act as surface dwellers. This could either be essentially adding a whole new faction (basically, two games in one) where the surface-dwellers also manage rooms, creatures, food, production and such, or it could be more of an adventuring approach, where the "human" player only controls creatures, and not an economy, and is tasked with bringing down the dark mothers. Dungeon lords would try to eliminate them via raids to the surface, while they would try to raid the dungeons below.
Different victory types could be devlopped as well, kind of like in SM's Civilization. That game has the obvious conquest victory, but also cultural victory, technological victory, and diplomatic victory (I might be forgetting one). Cultural victory is kind of lame, in my opinion, and it's just the first to accumulate a certain number of culture points. While this is easy to implement (for example, first one to sacrifice 500 creatures to the Dark Mother), It's essentially a race where it's hard to impact the progress of your competitors, because any resource spent on screwing up others is less productive than just focusing on yourself, and gives third parties an edge. Still, I'm sure some like this race kind of victory. Technological victory was by unlocking some high-tier techs, and then building spaceship parts, to launch the space program. The spaceship parts had a location, though, so that allowed one to try to conquer these cities to stop their progress. In Dwelvers, though could be the construction of magical artifacts. In Heroes of Might and Magic, one can try to look for the four pieces of the Tear of Asha, an artifact which allowed for the construction of a unique superbuilding. A "technological victory" could therefore be a mix of developping certain spells, constructing certain special items, and looting certain artifacts from mazes. It could either be a hard victory (acquire X progress and win), or a soft victory (acquire X progress and gain a super creature/boost). Diplomatic victories were by getting voted as head of the UN by the other states in the game, something which doesn't really apply to a game like this, though if some forms of temples are brought into the game, the dungeon lord could very well try to please arch devils and other such deities, and pleasing a large enough number of them could allow for a hard or soft victory. Another common victory type, in games, is sudden death, where players have a limited amount of time to accomplish something. This makes me think of StarCraft II, where some maps had a timer for cycles of poison/ice/lava to spew on the map. Perhaps every X minutes, cave-ins could occur, requiring the player to do something to try to prevent/survive them. Having the Dark Mothers start over what is essentially a volcano could work too, where every X minutes lava can spew somewhere. Alternatively, could also be that the dungeon is under the sea, and that the water level rises every X minutes, and the player needs to pump it out and contain it somehow. In this mode, the player would either need to survive the longest by delaying the progress of the hazards, or find a way to manage their impacts on his own dungeon while amplifying their impacts on enemy dungeons (by sapping key structures, for example).
