Creeper World 4 Editor/CRPL Suggestion

[pawel345]

Hi,

I know that this is out of place, but there are a few features in CW3 that were not possible and might be handy in CW4 but are of  the sort that would need to be in the game from early alfa or not at all probably.

This is just a random list, obviously none of them will probably be possible.


1. Expose resources to mapmakers/ allow mapmakers for custom packets, energy ect.

So nr 1 thing that was impossible in CRPL of CW3 was to generate energy for the player. It would be really great if there was an option of creating custom resources, and defining if they are like energy(instant) or are packets.


2. Expose player controlled units stats/ enable creation of player units.

Now this is possible in CRPL but is very hard and often there is a problem that the custom units handle differently than regular ones. Additionally there was a lot of different requests in the past to be able to tell if a mortar, cannon or bertha shell hit somewhere so if mapmaker could get to the player units to modify or add it would make it all easier.     

3. Along with suggestion 2 a natural extension would be expose tech tree(if there will be any) to allow change what the upgrades change and add some custom upgrades.(I guess this is actually a part of the units but leaving it here)



Additional I have a question regarding the (nonexistant yet) core gameplay, Is there a plan of adding underground(CW2) now that the game is 3D. So pressurized creeper, underground structures to shield them from waves and so on?


Again sorry for this post but this some random thoughts.

[Karsten75]

So nr 1 thing that was impossible in CRPL of CW3 was to generate energy for the player. It would be really great if there was an option of creating custom resources, and defining if they are like energy(instant) or are packets.

Since all the defined resources in CW3 had resource packs that you could access via a Siphon I'm assuming you are asking for an additional, player-defined resource type that can be carried over the transmission network of the game?

Additional I have a question regarding the (nonexistant yet) core gameplay, Is there a plan of adding underground(CW2) now that the game is 3D. So pressurized creeper, underground structures to shield them from waves and so on?

The camera is above ground. To change the game so one can go into (eg.) caves or tunnels is really a completely different game with different graphics requirements and different behavior for weapons. There are several optimizations to only render the creeper and terrain at the surface level. Virgil referred to it in a blog comment when someone asked what one would see if the camera was submerged in creeper. :)

What you might hope to see is perhaps objects (foreign and domestic) that may need to be uncovered/discovered, but the type of CW2 gameplay won't be making a return - it's just not really compatible from what I understand.

[pawel345]

Yeah I know, that CW2 type gameplay will not happen, this were some general questions observations as the game is still alpha. The resources was one is more about having all the normal resources exposed, and maybe an ability to possibly add a player defined resource.

Generally this post is more about asking Virgilw to have this customizability in mind when his is coding the base structure of the game, as it will probably too late once there are more units/features.

[planetfall]

Let me weigh in to say that that there are numerous disadvantages to using siphons. To wit:

Spoiler

• Unremovable popup text
• Fixed rate of extraction for Ore packs.
• Constant "siphon depleted" messages. It's possible to mitigate these for Aether packs. I have not tried for Energy packs; Ore poses the problem of deleting the final packets along with the connection and the siphon.
• Ore and Energy siphons don't add to the income stated in the overhead info panels; Energy packs don't dump into storage like reactors. You can kludge this (as I have) by spawning reactors/mines, but you are constrained by the default behaviors and raw numbers of those structures.
• Unable to create new destinations for Aether and Ore as one can for Energy and AC

[close]

Not feature-begging cw3 (that ship has sailed) but legitimizing the request for more robust script access to resources in cw4.

[Relli]

I definitely agree with the desire to have access to more of the basic things. In CW3 you can access and tweak the stats of Emitters, such as creeper emitted and the interval. That kind of control would be nice to have elsewhere. Like modifying the AoE range of a Mortar, or changing its attack speed, or energy usage per shot. Things of that nature. And I've always loved the idea of being able to tweak the Forge Upgrades (or whatever CW4's equivalent will be), such that you could read what the current upgrade level is (for use in custom player units), or even have alternate ways of raising or even lowering the current upgrade levels. Things of that nature.

The general rule here is that from the player's perspective, the more options, the merrier the mapmakers (and the more diverse and interesting their maps). While, I would imagine, from the developer's perspective, making those things visible takes effort and might be costly to run. So it almost comes down to a tug-of-war, of how many such options the players can get out of the dev. I guess my own personal opinion would be that at minimum I would want to be able to read variables such as attack speed/energy costs/current Forge Upgrade levels. Even if setting them is too much to ask for, being able to read them could allow for a lot more than you might expect.

[GoodMorning]

On the subject of "underground":

Three dimensions is actually a big step up. I don't recall the thread where it was mentioned, but CW2 is essentially the same flow mechanics as the other games, but with an invisible hill stretching the height of the map.

3D also causes major complications in the engine, as far as tunnels, equalisation, terrain multilevels and so forth go. At the moment, all the CPU has to worry about is two numbers: terrain height and Creeper height. (Plus fields, plus Digi, plus walls, ...) and V is still talking about needing a Chronat-like system to keep lag under control on big maps.

For custom resources, there's exactly one required command: RoutePacket. More would be nice, but the pathfinding needs to be native to come in under the opcode limit. Being able to find Aether to delete it is the major problem with it in CW3. The entire tech system is more-or-less divorced from CRPL beyond spawning Totems. (SetTechLimit excepted)

[ShadowDragon7015]

I would like to see some crpl functions that can do some advanced terrain movements easily that are built in like:

• circle: circle(starting, point, size,height)
• Square: square(starting, point,sideone, sidetwo)
• wave square: waveS(starting, point, side1 length, side2 length, time in seconds) makes a wave in a square shape going out with the terrain to mess with the creeper or units in that area
• wave circle: waveC(starting, point, circle width, time in seconds) same as last thing but with a circle instead
• randomize circle: randcirc(starting,point, width) randomizes the terrain height in that area
• randomize square: randsqu(starting, point, side1 length, side 2 length) same as last but square

because i think it would look really cool and make advanced terrain movements in the middle of a map a lot easier.