Reverse the game

[Indiana_nic]

Hi Virgil and every involved people in this highly addictive game. I bought it last week and I abused too much of it.

After analyzing the game behavior, I would say that the game elements are really well decoupled and object oriented. Pretending that would mean that it is possible to reverse the game and play the creeps!

Just some ideas of a possible gameplay:

The city in front of you is well defended and you have 1 emitter at the beginning.
You can only build new emitters where the creeps are 2(or N) levels and + thick.
You can build rock throwers and send rocks the same way you send drones (but less precise)
Of course everyone know when you win... death to the Odin City!

Ultimately, the enemy city could grow (as a predefined recorded pattern) to try to defeat you.

As I said, just an idea to expand this very original and cool game possibilities. This will cost time and only money can buy time, so I hope you get plenty of it with your game!

[mothwentbad]

Challenging AI would probably a difficult thing to program here, and some kind of economic scheme for making creep emitters and placing them would also be quite a challenge. I imagine it would very hard to program all of this, much harder than making CW was. But someone somewhere could do it, eventually. It would just have to be a sequel, I think.

As it stands now, there's no AI at all - just some physics equations for spreading the creep.

Not that it wouldn't be fun, but it's asking for a lot, I'd imagine.

[Aurzel]

actually i already suggested a system for playing as the creeper in one of the multiplayer threads but obviously yeah it would be very hard to pull off

[NoobSauce]

*shameless plug of my own idea*
You could, however, have creep-to-creep warfare -- a modified collector or a completely new building that emits a 'friendly' creeper (probably modeled by the exact same equation as conventional creeper except with negative temperatures rather than positive temperatures) that annihilates creeper.

[Aurzel]

wow talk about deja vu, it seems like just the other day that virgil was telling us about his idea to have a friendly creeper producing building ...

[Indiana_nic]

*shameless plug of my own idea* : It is not because you have an idea that you are the only one. This idea is not new at all, let's talk about StarWars VS Tie Figher, WarCraft/Starcraft gameplays, etc.... Shameless use of others idea to pretend it is yours... I know this is not a new concept, I just propose it to the game...

About the concept integration, there is no need to add AI to an Enemy Odin City to obtain an interesting gameplay, just let the physics go on. Assuming no AI added, this type of gameplay should not be more difficult to implement than the initial game. Maybe the concept does not interrest the game owner, but don't pretend it is difficult when all the required prerequisites are already present in the present game.  

The towers already shoot by themself, the creep already advance by itself, what is difficult in placing ourself emiters (constrained to some rules) instead of towers? please explain...

[NoobSauce]

Fine, then.  It's a shameless plug of virgil's idea.  Didn't know I'd get so much hate for it, sorry.

I think the idea here was to have an AI controlling Odin City and building placement -- the computer "playing" as the human, with the goal of getting to the reactors.  The problem wouldn't be in placing the emitters on-the-fly, but rather, the problem would be having odin city (the cpu version) decide where to put buildings to win the map.  The A.I. in this game is minimal -- yeah, towers shoot by themselves but they have no long-term strategy.  Yes, the packets decide where to travel on the network, but again, they only have to find the quickest route -- they don't have to do anything complex.  Creeper flows based on physics, not weighted decisions.

Also, creep-to-creep combat, by itself, doesn't really lend itself to CW.  In my opinion, Creeper World needs to be about humanity versus the creeper.  Maybe humanity can make a synthetic creeper, but the point is that humanity is there in squishy little Odin City.  Creeper versus creeper...  I dunno, it just feels more like an easter egg bonus mode or something -- not "main game" material.

[Aurzel]

lol no hate to you nubby, just sayin :P

and i agree with what your saying, nub's right nic you cant just have a layout of buildings and leave it with no AI, that just means a win is inevitable and makes it boring

[Indiana_nic]

Thanks Noob for your personal message, there was no hate intention in my reply, english isn't my primary language so I apologize if my sentenses aren't well balanced ;-)

Aurzel you are right, no movement = boring gameplay. When I am thinking about no AI I am thinking about a predefined city growing  with a predefined placement sequence.

Today, when you start a normal level, you can pause the game and place all your buildings before the first second and push play and your city will grow alone without your help, this is what I am talking about. You change nothing on the current game and it already works this way. If you want to be more AI like(fake), you hide the "unstarted" buildings so they appears on the level only when a precedent building is completed. This part is not yet programmed, but all the prerequisites are because the energy movements follow this simple rule. This kind of hidden city could cover all the map at the beginning but as you grow your creeps, the hidden buildings are removed from the creep coverage the same way it would explode today, but silently because they doesn't exist yet.

My developer eyes tell me that it is the simplest part of a creep VS human integration. It seems a good gameplay for me, but this is just an idea.

[Aurzel]

there's still no growth though and no chance of victory because the city cant react to the creeper

[Kamron3]

I agree, AI should be in the game. Although it would have to be an enemy that fought with Creeper-based/powered weapons and stuff.

_k

[NoobSauce]

Kamron: Wa-wa-wa-whaaat?  Creeper's tough enough when it's just mindless ooze, you tryin' to get us killed?  XD

I still have to insist that some of the appeal of Creeper World is that the Creeper has no A.I., and that makes it stronger than any A.I. will ever make it.  If you have A.I. in a game, you expect the opponent to act with intelligence.  Full, human, "I can ride my bike with no handlebars" intelligence.  And when that doesn't happen...  well, the game just isn't fun any more.  In order to get difficulty to human levels, the A.I. has to be programmed to take advantage of things not shown to the player, for example, reading inputs to get frame-perfect reaction time, and artificially inflating stats.

Again, the creeper is wonderful because it doesn't need (and, in my opinion, would really be harmed at any attempt at) artificial intelligence.  The physics give it all the difficulty it needs.

Now, in the future, you could give the illusion of intelligence using hidden emitters that only show up when conditions are met, but ultimately the creeper is meant to be an unguided weapon...

[Kamron3]

Not even close to tough yet, even on Double Down. >_>

_k

[NoobSauce]

Yeah well that's because y'all are crazy genius mofos who already have 100% completion :/
Which might be able to be solved with harder maps, but I see your point here...

What I'm getting at is that A.I. is unnatural by nature.  It does things like the A.I. Roulette (think Pokemon -- your opponent basically uses moves at random)and of course as mentioned before cheats to level the playing field.  The difficulty in CW is natural, on the other hand.  Physics doesn't need to cheat because it doesn't even follow the same rules as you.

I think it would be up to the map developer, ultimately, to decide how 'intelligent' the map's creeper is.  So, rather than A.I., tools could be made available that would make the creeper appear to be advancing and building up...  when actually it's just clever map design.

[Aurzel]

yeah i agree with nub, triggers are the way to go, like thebuilder's suggestion, not creeper intelligence