MOD/Screensaver Idea

[sPank4]

Hey,

Just thought of this....I'm not capable of making such a thing, but im sure you guys could and it wouldnt be that hard for you either....?

How about making a mod that basically puts the green and the red darwinian's in a fight against each other?

So basically its a war between them on a map, with dynamic camera angles and say incubators to keep generating darwinian's. It would be cool to watch a war going on and see the AI at work, but it would be Awsome if that could be a screen saver!

I've only just bought this game. I havn't even finished it yet, but I seriously love everything about it. It is ground breaking. Legends have come up with an awsome concept. Thanks.

Let me know what you think bout the idea.

[jaysc]

well one thing is that it will be easy to make the AI battle but i'm not sure about the camara and the screen saver.

[sPank4]

well the screensaver would just be a reference to darwinia. it would just run darwinia and run the mod really....

btw, this idea was sparked whilst reading the development diary. all they're first versions of darwinia were basically what im talking about....or the other way around...you know.

[martin]

you could make a mod that was a massive battle but one side would win, eventually.

[sPank4]

well thats fine i suppose. ultimatly you wanna watch to see a winner...if there could be some sort of variable that would alter the length of the battle, by altering AI strenght or something.

say you want to watch a battle, but you dont want to wait around for ever, you could have alimited number of darwinian's spawn after being killed. so eventually they run out of souls maybe.

or if you wanted to run the screensaver, the spawn wasn't limited?

im not familiar with what variables you would have available, but im sure this must be possible!??? its just too cool to pass up surely??

[martin]

I'll have a quick go over the weekend and get hitm4n to host it on monday/sunday.

[xander]

you could make a mod that was a massive battle but one side would win, eventually.

Actually, by using AISpawnPoints rather than SpawnPoints, you could make the battle last for ever. You could also position the SpawnPoints and AITargets so that they will never get taken... A basic level might be something like this:

Say, five green SpawnPoints in the northwest corner, and five red SpawnPoints in the southwest. In the middle, there could be several more SpawnPoints. Both red and gree are sending units to the middle, but not to the far corners, thus there will always be units pouring in. However, I would think that the battle would eventually reach equilibrium. In the end, you either have equilibrium, or one side winning. Neither is all that good for a screensaver. What I might do is set up a battle, and an Always ScriptTrigger. The ScriptTrigger moves the camera around for a while, then resets the level and starts over again. There ought to be enough randomness to the AI to keep it from ever ending in exactly the same way, though I would think that it would become fairly predictable after time. At any rate, if it were to be done, I think it would have to be something like that.

xander

[sPank4]

sounds pretty good to me.

i still reckon it would be an awsome screen saver. hopefully something different each time.

you could even have random startup variables like say add Armour (havnte even got up to them in the game yet) for some games or random virii, etc.

i dunno really. i imagine all this could be customisable by the user in later versions maybe.

[xander]

you could even have random startup variables like say add Armour (havnte even got up to them in the game yet) for some games or random virii, etc.

This, right here, is the crux of the matter: levels in Darwinia are not random. They are static. You could run the level a thousand times, and it would always be the same. The only think that I can think of would involve some kind of script.

First, you would have to set up the level. I think that you would probably also have to set up all of the possible combinations of the level (or at least place buildings in every location where you want buildings). With every building that you could ever use activated, it would be an ugly level. However, you could store all of the buildings in a scratch file. Then, using a random selection process, place buildings in the mission file. Change the level configuration every five minutes or so, and make sure that your camera script runs at least that long. Then, every time the level is reset, you have a new random level. Still, there is great potential for having really screwy levels, and it would not be truely random.

You could probably up the stakes a bit by also generating several different landscapes, but this creates a problem with building placement. All in all, it sounds like an overly complicated idea, and not all that useful in the end.

xander

[jaysc]

Just did a quick map and put in all the spawn.



I think i put too much spawn point but this is what it looks like. Off course you wanna consider LAG!

[sPank4]

hahaha, aww that looks cool...but i could see it becoming boring, therefore seeing your point....something like that would be too static.

if only there were a good way to configure battles easily....

[martin]

bloody hell!
What I'm doing is making a load of levels so potentially you could run a script that rotates between the levels.

[martin]

OK, I've made five levels. You can control with officers if you like but it will run on its own without you/with you just watching the poor innocent creatures die
It's called the autobattle mod and I'm going to send it to hitm4n now. It'll be added to the modlist thread.

[hitm4n]

Added to the MODLIST

[martin]

Thankyou hitm4n, any feedback off anyone?