Archmage: wacked out survival scenario for 1.5.0

[TL]

Okay, so. I just uploaded yet another totally new highly experimental project (yeah, another one. Bear with me here.) Mostly I just threw this together to see what the 1.5 dev release was capable of. The answer, incidentally, appears to be everything. Possibly including time travel.

Anyhow, here's the skinny. The scenario is a 3p coop survival, not unlike Orocia. However, players don't recruit or control any units directly; instead there are friendly AI sides which you have to protect. Since you have no units of your own, you influence the battle using spells, which work somewhat like a stripped-down version of Magic: The Gathering: you draw a couple of random spells per turn, which you can use to summon units, grant upgrades, alter terrain, blow up enemies, etc., limited by your current MP pool. So... you've got all kinds of crazy powers to protect your AI-controlled followers from massive enemy hordes. It's definitely more of a random crazy stuff mod than a serious strategic exercise, but I thought I might as well throw it out there.

[Slann]

Incredible! have you finished the map?? Id like to play there, i like magic.

Anyway, why random spells instead choosen since the beggining?

[Fosprey]

I checked the wml code, and i love it, that's the exact feature i was looking for my era, hope you don't mind if i borrow it ?

[TL]

It's not 100% done, but it should be playable. I'd like to expand the number of elements available, but that's really the only noteworthy thing I'd like to add.

Anyway, why random spells instead choosen since the beggining?

Drawing random expendable spells makes things a lot more varied than having spells chosen since the beginning; you're not just casting the same spells over and over again each turn. You do get a bit of influence over the spells you draw, since each mage has an associated element that they get many more spells from (and cast at lower MP cost), at the cost of not getting any spells from the corresponding opposite element: mages get more fire spells, sylphs get more wind spells, dwarfs get more earth spells, mermaids get more water spells.

I checked the wml code, and i love it, that's the exact feature i was looking for my era, hope you don't mind if i borrow it ?

Not at all. There are actually still some improvements that could be made in the WML; I didn't fully realize how useful [insert_tag] was until later in the work, so the filtering for spell effects is still a bit kludgy.

[jb]

I really like this idea. I had a lot of fun trying it out. Seems like there could be a lot of good possiblities with this mod.

Things I really enjoyed:
-spell casting is fantastic, I like the unit enchantments, the global spells, and the summon spells. very neat idea
-terraforming was fun
-the random spell selection was very cool and makes for interesting replay value

Some things I noticed:
-It seems a bit impossible to kill all the enemy units.
-It seems you can't lose? I lost all my units and still my main mages were able to continue with no threat from the enemy.
-I didn't like my recruiting sub-leaders leaving their post to fight. They died right away and I had no more recruits.

[TL]

-It seems a bit impossible to kill all the enemy units.

It's possible. I tend to do a limited amount of long-term playtesting because it's boring playing all three sides. I know the first couple of waves tend to get annihilated but have only played past the 3rd or 4th wave once or twice. At what point (rough turn number etc.) do you stop being able to wipe out enemy waves as they come? At what point do you start getting totally overwhelmed?

-It seems you can't lose? I lost all my units and still my main mages were able to continue with no threat from the enemy.

Whoops. All my experience doing all sorts of crazy WML... and I still manage to forget to put first_time_only=no on a routine event.

-I didn't like my recruiting sub-leaders leaving their post to fight. They died right away and I had no more recruits.

I agree this probably needs to be tweaked. I like the fact that they do go out and fight, since it gives a bit more focus to things--it has the potential to lead to "oh crap red leader is being totally suicidal, quick start throwing spells over there" situations, which I think is something desireable. They still need to have the AI settings adjusted to be a bit more intelligent about it, though. In particular I'm worried that the later waves probably have enough firepower to wipe out one of your leaders before you have a chance to react to their stupidity.

[Sapient]

It's very fun. I noticed a few problems.

1. The "You haven't moved yet" prompt is a minor nuissance... maybe there is a way to make it go away by taking some movement points away from the leaders when they cast a spell.

2. the spell that grants marksman doesn't seem to work

3. got an invalid terrain warning from the cave-creation spell

4. some of the terrain location filters are messed up... though I don't remember all of them

5. other stuff I forgot

[TL]

1. The "You haven't moved yet" prompt is a minor nuissance... maybe there is a way to make it go away by taking some movement points away from the leaders when they cast a spell.

*smacks forehead* I should have thought of that.

I've uploaded a 0.1.3 version with a number of updates. I think I've got most of the buggy spells fixed now, and spell balance has been tweaked a bit--before summoning as many units as possible seemed to be the way to go, so I tweaked summons' cost upward slightly and decreased the cost on a lot of other spells. There's also some more visual effects associated with spells to make it a bit easier to tell what's going on in online games.

[Sapient]

Code: Select all

				[insert_tag]
					name=effect
					variable=$current_spell|.object[$I].effect[0]
				[/insert_tag]
				[insert_tag]
					name=effect
					variable=$current_spell|.object[$I].effect[1]
				[/insert_tag]
				[insert_tag]
					name=effect
					variable=$current_spell|.object[$I].effect[2]
				[/insert_tag]

By the way... you don't have to insert each index of an array explicitly like that.
If you insert_tag for $current_spell|.object[$I].effect it will automatically insert all three [effect] tag(s).

[Fosprey]

Can it be made 1v1? There is people that just despise survival scenarios

[TL]

Doing a major overhaul of the spell list in preparation for an alignment system, so it'll be a couple days before I update.

Can it be made 1v1? There is people that just despise survival scenarios

...ironically enough, the main reason I decided to make this into a coop survival rather than a competitive 1v1 was that I figured people wouldn't want a competitive scenario where your actions were circumscribed entirely within randomized spell draws.

[Fosprey]

No i don't say to think it as a competitive thing. But the main reason i don't play custom games is that they are mostly survivals and i don't enjoy playing against an ai. I ocasionally play games like a new land and siege wars, becuse i can play against players.
I just think this idea sounds like fun, but at least for me , there isn't fun in playing against ai, i'm sure other players out here feel the same

[Ken_Oh]

I think this is the closest thing we've seen so far to the "Wizard of Wesnoth" idea Dave had.

Very cool.

[St.John]

this is absolutely brilliant
i thought it reminded me of magic
tons of fun
really love it.
it tends to get quite tough around turn 20
maybe you could find a way to make the spells selectively random?
as in, the spells get better and better as you go, but are still somewhat unpredictable?
i dunno how that'd work

[Qes]

Dunno what i'm doing wrong. I cant seem to target units for the buffs. The area affects work ok.

But rightclicking on units doenst bring up stars. I've enough mana, so.. ?

Thanks for another awesome thing.
-Qes