Hero units

[Dave]

Note: splitted from New Campaign: Under the Burning Suns.

Btw a feature that we might want to add to the game which would be useful in this campaign is to mark a unit as a 'hero', in a similiar way to units being marked as the leader with the little crown.

A 'hero' is a unit that must stay alive, and who means the end of the game if they die. Likewise, in say HttT, Kalenz, Delfador, and Li'sar would be marked as heroes.

David

[quartex]

The crown is a good for leaders (units who can recruit/recall), but not all heroes can do that. We'd need to think of another symbol to use.

It easy to implement heroes right now by just having WML code that causes you to lose the game if the hero dies. And I like how in TRoW, the lady outlaw's death doesn't result in the scenario being lost, until a certain point in the campaign. Likewise occasionally a scenario designer may want to kill off a hero. Right now
[kill]
description=Hero'sName
fire_event=no
[/kill]

won't cause the player to lose if the character is killed by the scenario. Hopefully this would still be true.

I'm not trying to bash the idea, and I like the idea of a symbol making it clear to the player which characters are heros. But it's very easy right not to implement death=defeat, and by doing it manually the scenario designer can change this rule in certain cases where you want to give the player more leeway.

P.S. I'm don't have the privs for this forum, so perhaps a mod could split this and Dave's post off into a new thread (maybe in the Ideas forum) so we can discuss "hero" units seperately?

[aelius]

It would be nice if the game indicated to you will lose the scenario if a particular unit dies. For example, once you have a couple of swordsmen in South Guard, it's hard to tell which one is Sir Gerrick, and you can accidentally send him off to a premature death.

I think there are a couple of ways you could attack the problem. One is to have an image like the crown that signifies "defend this person". I'd suggest a little shield. If I could draw, I'd attach one, but after about 15 minutes of work, I've got nothing on the shield front.

The question is then, "should leaders have both a crown and a shield." The answer to this depends, I suppose, on whether we want to have leaders that can be killed without ending the scenario. If not, then crown ="can recruit, can't die" and shield = "can't die".

- b.

[Invisible Philosopher]

The question is then, "should leaders have both a crown and a shield." The answer to this depends, I suppose, on whether we want to have leaders that can be killed without ending the scenario. If not, then crown ="can recruit, can't die" and shield = "can't die".

In Elves Beseiged, there are ally elves that can recruit but you needn't defend.
In Blackwater Port, there is an ally Grand Knight that can recruit and you must defend.

So, we need to specify them separately.

[Elvish_Pillager]

The question is then, "should leaders have both a crown and a shield." The answer to this depends, I suppose, on whether we want to have leaders that can be killed without ending the scenario. If not, then crown ="can recruit, can't die" and shield = "can't die".

In, say, Isle of Anduin, there is an enemy leader that can recruit, but you don't need to defend it.

[aelius]

I'd also be happy if there were a way to indicate in a scenario that it not end when your leader dies. Right now you've got to intercept his death event, which isn't the cleanest thingy ever.

- b.

[Mkgego]

Yeah yeah yeah we need something to know whos heroe and whose unit !!!

Put an gold aura or something over his hp bar... Gold ring image or so !

[Invisible Philosopher]

Also, it'd be nice to be able to specify "have to defend" per-side. That would be good for multiplayer, and if done right, can be used by the AI. Then units that canrecruit can by default also have to live, for their own side. Then the AI could be cautious with its leaders in a customizable way, which I would really like. I want to have non-cautious enemy recruiters and cautious non-recruiters.

However, I agree, it should not have any direct effect: the real thing has to be specified by events or whatever.

[quartex]

A shield seems like a useful icon. If a leader is known by their crown, then a hero is by their sword and shield.

[scott]

When you get to a scenario where your hero can die, would you remove the shield or (keep the shield + add a special death event)?

I think it would be confusing to remove the shield from your hero when he had it for the last 12 scenarios.

Thus, the campaign writer would need to ensure the shield behavior matches what is intended in each scenario and add special death events. I assume each hero will still get to have a corny "Ah I died" line, so that's 2 sets of death events that will still need to be maintained.

Therefore, why not provide the support for the shield icon but not hardwire any death behavior to it? The scenario designers are still responsible for keeping {CAMPAIGN_DEATHS} current just like now, but the graphical support is there without tying them down to anything.

[aelius]

I like scott's idea. Keep the guts in WML, add a key to the unit that marks it as a hero. The interface conveys useful information, and still allows the campaign designer to fiddle with it in code.

- b.

[Dave]

I like scott's idea. Keep the guts in WML, add a key to the unit that marks it as a hero. The interface conveys useful information, and still allows the campaign designer to fiddle with it in code.

Actually this was my idea too

I'm not proposing any change to the mechanics of how things work, just the addition of a tag which sets a unit to being a 'hero' and displays an icon on them. It'd be the responsibility of the scenario designer to ensure that the semantics of a hero dying meaning a loss being carried out.

Also, I don't see any reason to need to convey the concept of a leader unit whose death doesn't mean a loss. This is an obscure situation and the scenario designer can use existing mechanisms to convey it to the player.

Likewise, many other scenario objectives such as protecting an ally leader can be conveyed using WML.

David

[quartex]

Good idea Dave. So I guess all we need is a simple image to convey the fact that the unit is a hero to the player.

Coding "is_hero=true" shouldn't be that hard.

[Sangel]

A few people have proposed a "shield" design, which I believe would work well, particularly if it sometimes has the current crown overlaid on top of it.

The only problem is that it might cover the health bar a little. Here's an example I whipped up.

[turin]

Are we not allowed to put the shield (and the crown for that matter) on the side that doesn't have the health bar? (It would make it stand out more, and people (like me) wouldn't keep trying to look behind the crown/shield to see the rest of the HP/XP bar...