Messing it up: Making the Cave based on Light not Terrain

[Eleazar]

In Wesnoth the time of day, (i.e. amount of light) has a big impact on how well a unit can cope. This concept is unevenly extended to caves. Most lawful units have a real hard time getting around in caves, unless another terrain is used. In an underground lake or on a strip of dirt a lawful unit isn't effected by the cave. It's just when he's on the cave terrain, that he can hardly move. Having a Mage of light nearby hardly even helps, contrary to what you might expect.

If the coders find this interesting ('cause to implement this would require a lot of changes) i'd propose that Wesnoth would recognise 4 instead of 3 amount of light (i.e. times of day):
Day, dawn/dusk, night, and Complete/Pitch Dark. A neutral unit would be effected by complete dark to the same degree a lawful would be effected by night. Lawful units in Pitch dark could incur a movemnt penelty in addition to the attack penalty they get at Night--no matter what terrain they are on. Light bearing units and fires would diminish the negative effects of caves.

This would require Wesnoth to be able to "shade" different hexes on a map for different amounts of light, instead of the current all-or-nothing approach. IMHO this would be good to have anyway.

If this was implemented Caves could have their own versions of hills, plains, etc. with familiar atributes. The current "cave" terrain might become an alias of the hills or grasslands.


That's the idea in a nutshell...

[MadMax]

Actually, few changes would be required. The lawful attack penalty can be implemented already (the time-of-day is handled by WML), although the movement penalty would require code changes.

[Ayin]

Maybe I misunderstood your post, but the way I see things is that:

* The "cave floor" movement penalty is due to the fact that cave terrains are rough, not to the fact it is dark. Actually, schedules only bring combat penalty and no movement penalty.

* The "underground" time of day (see file schedules.cfg) is used on underground scenarios to add the lawful penalty / chaotic bonus on the dark.

[scott]

There are only 2 times recognized by the game engine, [time] and [illuminated_time]. The rest of a TOD definition is user-configured, and the game has no special knowledge of it.

That said, I like all 3 basic ideas I took from your post:

1. The pitch black idea requires the ability to have more flexibility in specifying alignment bonuses. Right now you specify the lawful bonus (LB), which translates automatically to -LB for chaotics and 0 LB for neutrals. Being able to specify a LB, NB, and CB separately could be good in some situations (like if you wanted to define pitch black).

2. Cave terrain variability. Sounds good to me.

3. Variable shading based on [time_area]. An awesome idea that I try to simulate (to poor effect) in Liberty-6.

[Eleazar]

I think i explained myself rather badly. I don't currently have access to a computer with Wesnoth, so i can't check on details.

It makes more sense (according to how the game now works) to assume that the lawful cave movement penalty is because the caves are rough, but apparently no terrain artist had that idea, because the cave floor has always been pictured smooth. The dialog in HttC seemed to indicate to me that the elves problem with the caves is mainly one of darkness.

Let me try to rephrase. It seems to me much more intuitive that:
• Lawful creature's problem with caves would be centered around the lack of light.
• And that if light is introduced to the cave, (via mage, torch or lava) that penelty should be eased or lifted.
• For this effect to be apparent to the user, different hexes should be able to have different shading in the same turn. If this can't be achieved, then it's probably best to leave things alone.

On a side note, i do think the current caves are duller than they should be. There should be more graphic variety between the hewn halls of dwarves and the more natural cave tunnels, as well as various types of terrain (aliases of known types, like hills). Hopefully we'll get to that.

[Darth Fool]

Let me try to rephrase. It seems to me much more intuitive that:
• Lawful creature's problem with caves would be centered around the lack of light.
• And that if light is introduced to the cave, (via mage, torch or lava) that penelty should be eased or lifted.
• For this effect to be apparent to the user, different hexes should be able to have different shading in the same turn. If this can't be achieved, then it's probably best to leave things alone.

Well, I am pretty sure that you can define Time-of-Day differently hex by hex, although currently I don't believe that it has any effect on the lighting of the hex. It would be an interesting idea to add a lighting parameter into the time of day definition that would allow for the graphical representation of this, although I don't know how well it would work with the current methods of shading hexes based on where units can move.

[quartex]

Traditionally elves have had problems with moving across cave floors. I suppose it's not an issue with light, it's just a completly alien environment to them. However dirt, which is often used in caves, is actually an alias of grasslands, which is a terrain elves are better acquainted with. So I tried to add a lot of dirt into my caves so that elvish units had some terrain that would speed their movement and they could fight decently on.

[Eleazar]

.... although I don't know how well it would work with the current methods of shading hexes based on where units can move.

The current method of showing how far a unit can move needs to be changed, IMHO. Currently all the hexes a unit can't reach are turned greyscale. Unfortunately some hexes, (snow, castles) are already nearly greyscale, so there's no clear distinction. Changing this method might conflict with showing gradiations of light, but currently it shouldn't.


Probably anyone who has moved a bunch of elves through a cave is distinctly aware of the advantages of the dirt "speed strips." All players should be thankful for the mercy in those occasional patches of dirt. But it doesn't make sense to me that a cave is only alien (to an elf) when floored with stone.

[Jetrel]

Eleazar, if you draw some different ground terrains for caves, I'm in support of having cave terrains aliased to ground terrains.

It's the lack of graphics that has really held us back on this.

[Eleazar]

Well, of course i don't expect people to make terrain graphics for me.
It's on the long list of things i'd like to get around to.

But currently i don't think it would work very well. For instance an Elvish rider would have an easier go through an alias of mountains than the normal cave floor. And i don't what to make graphics that encourage the creation of new basic terrain types, i think we could easily loose our KISS moorings with too many of those.

[Chris Byler]

Why would elves have trouble with lack of light? They fight just fine at night... I was going to say, on an overcast night with new moon, but then realized that there are neither clouds nor new moons in Wesnoth (just look at the sky indicator). Anyway, your discussion of how lack of light in caves should hamper lawful units seems to have overlooked the fact that elves are neutral, thus if cave penalties were alignment based, elves would get only a small penalty. Also it would be unreasonable (IMO) for dwarves to be hindered in caves, dark or otherwise.

Ultimately this boils down to scenario design: heavy use of cave terrain and/or eternal night is one way for designers to handicap the player. They don't have to do this if they don't want to. I don't know of any MP maps that make heavy use of cave terrain and wouldn't play on them if I did. (Heck, I wouldn't play the SP scenarios that do this if I could avoid it and still continue the campaigns. Making the most effective use of my options is fun, having them taken away is not.)


PS: I agree that the current method of greying unreachable hexes is bad because some terrains are already very grey. Maybe shading unreachable hexes red would be better, I can't think of any terrains that are normally very red.

[turin]

PS: I agree that the current method of greying unreachable hexes is bad because some terrains are already very grey. Maybe shading unreachable hexes red would be better, I can't think of any terrains that are normally very red.

Mountains. They'd probably have just as much of a problem as castles currently do, although I'm not sure.

[RedLTeut]

How would you handle a mage on light? You'd have to move single hex by hex the mage and the units following him and profiting from the light for optimum progress.

It would be quite interesting to have a static lightning effect available though, but you would have to reserve pitch black for caves, and you'd need torches or other light sources for emphasis

[Eleazar]

How would you handle a mage on light? You'd have to move single hex by hex the mage and the units following him and profiting from the light for optimum progress.

Hmm, that would be painful.

[khamul]

What I'd like to see in caves is localised light sources as the tactical/strategic key:
aboveground, winning depends on (correct choice of units) and correct use of time of day, and terrain. In caves, time of day does not vary, and the commonly used cave tiles also do not tend to vary much in terms of defense. Because very few units have acceptable movement rates in caves, the player(s) generally have very few tactical options.

The obvious way to resolve this is to increase the number of cave terrain types and increase the variety of moves and defense for units on them - but this is a bad idea, partly because the number of terrains starts to get unmanageable, and partly because what you end up with tactially is just like an aboveground battle, only without time of day.

A much better idea would be to make caves tactically different to aboveground fighting, and I think this can be done fairly simply. Cave maps are made up of choke points and open areas, and the skill in fighting in them is in picking where you fight - but this is hard to do because all your units move so slowly, and because (unless people have put in rivers, etc) it doesn't normally matter much.

So let's make it more important where the fight happens, by having localised light sources - so the tactical struggle becomes one to force your opponent to fight in an area where the light is not to his/her advantage.

Let's make it easier to control where fights happen by increasing the variety of underground terrain - I don't think it's necessary to add new cave terrain types to do this, but just to make the existing viable underground types (dirt, road, swamp, water...) look better underground, and make the existing cave terrain _look_ rough, and full of stalagmites, and maybe be even worse for movement, so the map designer starts to use it to give shortcuts around key tactical choke points.

As an example, imagine an underground map, rebels against northerners with a sand/dirt floor, and a river across it. The cave wall limits the paths to the enemy castle and the villages, but it's broken by cave terrain - suddenly, trolls are incredibly important, because they can use the cave floor terrain to get around the choke points and chew up the support units, forcing the rebel player to fall back to an un-illuminated choke point, where the grunts can be used for full effect.

Long post. Apologies. I'll try to post a map somewhere to show what I mean.