Hello to all Wesnoth fans! A few questions & suggestions

General feedback and discussion of the game.

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miyo
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Post by miyo »

No multi-hex units.

- Miyo
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Post by Guest »

If i remember correct Demonworld used multihex units. But it was a different scale, more a tabletop game. Ie a cavalry unit had every soldier drawn as a two hex figure, infantry unit as one hex figures etc.
So i think even the argument wesnoth would be first dont strikes.
Sithrandel
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Post by Sithrandel »

I posted a tedious response about HoMM elsewhere... but that used multi-hex units for the battles.

Multihex (or multisquare) only has a purpose with killer units. E.g. dragon or titan, etc. Huge HP, huge damage, can kill almost anything with ease. The point is that against one of these the best defence is actually the smallest weakest unit as you can surround 1 dragon with 20 or 30 little folk who actually do far more damage than a few larger units. Sure each dragon bite kills one, but for each bite there are 20 little attacks :D

Wesnoth does not (and please keep it this way), go down the "godlike unit" road. This is why I like the 3-level (or 4 counting lvl 0) tree where each upgrade is small. I therefore think that in this particular game the multi-hex system would not actually benefit the game, or would change it from what it is.
cobretti
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Post by cobretti »

Multihex units (real ones, not just painting them in multiple hexes) have other problems, too.
For example, how do you handle ZoC with them? Imagine a situation where two enemy units keep their ZoC with just one free hex between them. A normal unit could sneak through it, but what about the multihex one? do we make it depend of the shape of the multihex (horizontal, vertical, square...)?

Also, what about two villages being one next to the other? Should they be occupied simultaneaously? And defensive rates? Each part of the creature has it's own defence rate, or there is just one for all?.

And, even if we achieve solutions for all of them, how do we expect a player to take them all in consideration when playing?

I feel it would be more a source of headaches than an interesting addition, but it's just my point of view.
Mortifer
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Post by Mortifer »

Race or type based damage modifiers would be handy, though I'd shy away from implementing them in the standard set of units. Having all elves do extra damage to all dwarves (as an example) would be quite pointless, while having just one "normal" elf type do lots of damage to all dwarves would make multiplayer games monotonous. For scenario specific units, though, this would be a great feature (A dragon? Summon the Dragon Slayer!).

Indeed but this could be solved. 1 unit will have special advantage against an other race. but....what about more choice?
Example, and orc warlord could be a human slayer, dwarf slayer, elf slayer etc, but just only 1 of those!

I love the idea of multi hex units, so I would be happy with them. :)
Darth Fool
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Post by Darth Fool »

I have to say that I don't think multi-hex units are a good idea. As for units that have multi hex graphics, I don't see this as a particular problem, except for the artistic analogue, call it creeping biggerism, of the coder's oldesst enemy, creaping featurism. The tendency will be for a big unit, to make it bigger to be more impressive. After the first few units like this, it will be used to justify making other units bigger....ad nauseum. I suppose one way around this would be to mandate that only level 5 units are allowed(but not required) to have multi hex graphics, but generally I think mandates in open source projects don't work. If, as a result, dragons end up looking cute, well, so do orcs...

I guess I would make an exception for multi-hex Zone-of-Control graphics for special effects (like the mage of lights halo) but the unit should still fit in one hex.
Mortifer
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Post by Mortifer »

I agree, only level 5 units should be allowed to be bigger than 1 hex. [Dragon, demon, various other powerful monsters]
turin-at-school

Post by turin-at-school »

Mortifer wrote:I agree, only level 5 units should be allowed to be bigger than 1 hex. [Dragon, demon, various other powerful monsters]
not bigger than one hex, have multihex graphics. NO unit, in my opinion, should occupy more than one hex at the same time.
multihex graphics are not neccessary for a unit to look large. the yeti is only one hex, and you can easily tell that it is a very powerful unit.
Mortifer
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Post by Mortifer »

Hm yes you are right, We need multihex gfx. :)
quartex
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Post by quartex »

Please no multi-hex units. What do we do about a unit that is on 2 types of terrain, how does that affect his movement or defense modifier? It has been previously asstered by people like miyo that each hex represented a mile of terrain, if a unit filles more than one hex, then that means each hex must be only about 10 feet wide, which seems like a rather small scale. And of course if a unit fills several hexes, getting it to cross bridges, fit into narrow tunnels and such will be very difficult. If a player call recall an multi-hexed unit, it would suck if that unit was trapped or couldn't be used on certain maps.

I think only a very few units would be big enough to be multi-hexed, and thus the artistic benefit does not balance the trouble it would cause. We can make great looking units in one hex, a multi-hex unit would break the scale of the game and look bad.
Dave
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Post by Dave »

quartex wrote:Please no multi-hex units.
I can promise you that as long as I am the maintainer of Wesnoth,

- I will not implement multi-hex units;
- I will not accept any patch into the main codebase that implements multi-hex units.

Even without delving into the nasty, nasty implementation details, I would point out that other games which use multi-tile units, such as HoMM, Exile/Avernum, and Gladius have battles that take place in a 'zoomed in' scale. A battle in any of these games might take place in a town, city, or village, or in the wilderness; perhaps on a road, or in a forest. In Wesnoth, a battle takes place on a map that may encompass many towns, villages, forests and roads.

The scale is completely different. A dragon may be as big as a house, or even two houses, but it is certainly not as large as four villages.

I don't mean to offend anyone or sound aggressive, but the gameplay concept of a unit that exists in multiple tiles at once is so alien to the underlying principles of Wesnoth's game system that it has to be rejected without further consideration.

Units that have graphics that extend into surrounding hexes I would like to put in, although it may prove difficult. However note that the motivational example for such graphics is a unit such as a mage of light having a 'halo' into surrounding hexes, rather than a large unit having its body appear to overlap surrounding hexes.

(Although if artists use this feature to draw large units that have slight overlap into surrounding hexes, and it looks good, we'll accept the images).

David
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
Sangel
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Post by Sangel »

I'd also note that it's useful for some normal units to have a tiny overlap into other squares on occasion - attacking with long weapons such as spears, for example, which might violate the current (somewhat restrictive) hex boundaries. But yes, basically I see serious overlap into adjacent hexes as extremely unusual, the province of lighting effects and scenario monsters. It should by no means be common.

Best of luck implementing the code, Dave. It sounds quite challenging.
"Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Dave
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Post by Dave »

Sangel wrote:I'd also note that it's useful for some normal units to have a tiny overlap into other squares on occasion - attacking with long weapons such as spears, for example
If you're talking about a spear as a melee weapon, I'd point out that when units attack in melee they actually physically move into the hex they're attacking into.

Simply standing and attacking with a long spear would require the artist to do a different animation for attacking north vs north-east vs south-east vs south (ne and se could be flipped to provide nw and sw). I don't really think this would be feasible.

David
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
Sangel
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Post by Sangel »

Of course. I was just pointing out that it's easy to exceed the bounds of a single hex by a few pixels when creating a unit waving a long weapon about, and that this will alleviate any problems with that.
"Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Mortifer
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Post by Mortifer »

Units that have graphics that extend into surrounding hexes I would like to put in, although it may prove difficult. However note that the motivational example for such graphics is a unit such as a mage of light having a 'halo' into surrounding hexes, rather than a large unit having its body appear to overlap surrounding hexes.

This would be very good Dave!!!! I hope that the devs can make it! :)
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