Mirror matches to flip one alignment (where applicable)

[Ken_Oh]

Just a random idea that fails on a lot of levels, but I think it's interesting and might be useful for UMC.

Some people complain about mirror match stalemates (caveat: this isn't to give that idea any credence) and it's understandable that time of day gets thrown out of the window to a degree with such matches.

Think what it would be like if one side gets its alignment flipped in a mirror match, Loyalists vs Dark Loyalists, if you will. That match would have the normal push/pull-back rhythm that a Loyalists vs Northerners match has, preserving that dimension of the game.

Failures would include not making sense for some factions (light-loving undead?) and general confusion for the flipped team. Not making sense could be overcome by new units/art (angel instead of ghost, pirate instead of fencer, giant walking mushroom instead of wose, etc.) but that probably pushes it all too far in the direction of not worth it-ness.

[irrevenant]

Failures would include not making sense for some factions (light-loving undead?)

Why not? There were an army of "light-loving undead" in Lord of the Rings, after all...

[taemyr]

I think this is a good idea. In fact in one on one matches I think it should be the default to flip alignment if the factions is identical. Possibly even default to flip if overall faction alignment is equal.

[Velensk]

Right then.... aside from the illogicalness, and how it would affect campains, how would you deal with more than 2 sides?

I don't realy like this idea. It is not nessisary, and it would mess things up.

[Ken_Oh]

Obviously not for campaigns. Obviously not for anything other than 1v1 (can't be a mirror match when it's not a reflection).

[Vendanna]

The only way would be to have it be a tag/box you can mark in the (lobby?) like with random faction/gender in which you could mirror the alignment of your faction.

if the alignement is different, some could be marked as mirrored counter parts, maybe with a mirror icon in the trait description or as such.

That way it could be implemented with more than one faction, and if it can be relegated to random, it gives some more variation to the matches.

Tought, playing dark loyalists against normal drakes could be something strange, or the slaughter of Dark Drakes against normal undead.

Anyway I'm not against the idea.

[Ken_Oh]

Yeah, I'm not seriously suggesting it, just putting it out there.

I was really thinking about more types of units to add to the Wesnoth world, peripheral to mainline. I was thinking about how Bob the Mighty's naval MP scenario The High Seas (which IMO has some pretty awesome potential) has lawfully aligned fencers on pirate ships, when they should be something more like pirates. Pirates would basically be the chaotic version of fencers . The idea rolled from there to other anti-units. I personally like the giant, walking mushroom version of wose.

[irrevenant]

Right then.... aside from the illogicalness, and how it would affect campains, how would you deal with more than 2 sides?

1. Campaigns don't really have factions.
2. For more than 2 sides you would alternate each time that faction recurred in a diferent team.
eg.
Team 1
- Loyallists
- Undead

Team2
- Undead (Light)
- Undead (Light)

Team 3
- Loyallists (Dark)
- Northerners

I was really thinking about more types of units to add to the Wesnoth world, peripheral to mainline. I was thinking about how Bob the Mighty's naval MP scenario The High Seas (which IMO has some pretty awesome potential) has lawfully aligned fencers on pirate ships, when they should be something more like pirates. Pirates would basically be the chaotic version of fencers.

Campaigns and UMC scenarios are completely tailorable anyway.

The idea rolled from there to other anti-units. I personally like the giant, walking mushroom version of wose.

Urk - which raises the questions of graphics for the alternate units.

[Vendanna]

As a note, I think that for testing purposes, before implementing any graphics at all, we could simply generate a special Halo image (for the mirrored version) or coloration like Poison on the unit to diferenciate it.

Because I think its faster and easier to have it running for testing (like the accuracy feature megane added to the server), and probably the art developers would turn less paranoic if the idea fails to deliver, since its less graphics needed.

anyway, here is a text based tree, if anyone can come up with names, I think I'm going to fiddle around with the core 1.5 to create a mirrored undead (maybe taking graphics from loyalists) (tought the falcon/azure bird from the elemental faction of EoM could be useful/nice for the vampire bat mirrored/light version)

Code: Select all

Dark Adept --> Dark Sorcerer --> Lich
                             --> Necromancer
Ghost  --> Shadow --> Nightgaunt
       --> Wraith --> Specter
Ghoul --> Necropaghe
Skeleton --> Deathblade
         --> Revenant --> Draug
Skeleton Archer --> Bone Shooter --> Banebow
Vampire Bat --> Blood Bat
Walking Corpse --> Soulless

[Ken_Oh]

Urk - which raises the questions of graphics for the alternate units.

I'm alright at frankensteining. For my own purposes (RPG stuff) I bet I could get a pretty good pirate out of a fencer (instead of gender, you could have with and without eye-patch/peg-leg variants). The giant, walking mushroom is probably going to be much harder.

[Vendanna]

Well, I'm going to test the flipped version of undead, and while I'm at it, there is some recoloured version of the Dark adept male (Using the colors from the white mage tunic)

[AI]

While the idea has merit, I don't think it's worth frankensteining *every* *single* *unit* in default. A better solution (since we're need C++ changes anyway) might be to invert everything but TC and alpha. (so, keep TC, keep the shape, invert all other colours)

[Dave]

While the idea has merit, I don't think it's worth frankensteining *every* *single* *unit* in default.

Right. Gee. Heavens no.

Just make a standard transformation. Either a simple image algorithm, or some kind of halo that can be applied to all units to show the opposites version.

[megane]

Diddling about in the GIMP, this was the nicest-looking recolor I could find that was simple to implement; it's just a remixing of the channels (R=150B, G=100G, B=50R). The main problem is that most things in Wesnoth are primarily brown ^^;

[Neoskel]

Funny how the Loyalists turn gold. Gold is such a good guy color.

And the Footpad turns black with green hair, so he looks extra evil.

The drake and wose turned out good (i mean evil), but the orc and ghoul are kinda meh.

Is there a reason most of the wose's foliage stayed green?

And i'm putting up a 'hand-made' 'Light Adept' since i already did one.


@the main concept: It would make certain units, namely the lawful Shadow and Nightgaunt (Lightgaunt? ), pretty darn useless unless they're given 'daystalk' (or 'lightstalk') to replace nightstalk. Also, the 'Mage of Darkness' (evil Mage of Light duh) would need 'Shadow Aura' or 'Delumination' or something to replace Illumination. I can't think of any other units with ToD specific abilities, but those abilities would obviously have to have opposites used by the opposite units.