AVWW Building Things, like Terraria...

[Teal_Blue]

Just a small note, i went online and checked out Steam and saw that Terraria has sold a Million copies!  I was stunned, i mean, its a little quirky graphic wise for me, but to be honest a lot of the mechanics, that allow you to do alot of things.

Like building,

Makes me think i understand why it is so popular.

I wanted to just mention this, in case it seems like a good idea for AVWW. It could broaden the appeal alot. And give the players another aspect to the game to enjoy.

-Teal

I think i'm going to pick up a copy of Terraria anyway, it is only $9.99 U.S. and looks a lot of fun.

Take care

[tigersfan]

I think the problem with copying Terraria (which is a fun game) is that well.... we'd be copying Terraria. The problem with adding things like digging and building manually is just that there's already games out there where you can do that (Minecraft, anyone?) I think for AVWW to truly be successful, it needs to be different.

[x4000]

Yep, very much so.  And a lot of the building and digging aspects of Minecraft and Terraria work specifically because of their graphical style.  Minecraft uses blocks for everything, which is awesome for building (Legos anyone?), and Terraria uses pixelart which is by nature a bit more abstract and more easy to combine into larger forms.  The AVWW art style actually makes it a lot easier to represent MORE different world objects more realistically and with more variety, but the Terraria art style makes it so that that construction aspect is possible.

You could also do digging/construction in pure 3D with either voxels or some other sort of smaller components, but with 2D sprites of the sort we're using it wouldn't really look very good I don't think.  Anyhow, we definitely want to be "Not Terraria" when it comes to the gameplay.  If someone wants the sort of gameplay from Terraria, I think they're already the best at providing that sort of gameplay, and they have a huge lead on the rest of us.

[Teal_Blue]

  Just a thought, but thank you for the response.

Take care,

-T

[x4000]

You bet!

[eRe4s3r]

I am still waiting for a game that doesn't base tunnels on sprite blocks but instead models the intrusions in a volume and details floor/ceiling/walls procedurally and smoothly by using spline algorithms for the tunnel shape with variations for the various formations.

That way you could code certain angles to have certain textures and sprites attached and even model dynamic earth fall and water volumes easily. Because to simulate an earth fall you just need to modulate the spline..

Man, i wish i was an engine coder.... (talking about 2d games here.. not 3D..)

[Dizzard]

I can understand fully why AVWW will never go the route of Terraria/Minecraft. Why would it anyway, it can do it's own thing.

On the other hand it would still be nice to have some areas of the game we can personalize in depth. (like our own homes/bases (maybe we could convert lieutenant/overlord keeps into forts for our civilization and decorate them)

We can sort of decorate at the moment with that shrink spell but it's not really ideal for large scale decorating.

[Coppermantis]

Who says you can't build things in AVWW?




It's extremely hard to place all those crates exactly in line, hence the awkwardness.

[eRe4s3r]

I see a feature request in the above post

"optional grid alignment of placeable objects" ^^

[x4000]

That seems like a great one for mantis -- I would love for players to be able to personalize as much as is feasible, there's just a limit to how much hat would be like terraria, which is about customization at core rather than as an aside.

[Martyn van Buren]

Gosh, that picture makes me want some defense missions.  Any chance of gravity turrets in stash rooms?

[keith.lamothe]

Gosh, that picture makes me want some defense missions.  Any chance of gravity turrets in stash rooms?

Haha, I just had a mental image of the forum posts after someone stumbled into an overlord's room with a grav drill or grav guardian.

Not pretty

[Coppermantis]

And why not add Overlord Eyes while you're at it? 

[wyvern83]

And why not add Overlord Eyes while you're at it? 

wreathed in flame ...   

[keith.lamothe]

And why not add Overlord Eyes while you're at it? 

wreathed in flame ...   

That could lead to trouble, though, when players realize that to beat those overlords they always have to destroy the Core Anti-Halfling Field Generators.