Ideas 2011:Combat system
When in multiplayer mode of Unknown Horizons, the only interaction you have with other players is that you can play on the same map.
Since that might not totally occupy one's instincts, we want to give our players more possibilities about what they can do. Not together, but against each other!
We want to fight!
Combat with ships, combat with units, fighting with something completely different.
In the end, you might even be able to write a small combat AI, but that's only one of many tasks we can think of. Arrr!
- Implement basic and flexible attacking and defending of units (we want to apply this to buildings later, too)
- Implement statistics and properties of attacks
- Try your luck at combat AI (as opposed to [settlement AI](Ideas 2011:AI player), another idea for GSoC)
- Python programming skills
- a shade of pychan since you will also implement the combat UI
- stamina in dealing with game designers ;-)
- AI knowledge if desired
- Estimated difficulties: The design of our combat is not finished yet (and needs actual ingame impressions), so expect the requirements to vary while working on this idea.
- We expect a moderate difficulty if you do not touch the AI part.
Now that you made it until here because pirates just rock, be brave: there is a lot to do before you can work on pirates ;-)
- A work-in-progress specification that you should use as a starting point: Combat
- Animated placeholder assets, currently no visible distinction between units of different players
- selection and grouping of multiple units already implemented
- Tab interface design: Combat UI
- A description of how stressful we plan the combat to be: Fighting units
- previous implementation of pirate by RainCT that just followed player ship:
checkout branch master at revision 97569d.
Related commits in our trac:
- http://trac.unknown-horizons.org/t/changeset/97569df91aa78ef5ea584c9fad1ed37122b2fbf8 (newest)
- http://trac.unknown-horizons.org/t/changeset/61e4c223364efc2472236fc01556127625dfdeb5
- http://trac.unknown-horizons.org/t/changeset/7cb434412b0cc65a368de53cdffb0773abbb07d3
- http://trac.unknown-horizons.org/t/changeset/8385547fbabed90bb23ae9823ebfcdc0db397707
- http://trac.unknown-horizons.org/t/changeset/0646283e653c0d4e9def3fac44ff9557ff797efa
- http://trac.unknown-horizons.org/t/changeset/bd2118db1ffaf3a69eccc0fa9e8291e9a53647ed (oldest)
As a pre-GSoC task you could try to implement a basic tab interface for combat (description linked above). This way, you can focus on your actual combat system development later on. It always helps to have a starting point and modify instead of creating dysfunctional placeholder tabs.
You can shift around release goals and target dates in the planning stage as you like. Once your mentor and you agreed on a rough timetable, only light modifications should occur if there happens nothing unforeseeable.
- Milestone 1: Sea fight without properties (attack UI, skeleton methods)
- Milestone 2: Sea and land fights; attack types (generalising work, adding features)
- SoC Deadline: Automatic fights & combat modes; pirates? (further connecting the idea with UH)
In general: If your mentor agrees, you can change almost everything in our descriptions. They are just meant to provide guidance if you are not sure where to start or which way to choose.
You are especially free to alter the following parts:
- milestone features, just make sure that you frequently communicate and show your progress to allow testing for every interested game designer
- the user interface as long as it is flexible enoughand to include
- more features related to combat, e.g. AI units, auto-retreat, ...
Your mentor for this task will probably be: totycro
Additionally, the following people have worked on designing the combat specification: dauerflucher, eoc, Kilian,
These devs have worked on the multiplayer mode and might help out if you have trouble testing: manuel, tuempl ...
