[merged] Rivermod

from Elemental Forums

 

This mod has been merged into the Stormworld mod pack. This topic will not be updated.

 

 

 

When the first beta was released, I jumped on the idea of modding the rivers to be more varied. It has been an uphill struggle with a lot of hurdles I had to overcome (too many to mention really).

Last week I made a significant breakthrough that allowed me to actually have rivers appear in the game "dynamically". The long story short is that the solution is using "stamps" which were actually present in E:wom to a very small degree. In E:wom, there was a spell called Curgen's Inferno that summoned a volcano on the map, and this was from inside a stamp. I also knew that Frogboy had mentioned stamps being important for how maps were generated in FE. So I started out by first building a spell that summoned a stamp. Then I changed that stamp around until it was actually summoning a river. Then I changed the stamp to not be summoned, but appear in the game by chance instead. Then I started tweaking how the river works and looks.

Anyway, enough talkie talkie. Here's the stuff in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bun87Db0d-M

Unfortunately, the example took a horridly long time to do without access to the workshop. I'm hoping that when we get the workshop, there will be tools that allow us to do this sort of thing more easily. In this post https://forums.elementalgame.com/411769 there is a screenshot of some sort of stamp creator that should help greatly in achieving this.

Edit: Assuming that the workshop is fairly decent, I plan on bringing more types of rivers into the game. Off-hand, I'd like to have a poison river (see above), magma river, river of blood, and some sort of corrupted river. Those are rivers I would expect to see in a fantasy world destroyed by magic.

28,581 views 24 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Cool ideas. How would you give the different rivers unique characteristics, and what ideas do you have for that?

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

The rivers will primarily be for looks, but they will also have world resources the player can build on. For example you can build a magma forge on a "magma river with bedrock", giving better cutting attack and a little bit of fire damage to the connected city. Poison river means a little bit of poison damage, and a few extra potions to buy. River of blood will have some health bonuses to the connected city, maybe some extra constitution, but also some regeneration. I have no solid ideas for the corrupted river yet.

But basically, I want them to be more flavour than "power". It will also allow specific factions to be particularly good at using one type of river resource, eg Greenskin would use the poison river well, and an undead faction would probably love the corrupted river, and the living stone would love the magma river.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Amazing as always. Thanks for sharing your discoveries with the community.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Awesome. :) If they can also be used for "power" stuff even better. :D Me having trouble with silly UnitStats while you solve custom rivers stuff.  :blush:

river of blood

 some sort of corrupted river

 

 

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Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Wow, can't wait!

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Those look kick ass!

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

river of blood looks cool!

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

HF we have something else in common.... Power Metal! lol

 

nice work

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Perhaps Corrupted rivers hold powerful dark creatures that can be tamed by Empires and slaughtered to make vile poisons by Kingdoms?

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

The way I see the corrupted river is that it's a place where evolution is turned up 1 000 000 000 times, so one day you have a fish that can breathe that walks out of it and another day there's an insect that can't breathe that just dies as soon as it's born. Anyway, the corrupted river is basically a "change agent", so it will add a trait to units trained in connected city that makes them deal random effects on melee attacks.

 

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Of those three, the blood river certainly looks the most awesome. The corrupted river doesn't seem to... er.. it seems too "flat"? I like it but compared to the others it's less impressive (the white trees are more likely to catch my eyes than the river itself). Probably it's just me though. :)

Nice job! :D

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

I agree, the corrupted river needs more texture work.

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top
Perhaps the hero can suffer some penalty/effect when crossing the river: Corrupted river - Curse or even a random Dark spell Magma river - Fire damage River of blood - maybe Bersek effect Poison river - Poisoned or Disease For example: to cross a magma river without get burning the hero have to cast Protection from Fire spell...
Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Would it not make sense to effect any nearby cities too? IE sitting beside a magma river may limit agriculture production but increase forge work, rivers of blood may cause unrest but give alchemy boost or something? There's no point having complete negatives otherwise they'll be come ignored by the player.

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting fsemprini, reply 14
Perhaps the hero can suffer some penalty/effect when crossing the river:

Corrupted river - Curse or even a random Dark spell
Magma river - Fire damage
River of blood - maybe Bersek effect
Poison river - Poisoned or Disease

For example: to cross a magma river without get burning the hero have to cast Protection from Fire spell...

You cannot cross the rivers, unfortunately. Doing so opens up a whole list of broken graphics. The only place you can cross a river is if there is a bridge, or at a world resource on top of a river.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

These rivers are really amazing! Expecially the corrupted and magma look cool. I don't like the river of blood though, it looks really bland and the red trees look really weird. But all in all, great work!

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

Heaven, do you have any tips, tricks or other secrets for making the River Tool in the Map Edit actually work right?

Reply #19 from Elemental Forums Top
Very cool! The more variety that can be added to the game, the better. Have you investigated the possibility of modding in new wildlands? How about a Land of the Dead bordered by the River Styx? New wildlands would make for an awesome mod, although I suppose you'd have to spend a ton of time on artwork.
Reply #20 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Aerion, reply 18
Heaven, do you have any tips, tricks or other secrets for making the River Tool in the Map Edit actually work right?

River tool? I only edit xml.

Quoting ErikCurre, reply 19
Very cool! The more variety that can be added to the game, the better. Have you investigated the possibility of modding in new wildlands? How about a Land of the Dead bordered by the River Styx? New wildlands would make for an awesome mod, although I suppose you'd have to spend a ton of time on artwork.

I may do a wildland per river type somewhere down the line, assuming they can be modded in.

Reply #21 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 20

Quoting Aerion Istari, reply 18Heaven, do you have any tips, tricks or other secrets for making the River Tool in the Map Edit actually work right?

River tool? I only edit xml.

Man, if you can edit the map XML and end up with something that makes sense, you're a God! 

Reply #22 from Elemental Forums Top

I designed the tiles in the E:wom editor. Other than that, it is more a matter of understading the XML, and then applying it.

Reply #23 from Elemental Forums Top

I do go into the XML and clean up bad rivers and a few things like that, but no way I'm spending the time to design a map with an XML editor!

Reply #24 from Elemental Forums Top

I've been thinking about how to best allow the players to actually use the rivers, ie a magma forge for example.

The modifiers that I want to use don't work from world resources - ie stuff like "apply trait to trained units" or "apply stats to trained units", or "give stats to defending units". So I can't just put them in the improvement and link it to the closest city, that won't work.

The other option is that each world resource from these rivers, for example a magma forge, unlocks a spell and gives you one perpetual cast - like rations worked in E:wom, this magma forge produces +1 global "magma forge resource", and the spell uses 1 of that resource every turn. In essence, for every magma forge, you can cast one such spell. It would have a cooldown too, to prevent the player shuffling it between cities just as units finish training.

But the downside of that solution is that the spell isn't dispelled if the world resource is lost. So I have to put a limit on the spell - say 100 turns duration. That creates micro for the player, and also there is no warning when it expires (other than the resource appearing in the resource bar).

The plus side is that this kind of solution is extremely easy for the AI to use.