Thief, Guard, Hammerite, Pagan, etc...

Ricebug on 19/6/2014 at 22:24

I've been mulling over this idea of doing a mod where you could choose different AI types under the Difficulty Menu. So instead of Normal, Hard and Expert, you could be a Thief, a Guard, a Hammerite, or whatever.

Has someone done any arm/weapon animations for a guard or Hammerite? And then there's the issue of being able to switch the player schemas back and forth. Another thing to consider is that you'd also have a guard or Hammerhead who could climb, swim and mantle, which would rattle some purists.

Comments welcome.

Random_Taffer on 20/6/2014 at 01:50

Neat idea. I think there's a hammer arm in Yandros' Hammerite kit, IIRC. Let the purists be rattled.

nicked on 20/6/2014 at 05:38

I've started a mission where you choose between a warrior, a mage and a thief about three times now. Somehow it always falls flat; I think it's just easier to tell a good story with Garrett. But, I'd love to see it done!

R Soul on 20/6/2014 at 16:00

I think it's better for the player to be the same character on all difficulty levels, but I'm sure it could be done if you were really fired up with your idea. E.g. I think some of the scripts in KDScript could modify the light gem/health shields, and you can give the player 3 "swords" and use Difficulty > Destroy to limit each one to the correct difficulty level. The same applies to other weapons and items.

It might be possible to change the player's voice, but I suggest trying it before committing to the missions. The Garrett archetype has Schema > Class Tags: CreatureType Player, so you can look through the schema files for that, and copy the schemas to make new creature types for a guard and Hammerite (avoid naming conflicts with default guards/Hammerites). You could have the Class Tags property set by difficulty, probably be sending a stim from objects that are deleted from the wrong difficulty levels.

That's the easy part. You can use existing AI sounds for getting hurt, mantling etc, but if you want VOs, you'll need to get voice actors to do a full set of player sounds to keep things consistent.

You can have different AI, lights on or off etc depending on difficulty, but rather than simply making things easier or harder, you'll have to bear in mind the different types of inventory each type of player will have. A Hammerite would have no business carrying lockpicks unless he was a really naughty Hammerite. Doors can be locked/unlocked by difficulty.

So from a technical point of view it can be done, but if you want people to play as a Hammerite or a guard, I think it would be better to have a whole mission for that character.

nicked on 20/6/2014 at 17:48

I had three separate StartingPoints, which gives you almost complete control over player properties across different difficulty levels. My warrior for example, had a fullbright light gem, a slower walk speed and couldn't jump as high, or swim at all, to simulate his heavy armour. But he also had a ton of health that constantly regenerated and did masses of damage, so playing as him was more a case of tanking your way through, cutting down anything in the way. Wouldn't work in a traditional style FM of course, but the idea was to be working your way up through a castle infested with respawning undead.

Meanwhile there was a thiefy type with very low health, extreme acrobatic jumping ability (3x normal iirc) and a proper light gem, and the mage who fell somewhere in the middle but was going to have a range of powerful offensive and defensive spells like stone skin and calling lightning.

Sadly I ran out of cells long before I finished the castle. :p

Yandros on 20/6/2014 at 18:23

I would suggest working on the classes/characters and their differences either in a test mission or very early on. Get it all working and such and then go off and build the mission, that way you don't waste loads of time making a mission that you later don't release because something you wanted to do wasn't technically possible.

Nick, that sounds really cool, you should go back and scale down the mission so you can release it!

nicked on 20/6/2014 at 20:20

I may do one day, but the sheer scale of it means it would need rebuilding more or less from scratch to keep any kind of coherence to the level design.

Ricebug on 20/6/2014 at 20:38

I'll heed the advice of the Master Builders. I figured there would be technical gymnastics to pull off, and I have trouble figuring out how to load VictoryCheck. Or VictoryScript. Or Victor's Shirt... Ahh, whatever it is. :p