MoM IME Expanded

Anything else to do with MoM IME
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

Lucern wrote:Regarding Bee People: This should be quite cool Lubricus. I had some vague thoughts about a counterpoint to the Klackons, and I find it interesting that you went virtually the opposite direction. Cool -this means I can still do it lol. I imagined the Klackons to be the more sentient of the two, and the two would despise each other because the Klackons were a slave race that escaped the draw of hive-thinking. I'm also considering an avian race to cover the flying thing, but they're a bit down the list, and only if I make a 3rd plane. Too many flyers in one area...yikes.

By the way, I was sure that good old Latin from the scientific classification of bees would help us. I was wrong. Apoidea? Hymenoptera? I mean, Hy Men would be funny, but...wrong lol.

Looks like a well-developed concept and description that make mine look a bit fluffy. Wait, mine ARE a bit fluffy. Balance is for later :D Oh, and I had a good laugh at the gnolls raiding them for honey. Furry punks.
Great feedback, Lucern! :D

I wanted my bees to be a bit more civilised than the Klackons, but still have a hard time accepting other races. They'll still be hive-oriented, just somewhat milder by nature than their ant-like cousins. I still haven't managed to think of a good name for them, however, and now I'm beginning to get used to thinking about them as just "Beemen"... Well, they won't be in the game for a long time anyway.

I don't know where the idea of the Gnoll raids came from, but it fits well, I think. I see the Gnolls as a race which prefers not to do any work on their own unless they have to, so raiding the comparatively defenseless bees would make sense.

When it comes to the Klackons, I think the bees should see them as simple-minded cousins. Their societies would be ordered somewhat similarly, making it easier for them to accept each other, but the mindsets would be quite different. As for the other races, the bees would prefer to be associated with peaceful and nature-oriented ones, like Halflings, Elves and Nomads. I guess they would be quite happy to live alongside the Gnomes, by the way, even though they would have a hard time understanding their magic.

The graphics will certainly be my undoing. :( I spent two and a half hours creating an overland image of my Beeman spearmen, and I'm still not happy with the results. The only success I have had is with the War Wasp - I ripped off an image of a Beedrill (from Pokemon, of all things), and fiddled with it until I got a pretty good overland picture. But creating all of the animation images, as well as the overland stuff... I don't think I'll manage it.
User avatar
Lucern
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:13 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lucern »

Hey Lubricus,

Thanks for the commentary. I think your vision can work just fine in the game.

Sorry to hear that you're having a tough time with the graphics. Can I suggest starting with an easier one than War Wasps? And while we're at it, starting with the combat animations rather than the overland? The hardest graphics I've done were for the Sylves, since they were the least humanoid and were least similar to pre-existing graphics. I suggest that you give it another go: make some Beemen swordsmen. It's probably one of two units a beeman player will see at the beginning. If I may be presumptuous in imagining how they'll look...start with a klackon swordsman as a base, and drag their animations out from the extracted graphics into your working folder. For the sake of getting the 3-segmented insect thing going on, start with the 001 frame of them looking up and to the left - just like they'll start in battle if they're on your side. Make a palette of a bright gold, maybe a yellowish dark brown for the stripey contours (black might look weird with the border), perhaps another color for their big eyes, some metallic colors for the sword, either bronze, dull iron, or bright steel, and think about what you want the shield to represent - metal, wood, leather, something painted, etc. Begin experimenting with making the klackon into a proper bee. Try giving his abdomen (bottom segment) some striking striped pattern, but don't make it too complex - you'll have to replicate it many times ;). Try making it a bit bigger too, as bee-people might have more pronounced abdomens than ant-people. After all, you don't want to look like a recolor of an existing race. Color in the thorax with the mostly gold colors, and finish off the head with eyes and antennae in whatever looks best. Change the sword shape or keep it the same as you recolor that, and do the same with the shield. Okay, there are 2 things about this unit that will make it a bit harder: wings, and the fact that wings make them fly! :D Get that basis down first, and go hunting for draconians - drag out the draconian swordsmen in the same way as you did before for comparison. Look at what they do with the wing animations. 000 is 'in', 001 is midway, 002 is further out, and 003 is in (like they dart forward to strike). Pick a soft yellow that offsets the gold, with some darker tones to outline it and draw veiny lines into it in the same pattern as the draconian. Experiment with the placement and size of the wings until you're happy, keeping in mind that he's looking top-left rather than straight forward. I'm not sure you could animate it so that it looks like a flutter, but that's also worth experimenting with - as in, they go so fast you can only see a shifting slightly colored blur. For simplicity's sake, you might have them be slow-wing-flappers. Now, they can't look like they're flying but be right on the ground, right? Open up the draconian swordsmen facing that same direction and stance. Copy and paste your bee over him, lining their feet up. Shape the bright green shadow the way it should look (it'll be dark in game) to match the body of a bee rather than a draconian, and the effect, overall, is that you should have a unit which is higher up than the klackon was. The shadow could be a small circle or oval, since the bee's features are a bit slimmer than the draconian's, and the bee's wings are translucent.

I think this unit would be easiest to start with for you, because it's mostly just 'painting' rather than drawing. If you get all 32 frames, pick one of the frames in the 'bottom-left' direction, and use that to guide you with the overland graphic for them (all the graphics in the game have the bottom-left image for their overland, so the player will be subconsciously expecting the same). You can do this...put some music or bad tv on in the background and just go to town on that bee :D
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

Re: Heroes

You're right, heroes need to be scrutinized a lot more since their growth is quite a bit more exponential than normal units. the good news though, is that we could always base a lot of basic states around existing heroes. We already have some base archetypes to run with: the Leader, the Warrior, the Archer, the Healer and the Mage. Most more common heroes at lower levels tend to be one dedicated type or another, with more powerful heroes leaning more and more towards hybrids. (such as warrax the chaos warrior)

The Sapper, or rather, the engineer hero is really just what I thought to be the missing niche. Of course, considering your goblin culture write-up, I think the engineer hero archetype would be PERFECT for them and I'm leaning towards keeping engineer heroes specific to them.

Expanding the heroes cast for the most part will just be a matter of fitting the heroes into each of these archetypes. (or mix and matching them)

of course, there are other types of heroes too

stack mover: guys that have abilities which make your troops move farther and faster. i.e the entire point to Rakir the Beastmaster.

I'm sure there are tons more based off of the existing abilities, but those are the most immediate archetypes that come to mind.

Anyway, let's try to do Bdoken again, this time with ability scores. (brackets are after they hit demi-god status)

Bdoken
Attack 1 (9)
Special Attack: Throw 3 (12)
Armor 4 (8)
Resistance 6 (14)
Hits 5 (13)
Accuracy Mod 3 (6)
Abilities
Armmaster
Leadership
First Strike
Wall Crusher
Construction
Korenn
Posts: 22
Joined: Thu Oct 09, 2008 8:07 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Korenn »

Yay, activity!

I don't deserve being mentioned in the same sentence as Lucern yet, because I didn't actually do any ass-saving as of yet ;) Implode warned me to wait with making the graphics editor easier to use until 0.9.4 is done and he had converted the editor to Java, so I'm patiently waiting for that to happen :D

But don't let that stop you from drawing graphics! A good guideline that I've used myself when pixeling, is to work with a game screenshot in the background that I can turn on and off, to immediately see what the sprite will look like in-game. However that does require using a drawing program that can handle layers (I use Gimp)
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

About heroes of the stack mover type: I was thinking of making a Lizardman hero (riding on a Dragon Turtle, I imagine) with the ability to transport units over water. But I'm wondering if it is possbile to do that - will a unit capable of moving on both land and water be able to have "paasengers"?
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

hmm... interesting question... the only way currently to have a stack-mover is to either provide movement bonus, or be Jaer the Windmage. In order to do that, you'd pretty much have to create a new ability from scratch.

Currently, the only abilities that allow you to do this are sailing or wind walker. The problem is, I'm not sure if the sailing ability marks you as a ship and automatically bars you from being on land. (Notice that the draconian airship does not have the ability)

Being a windwalker would work but then that makes the unit flying and it also means that the whole stack ignores overland movement modifiers like roads and mountains.

This is where I would suggest we create a new carrier ability with the following format: "Carrier X" where X equals to the number of units that can benefit from this ability.

Normally, when a stack moves the unit with lowest movement points becomes the stack's movement points. (Though you can always break the stack to get your faster guys to move ahead) What you can do here is to give units with less movement points than the carrier the same movement points. The problem here, however, is determining which units get this benefit. while I'm sure you can pick it out easy enough, automatically we'll still need an algorithm determining who gets this bonus first and in what order of operation. We could always just say "the first X number of units in the stack with movement points less than carrier gets it, in order of the stack", but that means automatically, the heroes will get it probably every single time.

hmm... this ability would definitely need to be tinkered with before it can be ready...
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

I was afraid of that. Too bad, it would be cool to have such a hero, and I wouldn't want a Lizardman hero to have Wind Walking. I'll have to think about this.
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

well, we could always just test the engine by giving a hero both land movement points AND the sailing tag and see what happens. If it works out, great, we got ourselves units that can both go on land and be a ship when need be. Of course, they're still not carrying anyone on land though.

conversely, we can simply use the ship mechanics, but apply it for units on land. Basically, we would reproduce sailing as a power, but this time make it land based. either way, it'll require a new ability be programmed into the game.
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

Hmm. The hero wouldn't have to be able to transport units on land - in fact, it shouldn't be able to. If the swimming hero has a movement of 2, and is travelling with a regular swordsman unit (with a movement of 1), the stack should have a movement of 1 on land and 2 on the sea. But I see that it would require a bit of fiddling with the rules. I'll see what I can find out when I have the time. The Beemen will have to stay graphic-less for a time, I guess. :shock:
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

don't worry, that idea is not going anywhere so we can take some time to try out some concepts. I think having some more new abilities or new archetypes combined together will also help us come up with more ways to make certain races unique anyway. (Personally, I'm of the school that there should heroes that you can only get if you have a certain race under your control and certain heroes you simply cannot hire if you have their opposition under your banner)
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

If some heroes are exclusive to a specific race, I would like each race to have at least two heroes each, so that you don't end up never seeing some of them. I like the idea, though.

A bit to the side, but I thought about adding in units that cannot be built by anyone, so that they can only be encountered as mercenaries. How does that sound?
User avatar
Lucern
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:13 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lucern »

I like the idea of heroes that will only join up if you have a certain race in your empire (or maybe some that won't join wizards using them as 'slave races'...rather, starting race only). This would be especially cool for races that don't seem to have much going for them. Gnolls and Klackons come to mind. By existing rules, you could probably make heroes that will only join if you have x amount of sorcery, chaos, or nature books. I think Mortu the Black Knight required a death speall book and that a couple of life-book required champions were in the game (aside from Torin).

While we're at it, I like heroes that have unusual characteristics like the transport hero. The Wind Mage and the Draconian always shook things up. I wouldn't mind seeing powerhouse heroes or strategist type characters on foot, like a berserker hero or an orcish captain. You could even have a griffin or dragon rider as a champion. I thought about making a hero who rides on a magic carpet. Lots of heroes, of course, implies lots of work on heroes. I've never tried drawing a portrait in the MoM style...I wonder if I can manage it.

The mercenary-only unit idea is a nice one, but personally I'd hate to see a unit I made only show up in such rare circumstances. That's definitely a good repository for half-finished races though lol.
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by Lubricus »

Hmm... A dragon hero would be cool... Maybe it would only join you if you were Draconian, and might look like a recolor of a Sky Drake or Great Drake. It would be flying and have, say, three movement points. It shouldn't be hard to find a cool dragon portrait to use for it, either.
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

aren't there tools that can be used to pixel-ize an existing picture? maybe we can do portraits that way? though, copyright issues might crop up...

Lucern, that was the primary driving force for me to have heroes that are race exclusive. It gives certain races more power and just more reason to play said race. Currently, there are 4 characters (besides Torin) who require at least one spellbook of a certain type to join. The Paladin and Priestess require one life book while the Black Knight and the Necromancer are one death book each. I'm actually surprised that Warrax the Chaos Warrior didn't require at least one chaos book first.

Maybe we ought to create a new ability called "Loyal" that basically stipulates you HAVE to have a certain race under your control to recruit this hero, and another hero that's called "Supremacist" (err... might want to look for another word that is less offensive, of course) where you need to have the character's race as your master starting race to recruit.

anyway, for gnoll heroes, I want to go with the whole "raiding civilization" theme and have heroes that primarily support that end. Heroes that give their units higher mobility and fast attacks. Immediately, I think this means a leader hero. But also, I'm thinking of a shaman hero that would basically be a hybrid of the healer/caster type. The whole idea behind this is that the shaman would be the spiritual guide who also inspires his followers.

Remmar the Raider
Attack 5 (14)
Armor 3 (7)
Resistance 6 (14)
Hits 5 (13)
Accuracy Mod 3 (6)
Abilities
Armmaster
Leadership
First Strike
Path Finder
Might
Loyal (Gnoll)

Dermock the Shaman
Attack 3 (11)
Special Attack fire 5 (13)
Armor 3 (7)
Resistance 10 (18)
Hits 4 (12)
Accuracy Mod 3 (6)
Caster
Noble
Loyal (Gnoll)
spells:
Endurance
Flame Blade
Prayer

Wait... did I just create a HOLY gnoll? oh man... what have I done?

Anyway, for dragon heroes, it goes without saying they all fly. In keeping with the theme of dragons being magical and vain creatures who love jewelry, here are a couple suggestions.

Shaiel the Dracomage
What, you think Sss'ra just popped out of the ground? There's a place where these guys come from! This one here? She's basically what Sss'ra was before he became the big shot mage that could contend the throne. Unlike Sss'ra, however, she's far more obsessed about the furthering of Draconian interest and would not work with anyone who she believes does not have Draconian interest at heart. (anyone who has read Order of the Stick, think Red Cloak)
Attack 5 (13)
Special Attack fire 8 (24), fire breath 5 (13)
Armor 3 (7)
Resistance 12 (20)
Hits 5 (13)
Accuracy Mod 3 (6)
Super Caster
Super Arcane Power
Noble
Flight
Supremacist (Draconian)
sage
spells:
High Prayer
Invulnerability
Flame Strike

and right there you have your first supremacist hero with draconian principles! (ba-dum-chh!)

And while Fang the Draconian is fine and dandy and all, he still comes across more as a brute warrior type than a real draconian hero. Here's my first potential game breaker hero, also race specific.

Haa'Tilat the Ancient
An old fashion dragon, made in the way Gygax (may he rest in peace) intended them to be! This dragon is also a supremacist as he always find himself the most powerful being in existence. (That is, other than Torin, and the player wizards, there is very little that can actually threaten him)
Attack 9 (25)
Special Attack fire breath 9 (25)
Armor 6 (14)
Resistance 9 (20)
Hits 9 (25)
Accuracy Mod 3 (6)
Caster
Noble
Flight
Supremacist (Draconian)
Might
Constitution
Super Legendary
Weapon Immunity

Looking at these two heroes, I realized I might have accidentally Mary-Sue'd them up a little... maybe you guys want to help me reign them back in a little or maybe we can come up with other restrictions or do you guys think requiring the player to play a draconian civ is a good starting point?
Last edited by elliott20 on Tue Nov 25, 2008 8:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: MoM IME Expanded

Post by elliott20 »

Klackon heroes

What characteristics does the klackon have? durability, for one. they have that +1 resistance and +2 armor as a race. But let us extend this beyond just their defense bonus. Klackons are basically insects. brain storming on that concept, the following phrases come to mind: hive mind (thank you starcraft), ant-like industrious efforts, formian warrior ethics, special breeding.

There is no doubt in my mind that all klackon special troops probably come from a warrior class bred specially for combat. the entire idea of an elite bred hero makes for a good race only hero. But also, it is a chance that we can turn the whole "super defensive" mind set on it's head. instead of just a hero who is super durable, how about a hero that is also super destructive? and going with hive mind, how about a hero that is capable of summoning a lot of vermin to the battlefield? (i.e. ant queen)? However, for the queen, you'd have to come up with a new summon ability that currently does not exist in game. that is, "summon other insects" kind of ability.

so let's work with that.
Xl'lck (yeah, pronounce THAT! there ain't no syllables anywhere in there!) The Formian Knight
The concept behind Xl'lck is that he is a wrecking ball, with the ability to pretty much roll over lesser troops through sheer brute force, being the ironic result of refined breeding. Not quite Karrigan, more like an Ultralisk. His animation would basically be a really large insect of some sort. Maybe a centaur-like ant, using the stag beetle as it's lower base, but having it's upper torso attach to where the head should be. The upper torso would resemble an ant. I'll draw up a concept art on paper later if I get the time. I imagine him with 4-6 arms, wielding a different weapon in each. (Though, this could be difficult to draw) He would also be one of the few heroes whose magic item slots would have two weapons and one shield instead of the standard one weapon, one shield and one magic ring.
Attack 8
Armor 6
Resistance 6
Hits 6
Accuracy Mod 3
Abilities
Might
Constitution
Wall Crusher
Blade Master
Loyal (Klackon)
Noble (thank you hive mind!)
Shield (+2 defense vs arrows)
Burrower (not sure what this is called, but the ability to dig through earth)

Xar'dach the Queen
If we could come up with another ability to spontaneously summon creatures (preferably of some insect type that is cheap, simple, and basically cannon fodder) to the battlefield, this would be my second hero choice. What is it? it's basically a queen ant. Unlike most heroes, this hero has only one movement point, what with her dragging around a gigantic abdomen and all. Traditional ant queens are really just glorified wombs, and that's kind of boring, so we can always throw some other stuff on top to make her more interesting. Oh yeah, and I also have this silly idea of making her the first hero who can also double as a settler. :lol:
Attack 4
Armor 6
Resistance 6
Hits 6
Accuracy Mod 3
Abilities
Constitution
Supremacist (Klackon)
Noble (thank you hive mind!)
Burrower
Summon X (whatever the creature may be, we might have to create a new creature for this)
Build City
Caster
two random magic
Post Reply