New buildings

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Iluvalar
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:57 pm

New buildings

Post by Iluvalar »

Reading about bee like race gave me some ideas for some buildings that could break the traditionnal and somewhat very linear path of buildings. One of them might make klackons a decent race :
Forum
Prod. cost: 250
Preriquisite : builder's hall
Maintenance : 3 Golds
Effects : -3.5 unrest (rounded as usual)
Considered like a temple (allow nature's guild)
+Can gain the life/death mastery bonus (+50% unrest bonus)
+Evil presence and such...
Goal : Could replace shrine and temple for races that do not use magic.
Air port
Prod cost: 800
Preriquisite : University or mechanician guild ?
Maintenance : 6 Golds
Effect : principaly acting like a fantastic stable and a shipyard
+new troops (those might have wind-walking ability)
+Allowing merchant guild
Goal: For airborn races or highly technological.
I have some others ideas. It surely need some balancing trough gameplay.
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Lucern
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2007 9:13 am

Re: New buildings

Post by Lucern »

Nice Iluvalar. The good thing about buildings is that they're EASY to draw and animate. You can draw it once and then create very minor changes for a fairly impressive structure. You know how there's 33 frames for a unit? Try 1 for some buildings. As for other frames, buildings don't tend to move much! Generally the other frames are like for the magician's tower that glows, or the smoke coming out of some buildings.

The downside, I think, is that the game expects a linear and shared building pattern...so the new buildings will be added to every other race's "Cannot build" list, which will render the comment less than meaningful. If we changed that to "Can build" instead, or gave a number as a general guideline for "This race can build very little", then we'd be pretty free to think about all kinds of divergent building pathways. Naturally, balance is in the balance when this happens lol.

For my races, I intend to add a gambling hall for the "Free Men" that ups the cash generated in a city, a Warrens for the goblins that ups their reproduction (I don't want to give them their max right at the start) , and some sort of greenhouse for the plants that ups their reproduction from pathetic to less pathetic. In fact, I might replace a few normal structures with structures that make sense for a more biologically (rather than culturally) driven race like the bee guys might be. Instead of the granary, anything based on bees might have a honey repository lol.
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: New buildings

Post by Lubricus »

I like these ideas. But I would be careful not to change the "feel" of the game by adding a lot of highly specialised building. I WOULD like to have the possibility of allowing a building which normally requires a different buidling, though. If the bee creatures were to be highly spiritual, for instance, they might need an Animist's Guild, but that doesn't mean they should get a Stable. And they could certainly use a Merchant's Guild, even if shipbuilding is an alien concept for them. All in all, though, I kind of like the quirky building requirements...

I'll flesh out my bee idea soon, BTW. I have had a restless night of plenty of ideas! :D I just wish I could come up with a good name for the bee people...
Virm
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:54 pm

Re: New buildings

Post by Virm »

It might be possible to change it from a test against the building's build requirements to testing the race's requirements for the building.

If each race also had a structure containing a list of 'construction' objects, then each 'construction' object could specify the building it pertains to (unique ID of the building, probably also meaning that a building will always have the same effects for anyone who builds it) and what buildings are required to make it. A similar object (or the same one with adaptation) could be used to contain the units that can be produced (unique unit ID, building prereqs).

This would allow any new races to add race-specific buildings, and have abnormal build trees, but would leave any existing build trees intact.

The race editor could easily include a 'default' button/option to set the current race's build tree to the complete tree like the Orcs have, and modifications can be made as needed from that as a starting point.

As always, the feasibility of a method like this is entirely unknown without knowing how implode is currently performing this task.
Iluvalar
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:57 pm

Re: New buildings

Post by Iluvalar »

Lucern wrote: In fact, I might replace a few normal structures with structures that make sense for a more biologically (rather than culturally) driven race like the bee guys might be. Instead of the granary, anything based on bees might have a honey repository lol.
Graphicaly it would be cool, but for the game play not at all. This mean that we'll have to pay much more attention at which bulding have which effect for every race without really having any impact in the game (except confusion). And franckly, can I say that graphical issues are not our main concern :roll: ?
Lubricus wrote:I like these ideas. But I would be careful not to change the "feel" of the game by adding a lot of highly specialised building.
undoubtiously, I don't want to disrupt the "feel" of MoM in any way. Still I think that there's room for good ideas for new buildings/concepts that could put an end on the actual completely linear building pattern: smithy,builder hall,market,(lower your taxe)farmer market,shrine(up your taxe),sawmill(lower your taxe),2 bow men(up your taxe),miner's guild (lower your taxe),2 bow men (up your taxe),temple,animists guild(up your taxe again),library,sage guild,alchimist guild,2 bow men,forester guild,university,bank(lower your taxe) (and then you have a begining of a choice depending of what you can't build). insert in that a settler or two some attacking units and their you are ! ok :lol: it's just a bit more complicated then that, but not realy much.

So if we had buildings that disallow an other one or make it more useful we might have some real choices in our cities.
Virm wrote:As always, the feasibility of a method like this is entirely unknown without knowing how implode is currently performing this task.
I don't want to talk for implode, but the worst thing that can happen is that he give us some XML files to create. (which building alow which one) (which race can build what ?).
I don't think that sort of thing is realy complicated compared to battle/over land interface or AI except if we start to create some realy special building ability.

Came across my mind : it might be interesting if instead of just (can/cannot build) we could put a building factor that multiply the cost and maintenance of some buildings. Exemple : Klackons might be able to build a temple at 400 prod. and 4 gold/turns(x2) if they (and they do) need more research that bad.
Lucern wrote:I intend to add a gambling hall for the "Free Men" that ups the cash generated in a city, a Warrens for the goblins that ups their reproduction (I don't want to give them their max right at the start) , and some sort of greenhouse for the plants that ups their reproduction from pathetic to less pathetic.
I'm curious to ear more about these one, it might help us to understand how all this will could be put together.
elliott20
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 8:56 pm

Re: New buildings

Post by elliott20 »

on the flip side, does anyone know the game handles just the pure graphical parts of the buildings? I'm asking because I think it would be cool to have different races have different architectural aesthetics even if the building itself does essentially the same thing. Or would that be better done if we just created a new building and replaced it within the queue?

edit: I'm currently just messing around with a Japanese style castle based off of the wizard fortress. Not sure where I would use it, but maybe it could be a war college replacement. If I can ever get it done, I might try to do a shinto temple, some thatched houses, and a couple of other Japanese style structures.
McTaff
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat May 03, 2008 12:38 am

Re: New buildings

Post by McTaff »

elliott20 wrote:on the flip side, does anyone know the game handles just the pure graphical parts of the buildings? I'm asking because I think it would be cool to have different races have different architectural aesthetics even if the building itself does essentially the same thing. Or would that be better done if we just created a new building and replaced it within the queue?

edit: I'm currently just messing around with a Japanese style castle based off of the wizard fortress. Not sure where I would use it, but maybe it could be a war college replacement. If I can ever get it done, I might try to do a shinto temple, some thatched houses, and a couple of other Japanese style structures.
Interesting ideas! It would be nice to see something looking a little more flashy.

@ Implode - if this is feasible, what dimensions/resolution/file size would you need? (If you're interested in fan input on this, a list of all the buildings would probably help too!)
Lubricus
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 7:30 am

Re: New buildings

Post by Lubricus »

Hehe! I've always liked the insane look of a large Klackon city with a couple of medieval human buildings thrown in... :lol:

Seriously, different buildings for different races would be great. But for me, limiting it to the already different Housing styles would work best, instead of having different buildings for every single race. I like the Japanese theme idea, though.
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