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| Thread: New terrain idea ! Pure genius ! | |
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted August 16, 2004 04:56 PM |
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New terrain idea ! Pure genius !
Hey. I just got an idea to introduce "new" kind of terrain into Homm serries. One of most common in our world, one you are really familiar with. And the one that has been persistently ignored in Heroes.
The forest !
We all know that all of you thought about it while playing Homm(whatever number) for first time. Why exactly are the trees so scary that no one dares to enter the forest ? Is this very realistic ? Or perhaps all Erathian/Jadame forests are composed of flesh-eating, killer plants only ?
Or the game developers signed secred pact with woodcutting industry, and they want to make us used to the Earth without forests ? Or perhaps because the forest is very non-climatic and it would break the athmosphere of the game ? (Hmpf !)
The reason behind it is most probably the technical one - too many sprites, especially animated ones could cause severe slowdowns. After first try it was easy - no one cares about forests anymore.
Really no one ? Just think how much fun there could be having a castle in middle of large forest, use no road, trace dangerous forest beasts, both "normal" and mythical ! The battlefield could be quite interesting, too.
My suggestion would be that flying creatures and all mounted ones would have disadvantages in forest. Something like -5-10% to speed, attack, defense. On Adventure map, sight range would be a bit lower than in plains or other "normal" terrain. Movement penalty would be like 25% percent (there could be Dense Forest terrain, too).
I hope this topic isn't redundant. MODS: if you feel it is, delete it on sight. I won't feel offended.
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Daddy
Responsible
Supreme Hero
and why not.
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posted August 16, 2004 05:13 PM |
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In fact, your idea is quite cool.
I allready was full of joy when seeing the new terreins in SoD - but even more would enhance the game imo!
good idea  #
reg
Daddy (maybe forest creatures get a bonus? eg dendroids, woodelves &co)
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Mitzah
Promising
Supreme Hero
of the Horadrim
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posted August 16, 2004 10:39 PM |
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Hmmm...guess I could make a new terrain and introduce it in da game, but the disadvantage could only be done with ERM...
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| The HoMM Channel |
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dajek
Known Hero
Psychedelic Knight
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posted August 16, 2004 10:42 PM |
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|I love forests, so I support your idea I think... But I cannot fully understand it and I'm neither depressed if forests are left as they are. I cannot remember much games where you could actually walk in the forest... Forests have always been obstacles, not environment. Maybe that needs to be changed...
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IYY
Responsible
Supreme Hero
REDACTED
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posted August 16, 2004 10:45 PM |
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Quote:
|I love forests, so I support your idea I think... But I cannot fully understand it and I'm neither depressed if forests are left as they are. I cannot remember much games where you could actually walk in the forest... Forests have always been obstacles, not environment. Maybe that needs to be changed...
Except for Japanese RPG's, the only game I remember that allowed you to walk through forests is Warwind.
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Lord_Woock
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Daddy Cool with a $90 smile
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posted August 16, 2004 10:56 PM |
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I like the idea, but the problem this leaves is that this way mapmakers will find it a lot harder to e.g. restrict movement area and enforce taking specific routes. We'd be left with mountains and water as the only impassable terrain, and the latter is no longer so when we put in boats.
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Yolk and God bless.
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My buddy's doing a webcomic and would certainly appreciate it if you checked it out!
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drlucifer
Adventuring Hero
The Surgeon of Death
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posted August 17, 2004 12:38 AM |
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Quote:
We'd be left with mountains and water as the only impassable terrain, and the latter is no longer so when we put in boats.
And the former will be no longer so when people start saying, Hey, wait a minute, people can climb mountains...
Or fences- how ridiculous is it that you can't pass through a fence-
But seriously, I like the idea of a forest terrain... one of the things that annoys me about creating my own maps is having to place every single tree in a part of the map where I want a pretty forest.
As to passability- H4 brought in the Lava River (maybe the Ice River, I'm not sure) as an impassable terrain. I think it is not giving in to realism too much to allow passable forest, or even passable mountains. Mapmakers can put in realistic barriers like canyons, streams, or even good old walls.
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Doctors are not necessarily your friends.
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IYY
Responsible
Supreme Hero
REDACTED
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posted August 17, 2004 01:37 AM |
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Well, climbing mountains is not like passing through forests. Although some great armies in history did pass through large mountains, it doesn't mean that your hero can just go around hopping over mountains. If such a trip was to be made possible, certain units (balistas, catapults, dragon golems, knights) would have to be removed from the army. Also, casualties would have to occur.
In other words, mountain travel is not too realistic. As for forests, that'll be just fine. Maybe there could be two types of forests - one of which is too thick to be passed.
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Svarog
Honorable
Supreme Hero
statue-loving necrophiliac
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posted August 17, 2004 01:47 AM |
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Quote:
But seriously, I like the idea of a forest terrain... one of the things that annoys me about creating my own maps is having to place every single tree in a part of the map where I want a pretty forest.
Why not instead make an adventure map object, a collection of trees set in a gird, kind of like a chess board? Problem solved. You've got a forest and you dont have an impassible combat screen full of trees.
However, special bonuses/penalties for forest wont be able to be implemented.
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The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT its mineral rights.
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted August 17, 2004 06:50 PM |
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Lord Long Teeth:
You still get lakes, water, mountains and rocks, those big especially barren trees, lava rivers, interactive structures, slopes, outcroppings, and those patches of man-eating predatory mushrooms.
"The only game with forest" thing - as the graphical hardware and CPU development advances, you can see forests popping here and there. What kinda proves my statement that it was mostly because of technical difficulties.
You see lots of trees in Warcraft3, even if they're big, chunky and basically cones. There are some very nice trees in Neverwinter Nights (the game may be a bit unimpressive with story and all that, but it should be _seen_ just for those forests. There are several flavours of forests there, even hell-converted one, all of them looking great). I'd say were are going to see forests more and more often these days in games. On other hand, turn-based strategy games often have forests as normal terrain - "hardcore" hex based games, master of magic, civilisation, battle for wesnoth and the games that inspired them. Not that rare at all. But certainly rare in games with more detailed graphics, especially 3D.
Svarog:
Quote:
Why not instead make an adventure map object, a collection of trees set in a gird, kind of like a chess board? Problem solved. You've got a forest and you dont have an impassible combat screen full of trees.
As you said bonuses and movement modifefiers are one possible reason. You may also ask why is there Rough terrain at all, when it can mostly be substituted by placing large amount of rocks (some meant for water like many mapmakers do), mountains, and Cursed Ground and others as a floor.
It's not like forest is uncommon, unrealistic, particulary hostile for military, or disliked in fantasy games. But what is also important I would love to see more believable, specific, detailed forest. Kind of forest which obscures your hero and other things, a dense, foresty forest which makes it possible to stand beneath a tree corona in foggy weather and listening to howling wolves.
Partially because of you I got an interesting idea: more freedom to mapmakers. At the moment you create a swamp, add some decoration, dense trees... and it will always be a swamp. Let the mapmaker decide what his land truly is . Even more - it could be possible select an area in editor and mark is at both swamp and forest, essentialy making it an overgrown swamp or "wet" forest.
Both swampy and wood creatures would feel at home there. It would also be great if I could choose the terrain type for battles in an area, for castle... So you could make story-based, underground map, where there are wonders going on, powerful magic, blah blah (you probably seen at least several maps of this kind), and have no annoying sun/sky in supposedly underground battles.
My hands hurt already, now leave me alone.
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Draco
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted August 17, 2004 07:53 PM |
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im M&M 4(and5) (i think 3 too) you needed at least 2 characters with pathfinding skill, to pass over throught trees.
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Svarog
Honorable
Supreme Hero
statue-loving necrophiliac
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posted August 18, 2004 03:19 AM |
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My final vote on forest terrain - YES.
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The meek shall inherit the earth, but NOT its mineral rights.
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Polaris
Promising
Known Hero
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posted August 18, 2004 04:42 AM |
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I'm not quite sure what you mean by this idea. Trees have always existed in HOMM games and a forest is nothing more than a collection of trees. So I think you mean to make a ground tile that is called "forest"?
If so, this proposal violates the basic concept of layered tilesets. If the game designers make a distinction between tiles and the objects contained on or in them, it is not logical to mix the roles of the two. Is a tree a tile or an object? A forest?
In the case of HOMM, which is thankfully the usual case, the tile is what you walk on while the doodads are what is on the surface of the plane of motion. It is illogical to have a "forest" tile because that would imply you are walking on top of the forest. Quite a strange forest, I think! Forests are inherently in the object layer, as are towns, units, and structures. As an aside, water and mountains (on a 3D map) should not be in the object layer- either an angle tolerance or cliffs can be used to prevent pathing on mountains; HOMM has been bad about putting too much in the doodad layer for artistic purposes (but the tree is not one of those things).
As you pointed out, some games do not have a policy of distinguishing between objects and tiles. However, HOMM is not one of those games.
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B0rsuk
Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
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posted August 18, 2004 03:48 PM |
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I'll try to keep it short and simple.
This is the kind of forest you can travel in Homm - fairly loose because each tree is essentially a wall. You see your hero traveling between trees. Actually, it doesn't look much like forest, because it isn't.
http://www.mikelevin.com/YosemiteMist2.jpg
...and this is the kind of forest I want to see in homm games:
http://www.mikelevin.com/YosemiteMistRescan1024.jpg
It's dense , and it covers the ground. In Homm games it would be represented by partial translucence effect. The armies marching below the branches. The forest terrain would also have its own mountain set - one densely covered with trees.
Point three: there's no definition of terrain anywhere. Moral of story: Homm terrain is what you believe it to be. I personally believe them to be a way to:
make some things in more convenient way
add extra music&battlefield images, and stuff
If you convince yourself that a homm terrain can be a way to represent things more accurately - you have no more problems with realism.
At the moment the best "forest" you can get looks like a lawn with some trees planted on top of it. Forests don't look like that. This http://www.mikelevin.com/RussianRidgeBlueWildflowersBig.jpg
isn't forest. I'd prefer to think about "grass" terrain as plains. plains/forest separation would make some things nicer, for exaple Rampart could do bether in forests, and Castle would excell in field battles, cavalry usage...
But look - bodies of water in homm are represented by both (o teh terror!) objects and terrain type. For some reason this doesn't bother you. The same could be done with Forest terrain - tree objects would still be there, but they would be used as "details", to make some trees more conspicuous. The only change would be that most of them would now be passable by default. I think it should still be possible to place ten barren trees, mark them impassable and place some events about some evil magic going there.
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TitaniumAlloy
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Professional
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posted August 18, 2004 04:42 PM |
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good idea.
you can go through the 2D forests in MM8, if you can call them a forest.
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John says to live above hell.
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gerdash
Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
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posted September 10, 2004 04:00 PM |
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is it honorable enough for a noble to sneak around in dirty forests instead of walking boldly in the open?
i have also thought about passable forest and that should be normal for elves. i think that for some towns, it would be more natural to walk in forests.
downside is that if we need obstacles and only have to use mountains and lava rivers, the maps might become boring. and if we also want to use some forest, there will be very little open plains left. forest, along with some mountains, looks nice on the adventure map as obstacle, and open plains look nice as passable terrain.
now if that problem could be solved so that the adventure map view won't suffer too much, maybe we could let our hero and army take a journey into the depths of an ancient forest to punish a scary forest goblin because he doesn't wash hands before he eats.
Moderator's note:This topic has been closed, as it refers to an older version of the game. To discuss Heroes 3, please go to Library Of Enlightenment, to discuss Heroes 4, please go to War Room Of Axeoth, to discuss Heroes 5, go to Temple Of Ashan.
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