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Heroes Community > Heroes 7+ Altar of Wishes > Thread: Respawning Maps
Thread: Respawning Maps
RedSoxFan3
RedSoxFan3


Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
posted November 05, 2003 07:06 PM

Respawning Maps

This would be a really cool feature to add to HOMM. Everyone knows how at the end of a month, if it's the month of the griffin, griffins show up at random places around the map.

What if you could make groups of objects to respawn at certain locations. For example, you have a random monster guarding 2 treasure chests, you beat the monster and grab the loot. A week later it pops up on the map again; another random monster guarding the same loot.

Perhaps you could do the a similar thing except with banks. Banks could regenerate every two weeks.
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Delfontes
Delfontes


Known Hero
Sorcerer Extraordinaire
posted November 05, 2003 07:51 PM

In heroes 4 that is done currently... to an extent.

Creature dwellings (not generators) guarding treasures, pyramid, glens etc. do repopulate after a while, and re generate random treasure.


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RedSoxFan3
RedSoxFan3


Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
posted November 06, 2003 03:28 PM
Edited By: RedSoxFan3 on 15 Dec 2003

As a further explanation to my idea:

The following is a representation of the maps, where the x's represent impassible squares.
The following squares label 1, 2, 3, and 4 make up a group objects that will respawn themselves after all 4 squares are empty.
___________________
|1|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|
|3|2|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|
|4|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|x|
| | |_|_|_|_|_|_|_|


The following squares label 1, 2, 3, and 4 make up a group objects that will respawn themselves after all 4 squares are empty.

Each square given a number will have certain parameters.

For example, in square 4 you may decide you want a monster stack to appear. Then you can choose the level of creature or choose a set of possible creatures that will appear on that square. Let's say you choose to have only pack of grand elves.

Then in squares 1, 2, and 3 you decide to have the possibilities of random resource or treasure chest.

Then you set the amount of time it will take to respawn. Let's say that you decide on 5 turns.

Let's say that on day 5, week 1, you fight and defeat the monsters on square 4 and take all the loot in squares 1, 2, and 3. On day 3, week 2, another monster will appear at square 4. Since you chose to have only Grand Elves respawn on that square, then a pack of Grand Elves would appear. On squares 1, 2, and 3, there would be either a random resource or a treasure chest for each square.

This purpose of this is to give the players another option for generating money. By conquering monsters you generate money. By having an everlasting supply of monsters guarding treasure. You will get an amount of income equal to the amount of land you control that respawns in this manner. So if you have a map that respawns very quickly on a map with no mines and no extra towns, then controlling land area is the only way to get extra money.

With respawning maps, another strategy will have to be strongly implicated, control the map. The players that can control the map the best will be able to tap the map for it's resources better even if there are no mines or towns.

Plus this will make for some really good heroes with all this fighting not to mention efficiency when fighting computers.
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Sir_Stiven
Sir_Stiven


Honorable
Legendary Hero
banned
posted November 21, 2003 01:53 PM

Even though i like the basic idea i think it would make the game more slow.

Why?

Because you would have no need to expand, just wait long enough and you´ll get the chance to take your resources back again and again and again...

Furthermore it will make the building structure in your towns even less important. As things usually are now in heroes 3 you spend first week (unless really poor map) trying to get as many dwells as possible in your town. Then next week your area problably will be quite cleared and to get enough creature to break border guards you need cash... cash you will need to get from money generating buildings and hopefully from taking some of the more tougher fights in your area.

Like if you play a map without big relic artifacts or a treasure area you will have no need to expand whatsoever since taking same fights over and over will bring you experience and the resources you get will make you stay alive... so you could just stay and wait until enough army to risk nothing fighting big border guards.

Plus respawning monsters will make map handling more difficult, lets say you take out a quite tough block to enter a new area in your zone and send a scout or two in there. And when done scouting and on the way back to meet up rest of heroes the monster re appears and your scouts are stuck while your main hero is long away taking other fights.

Will just add another thing to take in mind IMO that shouldnt matter. I dont know if you thought about it but for example creature dwells at maps and for example waterwheels is things that respawn too in heroes3. That i like because its made on a simple weekly basis and its not tough to keep track of.

But what will happend is that some players will play a map enough to learn when units/resources are respawning and will from that get an advantage. For me its just another thing to keep in mind that shouldnt matter too much.

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RedSoxFan3
RedSoxFan3


Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
posted November 21, 2003 03:22 PM

First of all I understand your arguements. Some of them I don't understand, because they seem more like arguements that are in favor of respawning map, such as trapped scouts after killing off a big creature block.

To please you with this, I will add a spell that goes along with this. Perhaps you can have a level 2 spell that will deactivate the respawning group which the hero is standing on.

Now you can have your main hero kill off a creature stack and cast a spell to stop the map respawning. This could also create a natural defense for your mines. This prevents opposing scouts from rushing through and picking off mines.

There could be another spell that could make a stack of monsters appear at a certain square on the map. The size and level of the creature would depend on the Spell Power of the caster.
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Sir_Stiven
Sir_Stiven


Honorable
Legendary Hero
banned
posted November 21, 2003 05:15 PM

hmm i dont know about you but getting some scouts of mine trapped because of some creature that appears again doesnt appeal me very much. I like them to stay dead once ive killed them. Take for instance a closed map border guard that would respawn, that could be devastating. If fighting with a "slow" army such as stronghold, tower or fortress who´s fastest creatures are 11,11,13 fighting against for example pack of arch angels, arch devils or drags will mean losses since they will attack before you will even have the chance to slow them down. Losses you sure dont wanna feel more than once, not to mention main hero could get "trapped" if have had a tough fight and lost all fodder and only have lvl 7 creatures and some more high lvl units left. Then when you wait for reinforment units your only way back to town gets blocked again by lots of arch angels. Then you a dead man because you problably wont be able to kill em off and you cant get your reinforcment to them, and building up a new hero to fight with all new creatures you will get in a few weeks wont work because then opponent will alrdy have caught your trapped main hero in middle.

As for guarding mines you can still do this easy in h3 by visiting an alrdy flagged mine and put off guards. I think thats great. Not because of getting some guards there that my opp prolly would kill by ease anyway, but because you can leave slow units (example dwarves with rampart) there so speed reduction on the hero that would have been carrying the dwarves isnt as much.

I do however like the idea of a spell which can add creatures to the map, just as long as they are set to "savage" (meaning you cant add units to map and diplo them to your army). Summon elementals spell could for example be a good spell to do this, not to powerful creatures to fight but can be a real problem if put at right place at the right time.

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RedSoxFan3
RedSoxFan3


Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
posted November 21, 2003 08:41 PM bonus applied.

The fact that border guard creatures would respawn would completely depend on the map. The map creator can pick and choose what respawns and what doesn't. As with randoms, you would make an area block that may or may not have respawning. You can pick and choose what stuff respawns and what doesn't. I didn't want everything to respawn. It would be for certain things. Perhaps you have the grail in a land area that has lots of respawning level 7's.

Or maybe you put a bunch of gold mines in a place that has lots of respawning so it's hard to get to or you may run a risk of going into a certain land area.

Maps don't have to respawn. I just think it would be a nice extra feature to have in HOMM maps.

Maybe the user could just make the land wavy distorted where things respawn, kinda like in the movies when you flash back in time or go into a daydream.

This would let the player know what things respawn.

Maybe you could just have a general rule of things respawn at the beginning of every month and every third week in a month.

I'd just like to see a feature where maps regenerate stuff.
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Djive
Djive


Honorable
Supreme Hero
Zapper of Toads
posted December 13, 2003 03:58 PM

Off-topic Bonus applied.

I also like this basic ideas, and RedSoxFan3 has been coming up with good ideas for some time now so time for an award.

I agree with Sir Stiven's concern that spawning needs to be done with restraint so the strategy of staying by the castle is equal or worse as compared to the strategy of expanding to other places on the map.

This feature seems to me to be a feature which fits better with Single Player than with Multi Player, at least for random map games it would be difficult to make good use of this feature.


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RedSoxFan3
RedSoxFan3


Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
posted December 15, 2003 07:18 AM

I think that this feature could be good in multiplayer as well. However it wouldn't be possible in random maps.

My original intentions were for multiplayer fixed maps. With careful planning, map makers could make excellent maps that are far more unique than they are currently.

Randoms I'd agree probably wouldn't be a great idea to implement them unless Ubisoft found a way to generate randoms so that zone's could be constructed more specifically.

An example would be this.

Zone 1:

1 random castle with fort
- guarded by random level 6 creature

10 clusters
- 5 random respawning
- 5 random non-respawning

Then you would give a list of possible clusters that could go into the area.

Here are some examples:

Level 5 creature
- respawning 1 week
- 2 treasure chests
- 1 random resource

Level 5 creature
- respawning Never
- minor artifact
- treasure chest

Level 3 creature
- respawning Never
- stables

When the map is generated, the zone will put the castle in guarded by the creature. Then it will generate 10 clusters. For each cluster it will pick randomly from the list that you provided for that particular zone. So that means that you can choose what kind of things will respawn in certain zones and even get to choose specific buildings that could be in clusters and what creatures will guard each type of cluster.

I'd also like to be able to get more specific with the structures, artifacts, resources etc. This means that if you choose random resource you can choose which resources it could be. This means if you choose that you want it to be wood or ore than you can do so. This would be the same for artifacts. You could choose a set of artifacts to choose from that could possibly go inside a cluster.
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Sir_Stiven
Sir_Stiven


Honorable
Legendary Hero
banned
posted December 15, 2003 01:20 PM

with the heroes 3 RMG you can basically decide approx nr of creatures because of guard strength at blocks and monster level (weak, average, strong) at the zone where you put your treasures..and then the size of the treasure makes how tough of a monster thats guarding it.

But having this feature at random maps would be a problem since deciding which creatures to respawn or not will be really hard. You can always set zone monsters/border guards to respawn but that will be as you notice kinda general. Also another problem with respawning randoms is that you will have no idea when the creatures will appear again and could get stuck behind a former relic guard.

At set maps it can work by just editing in a respawn property when you edit in the creatures. That way the multiplayers easily can check it out aswell and know what to expect.

At singleplayer campaigns i figure this can be an interesting feature aswell.

But for random maps in general and for multiplayer in particular i see no real use for this as it would only unbalance the game more and you dont wanna surrender a game because a big treasure guard you killed a week ago suddenly appeared again and your main hero got stuck...


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RedSoxFan3
RedSoxFan3


Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
posted December 15, 2003 04:25 PM

Quote:
with the heroes 3 RMG you can basically decide approx nr of creatures because of guard strength at blocks and monster level (weak, average, strong) at the zone where you put your treasures..and then the size of the treasure makes how tough of a monster thats guarding it.

But having this feature at random maps would be a problem since deciding which creatures to respawn or not will be really hard. You can always set zone monsters/border guards to respawn but that will be as you notice kinda general. Also another problem with respawning randoms is that you will have no idea when the creatures will appear again and could get stuck behind a former relic guard.

At set maps it can work by just editing in a respawn property when you edit in the creatures. That way the multiplayers easily can check it out aswell and know what to expect.

At singleplayer campaigns i figure this can be an interesting feature aswell.

But for random maps in general and for multiplayer in particular i see no real use for this as it would only unbalance the game more and you dont wanna surrender a game because a big treasure guard you killed a week ago suddenly appeared again and your main hero got stuck...


I thought I explained a good way that randoms could be generated in the future so that respawining maps could work effectively.

Inside the template you can create a list of possible clusters that can go into the template. Then you can specify in each zone how many clusters, and which clusters will be possible choices. Doing this you can make sure that big creatures guarding relics won't be respawned ever where as a level 4 that's guarding a treasure chest and a random resource will be regenerated every week. I tried to explain that you can choose almost exactly what you want for each map. And careful planning would be something that would have to be approved for any online tournament. Templates could simply be checked out by a map council to make sure that it's balanced.

IMO this could certainly be used in Multi. It would just have to be applied properly.
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Sir_Stiven
Sir_Stiven


Honorable
Legendary Hero
banned
posted December 16, 2003 04:08 AM

well the "clusters" of yours still is like a zone in template making theory. You could make it in lesser pieces aswell but making a template zone works like this:

You pick size (approx), starting towns, neutral towns, possible landscapes, kind of monster alignments, zone connections, nr of mines,border guards but most importantly you have 3 treasure values. And all has a minimum, maximum and dentisity value, from there then the size of enemy guards appear.. the higher the value the bigger treasure and guard.

Meaning even if you have zones you can have 1 zone only consisting of a treasure value rate between 1000-2000 with a dentisity of 8 and the other two values can be nulled by making em 1000-1000 dentisity 1(0) or something.

Problem is that by disecting a template into these little pieces they would take forever to make and you would eventually remove the random part completely. You would know each zones value and small possibilty of treasure/monster guard range.

And even if respawning monsters might would be a good idea i dont believe many multiplayers would play it at that prize. Afterall many of us play random just because the maps are random...  the more you specify the less random the map really get which is fun to a certain limit but when you cross that limit there is no fun anymore.

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Gerdash
Gerdash


Responsible
Famous Hero
from the Animated Peace
posted December 17, 2003 07:22 AM
Edited By: Gerdash on 17 Dec 2003

imho respawning is a nice idea.

the month of .. has been nice, even if it just creates one type of creatures that is somewhat boring imho.

maybe creatures could respawn in random places that wouldn't usually restrict movement on the map.

what i would like more is a reason for creatures to be in a particular place. i like the idea of trolls guarding a bridge and letting you pass for a reasonable amount of money a lot. i don't know if it's a good idea, but it would be possible to make border guards etc do the same. maybe the more often you pay them, the more the stack would increase, like the payment goes for buying more creatures.

of course, creatures might want to inhabit an area just because they like to live there (natural terrain). so it could be possible that a natural terrain has a probability to produce a creature stack. but even then, wouldn't the creatures want to produce a dwelling there?

========
as i imagine a possible homm world, main income would come from taxpayer villages where you never build troop dwellings. e.g. i would expect a miners village associated with a mine. from another point of view, it might imho not be an impossible idea that the miners village would continue to produce the same troops as it did when the mine was neutral. so the longer you have owned the mine (and maybe the more of that resource you have used) the more guards there would be guarding the mine. purchasing resources from market might e.g. increase defenses of neutral mines.

might those systems somehow create exploit situations? like turning cash into exp at a border guard stack?
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RedSoxFan3
RedSoxFan3


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Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
posted December 17, 2003 08:36 PM
Edited By: RedSoxFan3 on 24 Dec 2003

Perhaps you will not get experience for fighting boarder guards if you were the last player to pay them.

I truly feel that most ideas that have a good base will create some minor problems. However, these problems can be fixed most of the time with minor changes, or minor exceptions. However, things that completely change the way the game is played cannot be fixed with a few exception and minor changes. But this only occurs when the idea lacks a good base concept.

If we identify the possible exploitations such as with randoms or multiplayer issues, then I think that this idea will work.

Quote:
well the "clusters" of yours still is like a zone in template making theory. You could make it in lesser pieces aswell but making a template zone works like this:

You pick size (approx), starting towns, neutral towns, possible landscapes, kind of monster alignments, zone connections, nr of mines,border guards but most importantly you have 3 treasure values. And all has a minimum, maximum and dentisity value, from there then the size of enemy guards appear.. the higher the value the bigger treasure and guard.

Meaning even if you have zones you can have 1 zone only consisting of a treasure value rate between 1000-2000 with a dentisity of 8 and the other two values can be nulled by making em 1000-1000 dentisity 1(0) or something.

Problem is that by disecting a template into these little pieces they would take forever to make and you would eventually remove the random part completely. You would know each zones value and small possibilty of treasure/monster guard range.

And even if respawning monsters might would be a good idea i dont believe many multiplayers would play it at that prize. Afterall many of us play random just because the maps are random... the more you specify the less random the map really get which is fun to a certain limit but when you cross that limit there is no fun anymore.


I would recommend that the map editor come with a list of "common clusters" that are pre-made in the Random map editor. Things like level 2 creatures guarding random resource or level 2 creatures guarding treasure chest. There could be a list of possible clusters.

When I refer to a cluster, this does not divide up what people use as zones. It merely represents what kind of things the creatures will be guarding and what creatures could appear. This would allow the randomness to still have bigger possibilities making the randomness customizable.

I would also give a basic set of possible clusters for each zone. This would be the equivalent to density. It would create possible clusters that would appear normally within that a zone of that density. This way it makes it less time-consuming to make a random map. This would be used as kind of like a default setting that can be changed.

I'd like to add another default setting to my version of random generation that will include respawing. This will be on a scale of 1-10 like you density values. It will be called regeneration. Now you can make "default zones" that contain clusters of not only one density, but also of many things will respawn, and how fast it will respawn.

I have proposed the land to be wavy where clusters respawn. This will allow people who haven't played the map to know that it will regenerate. Also, I propose the land to start glowing as well. This is a warning that the cluster will respawn in two days.

Now my next problem is what will happen if a player is standing on a cluster and creatures or treasure is supposed to appear on that square. What will happen?

Well my proposal is that if the hero is within 1 square of the cluster that will regenerate, then it won't respawn until the hero moves far enough away from the cluster. Let's say for example you have a main hero that defeats a big creature stack. You can leave a smaller hero on the cluster to prevent it from regenerating or you could use a spell to keep a cluster from regenerating. It could be a 4th level spell called sterilize land. This will delay any regeneration until either the hero dies or the hero decides to deactivate the spell.

Note: It will take the normal time of regeneration after the spell has been deactivated for it to regenerate. This way when a hero is being chased, the player cannot simply deactivate the spell and hide behind the enormous creature stack.

Edit: I just realized that if maps respawn, then there will be a penalty for those castle sitters. A huge problem in MP HOMM. If you castle sit, then you let your opponent get more money and more experience. Clearly this solves a BIG problem in MP HOMM. Although it may change the game a bit, people don't have to worry about castle sitters. It will also encourage players to venture out into the map, giving more battles. If this isn't good for MP then I don't know what is.
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b0rsuk
b0rsuk


Promising
Famous Hero
DooM prophet
posted December 30, 2003 01:09 PM

I think that you don't like maps being static.

I know it's more fun when they can change...somehow.

Map creator can make a map more random for instance by putting border gate somewhere, a one-way teleport exit behind it.... and it would be used as an entrance for AI player (which is meant just a nuisance).

Victory condition would be find artifact, flag mines, dwellings or something like that.  (so you don't have to defeat that pesky AI)

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RedSoxFan3
RedSoxFan3


Admirable
Legendary Hero
Fan of Red Sox
posted December 30, 2003 07:07 PM
Edited by alcibiades at 16:22, 13 Jun 2009.

No I don't. I like lots of action constantly. That's why I made some maps for Multiplayer that were designed to have several battles, which is certainly possible.



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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