End of Game, Summoning Fixes

9th Aug 2006

I made it so that I could assign a screen as being the "endScreen" on a map. Now, when that screen is cleared, the map is considered clear. By giving this a value of #none, every screen in the map must be cleared. The end screen is designated by co-ordinates, it doesn't matter what (if anything) is in there.

So I have designated the screen with the Ochre Wizard on as the end screen for the current MR3 map. This means that the game will end when that screen is clear. In MR2, the game ended when you killed the scarlet wizard, but many people found that to be too abrupt.

I did two more fixes on the summoning system today.

I fixed the bug where when multiple summoning enemies all try to summon at once, only one can do it at a time. This required changing the way the reservations system worked, which in turn will affect the way that dwellings spawn units. The reservations system is there so to make sure that the unit limit (the max no of enemies or friends on screen) is not breached. The way it used to work was that each dwelling would make a reservation with the reservations master for the number of residents it wanted to release (the number in the group it just made). Then it would ask permission to actually release them one at a time. And if it's reservation was the first in the queue and there was a spare slot it would given permission. The result was to guarentee that the first dwelling to build a group would be the first to release it. Even if there was a dwelling waiting to release a smaller group who could have done so earlier.

This system wasn't really designed with summoning spells in mind. The spell's reservation would go down the list, and if two spells were created at once the second one would not be given permission to release because it wasn't next in the queue.

The whole idea of using the reservations system as a queue was, frankly, not a good one. So I spent some time today re-organising it so that put simply, if there's room on the screen for the units you want to summon then go ahead. There is of course still a reservations system, otherwise if two dwellings each wanted to release four units, and there was only space for four more units onscreen, both would be given permission. This would result in four units too many on screen. The point of making reservations, is that you look at the number of units on screen added to the number of reservations made. So then, only one of the dwellings is given permission to release, the other will have to wait unit space for four more becomes available.

The other thing I did with summoning was to make it so that when an enemy unit summons, it aims for the middle of the tile that it's target (usually you) is standing on. This means that the summons now never hit trees or solid objects. If you had some flying units like bats on your side, the summon blasts aimed at them could hit trees, naturally. They only aim for the middle of the tile if they are actually summoning though. Blank blasts are still aimed directly at the target.

*These changes will appear in demo 0.15*

Goblins, Necros, Minimap

8th Aug 2006

After what feels like ages, I did do some more work on MR3 today.

It's all minor stuff but it adds up. The goblin mage is now fully added. I added a special hut for them to come out of and put some into the map. There are not too many around but there are two mage huts in the goblin fort now.

I also added a couple of goblin heros near the end of the map, as requested in feedback.

And I made Merlin level up his mana capacity more quickly. On a level up each character gets an increase in strength and hit points and one magical characteristic.

The magical characteristics are:
mana_burst (inital size of blast)
mana_capacity (max size of blast)
mana_flow (charge speed)
mana_rengeneration (reduced cooldown)

I increased Merlin mana_capacityLevelInc from 0.25 to 1. That means that whenever Merlin levels and he gets a mana_capacity increase, it will go up by four times as much. On a preliminary experiment, I found that after killing a goblin hero, (and levelling up a lot) I could summon archers after having collected only one potion.

Next I made the minimap show blue for screens where friendly characters are. This works for both infested and clear screens, so it gives you something to aim for. I figured it was more useful this way around as you can see that the screen is infested when you approach it because the arrows will be red. I could have made it so that an infested screen with friendly characters in shows up red instead of blue, but that would mean the blue thing would only be useful for spotting characters that you left behind.

I also changed the necro summon. I'm pretty sure it was Feory who pointed out that the necro summon doesn't work if it hits something solid, even though the ghost can fly over solid background. This has now changed.

*You will see these changes in Demo 0.15.*

It was Octavo!

7th Aug 2006

It was Octavo that suggestioned the dimming icon, and he also pointed out that I spelled Tamato Fish's name wrong on the game maker guide. Thanks!
Thanks also to Darren for pointing that out.

I was doing non-MR3 related stuff today, so I don't have anything else to say here today but I thought I'd better post this up before more people write to tell me. :)

Goblin Mage

3rd Aug 2006

I added the goblin mage today. He will add a bit more potency to the goblin attack by firing energy blasts.

He is not that powerful, but if left unchecked can eventually take out one or two of your units. Once your guys have him cornered, he dies quickly.


> Goblin Mage on a test screen.

I also implemented the idea that someone had in the bug database about dimming the icon on the army summon if none of that unit are available in your reserve army. I can't remember who it was now, and I can't find the bug report. Doh.

Well, anyway, I've done that.

These changes will be seen in Demo 0.15.

Demo 0.14 Online

2nd Aug 2006

Well I made a boo-boo yesterday. I had left Merlin with a huge mana_capacity. This was a left over from some tests I was running with the energy mines spell and meant that the energy blast and the army summon were massive from the start.

cjfjcjfjc and Ovrlndnsea wrote in and pointed that out - Thanks chaps! If you didn't start a new game with demo 0.13, you won't have experienced this and if you did, you won't lose the big energy blast until you start a new game with demo 0.14.

Hope that makes sense, have fun!

Demo 0.13 Online

1st Aug 2006

It's just a couple of bug fixes. Mostly, it's for the bug where team members dissappear from your army if you summon them onto solid areas. Thanks Chaustome.

The other bug that was fixed is where the game crashes if the Ochre Wizard kills you. Thanks Hrainian.

I also upped the Monks hp from 10 to 50 points.

Because it's such a small update, your save games from Demo 0.12 will still work. However, any Monks you have collected will not have the new stats.

And a special thanks must go to Carefree_Butterfly who's been doing a great job with the bug database. Thanks dude!

Demo 0.12 Online!

27th Jul 2006

This is more of an update than anything else. Mostly it's to show where I've got to up til now. As always I'm interested in any feedback I get. I'll add useful suggestions and ideas to my list of things to do. I have put this list up on the roadmap page, and my intention is to keep it up to date there rather than keep on pasting it into news items.

There are many, many small changes in this demo, please see the Merlin 3 page (scroll down) for the complete list.

The main things to point out are that the locations of the spells have changed in line with feedback I recieved, and you now have to collect team members before you can summon them. As a result, the first few screens are pretty tough (though definitely possible) and you must try very hard not to lose any men.

A couple of bugs to draw your attention to:

1. Berlin sometimes dissappears from your army. If you can identify the exact circumstances under which this always happens, please write in and let me know (prferably in the Bug DB). I would be very grateful for that.

2. The Dwarf won't build his tower when summoned. Don't know why just yet but he just starts fighting. This bug may have been in the previous demo but since there wasn't enough red potions for a dwarf nobody knew!

Hope you enjoy the new demo, but as always don't play if you just want to play the finished game. Only play if you want to beta-test. Thanks!

Finished the list

26th Jul 2006

I finished working down the list today. I thought about building a demo straight off and putting it up, but I'm glad I didn't.

Because of the way you now have to collect team members before you can summon them, the first few screens were nearly impossible. Especially for a new player.

There was also a bug to do with the reeling system (enemies were not reeling) which I fixed. And there is another bug to do with Berlin dissappearing from your army when you try to summon him (yoik!). I haven't been able to fix that one yet, because I can't quite find the particular circumstances under which it happens.

I have played through enough of the level to know that the balance is all wrong. The toughest screens (so far) are the first few, and the game seems to get quite easy after that. I'm going to finish my go tomorrow and then decide whether to put up the demo or attempt to re-organise the map.

Path finding and Monk Heal bug

26th Jul 2006

Whoops! I forgot to put the news up yesterday. So here it is now instead.

I continued tweaking the pathfinding as I still wasn't entirely happy with it. I noticed for example that the skeleton throwers were unable to find their way around anything. This was due to fact that because they moved so slowly, the pathfinding module kept misinterpreting that as getting stuck against a tree. So I tweaked the settings for the skeleton throwers.

I also noticed that the warriors were finding it hard to get into the corner of the screen. This was because they were choosing a random loc in the play area to walk towards, so as you get towards the corner, the chances of being pulled back towards the centre become higher. So units were finding it easy to get to the centre of the screen, but hard to get to the edges.

The solution was to choose a random location somewhere relative to the unit. Because I could set the max distance that this location could be, I could also do away with a timer that I had set up to prevent units from potentially wandering right across the screen. The timer was a clumsy way of doing it anyway - units with faster walk speeds would be able to get further, which would mean that the timer values would have to set individually for each unit. By doing it with distance, each unit can get there whenever it gets there, and the same setting can be used for all.

Next, instead of continuing with items on the list I decided to fix a bug reported by giambolvoe. Namely that the monks seemed unable to heal while walking. This turned out to be a problem with the animation (full explanation here: [bug_113] ).

Anyway this is now fixed and it's good to have the Monks back!

Better Pathfinding

24th Jul 2006

Well I worked hard today. I did, honestly!

But I only manged to do one thing off the list. The pathfinding turned turned out to be a whole pile harder than I thought it would be.

I started off putting in one place (the "move to loc" module) and after I'd introduced a load of bugs doing it like that, I realised it would probably be better off in a different place (in it's own module, attached to the AI).

So that meant removing all my changes and starting again. Except of course, I missed a few which came back to bite me later.

Well, that's the long story short. It all seems to be working now. Hopefully it'll hold up. :)