Warscale - Spiders! (w/screenshots)

Hello again to everybody who reads this blog series!

More than one week has passed since my last blog. My son is healthy again and even when he crushed his finger with a door and got his nail out, he is in an awesome mood.

So, that means I have to worry about my digital son....

What was accomplished

Alpha male power
This was an extremely interesting unit to program. It forced to do a lot of changes in the engine.
First, the Alpha male effects come into play in response to an OnEnterPlay event. I had alread considered the event so id didnt catch me on surprise but even so, I was forced to fine tune the mechanic. There were a lot of bugs killed in the code which filter which units are affected by which spell.
Second, the alpha male provides three global enchantments and one targetted effect. Two of the enchantments boosts all the wolves giving them +2 damage and +1 speed. A similar mechanic had already been coded for the Berserk power of the Orc Berserker so everything fit in place but lots of bugs were killed in the process.
The third global effect was to get the control of all wolves in play. This really forced me to implement a new mechanic (Dominate) and rewrite large portions of code related to the unit controller. I invested a lot of time on this feature but now everything works fine. Being able to control the enemy units is a powerful ability which may spawn great effects. Think about domination enchantments and of course dispel magic sorceries.
Finally, when the alpha male enters play it kills any other alpha male in play. It forced more work and bug crushing in the spell unit filtering but now it works as expected.

Fire wolf
I was missing targetted spells so the Fire Wolf's Fire Blast 2 ability (Range 2. Circle 1. 2-12 fire damage) provided me the chance to make this work. The game now allows the player to pick a point where an erea effect will start (only circle areas for now). Of course it shows the area which will be covered by the spell and it wont allow the player to select a point outside of the spell range. The spell damages all the units in the area except the fire wolf. This was a step required in order to code the Spider Web area effect.

Effects destroyed with dying units
The last week, Michael Perry made some interesting comments on the dying units powers so I decided to tackle this problem. I decided to categorize the spell source in 4 types. Arcane, Divine, Mental and Physical. The first three work basically the same (just a flavour thing) and require the presence of the summoning unit. I.E. the Alpha Male bonuses and its domination over other wolves are a Mental (charisma) effect. Once the Alpha male dies, the effects vanish.
On the other hand, Physical effects stay even when the original unit dies. That is the base of the spider poison and web attacks.

As you see, Warscale benefits from your comments so make any suggestion you would like to see implemented and lets see how it works.

2 Spiders!
As promised, two spiders have come to join our ranks. The Redback spider (to honour the most dangerous spider of Australia) is a medium sized spider with a extremely poisonous bite (Poison 4) but which will only affect humanoids (which holds true for the real one). In the other hand we have the large Black Widowmaker with its poisonous attack (Poison 4) and its web ensnaring power can be a real threat for any creature.

Spider venom
Warscale now can handle Poisonous attacks. A Poison X attack means that the target gets poisoned and suffer X points of damage at the beginning of each turn for 10 turns or until the poison is neutralized (future spell). Some venoms (like the one of the Redback) will work only for some kind of creatures. Poisonous attacks are cummulative so if the a poisonous unit hits again... just do the math.

Spider web
The Black Widowmaker can also use its web power to ensnare its victims. Black Widowmaker has a web power with 4 range which covers a 3x3 area. Any unit caught in the blast will get ensnare 2 (meaning -2 in movement) for 10 turns. Poison and web are Physical attacks which means they wont vanish even if the spider dies.


What wasnt planned
Bug in the number generator
I noticed the random number generator wasnt woking as expected. I think its now fixed but if not, I must look for another generator and adjust it to my code. The default Torque generator does not suit my needs but I still use it to generate the random seeds.

Reorganize all the unit controller code
The unit controlling code really took a lot of time because... well... I never thought about it on depth. Big mistake which fortunately has already been fixed.

Rewrite all the targetting system
Spells can get complex to code. Fortunately I think I have managed to get a targetting mechanic and its woking as expected.

Rewrite the spell system
This was the hardest part of all. I found that my spell system wasnt able to handle enchantments which stayed on play for some turns. Also the spell duration mechanism had to be rewritten. All for good fortunately. Now Warscale can handle enchantments which lasts multiple turns. I really can create more complex spells for different situations.

Screenshots!
This week I bring you 3 shots. The first shows an Alpha Male dying when the other alpha male comes into play.


The second shot shows this player using an opponents wolf to attack his avatar. You can also see the bonuses grated by the alpha male to that wolf.


The third shot shows a spider ready to throw its web attack. Look at the size of that spider and beg you never see a monster like that one.



The plan for this week

I know I promised 2 units each week but I have decided to bite the bullet and do some of the hardest things in the game which are the editors and this will take most of my time. If I have some free time I will create some simple creatures but dont hold your breath.

Army editor
So, the reason to make these kind of simple creatures is just because I need to devote time to the GUI. The first step is to create the Army editor. The army editor is used to mix and match your units in order to build your army. This one along with the avatar editor and the store are the three large editors the game require. The army editor is a lot of work and I really dont expect to finish it in a single week but I will try.

Dont expect me to show screenshots of these editors (really ugly graphics) but still will send shots of the new units if available. Once the three editors are finished, the client/server architecture is working again and the AI does some minimum response, I can call the first stage of development complete.

Luck with your projects!
Guimo