Warscale 53 - Creatures finished!

Hi to all my dear, loyal (and slightly masochists) which read this blog series.

It has been about 10 days in this weekly update, and Im proud to announce... another update.

As you know right now I'm on the process of adding new content, specifically creatures. And each creature I add forces me to fix a new bunch of problems or implement some new functions. The good thing is that each time one thing is fixed then it positively affect all the system. This are the new 8 creatures so let me explain the changes required for each one:


Flying creatures
Flying was contemplated since the first day. I liked the concept used in MTG that flying creatures cannot be blocked by land creatures. In Warscale this translates as. Flying creatures can only be attacked by other flying creatures or by ranged attacks or abilities.

But the first thing is how to handle the flying. In warscale a flying creatures occupies only one square in the terrain regardless how large is the creature. Second, a flying creature wont be blocked by other creatures, not even other flying creatures, but should end its movement in an empty space.

So I coded all those different rules and created a couple of bats. Wrote some test cases and now I can add the fly property to any creature, regardless if it has a flying animation.

Wounded creatures
One of those bats has a nasty property called wound. It was inspired by real vampire which inject an anticoagulant to their victims to make easier to drink the blood (not really inject, its the saliva). Anyway I was thinking if a bat weighting about 100 grams can do that, what about a magical monster bat weighting 10 or 20 kg.
So the idea was to allow the victims of the bat to bleed 1 hp per round after each attack (making it accumulative). The updates to the code allowed me to create the effect but I found and solved some serious bugs in the turn order when more than 2 players are in the game. Fortunately all was solved.

Whirlwind
The Manhunter Tiger is the first red creature with a real red trick. It has an special ability called Whirlwind which allows it to deal one attack to all creatures (friend or foe alike) within his attack radius. Of course flying creatures are safe as land creatures cannot attack flying creatures.

But the most important thing in this ability is that it forced me to update the card code and write a mana cost traslator. It allows me to dynamically load bitmap symbols to represent the ability activation cost. For example, the cost 1 Attack and 4 movement points is written like {1T}{4V}. ou can see many examples in the previous shot.

Poison
This effect deals damage each round to the target creature. Similar to the wounded creatures but depends on an element. Poison is particularly nasty as there are no natural defenses against poison. Some creatures like golems are imune to poison of course.

Web
This one was interesting. It required a simple cone and a cobweb texture. Look at the foot of the dire bear in this shot:

Kinda unfair?... naaah!!!

This is the first spell which uses a 3d model to represent an effect. The changes made to get this effect were really tricky but they worked. The effect will get better when I create walls of fire or such things.

Conditional abilities
Some creatures have enhanced abilities when standing in a specific element. The Drowned is an example of that. It looks like a normal zombie but when standing in a water tile it gains a lot of abilities. Combine that with its natural resistance to slash and pierce weapons and you have a little beast.

Resources
I found this zodiacs which can be really useful with AFX. Cheap too. May be useful for someone.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=69882&Start=181&TopID=1.3143.

The plan for this week
I'm missing two more creatures which are the Skeletal Archer and the Giant Skeleton. After those are finished, I will have 22 creatures. Then I plan to start with the sorceries. The first one will be the dispel magic and I expect a lot of things to break. This is a sample of all the sorceries I plan to implement

Dispel magic Air 2 Dispel any magical effects affecting target creature.
Dispel Evil Air 2 Destroy all effects controlled by any opponent affecting target unit.
Teleport Air 3 Transport target creature you control to any location in the board.
Breath of life Air 1 Target creature no longer suffers from invocation sickness.
Fast stride Air 2 Target creature gains +3 movement.
Fly Air 1 Target creature gains fly.
Kick the board Air 4 Return all creatures and artifacts to their owners hands.
Finger of Death Death 4 Destroy target creature
Slow Death 2 Target creature gets -5 attack, -2 armor, -2 Mov
Graveyard Death 8 Turn all the tiles in the game board to the death element.
Hold person Death 2 Target humanoid cant attack or move and gets -2 armor.
Disease carrier Death 3 Target creature gets Disease 5 (-5 death damage each turn). Any creature attacked by this creature gets Disease 5.
Aging Death 1 Target creature gets -4 attack, -1 move.
Zombie servant Death 3 Sacrifice a creature you control, gain control of target creature.
Black Plague Death 4 Destroy 50% of the creatures in board. Units are randomly picked. Undeads are not affected.
Disruption Earth 4 Target player loses all mana.
Mana burn Earth 3 Target player suffers an ammount of damage equal to his mana pool.
Treacherous leech Earth 3 Target creature generates -1 mana per turn.
Dust to dust Earth 1 Remove 2 creatures from target player graveyard from the game.
Unpaved road Earth 2 Target 3x3 area requires 2 movement points to pass.

I till have in mind to launch the beta when I reach 20 creatures (done), 20 artifacts, 20 Sorceries and 20 equipment (15 ready). So Im almost at half the way!!!

I dont expect to post until January so I really wish you a Merry Xmas, a happy new year, live long and prosper... etc etc.

Feliz Navidad!

Luck with your projects!
Guimo