Mechanic Mania

TheRedSwordsman

Hello, everyone! This is a discussion about some game mechanics that can be implemented in the game. If any of this is already implemented, I didn't realize it when I made this discussion.


Water Mechanics - Okay, when I say this, I'm saying you should add water to the game. It wouldn't be a bad idea, to be honest.
The first mechanic is fishing. You could craft fishing rods and put them in stockpiles. You select a Worker and hold right-click on a body of water. Then select the option to fish. This option will only be available if there are fishing rods in a stockpile. The selected Worker will walk to a stockpile with fishing rods and walk up to the pond to fish. Instead of collecting fish, you collect resources that happen to be in the water. For example, in the picture below, a Bricktron is fishing. He collects Brimstone from the pond. After this, he would take the Brimstone to its required stockpile. Then he takes the fishing rod to its stockpile.

Be aware that you can fish up multiple things (iron, brimstone, logs, planks, fabric, rope, stone, plants, etc.). This makes fishing a way to get renewable resources.
The second mechanic is swimming. No, I'm not joking. Bricktrons literally being able to swim would be a cool mechanic. They would move slower while swimming, and they can't swim while carrying something. Knights wouldn't be able to swim either, but other kits can. The picture below gives you an idea of who can and can't swim.

Just like fishing, you can make your Bricktrons gather resources by selecting a Worker, holding right-click, and selecting the option to dive in and search for resources. After a while, they will get out to keep themselves from drowning. A lot of the time they don't find anything at all. This is supposed to be the alternate to fishing if you want to find resources. Fishing is way better, though. Bricktrons, however, will swim if it's the only way to get to their destination (unless they are carrying something or they are a Knight). I have not decided whether or not Minitrons will be able to swim.

Weather Mechanics - That's right. I'm talking about implementing the weather in Castle Story. The two main types of weather would be rain and snow. Rain would create puddles on the ground that would slow down Bricktrons and Corruptrons. It would also become moderately dark (not as dark as Lights Out), thus giving Lantern Wards a use in Conquest. It wouldn't affect any pools of water (I don't want to give the programmers a hard time). Snowstorms would cover the ground with snow and turn any existing water on the island into ice over time. Bricktrons and Corruptrons have their movement slowed by the snow on the ground. They also can slip and fall on the ice sometimes. If a Bricktron is holding something and they slip on ice, the object falls out of their hands, they stagger up to their feet, pick up what they were holding, and carry on. Your Workers cannot fish in frozen pools. Weather mechanics would be a cool feature to be implemented in the game.

Object-to-Object Interactions A lot of you may not know what I mean by this. Let me give you an example of something that could be added. There is a chain of some explosive barrels. It would be super cool if you could take some link some rope to one of those barrels, continue building rope until you get somewhere, and light the rope on fire. Of course, the barrels would blow up! The point is being able to explode barrels from a distance using the rope-to-barrel interaction. You would select a Worker, right-click the barrel, then, if you have rope, connect it to somewhere as if you were doing a construction task. The picture below should give you a good idea of what this circuit is like.

A. The selected Worker lights the rope on fire.
B. The rope causes the barrels to detonate, causing the next rope to be set on fire.
C. The last two barrels detonate.
This "explosive barrel circuit" is not only but one of the object-to-object interactions with the potential of being added! There can be a rope-to-ice interaction in which setting a rope on fire can thaw ice, thus making it possible to fish.

These are some of the mechanics that can be added. That's all I have for now! Please tell me what you think. Check out my profile page for more suggestions I've made! Thanks!

DrWhoCares

1. When it comes to water, it must be clearly understood that water is an incredibly intensive thing to add to the game.
For the CPU, the physics that water requires, from filling up a volume, to settling, dripping, moving, etc. All of these things are insanely taxing and expensive for the CPU, and there is already a good number of people who have issues running the game.

For the GPU, there are expensive shaders and graphics that need to be used. Along with the fact that you cannot just texture a tile as the game already does, since water would be fluid, malleable. This is not a cheap operation.

2. Weather has a similar issue. However, to a lesser degree depending on how it is implemented. With your ideas, weather would be affecting gameplay. Additionally, weather would become expensive, almost as expensive as water. Likely, it is not a feasible solution.

3. Object to object interactions are likely a feature that will be added in various ways, but they must always respect balance in each game mode (and multiplayer), and performance. Currently you can destroy barrels from range by shooting them until they break (causing them to explode). Explosions can kill other barrels and set them off as well.

Cute drawings by the way.

TheRedSwordsman

Thanks for your reply! It helps me a lot.
Replies are in bold and italics.

DrWhoCares said:

1. When it comes to water, it must be clearly understood that water is an incredibly intensive thing to add to the game.
For the CPU, the physics that water requires, from filling up a volume, to settling, dripping, moving, etc. All of these things are insanely taxing and expensive for the CPU, and there is already a good number of people who have issues running the game.

For the GPU, there are expensive shaders and graphics that need to be used. Along with the fact that you cannot just texture a tile as the game already does, since water would be fluid, malleable. This is not a cheap operation.

You have a good point, but here are my objections. I never said this had to be done all in one update. It could be something that could be done over time. For example water may just be solid light blue texture. In another update, they can give it texture. All these things can be added gradually when they have the requirements. You are right, however. This would be very expensive.

2. Weather has a similar issue. However, to a lesser degree depending on how it is implemented. With your ideas, weather would be affecting gameplay. Additionally, weather would become expensive, almost as expensive as water. Likely, it is not a feasible solution.

Let me get this straight: the point of weather IS to affect gameplay. I know, it would be annoying, but they added the Chopping Block. You don't know how confused I was when the 1.0 update came out on why the Bricktrons wouldn't build stockpiles. Again, it can happen over a long period of time. Again, you prove a good point.

3. Object to object interactions are likely a feature that will be added in various ways, but they must always respect balance in each game mode (and multiplayer), and performance. Currently you can destroy barrels from range by shooting them until they break (causing them to explode). Explosions can kill other barrels and set them off as well.

I know explosions can cause barrels to explode. About the barrel circuit:
if barrels can be shot until they break, why not do something like the picture below?

A. An archer causes the first barrel to explode, which cause the rope to catch on fire.
B. The other barrels ignited by the rope injure (or kill) the Corruptron.
Now that I think of it, you're right. that would need balancing (I guess).

Cute drawings by the way.

Thanks.

Sorry that I probably misinterpreted everything you said. Thanks for the comment!

DrWhoCares

You got the gist of what I was saying.

1. Even if you restrict textures or do it over multiple updates, adding something like water is a major, extremely major, gameplay change. It fundamentally changes the game. It's like adding Brimstone and Iron to the game when it didn't exist prior. It completely changes how the game is played, how maps are made, how PvP/Conquest is balanced, how Corruptrons and Bricktrons pathfind, etc. Regardless of how cool it would be to have water, I firmly believe that unless an elegant solution can be found, Castle Story is not a game that should implement water.

2. However, for weather, that's something I could see implemented at some future date. I say that Weather shouldn't affect gameplay because you don't want to leave core elements of your game being hindered or helped by random elements of the game. In something like a procedurally generated roguelike, it's okay to have that randomness as it is understood that everything is random, (besides the obvious things that the player must learn and adapt to), which makes it fair.

In a game like Castle Story, having a random element doesn't make sense. You don't give the players in StarCraft a random amount of starting minerals, and you don't give random starting levels to players in games like League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Dota II, etc. You don't do this because it ruins the player's ability to understand the mechanics of the game, and respond and react accordingly.

For example, if I wanted to build a wall at location X, but then it started raining and now I have a bunch of water on the way there, now all of my time scale is thrown off. My project has a wrench in it because it started to rain. Maybe the enemy didn't get puddles in his way, now they are ahead of me. Etc. Does that make sense?

3. Like I said, or rather, didn't say, I have no issue with your idea of adding rope circuits. However, the idea needs to respect the current gameplay, and make sure it does not hinder performance. Implementing circuits like that in a 3D space, that has multiple levels of height (think of a slope), becomes tricky. An elegant solution would need to be designed for every use-case, and implemented without issue.

TheRedSwordsman

DrWhoCares said:

You got the gist of what I was saying.

1. Even if you restrict textures or do it over multiple updates, adding something like water is a major, extremely major, gameplay change. It fundamentally changes the game. It's like adding Brimstone and Iron to the game when it didn't exist prior. It completely changes how the game is played, how maps are made, how PvP/Conquest is balanced, how Corruptrons and Bricktrons pathfind, etc. Regardless of how cool it would be to have water, I firmly believe that unless an elegant solution can be found, Castle Story is not a game that should implement water.

2. However, for weather, that's something I could see implemented at some future date. I say that Weather shouldn't affect gameplay because you don't want to leave core elements of your game being hindered or helped by random elements of the game. In something like a procedurally generated roguelike, it's okay to have that randomness as it is understood that everything is random, (besides the obvious things that the player must learn and adapt to), which makes it fair.

In a game like Castle Story, having a random element doesn't make sense. You don't give the players in StarCraft a random amount of starting minerals, and you don't give random starting levels to players in games like League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Dota II, etc. You don't do this because it ruins the player's ability to understand the mechanics of the game, and respond and react accordingly.

For example, if I wanted to build a wall at location X, but then it started raining and now I have a bunch of water on the way there, now all of my time scale is thrown off. My project has a wrench in it because it started to rain. Maybe the enemy didn't get puddles in his way, now they are ahead of me. Etc. Does that make sense?

3. Like I said, or rather, didn't say, I have no issue with your idea of adding rope circuits. However, the idea needs to respect the current gameplay, and make sure it does not hinder performance. Implementing circuits like that in a 3D space, that has multiple levels of height (think of a slope), becomes tricky. An elegant solution would need to be designed for every use-case, and implemented without issue.

You make sense.

CastleBuilder

It's been said multiple times by the team that they have been fiddling around with the idea of water, however a solution on how to implement it has not been reached. This is for both performance wise and gameplay wise. Honestly I don't think they ever will; On the tech side I believe this because Castle Story is a VERY taxing game despite its simplified aesthetics and efficient use of low poly art.

Gameplay wise I just can't see how water would not be broken or a useless mechanic. It would either see abuse via players causing floods. Or just serve the purpose the void does now and become an obstacle you have to build bridges on or around on. So you'd have the issue of preventing abuse of the mechanic, technical issues, and trying to make use of it viable instead of just another void you have to engineer your way around to traverse in.

Now in regards to your idea of the fishing mechanic, I think that is the biggest culprit of RNG induced hampering the multiplayer experience for the game could have. It's not based on intuition, knowledge of map lay out or skill of micromanagement, just a straight up RNG. While in singleplayer it wouldn't be an issue since you're fighting Curroptrons, in multiplayer this is a problem.

Weather patterns wouldn't be too bad if they're not terrain changing but instead do an across the board debuff to specific units. However you're suggesting it changes the terrain physically, which is a no-go for me game mechanics and technical performance wise.