Walk under the seas, walk on vertical cliffs and other things Jesus did fingers in the nose !

[arn34]

Hi,

I've started making a map, but one or two things disturb me at the moment : units can walk under the seas or on vertical cliffs without pain.

I guess that for sea, you'll implement at some point of the project a "limit" the unit won't be able to cross, but what about cliffs (by cliff I mean almost vertical parts of the map, when you "pull" a piece of map at its max height) ?

Actually, I am interested in this feature just because it would be great for example to have a piece of map just accessible by a unique waypoint, a kind of natural fortress surrounded by unclimbable rocks. Or things of this kind.

So, did you plan to make units unable to walk on a slope harder than, let's say, 60°, or is it not a whished feature ?

[feneur]

It can get a bit funny at the moment yeah, but both limits when it comes to terrain and a max slope is planned. So yeah, what you are thinking about will be possible. If nothing else one can always use impassible/nondestructable objects (like the rocks in AoK). I'm not 100% sure if we've got any at the moment though, indestructible I think we have with the grass and stuff, but impassible I'm not as sure about.

[arn34]

Well, for the moment it seems that you can walk on or through everything (I tryed with large desert rock and the unit went through, then climbed the vertical cliff).

Anyway, if you tell me this will be implemented, that's fine and it fits me. I'll polish the details of the map till the game engine can handle terrain limits, no problem.

[DerWer]

I assume that walls will be made impassable by the time the beta arrives. Correct?

Edited July 28, 2010 by DerWer

[Ykkrosh]

I would expect so, since that would make them slightly less useless . (We'll probably need some new system for constructing walls - you won't just place each segment individually - so it'll take a bit of effort to get it all working properly. Currently the wall meshes seem to be centered around one of their ends, so we can't easily make them block movement properly with the current engine code (which assumes meshes are symmetric around their centers).)

[as-saffah]

Is there a way to implement or simulate the wall-building technique that's in Age of Empires 3? I like being able to drag and waypoint-click any length of wall I please. It will then build the wall on any terrain that's passable and buildable. It automatically calculates which combination of the standard-sized wall segments to use to fill in the line. You can choose wall segments 2, 3, 4, or 5 map units wide with fence posts or wall angles at each end.

You may build the wall in any direction, or change direction at a node, and it will build the new wall segment in the new direction, along the angle you choose, within an error of 7 degrees.

Lastly, you can convert a pre-existing wall segment of length 4 or 5 to a gate of width 4 or 5.

It's a very robust system, and quite versatile. Is there any way you can encode the 0 AD walls to behave like this?

If not, I fear that wall building in 0 AD will be severely limited in its tactical and strategic value during real games.

[Ykkrosh]

I don't see any fundamental reason why we couldn't do that - it'll just need some coding and maybe some new models. Sounds like it would be a good design to copy from.

[Mythos_Ruler]

That's pretty much how I've always envisioned walls working (click, drag, corner, drag, corner, drag, endpoint). We are (slowly) making new wall models for the Greeks (The Carthage walls are remade and ready for use in a new system), and eventually we'll remake the walls for the other factions too.