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Author Topic: Star Craft  (Read 6221 times)

Meph

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #30 on: May 07, 2013, 07:47:30 pm »

Yep, you make drones civ members with pop-ratio 1000, do some higher-tier units with pop-ratio 10 or so, and make larvae pets that you can buy and transform in workshops, in your hatcheries... and you need reagents from your roach warren and so forth.

Just checked, even the sprites fit. 24x24 or 32x32 should be fine for most units, that are not carriers and battlecruisers ^^
« Last Edit: May 07, 2013, 07:53:18 pm by Meph »
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Deinos

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #31 on: May 09, 2013, 10:12:44 pm »

I've been thinking of a similar thing. I believe you could split up weaponry, and weapon skills, so that different castes of zerg would only be able to use different sorts of weapons... technically, a big zerg could use a small zerg weapon, but, eh.

I think it'd be really cool to set up a mod like this with the infantry scale of Dwarf Fortress in mind; so probably vehicles aren't too workable (though you never know), and it'd likely just be up to power armor and big guns against the nastiest beasties in the galaxy.

I'd have zerglings be relatively weak, simply because the whole point of them (in this) would be to charge right up to ranged characters and box them in. In contrast, a huge caste like an ultralisk may only be able to be realistically taken out by heavy duty ranged attacks... which you can't deal with too well with zerglins at you, even if zerglings are relatively weak, with mostly tough hide and bone.

The trees = crystal, protoss = elves thing is pretty cool though, as is the idea of just about every land creature being zerg (or maybe just in evil lands) and the zerg civ being at peace with wildlife.

Is it possible to make it so that survival on the surface requires a special suit?

Is it possible to make a special creature body layout which would be basically a mecha, a giant of no nerve endings, no vascularization, etc. with a human body (to some degree) representing the pilot inside? Might be more fitting for dragoons.
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Meph

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #32 on: May 09, 2013, 11:39:28 pm »

Yes, mechas can be done. You could also do a siege-tank building, units that use it transform into a siege-tank driver, are immobile and stay inside, get a reaction to shoot anything within 50 tiles with a special reaction. Most other specials, like blinding cloud or fungals can be done as well.

I wouldnt make them wildlife though, no sieges that way. Maybe some wild zerg, but other then that 3 playable race, like it should be. And Ursadons and similar stuff as real wildlife.
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Zavvnao

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #33 on: May 10, 2013, 12:35:54 am »

feral zerg could be separate from the civ zerg :3
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Deinos

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #34 on: May 15, 2013, 01:14:59 pm »

Yeah, there's feral zerg opportunistically roam around and attack you, and the organized zerg that siege you (who are at peace with the former, unless they use opposed to life instead). If you have the feral zerg be separate species (and not just unintelligent clones of the civilized zerg with slightly modified raws), you could have the feral zerg be various species that not used in starcraft anymore (like the defiler) or have oddball nonstandard roles (like the broodling). Benign zerg even exist like overlords (which are probably mounts) and larvae.

There are also certain kinds of infested terrans that would work as animals (being things you can't really make in starcraft anymore but exist in the lore), and you could use an interaction like the Summoner Necromancers from Fear the Night that allows a necromancer-like zerg to either raise terran corpses as infested (both explosive and zombie-like, and there can be different kinds), or bits of them as broodlings.
Since you drop all items on death, you could get real creative with the body plans of infested terrans, like having 'fused power armor' tissue layers and 'fused gauss rifle' right hands or whatever -- not necessarily as functional as before, and fused to the creature by flesh with its infestation.


The siege tank idea sounds awesome too.
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escaped lurker

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #35 on: May 15, 2013, 07:32:46 pm »

As food for thought - replacing the whole fauna of savage and evil biomes with feral zerg sounds just about right - at least in my book. Also, by placing the mod "Inbetween" the two games, you pretty much could take the best out of both, without the need to leave some beloved "classic" types out of the loop.

The issue of zerglings normally coming in a double is somewhat a problem thou. I guess making larvae dirt-cheap might be the only way to counter that matter. That, or making those little buggers a bit more formadible than in the original.

You might want to give the zerg special tissues, bones and nails, to accomendate for their self-healing ability - not like you could just haul them to the sickbay afterall...
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Valikdu

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #36 on: May 16, 2013, 12:36:06 am »

I actually had zerg in some early versions of my mod, as a hostile civ (plus some zerg-like creatures as large predators). Later replaced the civ with more MLP-themed creatures, though.

I used custom body parts and materials for them.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2013, 12:39:44 am by Valikdu »
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Deinos

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #37 on: May 16, 2013, 01:30:56 pm »

Zerglings, may very well be best off as an animal type, they definitely seem the analog of war dogs. Relatively expendable. Broodlings, overlords and overseers, spine crawlers and spore crawlers may also qualify as animals; though overlords are smart, they spend most their time floating around aimlessly.

You really have the opportunity to give zerg a radically different feel; such as with an absurdly fast healing rate. It'd be especially cool if its possible to get their healing rates so high that its actually possible to fully heal within a day, week, or month.

The terran strategy might be, basically, the usual DF plan of 'secure perimeter, get armor too dense for enemies to hurt you, create perfect deathtraps', but the zerg probably do not create walled off bases. So its okay to give them huge advantages to compensate -- blistering fast healing rates, ideal servant personality types, and advantageous physiologies.

Lower zerg castes could have no need for sleeping, eating or drinking, and no emotions/thoughts. They should still be quite powerful, able to fight right out of the box from day one with no gear. Natural limbs that work like swords, natural skin layers that work like armor. Its absolutely essential that your common zerg unit isn't something you have to babysit and care for/about like a typical DF dwarf. You may even want lower zerg to count as blind -- they're not good for jobs that require quality level, and mainly about hauling and fighting, but being blind means they wouldn't run from fights, and, iirc, if they contact enemies, even outside of the military, they'd start fighting.

Mid tier zerg castes may be quite powerful, and have basic emotions/thoughts; though they'd still have obedient personality types -- median zerg probably don't get melancholic, have nervous breakdowns, have tantrums, make friends, and so on. They would likely eat, though not sleep or drink. They're probably semimegabeast strength. There probably wouldn't be zerg weapons (kaiser blades etc.) sized for them, but to prevent ludicrousness of embarrassed naked zerg at this level, they'd probably still have to be wear armor, described as various sorts of carapaces presumably.

High tier zerg would be the only ones you have to babysit like regular dwarves, who require inventory management etc.; in return, they're probably megabeast or demon strength. Ultralisks, brood guardians, queens, and infested ghosts come to mind. Ultralisks require management in that they may go berserk if they become miserable; queens differ from other zergs in that they can have friendliness and thus become unhappy from the deaths of the other zerg. It would be these high tier zerg that you'd actually have incentive to care about; they'd perform high end jobs, and they'd be able to equip zerg weapons -- which would have to be awesome.

Since it is absolutely un-zerglike to have to worry about individual broken bones and so on, I'm thinking zerg, especially lower zerg, could have drastically simplified bodies. Do creatures have to have nerves or spines, for example? The goal would be to make sure that they can regenerate FAST (within a week or so) even from crippling wounds, and that nothing would cause permanent damage to them, except probably limb loss (they should have few discrete organs).

The overall goal is to ensure playing as zerg is fast paced, involves drastically less babysitting and turtling, and only involves item management for the highest tiers.
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Zavvnao

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #38 on: May 16, 2013, 01:48:49 pm »

maybe no nerves? or a t least set nerves to regen if possible?
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escaped lurker

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #39 on: May 17, 2013, 09:34:02 pm »

Great thinking by Deinos there, i like it; About the normal citizens "not fleeing", I am quite sure [NO_FEAR] or [LIKES_FIGHTING] ought to do the trick - and let's face it, the lower classes of zerg have neither any need nor the capability for such emotions. Heck, even without a cerebrate or whatnot lording over them the swarm segments seem to do fine on their own - albeit in an amok state (Just think back to the campaing mission where this exactly is the case). Since the lower tiers are canon-fodder anyway, it would quite surprise me if the swarm would still give them sensory reception like pain, so [NO_PAIN] is quite fitting for most of them. They dont need self-protection mechanism as it would do them more bad than good - and lets face it, the swarm has "modded" them quite extensivly to ☼MASTERWORK☼ quality ;3.

The though of non-humanoid Zerg-Creatures "using items" is somewhat amiss in my book - but i guess to handle them as individual enchancements / mutations was "the plan" all along. Since by now items are able to "buff" their wearer, there would be quite a nice and interesting field of options besides the obvious armor and weapon-values. By a similiar line of thought, specific zerg that are known to "excert control" over their more simple-minded peers could have such abilities as well. Nothing game-breaking, but a desirable short-cooldown buff with a satisfactory timespan and effect - minor surplus to speed or dodge chances comes to mind.

While the "caravan" option certainly would work for larveas, there is always the workaround with female pet-classes of the same civilization. Only problem is that pets seem to spawn children instead of babys - wich somewhat makes sense, given that it seems to be somewhat of a loophole and else "normal animal behaviour". If I am not completely wrong, said childs could have their own anatomy* - larvea - and still "grow up" to be a mutalisk and whatnot. Wich might not be to our liking in fortress-mode, so those larvea just get a use-on-self-syndrome that let's them die before that ever were to happen. Said Syndrome won't work in worldgen (or does it?), giving us a nice way of creating "good" and varied invasion armys for terran (and maybe even protos?) forts, while staying quite true to the original lore.
*moot point of that idea, if untrue disregard this section.

Letting trees pose as crystals - wich ought to be the main resource - seems like an obvious choice, but this could really ramp up the difficulty based on the selected biome. While having to "go out there" to protect the workers from skulking enemys would also be quite desireable, i guess some other ways to gain energy should be implemented. Stuffing some minerals in there that need to be tediously and time-consumingly extracted from the encasing rock in workshops might do the trick. Is adding different kind of "purities" possible - e.g. "strands gained"? Anyways, "Going out there" should still be an incentive option thou, for !FUN! and great justice.

Not sure if the same should be done for vespin, since then you would "need" to mine - maybe giving them the "plant-treatment" could be considered. Hmm, yes - "surface deposits" in that manner sound viable - and easy to boot. Just make a tree and a plant that can - and thus will - grow anywhere, add a few clones with fitting tiles for atmosphere - easy going on that front. "Geological upheaval" in the growing phase - wasnt there something to set down or remove the "trample" value? Hmhm.. this is seriously becoming hard to abscond.
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Deinos

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Re: Star Craft
« Reply #40 on: May 18, 2013, 05:29:14 am »

Thanks for the kind words and advice. While yeah, zerg don't make sense too much as literally having items per se, we gotta recognize a few things.

0. Thank you very much for pointing out the likes fighting and possibly no fear thing makes it so that your non-military units won't run from fights. I'm working on a mod just for my own fun that will make the game way less micromanagey

1. While this makes zerg a bit more hermit-crabby than usual, having integrated carapaces/weapons may not be desirable. After all, if I'm not mistaken, an actual carapace/shell, once its broken, won't heal without medical treatment, right? We absolutely want to avoid that level of micromanagement, at least for the zerg. Since armor seems to increase in thickness with the wearer size for multicaste civilizations, bone armor (probably the most typical example) obviously won't do much for zerglings, but would contribute to making the huge ultralisks extra durable, as is appropriate. Utterly sacrificial zerg units, probably created by special abilities, can definitely have natural weapons/armor tho.

2. We could call them "evolution enzymes" or "external symbionts" or somethingorother.

3. In the original game, zerg and terrans alike research weapon/armor upgrades in the same way, which suggests that both terrans and zerg could get masterwork weapons, armor, etc.

4. Zerg tearing apart dead terrans and protoss for meat, bones and leather feels appropriate. If not that, at least using dead bodies to create infested terrans, sunken/spore colonies, changelings, zerglings, or broodlings would be really damn cool. Starcraft 2, post-HoS, has at least four zerg units that create free other zerg units, to really help create that 'limitless swarm' feel.

As to other races...

There are tissue layers, such as skin, muscle, and fat that can't be "broken," correct? I'm thinking that perhaps even terrans would have very different body layouts, because while knocking out the teeth of a power armored marine is not important, puncturing his suit may be; instead of lungs causing difficulty breathing, it may be their air recycler system part (rendered as an organ). Terran medics may have the ability to heal their friends, but (I'm not sure) such interactions can't be used to repair broken/severed tissues, so you'd have to get visited by a "suit repair" (bone doctor) type or eventually succumb to infection (zerg microbes in the atmosphere?). Its also fitting that, since the least terran unit started off encased in metal, that perhaps they have 'natural' metal tissues to protect them that they can't really remove (nude terrans running around on Tarsonis Orbital makes little sense). So wearable armor-type items for terrans would probably represent add-ons to their suit.

For protoss, as they can apparently run around in space completely exposed, this is less important. Also, the fluff for stalkers, dragoons and immortals suggests that they can and do take critical levels of irreparable damage; so protoss are perhaps the only types that being able to receive permanent damage fits. They could, however, upgrade a normal type into a stalker, dragoon or immortal to ignore that damage, or even there may be an interaction that raises the dead and transforms them into dragoons. Also, hopefully there's a way to mod in a good force field tissue that won't run the risk of infection.

Just some ideas.

Also, protoss have the judicator (noble), templar (warrior) and khala (worker) castes.

EDIT: Re: vespene, we might be able to create some system replacing magma's role.

I have heard talk of teleportation and summoning being possible, so I'm curious as to whether some possibility of nonstandard sieges (protoss teleporting into your base, dropships airlifting troops into your base) would be possible. Idea being not so much to punish you for playing zerg, but that the zerg should be more about trying to rapidly bring the swarm to respond to intruders rather than creating cold, reliable deathtrap hallways. Mechanisms really don't fit the zerg motif in general.
« Last Edit: May 18, 2013, 02:25:05 pm by Deinos »
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