Insects in game

So going along with the theme that insects are controlling this whole experiment I am considering inserting some hive type insects as NPC (non player characters) to mix things up a bit.  This of course will be added much later as I want to get the basics nailed down first.  The reason I will be adding this is that I am sure I will have to program some AI in order to complete my masters degree.  So the idea I have is this.

1. Wasps nest
This will be the most difficult enemy as it will be flying and it will also have both distance and melee attacks.  If a player comes too close to the nest they will get triggered and all come out of the nest at the same time to attack.  I'd like there to be enough enemies that spawn so as to overwhelm a single player or even a small group ( probably a pod size) meaning that taking one down is a serious event requiring a lot of coordination. Of course taking one down would also give a large amount of rewards in the form of nest material which could then be incorporated into weaponry or vehicles.

2. Bee's nest
This type is going to be in the form of suicide bomber type fighting,  as the AI will move quickly to the player and then explode.  Again it will spawn enough enemies to protect against a fairly large attack,  with a faster respawn rate compared to the other nest types.

3. Ant's nest/hill
These will be ground based insects that will close in quickly, then attach themselves to a player doing constant damage until the player is frozen, then they will move on to the next player and so on.

For all three insect types the only class that can outrun them will be the scout class.  Builder's will be necessary to harvest the nest material in all three cases,  and the firepower of the soldier class will be absolutely necessary in taking down a nest.  Luckily hive algorithms are fairly common so implementation shouldn't be all too difficult, though I haven't yet started the programming yet so I guess I'll find out eventually.

When a nest is not active I'll probably have a few of the insects outside doing simple patrolling.  If an insect is attacked it will make it's way to the nest and set off the alarm if it is not taken completely out before then.  Once in alarm state the various swarms will attack any players in a much wider area than the normal radius, meaning that if a group of players sets off this alarm they had better get away fast or be prepared to fight the whole swarm.

Crystal song

I have been working out how I want the energy crystals to work in the game, as they are needed for almost everything that get's created.  I want them to be fairly easy to find yet not so easy that finding them becomes so common that they become a non issue.  To this end I have come up with a nice workaround.  I plan on making the crystals sing.

So I can hear you asking, how are they going to sing?  I plan on making a crystal room that will be fairly large and have multiple connections to the surrounding caves.  This room will only happen on the mid or lower cave levels, and I will have to work out just how many of them per hexfield will be needed.  In the room it will be top to bottom full of crystal blocks.  Blocks will be randomly assigned a tone relating to the midi scale, and there will be a constantly repeating "song" that the blocks will play.  I have already composed this song, and I will post it to soundcloud probably later on today so you can hear it.  Anyway when a player is getting close to the crystal the song will get louder.  I plan on having the crystals emit a low level light source, and when singing the light will become slightly stronger.  When players interact with any of the crystals in the room the song will stop and only the crystals getting hit by melee weapons will play.  This means that players will be able to play little songs if they want to coordinate their efforts.  Builders again will be the only ones able to actually get crystals and fill up their bags and anyone else who happens to be with them.  After a time the song will start again, leading players back to the crystal room.  I plan on using simple MIDI to accomplish the song and the crystal playing by players.  Since this will be one of the few places in the game that will have music, it should provide a the needed guidance to players to meet their crystal gathering needs.  It will also mean that enemy players will be able to know if there are other players in a crystal room as there will be the player controlled sounds emitting instead of the song.

Tackling the surface environment

Game environments are particularly challenging, especially when I hope to make them random.  I have already talked about the three levels of caves, and how I hope to randomize the cave system to be unique for every hexfield in the game.  The part that I am now concentrating on is the surface level from 60 meters to 100 meters.  To help illustrate what I plan to do for this I have made a simple diagram.

As you can see, a set of equilateral triangles can be skewed to fit the standard square tessellation pattern.  This means that I would be able to translate a standard height map to this field.  If I divide the surface area of the hexfield like this:

 I can then create a surface that is reflected in triblocks.  While it is true that some of the more unique facets of a triangular tessellation will not be reflected in this type of initial setup, players will be able to add blocks to this environment utilizing the full spectrum of possibilities.  The height map will need to have area's that are flat where bases can be created as well as guaranteed low areas that could intersect with cave levels.  In order to still keep the sense of randomness each area could be taken randomly from one giant height map.  

Control systems

I recently tried out another popular title called "League of Legends".  It is free to play with micro transactions that allow players to unlock various heroes and looks for said heroes.  The first thing that I noticed was the control scheme employed.  One does not control ones hero directly, rather one clicks a location where one wants the hero to go and the hero responds accordingly.  There are 4 skills per hero which can be activated via keyboard or by clicking on them with the mouse.  I found the experience to be more along the control scheme found in RTS (Real Time Strategy) games where one acts as a commander who tells the troops where to go.

Since the majority of the player controls in my game will be based on the standard FPS(first person shooter) control system I'm thinking that when it comes time to market the game I will need to say that it is an MMO FPS game.  Yes there is the commander position, but that position and the control scheme when in a commanding ship (which will be more similar to the RTS control scheme) will be a very small portion of the game that many players may not even experience.  While commanders also won't be able to control anything directly like in RTS games, they will be able to set waypoints that all under their command or even in the faction can see,  they will be able to set a wireframe equivalent of the structures to guide the ground troops, and they will be able to sound alarms in a given hexfield if they find an enemy force is present.

I find that people have spent years developing skill sets in these various schemes,  which is why I don't see them going away any time soon