Re: Solo vs. multiplayer, campaigns, and difficulty

[Dave Fancella <david.fancella@comcast.net>]

On Friday 05 March 2004 06:27 pm, Jens Granseuer wrote:
> 1) Introduction of difficulty levels. Let's assume [easy, medium, hard]
> for now. This can solve A) (a solo map on [easy] is basically the same as
> a multiplayer map) and C) (if a map is to easy for you, play on [hard]
> instead of [medium], or the other way around). There are two ways to
> change the difficulty of a scenario:
>  * enable/disable certain AI features, or
>  * modify the scenario itself (add/remove units, crystals; change a few
>    tiles...)

With a better AI, I would prefer to enable/disable features of the AI.  How 
about this:

The mapmaker decides 3 tactics that are critical to winning the map, such as 
"Artillery", "Air support", "Infantry", or whatever, in addition to the 
objectives, of course.  Then, in easy mode the computer would randomly choose 
one of these and reduce it.  In medium mode the computer would randomly 
choose two of these and reduce them.  In hard mode the computer would reduce 
all three (or take the reciprocal approach).  By "reduce", I mean reduce the 
strength of the units, if the tactic is a unit-based tactic.  I'm not 
thinking of any non-unit-based tactics right now, but I'm sure there are 
some.  Well, like crystals.  Say 'crystals' is named as a tactic critical to 
winning the map.  To reduce it the computer would reduce the number of 
crystals available on the map, or possibly unbalance them in favor of the 
computer.

> It gets a little problematic when we also try to resolve B). As soon as
> the human player can also choose to command the second party, [easy] is
> not just [easy] any more. Consider an imaginary scenario. If the human
> player is restricted to Player 1, the mapper can define

This is solved by just playing the map straight.  You might offer a handicap 
feature for two players, in case one of the players is significantly more 
experienced or whatever.  In fact, you specifically, Jens, who has been 
playing this game ever since it was first playable, might start wanting that 
feature soon.  ;)

> 2) A clear distinction between campaign and non-campaign maps. One way
> to do it would be to take the current main window, leave the maps list
> as it is but label it "Play map" or so as opposed to "Play campaign".
> You would still have all maps in the list, you could play all of them
> as FNA or EoK or in multiplayer, and you would still need passwords for
> maps which are part of a campaign, but if you played a map from a
> campaign in this mode you would _not_ be taken to the next map in the
> campaign.

My preference is to have two tabs, one for scenarios that makes all maps 
available, and one for campaigns.  In the campaign tab, instead of showing 
the map in the right-hand frame you'd display the story for the campaign.

I also think that campaigns should be playable by two players, and they should 
reasonably fork, so if one player wins one map they play a different map than 
if the other player had won.  This will be more reasonable when more of the 
story is done (hopefully I'll make another pass at it tonight, I'd like to 
have the basic story ready for the 0.4.2 release), and also when the world 
map finally gets drawn (any takers?).  The basic issue here is whether or not 
the players make the story, or if they're forced to adhere to a certain 
story, or some compromise between the two.  If forced to adhere to a story, 
then instead of letting maps fork we'd just not let them advance in the 
campaign until the Proper Player has won the map.  We can also make sure the 
story branches in ways that make it possible to reuse many of the maps, just 
changing up the unit configuration, and that would mean designing the maps to 
accomodate one or the other player having the upper hand in the campaign.  
Some thought would also need to be put into how the battles in one campaign 
affect other campaigns, or if they even should.

Finally, when allowing two player campaigns, there needs to be some way of 
scoring the campaign, so that at the end of the campaign one player can look 
at the other and say "You lost, I won", and do a victory dance.

> In addition to the current "saved games" tab we'd have a third one called
> "Play scenario". This list would only contain the very first map of each
> scenario available, and each of those could only be played as Player 1.
> (Should campaigns also be playable (as campaigns) in multiplayer?)
> This preserves both a) and b).
>
> There are a few technical consequences we need to consider eventually (we
> need a new main window; the AI as is doesn't work when it's Player 1) but
> those are relatively minor issues so we can neglect them until things are
> properly sorted out, I think.
>
> So there, let me know what you think.
>
> Jens

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