Re: Solo vs. multiplayer, campaigns, and difficulty

[Jens Granseuer <jensgr@gmx.net>]

On 09.03.2004 20:25, Patrick Forhan wrote:
> Quoting Jens Granseuer <jensgr@gmx.net>:
> > The point I tried to emphasize with my example was that reducing a
> > contingent to 5 may be perfectly fine for one map but much to excessive
> > for another. That's why I think the mapper needs to have full control
> > over what is changed.

> Seriously, though -- I don't yet know where the majority of time is spent in
> designing a map, but we are talking about possibly tripling the amount of time
> spent on unit allocation and placement.  And I would think it would be
> difficult to represent multiple set-ups on CoMET.

By far the most time is spent on testing the map, i.e. playing. You won't
be able to reduce that time much, no matter which approach we take. Next
probably comes writing the story (that depends of course).

You're right that display in CoMET would be a bit tricky. What I have in
mind is doing representing those differences by events that get executed
on (before) the first turn.

This means you first create the map with the minimal setup. If you are
done, you create a few events which e.g. add a few crystals for P1 and
which get executed only if [advantage p1] was selected, and a few more
events which add more units to the ranks of P2 in case [advantage p2]
was selected.

We need a few more event types for this to work, but the basic
infrastructure is already in place so it wouldn't be too much work.
A drawback of this events setup is that the differences are not
immediately visible in CoMET and event handling itself in CoMET takes
some getting used to. That program should have been written using a
proper GUI toolkit in the first place...

Anyway, that's the way I'd currently go for.

Jens