What's left for Myth?

[king paris]

The best addition to Myth II would be multiplayer bots.

One of my worries is that eventually we'll run out of players for multiplayer games. Who will I play FFAs against then?! I've thought about making some single player maps that would simulate an online game but my mapmaking skills aren't up to snuff.

multiplayer bots? multiplayer bots would probably be easier to make than you'd think, and in fact, they're in most of the maps. ever notice the scenery, the deer, the birds flying around? those can be considered bots, because they're computer controlled and running thier own programed ambience scripts. if you wanted to make multiplayer bots you'd have to go through all of the maps you wanted and script all of the bots to react in certain ways and if you wanted a bot activated or not. it would be very tricky and time consuming, and if people suddenly disappear, i'm sure you can figure out how to do it.

(3) Multi-select active plugins on either side with "move all" left/right buttons.

(4) PLUS, a pulldown list in "plugins..." for custom active plugin combination presets (e.g. WWII units + Map XYZ as a preset you could select with pulldown). As many pulldown items as you want each containing up to eight plugins (we've used 6 before). This would probably save OoH hosts 22 minutes and 97 mouse clicks every night.



(5) Only game-play related one I can think of off-hand: shift-clicking a unit's path can pick up an object during the trip if the shift-click is on an object. In other words, you could have a heron pick up a root en route (cough) to an ultimate destination without having to move him again after he picks up the root.


(7) Semi-transparent graphic of inventory/items unit is carrying right over the unit's head (stacking upwards) - can be universally toggled on/off.

good ideas


your number 2,

(2) Local team color settings: Option to set your own custom colors for other teams (up to 16 teams) so you can always see the enemy the same way and there are no advantages for dark green, black, etc. There would also NEVER be any floyning because you would be picking the other players colors the way you want to see them! Smile (I just thought of this the other night!)

would be a wasted features, one of the things i look back on most about myth was how all of the colors were always changing, random and every new game meant you had to check and see who was which color again, because it could have changed and you could be fooled :O

[Myrd]

(2) Local team color settings: Option to set your own custom colors for other teams (up to 16 teams) so you can always see the enemy the same way and there are no advantages for dark green, black, etc. There would also NEVER be any floyning because you would be picking the other players colors the way you want to see them! (I just thought of this the other night!)

Imagine a many-teams Gimble game.

Captain of a team: let's attack red
Team member: ok
:: half the units go in one direction, the other half go in another::
.... 3 minutes later...
Captain: wth are you doing?
Team member: i'm attacking red like you said!

.....

[Archer]

Presumably that could be solved by having the captain's colour preferences override, at least on the overhead map.

~J

[vinylrake]

multiplayer bots? multiplayer bots would probably be easier to make than you'd think, and in fact, they're in most of the maps. ever notice the scenery, the deer, the birds flying around? those can be considered bots, because they're computer controlled and running thier own programed ambience scripts.

Scripts embedded into the game itself aren't really bots, neither are unit related scripts contained in a mesh.map level scripting bucket - calling something a 'bot' to me implies portability or a certain level of self-containedness - e.g. To be a 'bot' the unit should be able to be used on different maps and should contain it's behavior as part of it's 'self' - e.g. a bot is not unique to a specific map, whereas scripts attached to specific units on a specific map are not portable or self-contained. e.g. When you encounter soulBlighter on a solo level, his actions are scripted but he's not a 'bot' because when you are playing Myth I/II/III you have no way of selecting him for a different map, and even if you want to manually add him to a specific map you can't just go into Loathing and cut and paste SoulBlighter as a computer controlled entity out of one map and just paste him into another and have him work - you'd have to potentially cut a slew of different tags (unit/mons/colref/string lists/physics, sounds, etc) AND the portion of the script that is related to how SB behaves. And if you go tto he effort of embedding the same script on different individual maps so team 1 on map A will act the same as team 2 on map B that's not really portable or self-contained, so not a bot.

Another complication is that you would want a unit, and a team to behave differently for different game types, so instead of one set of scripts for a unit or a team you would need at least a half dozen (assuming similar game types could be combined to make fewer scripts).

if you wanted to make multiplayer bots you'd have to go through all of the maps you wanted and script all of the bots to react in certain ways and if you wanted a bot activated or not. it would be very tricky and time consuming, and if people suddenly disappear, i'm sure you can figure out how to do it.

Given that each mesh of each map would have to be manually edited and tested and would probably need to have teams and unit groups identified manually in Loathing before pasting in the script, it would definitely be a time consuming task. Of course if one only plays BC Proving Grounds it wouldn't be very time consuming.

I am sure there are other examples floating around, when I was writing this thinking about multiplayer games scripted for computer controlled teams, Barbarian Valley by CreationGames came to mind. It is essentially a multiplayer CTF style solo map where each of three teams have a crystal and the winner is the first team to get all three crystals to their home base. One of the teams is human controlled, the other two are computer controlled.

[AblitERateOR]

(5) Only game-play related one I can think of off-hand: shift-clicking a unit's path can pick up an object during the trip if the shift-click is on an object. In other words, you could have a heron pick up a root en route (cough) to an ultimate destination without having to move him again after he picks up the root.

i've actually thought of mentionting this many times lately, but when it occured to me it was too late to get into 1.6 so i never bothered, n i thought people would really care that much, it would be nice though!

[Baak]

(2) Local team color settings: Option to set your own custom colors for other teams (up to 16 teams) so you can always see the enemy the same way and there are no advantages for dark green, black, etc. There would also NEVER be any floyning because you would be picking the other players colors the way you want to see them! (I just thought of this the other night!)

Imagine a many-teams Gimble game.

Captain of a team: let's attack red
Team member: ok
:: half the units go in one direction, the other half go in another::
.... 3 minutes later...
Captain: wth are you doing?
Team member: i'm attacking red like you said!

.....

Yeah, as Archer said the Captains' preferences would have to override.

[Myrd]

"Pretty simple" now becomes "moderately complex" feature..

[Baak]

"Pretty simple" now becomes "moderately complex" feature..

Agreed. Would be *great* for FFA games though.


I actually think the Floyn Fix is a better/simpler approach overall. I still have that code if you ever want to slap it in.

The Improved Floyn test runner is located here - it's not 100% accurate but tends to be much better than 1.3 or 1.3(145) (145 seems to be the worst). It's based on HSB instead of RGB. I bet multiple eyes/minds working on it could get it to 99%. Just refresh that page which generates 16 random player primary colors - the three right columns shows what color entries "floyn" using the 1.3, 1.3(145), and my code, respectively.

[Myrd]

Baak, I think your code doesn't look at darkness/lightness of the color enough. Check this output: http://projectmagma.net/~myrd/floyn.html

It considers 09 to conflict with 06, which is ridiculous. (To a lesser extent, 01 and 10 also have the same problem.)

[Baak]

Baak, I think your code doesn't look at darkness/lightness of the color enough. Check this output: http://projectmagma.net/~myrd/floyn.html

It considers 09 to conflict with 06, which is ridiculous. (To a lesser extent, 01 and 10 also have the same problem.)

Aye, there are definitely times where it is as whacked as the other ones. What I notice with running it multiple times (like ten times) is the kind of extreme floyning like your example happens much less than the others. The 1.3(145) one likes to say that two near-blue colors aren't floyned - that seems to be it's fave.

Definitely agreed it needs some refinement. One of these days I'll look at it fresh and see if there is something obvious, which there probably is. Will also do some additional research.

[Baak]

Interesting! Did a little research this morning and it may be that the C code I have for HSV/HSB is not quite right *and* I have found additional information on HSL which may be better.

I'm going to play around with this during the week and see if it works - will keep you posted.

[Shaister]

(2) Local team color settings: Option to set your own custom colors for other teams (up to 16 teams) so you can always see the enemy the same way and there are no advantages for dark green, black, etc. There would also NEVER be any floyning because you would be picking the other players colors the way you want to see them! (I just thought of this the other night!)

This is the best idea, imo. I can't remember the number of times I've mistaken enemy warriors for friendlies because of their stupid, stupid color scheme. This could also solve the problem of team colors that blend into the overhead map in saved films.

(5) Only game-play related one I can think of off-hand: shift-clicking a unit's path can pick up an object during the trip if the shift-click is on an object. In other words, you could have a heron pick up a root en route (cough) to an ultimate destination without having to move him again after he picks up the root.

Another good one. It would also be nice if you could shift click a satchel laying route, shift heal a series of units, etc.

My own suggestions:

1. Color coded highlighting of in-game chat for the captain, teammates, other teams, and status updates (flag captured, etc.)
It would be nice to just press the up arrow key and instantly pick out any commands you've missed.

2. A toggle to allow the last few lines of chat to stay on-screen without having to hold down the up arrow. I'm not sure if this option exists yet.

3. A toggle to disable camera movement via the mini-map. Turning the mini-map off leaves me feeling naked, but it's a death sentence to accidentally click in the corner of the mini-map when you're in the middle of a battle.

4. A change to the way contested flags and balls are viewed. Neutral grey is great unless there's a grey team in the game. A blinking flag or ball would solve this.

5. The player who inherits the units of a dropped captain should gain all the powers of the captain. Even unit trading, if possible.

6. Units should not disregard their instructions to attack enemy units blocking their paths. I believe this was a change made to the AI in one of Magma's updates. It's really bad when a pus ghol decides to blast his way through a journeyman that won't step aside :O.

7. Dwarves should not throw looping bottles onto their own heads. I think this is due to a change in the AI which allows dwarves to throw over the edge of the fort on Cracks without hitting the wall. Unfortunately, it also kicks in when you target a unit running up a steep hill towards your dwarf. It's hilarious, but something better left for vTFL.

8. Herons should not spin around when self-healing. I think this problem is endemic to all units who can target themselves with a special. It doesn't happen every time, but it's a huge problem for heron guard heroes.

9. A confirmation window that asks me if I really want to load the tutorial. It's like a booby trap for would-be film viewers :O.

[TheHelmet]

9. A confirmation window that asks me if I really want to load the tutorial. It's like a booby trap for would-be film viewers :O.

Haha, I second that! This past year I've probably spent more time trying to get out of the tutorial than on playmyth :/

[AblitERateOR]

Thats a really good list of things there Shaister

[Baak]

Aye, Shaister - nice list!


With #3 it'd be nice (imo) if you could get the mini-map into semi-transparent mode and in that mode clicking on the map does nothing.

Like the way I would see the semi-transparent team stats and chat behaving.


I can see another problem in the "locally preset colors" though. Let's say we've got 8 people in the game and I've got my colors set. What happens when player "John Doe" leaves and comes back (thus changing his order in the room) - how would he keep the same color? Aieeeeee...

A *really* simple version of this that I would like to see with team games would be something that you could toggle that would turn all units on the field to "enemy/friendly/ally/you" - even if it were some kind of extra mana bar above the mana bar in 4 colors or something - I dunno. Amazingly frustrating in big team games when either the colors are similar (this could go away with a floyn fix) or when units such as Myrks are involved. Would be nice to be able to turn them a color (like in Loathing): solid red=enemy; solid blue=friendly; solid yellow=ally; solid green=you.