Technical Wishlist for editor

[azidahaka]

i rmember a game that had as "walls" an inextricable vegetation... it was a grid based game too, didn't look too exciting but cool nevertheless and can be done just with texturing.

ah found it it was in eob...





instead of walls... trees! is that Nyast meant?

[Kostas]

I'd be more interested in modding game mechanics tbh

[Nyast]

i rmember a game that had as "walls" an inextricable vegetation... it was a grid based game too, didn't look too exciting but cool nevertheless and can be done just with texturing.

ah found it it was in eob...

instead of walls... trees! is that Nyast meant?

Yes, that's what I mean. But notice in those pics of yours, how you can see the sky in the background ? LoG always has ceilings on the tiles, so we need a way to hide the ceiling, and to render a sky background. In addition, the view distance fades to black ( because we're inside a dungeon ), but it'd have to fade to gray or some kind of blue-ish color in an outdoor environment.

[Thels]

Ariel has a beard?

But seriously, keep in mind that unlike EoB, LoG also supports free looking around with the right mouse button, so you'd be able to turn and look up at the sky.

This would mean that, unless the sky was a single sea of blue/gray/black with zero detail, you'd get in troubles when walking around. You can't for example have the sun at the "ceiling" of a tile, because taking a step forward would then cause the sun to move a considerable amount.

In addition, the deep belows of a dungeon are more or less timeless. If you were up aboveground, day and night would have to alternate.

Not saying it's impossible. Just saying it's a couple of things they need to keep in mind in order to do it. Something they probably aren't going to provide just for modders, but they might perhaps include it in a later expansion, after which modders could use it as well.

[Dynosaulo]

Not saying it's impossible. Just saying it's a couple of things they need to keep in mind in order to do it. Something they probably aren't going to provide just for modders, but they might perhaps include it in a later expansion, after which modders could use it as well.

That's exactly what I meant. Thank you.

[oodyboo]

Please add support for mouse gestures.

I suppose all that's needed is a few Lua hooks for getting mouse position and click-status and modders will be able to add mouse gestures.

Maybe include gestures natively in LoG2 or whatnot, as it should eliminate the need to stare at the UI in the corner and imho would make combat more immersive and fun than it already is:)

[Patch]

Please add support for mouse gestures.

I suppose all that's needed is a few Lua hooks for getting mouse position and click-status and modders will be able to add mouse gestures.

Maybe include gestures natively in LoG2 or whatnot, as it should eliminate the need to stare at the UI in the corner and imho would make combat more immersive and fun than it already is:)

How would you differentiate gestures between the different characters? And the different hands of the different characters?

[oodyboo]

You could have different gestures and map them to the various character attacks, or even special attack skills.

The following are to illustrate this example only:

Gesture 1 is "left-right", maybe that would mean "Slash" or "Bash"
Gesture 2 might be "down-up", maybe that would be "Stab"
Gesture 3 might be "down-left, down-right" and that could be "Ice Shards" spell
Gesture 4 might be "up-left" and that might mean "Firebolt"

So now instead of focusing in the corner to click my attacks I can look at the pretty monsters and do mouse gestures like "left-right" to make my fighter(s) slash or bash.

Once a gesture is detected, simply loop through party from 1-4 and execute first available (not on cooldown) matching attack.

There are other methods that could be used as well, like starting your gesture with a left/right/up/down to signal the character you want to control. I think this would be too tedious, but it's hard to say.

There was a game called Sacrifice (almost a decade ago?) that was a real time strategy game controlled by mouse gestures, and it worked surprisingly well. Gestures were also implemented in Black and White, a few other games, and I even use them in my web browser. They are really awesome for some commands because they break the dependency on UI widgets and the mouse cursor position on the screen.

I'm sure there are better ways to implement the details than my examples, and I think allowing this to be modded would open up some really cool things and add personality to the use of different weapons.

Plus I feel like I don't have time to appreciate the pretty monsters as much as I would like to.

[Patch]

You could have different gestures and map them to the various character attacks, or even special attack skills.

The following are to illustrate this example only:

Gesture 1 is "left-right", maybe that would mean "Slash" or "Bash"
Gesture 2 might be "down-up", maybe that would be "Stab"
Gesture 3 might be "down-left, down-right" and that could be "Ice Shards" spell
Gesture 4 might be "up-left" and that might mean "Firebolt"

So now instead of focusing in the corner to click my attacks I can look at the pretty monsters and do mouse gestures like "left-right" to make my fighter(s) slash or bash.

Once a gesture is detected, simply loop through party from 1-4 and execute first available (not on cooldown) matching attack.

There are other methods that could be used as well, like starting your gesture with a left/right/up/down to signal the character you want to control. I think this would be too tedious, but it's hard to say.

There was a game called Sacrifice (almost a decade ago?) that was a real time strategy game controlled by mouse gestures, and it worked surprisingly well. Gestures were also implemented in Black and White, a few other games, and I even use them in my web browser. They are really awesome for some commands because they break the dependency on UI widgets and the mouse cursor position on the screen.

I'm sure there are better ways to implement the details than my examples, and I think allowing this to be modded would open up some really cool things and add personality to the use of different weapons.

Plus I feel like I don't have time to appreciate the pretty monsters as much as I would like to.

I dunno. I kind of like the idea, and kind of don't. It seems like it would make combat maybe a bit too easy, and also wouldn't allow micromanagement of attacking as much. Also, there would be a lot of gestures to memorize if each spell had its own, and each type of attack had its own. Add in some special action to select which character, and which hand, if the thing doesn't some how automatically scroll through characters/hands.

[oodyboo]

Maybe just a simple quadrant to choose character than direction for the hand instead of mapping attack types.

diagonal up-left, right -> Player 1, Right Hand

diagonal down-right, left -> Player 4, Left Hand

If it's a spell, maybe you do an additional gesture to select the runes.

Gestures can use curves as well, so there's really a lot of different ways to do it.

Edit:

P.S. It could even be configurable, so players can just define a few gestures to the particular character/hands they want to use.
P.P.S. can be used optionally in addition to the regular interface