Grouping partymembers in a free 3D world.

[Rasmus]

So, I have been thinking..
I have now created a couple of screamers to practice fight on in DMT2.
And here comes the problem:
How do I organize the partymembers so that the player has full control over them and can alternate attacks from diffrent heroes in the party.

I was thinking about something like this:


Lets say that the camera always are attached to the front character, and when switching the characters that I want to controll, I press a specific button on the keyboard. Then the characters alternates according to the picture above..

The good thing here is that the camera always are away from the characters that not are controlled, in this way collisiondetection can be much more simple for them. And that it will not be weird that only the main character activates floorpads etc.

The negative thing is that even the spellcasters that are weak on hp will have to be up front sometimes and take melee attacks..

I would like to hear some suggestions about this if there are some other better party alternating system to use before I set it in action

[beowuuf]

I ngeneral it sounds fine, but putting spellcasters in harms way sounds bad

[Rasmus]

I know, but the other way I could think of would be to only alternate the camera between the characters, and that would be to "jumpy" for the player, no flow that is..

[zoom]

you could have2 ways of switching between characters.

a button that switches all heroes(as it is now) and
a button that switches only between melee heroes. That means you have a (melee toggle) checkbox that you deactivate for your feeble spellcaster(s).
then by pressing the melee toggle you only control the characters that have enough hp and a decent weapon or whatever.
hope this helps?

[Rasmus]

That would work with some modifications.. If I am stuck in a dead end and need to create healthpotions I still needs to put the spellcasting heroes in front.. Maybe if I have one button to change the camera and one to alternate heroes.. But I'm still abit afraid that the controll woun't be natural for the player.. hmmm

[linflas]

may i suggest another way, suggested yeaaaars ago when i tried to make my own 3D DM : a lock mode.
space bar toggles camera lock on an enemy or a group of enemies and releases mouse pointer, so that your able to have a classic DM interface and "strafe around" monsters.

[Rasmus]

@linflas: I had this discussion at http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... 19&t=28619
There I decided to use the right mousebutton and create a lock on the monsters.. But I must edmit that I didn't think that the strafeing still would be avalible, this could fix the "pauseing" I otherwise thought it would create.. Good idea linflas

I have sort of fixed the problem with the spellcaster getting hurt.. I only attach the camera to the front hero and let the other heroes run forward and back when doing a melee action. The monsters could still harm the spellcasters in the progress, but the chances would be much smaller that hurting the front hero..

[cowsmanaut]

just a statement that based on the orriginal dungeon master, the eyes of the group was supposed to be Theron wasn't it? not the hero's.. he's kind of the never mentioned 5th player.

[Rasmus]

That is a interesting idea. I guess it means that I would be forced to attach the camera to a ghost in that case
Well, I can add a footnote that "Theron" takes over the heroes bodies (and therefore I have to attach the camera to the heroes ).
But if this really is that case as you say cows, I could change the gaming experience a bit so that the player gets a "feeling" of that there is a hidden goast..

[zoom]

So the party members would all be running in a formation 2 by 2 or maybe - in addition to the standard dm formation - a single row maybe. The thing would be that the champions would not be rigid in these positions, they would move about and so on, since there are obstacles or one hero is faster etc, but eventually they would be in these positions all right. Kind of a soft selection thing. Like soccer players maybe... hope you get the idea.
anyway really interesting proposition cows made there.

[Rasmus]

Well, I must admit that I already have sort of completed this task already.. My first idea was that the partymembers would run after the hero in charge and attack creatures as they came near by. But this made the player lose controll of the other partymembers, and the second problem was that only one hero could activate floorpads, and what if one hero would fall down a pit?

So what I did was attaching the heroes in triangular formation depending on where the hero in the front are looking / standing. And that the heroes in the back go forth when attacking.. This can seem abit unnatural having heroes attached to eachother, but it worked out quite nicely.. You can check out the DMT 2 v0.05 for a quick look at the "following formation", or wait for v0.06 and check how and comment on how it works with the "attached formation" there

By the way, cool avatar! Did it come with your 1500 post?

[zoom]

To do with 1500? Not really, completely lost track of my no# of posts!
Just entered "painting terrain" recently ; this came up while adjusting colors
thanks !
Whatever formations are the key - or something:)

[Bit]

Another option would be toggling between a view a la 'Dungeon Siege' with original DM-party formation and the original DM-view without any other characters visible. But I fear that in case of the 'Dungeon Siege'-view the dimension of the floors simply aren't big enough.

[Rasmus]

I guess it would be possible, and it would't be that much work attaching the camera above the characters.. The only thing would be that I would have to have a totally diffrent way to control the characters in this view, and I don't think that the "feeling" would be all that good But I will insert a 'Dungeon Siege' view when the characters are sleeping on the floor, bluring the screen with some "zzz" and decrease the viewdistance