Mow the Lawn

[Guest mrchak]

The thing that would make me the most happy in the world is to be able to type "-mow" or "-clear" to get rid of all the trees, rocks, rubbish etc in my playing area. Is this something we can see in Element TD Final?

[Cisz]

I want a "-plant" command. This map is far to empty. It really is. I want the terrain from beta 10 back.

[Guest GkJ-mo]

hell no id like it clean as well, maybe some roundhouse kick from the flamethrower tower to wipe out the area?

seriously, i really would appreciate a clean terrain as is was earlier

[Guest hyperprimate]

Atleast get rid of the damn tree at player1's (red) bend in the middle!

[0rb3r]

I like eye-candy, i would like to have more vegetation, and more differenciated playing areas, like yellow's bottom right is. I don't know how you feel but it puts me in good mood if I don't have to play always the same background. In fact, I mostly play solo and play different areas each time, it increases my gameplay variety. In other TD's I get easy bored from background. In cube TD in ex. you play each time a different orientation, and I like this point (but it doesn't fit for ETD, so, more differeciated backgrounds would be nice imo)

I want a "-plant" command. This map is far to empty. It really is. I want the terrain from beta 10 back.

Well, I dont remember if I've played beta 10 but I'll have a look on it and comment. For now, Yes it needs more vegetation.

Edit: I've just checked Beta 10 and found it better than the actual background.

[Guest mrchak]

My point is, some players like it cleared out, some like it with "eye-candy" - whether that be trees, broken columns, rubble, rocks, logs, whatever. If it is an option of the player to clear the doodads from their area (Except for pathing blockers) then everyone will be happy. I know this can be done with triggers, so it must be possible with JASS.

Furthermore, its possible with triggers to change the Tile used on a region, so using a few simple triggers it would be possible to make the grass be uniform on the playing area. This is just another thought.

[Guest Sancdar]

I wish there was a playing area for each element, like yellow is for Earth.

[0rb3r]

I had looong time ago an idea, but as I dont have a plan on map editing, triggering, JASS... I will risk it to post it here.

Furthermore, its possible with triggers to change the Tile used on a region, so using a few simple triggers it would be possible to make the grass be uniform on the playing area.

So technically it would be possible to change the terrain depending on the elements you choose, right?

I think you know where im going to...

Changeable terraing according to your element choice.

(The guy who would have to program this will surely think about killing me, i expect it would be a ton of tons of work)

[Guest mrchak]

Could be very interesting... You mean based on the first element you choose? Or each element as you pick it?

OR it could be sortof an average of your pickings... like in Spellcraft, your wizard changes color as you learn new spells, and the color is dependent on the spells you choose.

For arguement sake, Lets say you start by choosing Fire, your landscape changes suddenly to Lava. Then in 5 levels you choose earth. The landscape can be mottled with patches of dirt.

Could be tricky to make it look good, since there's the cliff tiles to worry about, and they will pretty much stay Grass or Dirt. It might not look as good in practice as it does in theory, but I know it could be done.

[echinodermata]

That must be pretty hard, I haven't even tried doing something like that.

Earth-some kind of dirt

Nature-Grass?

Fire-Lava

Water-Water? Or ice or snow?

Darkness-Blight

I struggle to think what Light would be.

[Guest mrchak]

I think light would be snow, water could be sand or bluish ice... or that blue underground dungeony tile.

[0rb3r]

An example of my idea:

Wave 5, elementpick earth: picks: earth lvl1

each 20 secs a little part of the creep path turns to dirt, stones or mushrooms are created in random building space or a random part of building floor turns to dirt.

Wave 10, element pick nature; picks: E lvl1,N lvl1 (Nature cancels earth)

each 20 secs a little part of the creep path turns to roots, trees are created in random building space or a random part of building floor turns to grass.

Wave 15, element pick darkness; picks: E1, N1, D1 (Nature cancels earth)

each 20 secs a little part of the creep path turns to roots, trees are created in random building space or a random part of building floor turns to grass.

and

each 20 secs a little part of the creep path turns to darkbrown stone path, trees die randomly or a random part of building floor turns to infestation.

Wave 20, element pick light; picks: E1, N1, D1, L1 (D

(dominant nature) each 20 secs a little part of the creep path turns to roots, trees are created in random building space or a random part of building floor turns to grass.

Wave 25, element pick light; picks: E1, N1, D1, L2 (D

each 15 secs a medium part of the creep path turns to frozen blue stone, northrend graphics are created in random building space or a random part of building floor medium area turns to snow. Set daytime to 12:00 and snowstorm starts.

and

each 20 secs a little part of the creep path turns to roots, trees are created in random building space or a random part of building floor turns to grass.

Wave 30, element pick earth; picks: E2, N1, D1, L1 (D

each 15 secs a medium part of the creep path turns to dirt path, many stones and palms (kalimdor graphics) are created in random building space or a random part of building floor medium area turns to wastelands. Stop snowstorm on your map section.

and

each 20 secs a little part of the creep path turns to roots, trees are created in random building space or a random part of building floor turns to grass.

and so on...

ideas for fire lvl1: trees start burning

dark lvl2: Set time to midnight, flies and poisonous clouds appear

fire lvl2: Random vulcano appears fromtime to time

water lvl1: sink and fload walkpath, building area turns to beach

water lvl2: has W3 some atmospheric rain graphics?

Level 3 cancels all effects and has only 1 dominant element (the dominant one or the earlier choosen one) and transforms the landscape to an unique element. So if you go for lvl 3 fire you end up with a volcanic landscape, or if you go for lvl 3 light you end up with a snowfield.

[Guest The)TideHunter(]

That gives me a idea.

This is going quite deep, but to save a stupidly big amount of memory to load, i could just set the map bounds to 1x1, with blank terrain, then use Jass and write it how it was when we finished it. It would only take about 2 seconds to create all terrain over the map.

This would fit into the doodad region and you could maybe pick wether to make the doodads in your region or not.

[Karawasa]

I'd prefer you not pursuing that idea. Right now I want to focus on getting the map converted, and all the spells coded. Perhaps down the line, this could be done.