Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

A Game of Dwarves - Development Diary #11

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
U

unmerged(323382)

Zeal Game dev
Jun 1, 2011
93
0
Hello all!
This week, we're covering traps!

Traps in A Game of Dwarves have been tricky for me, I wanted them to be truly powerful and have all this kinds of special effects without being stupidly broken. There are two very different voices in my head on this matter: one is the very professional “Everything should be balanced.” voice, and the other goes “More fire and bleed damage!”
So hopefully these two will meet somewhere halfway, allowing me to have traps that are fun and useful, while still having a draw backs big enough to make them balanced. So I can't really talk about the final stats of the traps since they are fluctuating. However, I can show them to you!

Introducing the Spike Trap!
_0001_Layer-2.png
The spike trap deals medium damage but has rather high attack speed. This trap also have a chance to make the target bleed. A bleeding target takes damage over time that ignores armor.

Arrow Trap
_0004_Layer-8.png
A classic arrow trap to put on your walls, they will attack enemies that come within range and have a chance to hamstring their movement.

Metal Dwarf
_0002_Layer-10.png
One of the more unique traps I'm not 100% sure of what he will do, but surely we should be able to find some use for him.

Blade Trap
_0000_Layer-4.png
Mighty blades swing out slashing enemies dealing heavy damage. I love these, mostly thanks to their sick animations.

Bear Trap
_0003_Layer-6.png
Snaps shut, not dealing that much damage but holding an enemy in place for a couple of seconds.

Playing around with different traps and combining them with each other will result in some powerful combos and by spending research points you can improve the damage and maybe even unlock more traps.

//Thorwaldsson

P.S all of the textures on the traps are temporary, they will look even better in the finished product :)
 
Hhhmmmm. . . . . Many questions come to mind. But I will only go with a few (for now).

How lasting are the traps? I could see something like the Spikes lasting forever – but the Bear tap being a once and done type of a thing (since once you trigger it, then it would not be usable) – and an Arrow trap in the middle (running out of arrows at some point in time).

Are traps “neutral”? In other words - Can your own Dwarves get caught in your own traps?

Can you remove a trap once it is placed? Either destroy it or simple move it to someplace else (like farther down the tunnel)?
 
Zarine said:
I can imagine the metal dwarf launching flames in all directions and spinning around...
Click to expand...
Like that idea a lot.

Or if there were “levels” to this trap, a first level of it could just simply be a decoy. Cause the enemy to be confused and stall their attacks by wasting time attacking the Metal Dwarf – thus allow time for your fighters time to react.

The flames launching could be an upper level of the trap.
 
midget_roxx said:
Oh how I love traps :)
Will we be able to set the spike traps to a lever so they can be retractable?
Click to expand...

Concidering what they said, they will rearm themself all alone I think:

"The spike trap deals medium damage but has rather high attack speed"
If it has a specific attack speed, I higly doubt that you would require a dwarf to reload it.
 
Zarine said:
Concidering what they said, they will rearm themself all alone I think:

"The spike trap deals medium damage but has rather high attack speed"
If it has a specific attack speed, I higly doubt that you would require a dwarf to reload it.
Click to expand...

I think this speed means time it takes for spikes to eject.
 
Zarine said:
Concidering what they said, they will rearm themself all alone I think:

"The spike trap deals medium damage but has rather high attack speed"
If it has a specific attack speed, I higly doubt that you would require a dwarf to reload it.
Click to expand...
I was more hoping to line the bottom of pits with spiky traps but when the need arises, you can retract them later
 
I think when it comes to balancing traps that's more readily done by making the monsters more or less able to deal with certain types of traps rather then trying to give every trap a mix of pluses and minuses. The overall paradigm 'Big-Dumb-High-HP Monster blunders into Traps and just soaks the damage' ware as 'Small-weaker-intelligent monster evades/dis-arms the traps' is the simplest way to avoid the 'spam the one-best-trap' trap.

If each trap has at-least one monster that's immune too it that goes a long way. Some traps would have really high damage (gratuitous even) and can stop the brutes but are easier for the 'thief' type enemy to evade while other stuff is hard for a thief but easier for Brutes to just smash-through or soak the damage from. Your Dwarven soldiers being being the best example of the later.

Another area of interest are 'obstacles' which are able to slow or hinder the enemy rather then damage them, as Xerkis describes, their can be hybrid trap-obstacles too. Heavy doors are the most obvious ones and I'm sure you'll have several types of door, but I'd really like to see hidden-doors that only the smarter enemies will find (requires some sophistication in the path finding code), no underground space is complete without hidden doors.

Trap/Obstacle levels are a great way to involve the tech tree, some of the issues of re-usability and 'friendliness' can be done with upgrades. take a simple Pit-trap as an example.

Level 1: Single-use, cheap collapsible floor, just un-builds itself and drops a creature into what ever shaft/bottomless pit you build it over, must be rebuilt from scratch, your dwarves can't walk on it but do know to avoid it and will treat it as impassible space.
Level 2: Same as above but with spring-loaded mechanism that returns the floor to normal after brief period removing need to re-build.
Level 3: Same as level 2 but with a friendly-recognition system (remember the scene in the Indiana Jones movie when he has to walk on the 'safe' letters that spell Jehovah cause all the rest will collapse, it's like that and should LOOK like it) so your own Dwarves can safely walk over it.

Note that intelligent Enemies have a chance to detect an unstrung trap and will then attempt to disable it (with suitably disastrous results if they fail), which in the case of a pit-trap renders it walkable. All enemies even the dumb ones always see any already sprung pit-trap and attempt to 'bridge' it to again make it walkable. Each trap should probably have an appearance that indicates its been disabled/broken such as bent-spikes, twisted-arrow-slits, logs over pits, dented-metal-dwarf along with level if applicable.
 
Last edited:
ImpalerWrg is getting down in deep – liking it a lot. My thoughts as well.
This is a very good way to make you have to think on what traps to best use in what situation and to have combinations of traps. Research and experimenting becomes more important – and thus the game will automatically have more depth to it and more replayability.
 
Ri0Rdian said:
Metal Dwarf will surely immolate you with his "fiery" eyes, beard and...ugh.... beer breath! :laugh:
Click to expand...

That gives me an idea. The metal dwarf could act as a sort of roulette-trap. One that had a chance to trigger one of seveal posible effects at random. So that youd never be quite certain what youd get.
Posible effects might include:
- He might "burp" or "fart" Noxious gas. Or maybe possibly knockout gas?
- He might sprew forth fire, maybe with his firey gaze in line with the post above. (Act as a flame thrower.)
- He could rotate in place, arms outstreched, with blates projecting from his sleves/hands. Cutting anyone unfortunate to be in an ajacent square.
- He might utter a howl (of rage? :p) while venting steam! (Basicly a hidden steam whistle) for the purpose of acting as an alarm. Wich would draw military dwarves, within a certain range, to come investigate automatically.
- He might simply break down and do nothing.
- He might fail CRITICALLY and blow up! Resulting in massive damage from the shrapnel. But requireing him to be rebuilt or repaired. (This effect could be explained away by the steam pressure building to high. Or the nozzle for the flamethrower failing to keep the flame from reaching the interior of the tank.)
- Or he might on rare occations trigger multible effects.
- Such as for example, rotate in the spot (with or without his blades) while sprewing fire at the same time.
- Start by venting gas only to suddenly have the flame thrower trigger. Wich could either (A) burn the gass away, enhancing the fire effect. Or (B) or the detrimental effects of the gas (knockout, coughing, confusion/disorientation. Take your pick.) could make it harder for the monsters to escape in a timely manner.
- Any other combination of the possiblie effects he might have. Some of wich could work togeather in a benificial manner, others maybe in a detrimental manner.
 
I liked the idea of using the Metal Dwarf as a decoy

Or it could be used to push and herd enemies into other traps.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back