9 replies to this topic

[greep]

For all intents and purposes, the game in question is a turn based, topdown strategy. The conundrum is, should large units have multiple tiles or single tiles?

Examples of game with single tile large units:

Dwarf Fortress (Bronze colossus and other megabeasts)
Advanced Wars (NeoTanks, Battleships)

And like 90% of strategy games

Examples of games with Multi-tile large units:

X-com (Terror Units)
Dwarf fortress (wagons, ballistas (I think, who uses them lol))
Fire emblem (Multi-headed dragons)


The pros of a single tile large units are ease of coding since you don't have weird pathfinding and bugs (mind controlled Terror Units in X-Com attacking their own feet) to work around, the con is it looks really stupid having a 25x25 pixie next to a 25x25 Ancient Dragon.

What would you choose, and what suggestions would you give for working with either choice?

[shledder]

From a dev point of view, I would go with the single tile approach since it'd be much easier to program.

From a player point of view, I'd prefer bigger units take up more tiles. I've played a lot of Advanced Wars and I always thought it'd be cool to have paths through the mountains only the smaller units could get through. It would add much more strategy to the game and prevent using a megatank as a blockade in narrow passages. It would also ease "swarming."

One thing to take into account is how big your average map size will be. If it won't be larger than 10x10, ask yourself if the bigger units have a reason for being bigger other than "a dragon should look bigger than a pixie." If not, don't do it. If so, I think it would be awesome.

[greep]

Yeah, it's actually generally a 3200x3200, so definately bigger than 10x10

Edited by greep, 09 March 2012 - 06:07 AM.

[TheouAegis]

There are other ways too.

Consider Front Mission. The Raven had a large sprite in all of its forms but still took up a single tile. I can't remember how Gloster and Clinton were handled (maybe they took up a 2x2 grid). And I've seen some games make the large enemy take up a 3x3 grid but really they took up a 1x1 grid and you could stand on the enemy. I think Shining Force let you actually stand on/under Dark Dragon's heads.

[greep]

Yeah that's true. Generally those situations are with immobile enemies, though, and usually monstrous. It'd look really weird crawling up the leg of a 2x4 titan or something

Edited by greep, 14 March 2012 - 04:53 AM.

[Yal]

My approach would be to let the enemy for all intends and purposes use only a single tile where it "is", but when moving it applies some sort of collision mask of a few panels to each potential position, and if any tile in that mask is occupied or otherwise invalid, this particular tile is an invalid move. During each Player Turn start, all tiles in that collision mask should be given a temporary label "Valid target, redirects attack to Enemy#XX" and another one "Invalid tile for movement". This label is removed again on the end of the player turn (even if there would be another player turn directly afterwards).

[GeoS]

If you can think of a reason why having multi-tile units is an important gameplay mechanic, I would implement it. But if it is merely visual, then I don't think it would be worth the extra programming.

For example, in X-Com, accuracy plays an important role. When you're shooting at enemies, enemies which take up more tiles are easier to hit.

However there is no such distinction in Advance Wars, where size of enemies is purely visual and has no direct gameplay consequences; they're usually more powerful, but that is immaterial.

So to answer your question, it depends on the game.

[DZiW]

If I remember correctly then once there was a DarkWood example with different size RPG chars and move planning.

[greep]

Well I think one way of dealing with the pathfinding situation, is to not even use any: Things so huge that they would take multiple tiles to represent should probably just destroy impassables right? The only downside here is that I wouldn't be able to add impassable tiles that were impassable for reasons like being a trench or something. As for attack redirecting, I think this could work, but what if you have a ranged attack that allows it to hit a foot but the redirect tile is out of range? I can sort that out somehow I guess.

To Geos: I think I'm going to stick with multi-tile even for visual effects, as one of the posters earlier said that a large world would benefit from it a lot. Dungeons will probably have none, though.

[Yal]

As for attack redirecting, I think this could work, but what if you have a ranged attack that allows it to hit a foot but the redirect tile is out of range?

You misinterpret'd me. What I meant was, if you shoot one of these "labels", the label wouldn't be damaged; it would apply the effects of the attack to the "main" enemy. Also if you selected one of the labels and brought up the Status screen you'd see the HP/MP of the main enemy, and so on. So basically, you can position yourself so that you can hit only part of the enemy just to be able to stay outta its range, that should be the main reason to make them so big, right?

This made me remember a scene from Disgaea 1, btw: