Could map damage be stored?

[[UFP]Ghost]

Well my real question would be, is it possibly to lets say:

You have have a fort tournament in worms with fairly large forts. Then as you progress you use the same fort from the game before, damage and all. That would make an interesting feature and it would add a little more strategy. ?

[SgtFusion]

But what if all the terrain is destroyed after 2 rounds, but there are 3 rounds to be won? Where do the worms go?

[franpa]

in the drink =) they lose because there fort was damaged enough to prevent it from sustaining life.

[bonz]

But what if all the terrain is destroyed after 2 rounds, but there are 3 rounds to be won? Where do the worms go?
They'd obviously die.

If their fort was indeed completely annihilated in the first round, they'd be dead anyway.
Should some small parts still be left (which is more likely) then they'd simply be dead meat.

[Melon]

If there was absolutely no land to spawn them on, maybe you could trigger an option for random girders when the map begins to run out of space.

Either that, or manual placement (which you'll need anyway for fort mode). It would be amusing to see a player pile all their worms up on a single pixel for the last round because their fort was utterly destroyed in the previous rounds.

I wholeheartedly approve of this feature request. It has the potential to be awesome.

Thinking technically about it, I have no idea how the landscapes are handled in game, but could it be possible to convert a map in it's current state after a round into a png map? That way, you could just use that map as the landscape for the next round. And if this is possible to do, could we have the option to do this during a replay? It could run through the replay, and then extract it's state at the time we specify.

Of course, it might not be possible at all depending on what happens to the map data when it's converted into destructable ground.

[AndrewTaylor]

I can't imagine it'd be impossible (or even all that difficult). After all, Worms Reinforcements did exactly that way back in the DOS years. I'd like to see it return.

The hard part, as far as I can see, would be the back soil stuff, although personally I wouldn't care at all if that wasn't kept.

[Plasma]

The hard part, as far as I can see, would be the back soil stuff, although personally I wouldn't care at all if that wasn't kept.
Or the back soil could be saved and loaded too, in the same way as the foreground.

[AndrewTaylor]

Oh, certainly it could. But foreground is already loaded, and there's always a chance that the code is a nightmare and modifying it to load backsoil too would be just too much of a pain to be worth the effort.

(See how I make up jargon.)

[Melon]

I suppose that the land used in the previous match wouldn't be too hard to carry over, I'm guesing you only need to keep it in memory or in some temporary previous map file or what have you, but converting it back into a form that can be saved for later, ie. a png map, might be much harder.

I wonder how the back soil is handled? It could be that it's created only when it would become visible, that is, when you make a hole in the ground, rather than always keep it behind the land. I'm not actually too sure about that though because the random landscape objects and girders don't have it, so maybe it's just a replica of the original landscape shape with holes created in it when the explosion is large enough?

[KRD]

This could well be merged into one feature with the option of resuming unfinished games. You'd only take the map [or half of it] from the end of last round's replay and ask to do the worm placement yourself. One way or another the map part will have to be done for resuming to work anyway.

Not a very fair option in all, but at this point I'd take anything to popularise Fort again, heh.

I'm not actually too sure about that though because the random landscape objects and girders don't have it, so maybe it's just a replica of the original landscape shape with holes created in it when the explosion is large enough?

Yah, except the texture is different.

[franpa]

No, the 'resume game' suggestion relies on playing a replay. then continuing... this was talked about a while ago.

[AndrewTaylor]

This could well be merged into one feature with the option of resuming unfinished games. You'd only take the map [or half of it] from the end of last round's replay and ask to do the worm placement yourself. One way or another the map part will have to be done for resuming to work anyway.

I expect "resume" will work by playing the replay very fast until it runs out of data, much like "replay at" does, then picking the game up from there. Hardly seems worth it, when you can dump a few arrays at the end of the round and load them instead of calling landgen.

[bonz]

After all, Worms Reinforcements did exactly that way back in the DOS years.
Ah, so that's the "continue on same landscape" option.

Features of old Worms games certainly need to be revived.
This could well be merged into one feature with the option of resuming unfinished games. You'd only take the map [or half of it] from the end of last round's replay and ask to do the worm placement yourself. One way or another the map part will have to be done for resuming to work anyway.
Good point there.
That's probably the easiest way to do, once the resuming feature is done.

You could even make the worms spawn randomly again.
In game modes like Fort or CTF this would require a feature that limits a team's auto-spawn locations to certain locations.
(Something like, IIRC, CS did with his Wormkit module that respawned worms on the start of a RR.)
Not a very fair option in all, but at this point I'd take anything to popularise Fort again, heh.

Well, lots of things are not fair in Worms anyway. :)

[[UFP]Ghost]

Not a very fair option in all, but at this point I'd take anything to popularise Fort again, heh.

Glad to see people actually like my idea, i never knew such an option existed before. Looks like I thought of it long after it was first introduced :p. But I see where your coming from and it can be cruel but it would be an option, not a rule. Also Fort is a great scheme and probably my second favorite so if it were popularized then happiness :p

[AndrewTaylor]

If you were just doing it for fort tournaments, there are all kinds of other options that you could include -- for example, allowing the fort to regrow. (Perhaps, adding the 10% of the destroyed pixels/the 10% of the total fort area closest to remaining pixels after each round.)

Or, give everyone a girder pack every round, put a 1-turn delay on all other weapons, and save the girders too.

[Melon]

Now that we can have large maps, this could give rise to all sorts of fun schemes. For example, you could play on a big complicated maze-like map, with a large range of weapons that don't come back between rounds and not many worms, but play it over multiple rounds. Over the rounds, the layout of the map would have changed to quite a degree due to it being worn away, which could require the strategies changing somewhat over the course of the game, especially with regards to what whether or not you should save your weapons for later. You may have dug a nice defensive area into the map last round, but this round the other player has started next to it and now has an advantage.

[KRD]

I expect "resume" will work by playing the replay very fast until it runs out of data, much like "replay at" does, then picking the game up from there. Hardly seems worth it, when you can dump a few arrays at the end of the round and load them instead of calling landgen.

Landgen.exe isn't actually used anymore, but you have a point as far as regular maps are concerned. For the Fort scheme, though, you would need some sort of a GUI to let you create a map from the two separate halves, making sure your half from the previous round is the one you're assigned. But anyway, by the time this has crawled up the to-do list, the frontend should be redone and not full screen anymore.

[bonz]

For the Fort scheme, though, you would need some sort of a GUI to let you create a map from the two separate halves, making sure your half from the previous round is the one you're assigned.
As I theorized in my previous post, this would require a feature that assigns teams to certain spots on the map in the first place.
If layered maps get implemented, one layer could be used to tell the game where the teams are allowed to spawn.
In Fort games that would be the left and the right side.

This could even be used to disallow teleporting to specific areas. For example in CTF games you wouldn't be allowed to teleport right into the enemies base, but you could still use the teleporter on your side of the map. (Or up to the front line to where your furthest worm has advanced.)

[Plutonic]

I like it, i like fort too, so something that actually adds to the fort games is always good.

[[UFP]Ghost]

Does anyone know if CS has seen this thread and if it's a hard feature to add? I know he has more important bugs to fix but if it's not hard then maybe it will come in like 2 updates from now or something :)

[Chip]

More than likely he has seen this thread and he's pending what he'll be posting :D

[CyberShadow]

I don't have much to say on this matter. You do not need to PM or IM me links to your threads on the forums I moderate, as I read them daily. As for the feature request - the gain per effort ratio seems pretty low.

[bonz]

As for the feature request - the gain per effort ratio seems pretty low.
Well, we hoped that it would be a side effect of the planned replay continuation feature.