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How bases/themes/animations work together

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notears
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How bases/themes/animations work together

Hey I'm posting this thread here because I think it's needed. There has been a lot of confusion as to what the bases and themes are which from what I can see has caused some confusion in the power suggestion thread with people not getting that there is no set term for what bases and themes are, so I made this thread so that we can brainstorm what exactly they are and offer suggestions on how they can work.

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

rookslide
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Yeah more info on this would

Yeah more info on this would be great. This is after all at the heart of character development. What kind of powers your character has and how they work. Bases? My best guess is that these are like the Base term of the Primary set. Super Strength, Stealth, or something like that but then I read how Damage and Ranged Damage are Bases??? I guess it is a guessing game as they continue to develop the game mechanics. It's kinda fun guessing how it will work though. There was a loose definition in one of the threads on here somewhere but I can't remember where I saw it now. It wasn't real clear from that thread anyway though. I guess I can see it as nondisclosure info. but it sure would be nice to know more about it.

"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle

Shadow Elusive
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Honestly I think the team is

Honestly I think the team is also still figuring this out. Besides, front end, it will probably be simplified. Still, if this gets the attention of the right people to help, great.

The easiest way to transfer from CoH terms is to think playstyle vs. damage types and secondary effects. The themes, by and large, cover that portion of powers that composed special damage types, and secondary effects. Whereas base covers the fundamental playstyle.

As for the undefined areas, it's best, as the team themselves often do, to work backwards. For those areas where something could conceivably be theme or base, the correct answer is whichever will get us the most options when combining. Hence, Martial arts as a theme is out because it restricts too much. Better for it to be a base and/or an animation style. As a base, it would change the ways the moves work: damage amounts vs. recharge and so on. As an animation style - well, that's pretty obvious. But as a theme, that would mean you could not have a fire or electric martial arts except as a skin, never as actual mechanics.

Now things like Melee and Ranged are categories, really, not bases, bases are subcategories. But - Hand to Hand Single Target would make a good base. Blade AoE would make a good base. Confusion (for Commanders, say) would make a good base.

Whereas, putting the various elements aside, Poison would make a good theme, and could be applied to any of those bases, including the Controller one. Psychic would be a theme, and potentially could apply to the first two, but especially to the Confusion base. Physical would be a staple theme, applied to the first two, simply supersizing them to fill the gaps a more thematic theme would make.

Just remember none of those details are taken from actual MWM plans.

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Shadow Elusive
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Now, you want to dig into

Now, you want to dig into some challenges, that would be best found in the mixed bag sets. CoH's shield was a mixed bag, though primarily defense. Willpower as well. Getting the feel of those through this system would be more challenging.

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rookslide
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I can see how this becomes

I can see how this becomes very very involved very quickly! Your right I was naming out categories rather than sub-categories. With that in mind there may easily be many bases for every major subset of combat, melee DPS, melee AOE, ranged DPS, ranged AOE, could all have a variety of bases.

Themes as I'm taking it may imply elemental (fire, ice, etc), marital arts, psychic, etc which will add damage modifiers to the base.

Now the animation will be strictly an aesthetic for the power custom to the character your making.

So, Say I have a base of hand-to-hand single target, with a theme of electricity, and an animation reflecting this I have just made some form of melee attack with electric damage as well as the base damage and some animation appropriate to my character theme as I see fit. Is that about right?

Would it be possible to create a power based on a ranged AOE with a near zero range setting, themed electricity and some animation like the jacobs ladder one villains use to have for electric brutes? Would this be a way to replicate that power in this new mechanism. I'm just trying to understand the concept.

At first this sounds very open and very difficult to code. There are so many "styles" or "genres" of powers that make this system seem very overwhelming to make happen. Separating bases and themes alone seems very involved. So many aspects... Type of action, duration, effects, targeting method, damage types, etc. Still you don't expect to see a lot of ranged abilities with melee characters and vice versa, but still some.

I'm just trying to imagine how new powers will become available in this system. It sounds like the Archetype will have a great deal to do with what powers are in a "set". This leaves some theme selection and the animation customization to play with as new powers become available.

Some of that seems very open while other parts seem somewhat limiting. It's still hard to imagine what it will be like but we'll see! I'm staying open minded and hopeful!

"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle

Shadow Elusive
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Quote:
Quote:

So, Say I have a base of hand-to-hand single target, with a theme of electricity, and an animation reflecting this I have just made some form of melee attack with electric damage as well as the base damage and some animation appropriate to my character theme as I see fit. Is that about right?

Yup. Bear in mind, those animations can vary alot, we're talking a lot of concept accommodation right there.

Quote:

Would it be possible to create a power based on a ranged AOE with a near zero range setting, themed electricity and some animation like the jacobs ladder one villains use to have for electric brutes? Would this be a way to replicate that power in this new mechanism. I'm just trying to understand the concept.

You're not getting to build individual powers. Your choices affect your entire powerset as a whole. Hand to Hand melee DPS may well have one AoE in there for balance, but that will be handed to you. Same for animations, it's a bundle.

Quote:

At first this sounds very open and very difficult to code. There are so many "styles" or "genres" of powers that make this system seem very overwhelming to make happen. Separating bases and themes alone seems very involved. So many aspects... Type of action, duration, effects, targeting method, damage types, etc. Still you don't expect to see a lot of ranged abilities with melee characters and vice versa, but still some.

Far from it, it's very simple. The engine has the fundamental ability to take bits and assemble them, the team is taking advantage of that. All they do is design the base, numbers wise, to have a theme plugged in, a theme to plug into a base, and when you make your choice the engine does the rest, it'll assemble the whole thing. You design a fire theme, melee style, ONCE, and every single melee base then and designed ever after can use it. that's the beauty of the system. You design a theme and it can be plugged into any appropriate base. Exponential option growth.

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rookslide
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Thank you very much for that

Thank you very much for that info!

This clears up a bit of the confusion I've had on this matter. It makes sense now that choices affect the entire power set not on a power by power basis (tho that would really really rock!). This point just wasn't clicking in my head now I get it much better! Sometimes I can be pretty dense...
Thanks so much for the info! Makes it a little easier to imagine how to build concept characters.

Yeah the difficulty part I imagined, would have been if it were a power by power basis rather than applying choices to a set. I see that being very complicated but the way you have explained it is simpler and makes much more sense. A little more limited than what I had hoped for but then I tend to hope for a lot! lol

"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle

Tannim222
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I just want to stress that

I just want to stress that many things are still in the design phase and may not necessarily reflect everything that is being brought up here. Things like "base" and "theme" are mostly for the power team devs to have a road map and building blocks for creating power sets. The result for the end user (player) will most likely be incredibly different from what we as the dev team see.

There may be animation suites (themes) or visual fx suites (themes) so you don't have to choose the same animation type or visual effect for each power individually, but that's up to UI. I also want to stress that depending on how we design certain things, there MAY not be able to plug any theme or suit to every single power set. I empasize may due to the fact that we are still in design phase and there's a lot that is in flux. Some may read this and think we will unfairly limit choices, this is not the case, there may be a reason there are a limited amount of options in certain cases which will offer additional options in other cases. Or it could very well work out to where anything can apply, but that may come at the cost of certain other game play aspects. We will see. I know this may cause more questions but I hope it also clarifies others.


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