The Settlers 4 - modding forum

Tarvanis

Member

Registered: 2017-02-15

Posts: 11

Playable Dark Tribe GUI

Hi there folks!

I had some thoughts about the playable Dark Tribe since the decoding progress is rather slow and we'll be stuck at coding LUA manually for quite a while.
I had those thoughts for some time now about standardising some of the elements that are constantly used within Dark Tribe scripts. You'll (almost) always have the option to build farms, recruit units, build manacopter halls and manacopters, etc.
However, there is rather little consistency within the scripts. Sometimes you recruit soldiers via barracks and have to use woodcutter and stonecutter huts to create shamans and gardeners. Sometimes you use eyecatchers for all four of those units but don't have a barracks. And sometimes when you have a manacopter hall, you'll need almost all of the eyecatchers to control it. And the costs for units vary from map to map as well.

I think of this inconsistency to be very frustrating for the players who don't want to look at the map description every time because the ruleset is different almost every time. That's why i thought standardising most of the rules for the playable Dark Tribe would be a good idea because it would be the same(-ish) for every map. It would be easier for the players I guess.

I created a first PDF file to show you my ideas:

PDF Download via File-Upload.net

Short list/explanation:

• Woodcutter Hut: recruit 1 Dark Warrior for 15 mana.

• Stonecutter Hut: recruit 1 Acid Thrower for 15 mana.

• Sawmill: recruit 1 Gardener for 5 mana.

• Forester Hut: recruit 1 Shaman for 10 mana. This pattern for the units simply makes the most sense to me.

• Small Residence: Build a mushroom farm. Simply because of the shape when you want to place it.    I would leave the way it is placed (random position/on the visible screen area/closely to the chosen position) and the cost for it (mana/timer-based/...) to the map maker.

• Medium Residence: IF there are manacopters allowed in the map, this could be the building to place the manacopter hall. I think this would fit because of the big round shape the temple has. Again, the placement and cost conditions would be up to the map maker.

• Eyecatchers: I hope the images are self-explanatory.    You can build a manacopter, send it somewhere, and return it to your base. (I took the freedom and merged the return-to-base and reset-the-variables functions into one. This seemed logical to me since the Dark Tribe uses their manacopter this way. Flying around freely with the manacopter seems a bit strong to me.
  You can create single units of every type at the manacopter as well as entire troops. Again, I'd let the mapmaker decide what those troops consist of. It would only be nice to let the player know somewhere what it is and how much it costs. 

• I also included the costs for units in this PDF. We created maps and scripts to find out the costs of the units. So I can't see why we shouldn't use them now. (However, the Shaman is a bit weak without his spells, and the Gardener is way OP without the AI deleting dark land.)

I could imagine using this layout as a foundation for future playalbe Dark Tribe maps. Of course this isn't a must. There will be maps without manacopters where you don't need all those controls. There will be maps in which you want to use other buildings for different events. (I would still want to use the barracks to recruit Dark Warriors and Acid Throwers.) But I think it would be nice for players to have a specific basic ruleset for those maps.

What do you think about that idea? And if you like it, would you change anything from my first suggestion?

Greetings
Tarvanis