I know that discussion in another thread about First-Person mode had people on the fence but I wanted to elaborate a bit and also think that this particular flavor of the discussion belongs in a “mod” thread since the first-party game won’t ship with such a mode. A mod could be a great solution to those looking to put boots on ground inside their city!
Imagine if you could play as one character that was the “Leader” of your city. You could run around and modify your city, check on the progress of construction, have your workers build a house for you, and lead your civvies into combat.
Ideally, you’d be able to switch in and out of game views to still enjoy the top-down feel of panning the map and giving orders (essentially playing the game as intended) leaving your “leader” character either idle or to wander the streets greeting his faithful companions.
Wondering if this is something that anyone else would be interested in and whether or not it’ll be possible to implement this sort of first-person or third-person over the shoulder view and a playable character via modding. Think control over your character feeling like CubeWorld, just inside of Stonehearth.
Curious to hear what people think. And whether someone knowledgeable about modding Stonehearth thinks this is ultimately possible.
Just from a techincal perspective I think this might bring some challenges with it (to say it nicely). My feeling is that the camera will be hard-coded in the engine. If we will get any access to it (via Lua), this might be limited to some basic features. As Tom highlights every now and then, you will see your settlers from high above and small details in the models will not matter too much. Based on this statement I don’t believe that we will get the option to zoom in too close, not to say into a 1st person angle (which might put some special requirements to the engine).
Regarding the idea as such… for sure it would be great to run through the streets of your own city. However, this might be another game which the devs have in their minds as it was mentioned some time ago. For a city-building game I think a 1st person view is rather inefficient as you are not building your houses by yourself (like in Minecraft) and you will not have the required overview.
Yeah, wouldn’t be surprised if this was the case. Also, the additional programming required to tie one “special” character in might be too much. Hmm…
Saw this mentioned before but kind of hoping that this just becomes a different play-style or mode of play within Stonehearth. If it was a whole new game I’d just want it to be Stonehearthy with the features described in my original post.
I feel you. Just thinking it would be cool when you didn’t have any pressing work that you were interested in to take possession of a character and enjoy the fruits of your labor. All construction/task assignment could still be accessed/used as intended from eagle-eye view.
I feel like having a character that was “me” in the game world could help with immersion. Give me more motivation to better my own house and to feel responsible for aiding my citizens.
Don’t get me wrong… I would love to see my “Alter Ego” in the game. Actually I have a sweet little idea how to make this happen, but that’s another story . I also would like to have the option to run around through the city I am building. My comments are more related to the idea of building your city from a 1st person view (as this was my understanding why you have created an own thread and not continued to discuss it in the other one).
Maybe your idea could also be merged into this discussion on a “Leader”, “Chieftain”, “King”, whatever. This could be also a representation of yourself, no?
It was definitely toying the line. Since I figured that the 1st person discussion over there was as to whether the feature would be implemented in the 1st party release (unlikely) I thought I’d start the “mod” discussion. But they can definitely be merged if that’s possible - not quite different enough!
I was thinking if they did add this system it would be more like the Dungeon Keeper Style, so you can just randomly pick a guy, This would get rid of the need for coding in a ‘special guy’
As I made my point over there, all I would really like is the ability to see a first person view and have no control over anything at all whilst in there. Exactly like RCT3’s coaster cam. Even if only in selected times (like combat) but preferably always available.
If we can get a thing like Total war ROME 2s cinema-cam (the only thing in that game not broken atm) or like the old LEGO Rock Raiders game that 3 people other then me grew up with, I would totally want that!
An idea on how to make this work would be in the way of using the future game that Radiant is eventually planning to do after Stonehearth. Since that is purportedly going to be a first person RPG fantasy, it might be possible to have some sort of ability to take a map from Stonehearth and use it as your fantasy world.
This would work even better when you would have a system that they are also going to be implementing: a map editor. You create the world or have it randomly generated with a special fantasy preset, then you build in that world for a bit in Stonehearth, followed by saving it and porting it to the fantasy game. As long as the second game is going to include the ability to become the leader of a town or city, not to mention walking around inside it as you originally wanted, then all is good.
Of course, as they always say, you could mod it into the game, but as they said, the difficulty of doing it and the rather nasty state of details when you are in first person real close to the models would make it worse than trying to do Minecraft with a 4-bit texture pack.
I was thinking of something very similar to this, actually. Everything you mention about what you could do in terms of running around the city and having your own house, etc. is what I had in mind, the only difference is that I think a first person camera is going to be too difficult (and unnecessary) to implement within the game.
It might be a lot easier to simply have a unit that represents ‘you’, and have the normal aerial-view camera simply be fixed to that unit and follow it around. You will be able to control that unit through various keyboard and mouse commands and have it mine, gather, build, fight, etc. just like any other unit. My thinking is that it would start off only slightly better than normal units at those tasks, with the ability to upgrade as you progress through the game (whether or not the upgrades will be available for all tasks or if you have to specialize in only a few I am undecided).
In terms of a story tying the unit into the game, my first thought was that it could be a leader as previously mentioned, but then I had an idea that it could actually be a living statue that the people have made to help them. You would be able to turn the statue off and on, essentially switching in and out of the normal game mode and the “player-unit” game mode. The statue idea also allows a seamless transition into massive upgrades for certain tasks- being able to carry more and take more damage because they made the statue much larger, for example.
Anyway, this is just an idea that I thought ran parallel to the one posted here. Let me know what you guys think of it, and whether you’d prefer to focus on having a first-person camera.
I have a few things I’d still like to work out in my head before I even start thinking about how to implement it. My main concern with this kind of mod is that it could potentially change the core gameplay enough that certain aspects of the game may end up being too easy. Even if the player-controlled character is scaled properly with the rest of the game progression, at the end of the day it will still make things easier just through the sheer fact that the game was intended to be played without a player-controlled character. Adding one would therefore add a whole new tier of options players can use to overcome the challenges posed by standard gameplay.
Ability to select any AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Control any AI at any time (They are your citizens after all)
Third And First Person View
Combat/Armor/Weapons Mechanic
Ability to fight mobs yourself
Ability to equip gear in slots for any of your AI’s
Fend against hordes trying to tear your nation down
Dungeons to explore and conquer
Different combat classes obviously, spells and what-not
Death Mechanic
On death your AI drops their Inventory (Gear and Alternate Gear if present)
Ability to Resurrect AI if you have a AI on hand of which can Res based on their Class
Ability to pick up gear while controlling another AI
Classes Mechanic
Base Combat Classes [Mystic, Swordsman, Wizard, Knight]
Mystic [Healer]
Swordsman [DPS] And Yes I know they are adding these guys, just something to think about.
Wizard [Spell-Caster]
Knight [Tank]
Skill System For Combat [Progression]
The more you use a class, the more abilities you unlock for that class.
Skill Tree - Choose what abilities you want to unlock as you gain skill.
If you guys (The Community) have anything more to add to this idea please comment!
I’ll add the valid and logical replies to the Original Post!
Oh and please vote on the poll on whether you like this idea or not!
well, i like how you’ve broken this down… it seems you have a good grasp on the idea! seemed fitting to merge this here, and perhaps you and @splicepoint can team up…
Thanks I’m thinking about teaching myself Lua, One day maybe build my own major game. Until then i’m stuck coming up with ideas that just have to be shared >.<
Good idea @SteveAdamo. I know I haven’t been very vocal around here lately but I’ve been following this thread enthusiastically. Glad to see that others are interested in first person as well!
I know the game is still in development and this may be a stretch, but just an idea but, have 2 different in game modes, Creator mode, the basic Stonehearth, tell citizens what to do, then Player Mode where you play as a citizen (who starts out as just the leader of the group) and slowly progresses to being the king, allowing you to join your Footmen in battle and search through dungeons and such in the MMORPG version of the 3rd person character controlling aspect. just a thought
Yess! Like a dungeon keeper style but third person. (always preferred 3rd person over 1st person) I would love aspect of this, even just basically possessing one of your workers to make them work faster etc.
. I also would like to have the option to run around through the city I am building. My comments are more related to the idea of building your city from a 1st person view (as this was my understanding why you have created an own thread and not 
