Some suggestions for monster mechanics such as spawning

Suggestions
1

Ok, so maybe an option in the menus that disables monster spawning, so you can do a nice big town with cool looking defences, and THEN spawn ents, zombies, and all that fun stuff, so you can make it look like a fantasy first, and then deal with NPCs, rather than either never having them because of being in peaceful, or having to deal with them while building, which just gets annoying.

Oh yeah, and maybe an option to make the area that mobs can’t spawn in bigger. All too often I build a massive defensive wall, and they just spawn inside it. So maybe a slider to increase the amount of blocks away from the flag they have to be to spawn in. Obviously you’d have to limit it to something to prevent people from raising it so high that they spawn off the map and don’t exist.

Oh, another thing…LAST THING, I SWEAR!

Ok, maybe, in the escape menu, in a difficulty tab, have those two options, alongside a bunch of buttons to choose which mobs spawn. Kind of like what happens in Don’t Starve, where you choose whether, for example, spiders spawn, or bears, or dragons. You get the idea =P. I’d like to make it so my settlement is built in the fields of Terrokka, which are infested with zombies, skeletons, and Imps (The Stone and Wood mobs can be those). So it lets you build your own story. Or, if you are nuts, you can immediate make every kind of mob spawn in, and cry as your town is demolished.

So, just a few suggestions. I think they’d all work pretty well towards crafting your own story =D

2 Likes
2

Mobs shouldn’t be able to spawn inside a wall if it really surrounds your area, because buildings set the range that they can’t spawn in.

3

I think maybe the problem is that the convex hull is made from points, and the points are just the center of the buildings. This means that a wall around his town could have as its point the exact center of its area (the center of his town). So not having any other buildings at the corners and sides of the wall would not extend the hull.

Left side 3 houses and the hull formed. (black are its walls, red is their center, and blue is the convex hull)

Right side is another town, this time with a wall around to protect. The wall center is the bigger red dot. See how it does not stretch the hull further. The hull is around every point as intended even though the build is way larger than the hull.

1 Like
4

It is absolutely possible for monsters to spawn within walls, given enough space. Here is a rough drawing of a recent save I have. Brown is natural terrain (higher level ground), Black is a wall, green is my village area, red is trapper zone.

The blue circle is where enemies can (and do) spawn. This is normal, and not a bug - Albert has confirmed this previously.

As to @Sharayde’s suggestion - I like the idea of a peaceful game “hybrid” - where the player controls enemy spawning. Of the top of my head, I can think of only one other game (series) that does this: Stronghold. I’m sure there’s more, but I do like the way it works there.

2 Likes
5

I don’t want to be forced to play a certain way, like building a small town so I can enclose it in walls. Mobs are something the player should come across while exploring, not have them spawn anywhere on the map. Either spawn enemies at the edge of the map and have them wander around until you run into them or bring in fog of war if that will help solve the issue, but the way it works right now is not good enough. I have had a monster camp spawn directly on top of a hearthling then 1 shot them. How is that fun?

This is what the current system is forcing me to do, and it still doesn’t always work.

image.jpg1920×1170 526 KB

1 Like
6

If the spawning system does actually use the centers of buildings to shape out an area that enemies can’t spawn in, theoretically you could just make small watchtowers at the places they spawn to prevent them from continuing to do so, right?

1 Like
7

just do what I did, place 1x1 stockpiles everywhere and then the spawning system will actually work properly.

1 Like
8

Yeah, the system could probably use a bit of an overhaul yet. I imagine the game probably calculates the bounds of a building anyway, so it seems like it would work better to use that than the center. Though, this could be broken too. Using rectangle bounds would let L-shaped buildings block spawning over the whole area for much less time and resources. And you have to figure out which corners of the rectangle are the right ones to use when making the area…

…this is a lot harder than I realized.

9

Maybe in stead of spawning monsters out of nowhere, have caves and rabbit holes spread all over the map. These are the only location monsters can spawn from. This would give an indication if your walls protect you, and would allow your footmen (or workers) to block/clean up unwanted spawn points inside your preferred building area. Might even be that certain monsters only spawn from certain spawn points (ents from trees, rocklings from caves, goblins from rabbit holes).

2 Likes
10

@genboom Doesn’t that mess up your army’s patrol routes, though?

Also I would definitely like to throw in that enemies shouldn’t be able to spawn within a certain radius of hearthlings. It got pretty hairy when I sent just enough of my units to take out a cathedral and then an orc general camp spawned directly under it with about a 4 tile gap.
I could settle for fog of war coming back after being away from an area for too long, and then enemies being allowed to spawn in it… Problem with that is that the fog clears ontop of freshly spawned enemies.

2 Likes
11

Can we detect Collums?(the edges of walls)
If so, we could probably form a polygon using the outer collums of a buulding, and use that as a indicator for how big the building is, i’d assume it’ll work at-least decently since collums are good indicators for where the edge of a building is

3 Likes
12

I like how this game’s intuitiveness compares to other similar games.

However, what’s clearly obvious to me is that “mob spawning” is far from intuitive. Why are you taking things spawning out of thin air as a mechanic taken for granted anyway? It’s a mechanic that stands out as bad compared to all the rest that’s already done better compared to other such games.

The point is, it could be done better.

2 Likes
13

This could easily be corrected by assigning a large ‘initial’ set sized settlement boundaries (later to be expanded as your town grows in value) when you initially pick your spot. Stockpile zones already have this property built in so they would just need to use that segment without all the other properties that go with it.

They could also place spaced “boundary signs” along the circumference like “Hostile lands beyond this point” or what not, so you know if you are getting close to your property line. When your town is awarded the higher tier, those boundaries can get expanded. Then, if you choose, additional buildings built beyond the property line could get the standard measurement center from that building.

This way the spawns can still happen on the outskirts of your settlement along with the poi’s that go with them.

1 Like
14

I like that idea… a safety zone for enemies not to spawn in ever large enough to build a town and then have the outside of that zone function how it normally does enemies could still spawn near like farms on the exterior but not within the interior of your town (which is more realistic… in most MMO’s fantasy games the farms are always overrun with monsters lol)

1 Like
15

Hopefully in future we get enemies able to deal with walls better. So the current ogres should just make a B line for your town, and if they come across a wall do a quick check to see if there is a way around within a certain distance, and if not they start battering! This gives the player time to react. Of course a player might just layer his walls, so there would have to be fine tuning to make sure a player can’t just spam cheap walls for a sturdy defense. Perhaps after breaking down one wall an ogre would get a buff making him able to smash through others quickly.

Even cheaper might be the options to have stakes, to divert the enemy. This might need to come hand in hand with “aggro zones” around your soldiers, and enemies that would try to avoid combat in able to attack your town. Without any walls or choke points, in such a situation your troops might be able to take on a few but others would scatter and raid your town whilst your troops were fighting. This kind of change is necessary if walls/ditches/etc are to be a vital part of the game.

The basic walls are quite cheap, so further into the game the player should be able to build stone blocks or strong bricks (perhaps using clay and fibers or something?) in order to build tougher walls to hold out for longer. And eventually, siege engine enemies! If the game detects your town is mostly surrounded by walls, they’d deploy catapults, trebuchets and towers in order to assault!

3 Likes
16

well think about it, the only place they are going to meet enemies on this map is where I put the last few patrol zones outside of the wall and if you only have 1 party this usually works fine as long as everyone gets hungry at the same time and goes back to town all at once instead of 1 at a time, leaving the last guy alone- I don’t think this should ever happen and wish it was something the player could customize or improve with soldier training and discipline.

this also limits the size of your initial “zone” for a new town because you don’t want your soldiers patrolling too far from your main gate but its still a lot bigger than what you would be forced to play in without placing those 1x1 stockpiles.

I think the biggest advantage of this other than fixing the enemies spawning directly on top of you is also that it gives the player a little bit of extra time to notice an enemy has spawned somewhere before they begin attacking as the hearthlings fail to notice enemies unless they are within like 20 feet of them and then there is nothing you can do to save them.

its still entirely possible for a camp to spawn next to my hearthlings on patrol, so it still doesn’t really fix the problem but it makes it a lot less likely to end my game immediately so I find myself not rage quitting as often.

17

this is why I don’t like the current system lol
I’ve talked about this a long time ago

I’m hoping with the new topology service this can be fixed because just as hearthlings do not try to find a path to terrain that is inaccessible mobs should not be able to spawn in terrain that does not have access to both the edge of the map and the player location.
this would require an update to the map generator or a the ability for mobs to change terrain to ensure each elevation has a path to the edge of the map but would fix the issue. this would likely force the generator to stop making cliffs and make more of a hilly terrain in some areas to compensate for this problem.
I think this is fine because if we ever simulate a trader coming to town, this would be a requirement anyway.

same elevation solution?

this sounds very similar to an old idea I had

like this?

for columns that are too close to the centroid give them a larger radius offset to compensate so that you get something closer to the red polygon at least in the inner part of the zone

by drawing a circle from the centroid that is triple the area of the center of the triangle to the edge of the inside of the triangle. this would instead give you a circular radius around the inside of your town but still allow mobs to spawn near the edge of the town.

easy circle math tool for drawing this Circle Calculator

I still feel this is more player friendly but not 100% foolproof as you can tell the weak spots are now in 2 places for the player object at the top left and bottom right of the new circle as they are closest to the enemy spawning locations so it would still benefit the player to centralize their town but not limit the area that the town occupies.

I would still recommend putting a limit to how small the circle can be so that enemies cannot spawn within like 40 blocks of a player object or hearthling.

you know the thing about not having a war on 2 fronts? there is still challenge here, especially because the area is a lot larger patrols become more important. soldiers would have to try to defend a large area on completely different sides of a huge chunk of land. this is a good thing though, because it incentivizes the player to make multiple parties and organize things more.

centriod mentioned in the video:
I think that the method of multiplying the circle of the inner polygon is probably more desirable especially with odd cases like in the video at 1:57
while I think it would make the game interesting to have an enemy wander into this zone, I think its unacceptable to have them spawn there as this is territory you have already scouted out otherwise you wouldn’t build there

1 Like
18

here is an example of the new pathfinder optimizations not applying to monsters.
develop-3362
http://i.gyazo.com/aa77b5ad1835e4128107f438c9cc027b.gif

edit: gonna submit a bug report actually

1 Like
19

Hey there. Still having significant trouble with the spawn system under certain conditions. These may be edge cases, in which case I’m just playing the game wrong.

Essentially all the problems boil down to one, highly reproducible behaviour - mobs want to spawn in or near my village, but they can’t because of stockpiles, farms, and buildings. They also cannot spawn outside of the village and find a path in, because of defensive positioning (usually to the effect of 2-3 natural walls and a dug ditch). So, the game slows to a crawl for several seconds, then the new villager or mob pops in abruptly. About a third of the time, they pop well away from the village and can’t get in. About two thirds of the time, they pop right in the middle of the village. So when that’s a hungry hungry h- er, lizard - it just starts noshing on the farmers while the soldiers are off patrolling around an empty stockpile. Like always.

This is a hassle because it essentially punishes defensive positioning.

Same behaviour from A16, A18, A19, and now A20.