You have different layers of bitmaps with different transparencies. It is the same way that they do it for putting gold on the ground in an isometric game or how you walk around in an isometric game...

You just have a bitmap for the armour, a bitmap for the weapon and a bitmap for the person, you then layer it (using transparency bitmasks) and hey presto: you have a nice character

That is a little simplified, but you can probably find accurate tutorials out there on the net

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

mmh, that''s what I guessed, but ... ah damn it, that''s way off topic

youpla :-P

It''s a good idea, in theory. But I wonder if an army of infinitely variable fodder for powergamers is what we really need?

======
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
-Socrates

"Question everything. Especially Landfish."
-Matt

I didn''t see this mentioned, but thought it was important: I don''t think it''s enough to have monsters that look differently and have different attacks. I think they also need to have different behaviors (variances on basic AI, for instance) or the player will know they''re fighting the same creature based on how it acts.



--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

Basically, I think the point of this thread was to create a variety for the Player to choose from, and hopefully (in my thinking) if the player kills one of each race, they band together to merge into a super race . I think the other thing that I would want to see is the weaknesses point. You can hack off a limb, and they would still come at you, maybe if you left them long enough, they could regenerate that limb (how cool would that be ).


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

You could always bring the Darwin Theory into Monster generators. Think about having monsters that are generated who''s prime goal is to make new monster generators. Although while these monsters who make monster generators and being made from monster generaters there''s also monsters being generated who want to fight. This way the game evolves.

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

Whoa! Ok, now Darwinian monsters would be COOL!!! Instead of a Diablo style game where you just go up against harder, predesigned baddies, you could have monsters that actually adapt to your play style.
Say you kill lots of monsters with ranged weapons. Rather than just amassing more hit points, the monsters develop ranged attacks as well. Or they learn to use cover. Or they learn to close distance quickly. Whatever behavior keeps them from getting killed the most.
In fact, maybe only the monsters that survive an attack against you get to "breed" new monsters. So whatever behavior was successful gets replicated in the next generation.
I guess the point is that if you varied your play style, the monsters would adapt. Kinda like bacteria that becomes more and more resistant over time...

--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

the variable monster thing is a cool idea, but not original - black and white already does something of the sort with the player''s creature - a creature can be fat, thin (or something in between, good, evil (or something in between), muscled or skinny (or something in between) - you end up with a lot of combinations of creature. i think the totally random arm and leg assigning is not SUCH a good idea, because you''d end up with some pretty absurd monsters.

as for varying (and especially learning) AI, i think this is the area which needs to be researched into a lot more. i once had an idea of not actually programming monster AI, but giving each type a neural net then the people who make the game would train the monster to fight. but obviously it''s not feasible just yet - there''s not enough processing power.

one thing that bugs me about 3d shooters is that the AI of the monsters is totally independant - they don''t work as a team, and don''t employ coordinated strategies. a solution for this would be to treat all the monsters'' intelligence as ONE entity, and have one neural net for the whole collection of monsters (Borg-style).

Sure you have absurd monsters, but are you claiming that you don''t get absurd monsters in games anyway? At least there would be an absurdity theme about your game which would then mean that the monsters would not be all that absurd

As for darwinian theory... I kinda like it, but I think it would be difficult. Adaptive behaviour is a different matter. That comes from SMART monsters being able to adapt THEIR skills to YOUR skills. It is not creating a new monster that can do the same. It is kind of learning for monsters, but having learned this... they can create monsters that also know their skills, which would make for a lot of interesting learning

I am just wondering how difficult the darwinian theory would be to implement... For later discussion

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)