Make trees and plants dynamic to improve landscape

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Inkweaver
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Make trees and plants dynamic to improve landscape

Post by Inkweaver »

Currently the landscape is a little bit dead. The trees not only look slightly disappointing, but they are also very static.

I think it would be much better if trees were real objects that grew, and potentially could be cut down. These trees would be set to grow within a selected area, similar to the way that flower monsters and herbs are currently made to grow on the map. These trees would be real objects so they would change over time, eventually dying, or they would be cut down. This would help to keep the landscape interesting.

The main reason why this would not be desirable is that if all the trees could be chopped down the landscape could be dramatically altered, and players could approach the boundaries of the individual maps, ruining the effect of the game.

This could be fixed by no longer using trees to block off sections of the maps, but rather a different kind of vegetation. I envision this as a kind of enchanted bramble. It is very thorny, and would be placed around the edges of the map, and anywhere that developers didn’t want people to be able to pass. Then dense forest would be placed around this bramble.

Even if a bunch of people got together and chopped through the forest to get to the edge of the map, this enchanted bramble would not be able to be cut through. Attacking it would just do damage to the attacker.

So that removes the problem of players cutting through the forest to reach the edge of maps, or to create shortcuts.

Map developers probably still wouldn’t want people to be able to clear cut a forest and ruin the environment of the game. Well here’s my fix for that.

This is mana world, and according to the wiki, mana has extreme side-effects that may cause mutations of destruction. Well how about every once in a while, say every fifteen minutes, making the forest go through a period of phenomenal growth that refills any areas that have been clear cut? This could be passed off as a side effect of mana, or some sort of strange imbalance in the world.

So players could cut down trees all they want, but before they make any progress, the forest suddenly starts growing like crazy, and vines, bushes, and trees refill any clear areas that have been made.

This could also be used to fix housing issues. One of the big reasons that the aboveground housing is bad is because nobody wants the world to turn into one giant neighborhood packed with houses. Well the forest could easily destroy any tents, shacks, or other buildings in its domain. Just create some sort of effect so that when the forest regrows you can see giant vines tearing down the houses, and the trees growing up where buildings used to be.

This could be really interesting because it would make the landscape a player in the game, not just people and monsters.
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Kage
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Re: Make trees and plants dynamic to improve landscape

Post by Kage »

Maybe when our map system is more mature and able to do more dynamic things we could do things like this.
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Inkweaver
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Re: Make trees and plants dynamic to improve landscape

Post by Inkweaver »

Basically my idea was to make trees like flower monsters. The trees would basically be monsters that didn't fight back, but had incredibly high vitality, armor, and health points. It would take a couple players to conquer one and get wood or branches, or leaves of some other item from them.

Also, they would periodically die, to keep the landscape interesting.
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Kage
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Re: Make trees and plants dynamic to improve landscape

Post by Kage »

One issue is that monsters can't block path, at lest on eA
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feline monstrosity
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Re: Make trees and plants dynamic to improve landscape

Post by feline monstrosity »

Trees are also used for barriers for the edge of maps. If they could be destroyed it would create problems.
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Inkweaver
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Re: Make trees and plants dynamic to improve landscape

Post by Inkweaver »

Kage wrote:One issue is that monsters can't block path, at lest on eA
Good point. That is a big problem.
feline monstrosity wrote:Trees are also used for barriers for the edge of maps. If they could be destroyed it would create problems.
I covered the tree's being used to block the edge of the map issue. You could use a different kind of undestroyable magical thicket for that purpose, and still leave real trees in the center.
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feline monstrosity
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Re: Make trees and plants dynamic to improve landscape

Post by feline monstrosity »

Oh sorry. Missed that bit.
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