Forgotten Tales

Need new beast. We have quite a few of different beast but I think instead of releasing monsters that are just resized and recollared we need to come up with new species like gargoyles and finexs big foot stalkers etc.

Yes I agree

Hyena <<<- now there's a killer beast!

Or a nice loooong Chinese dragon type beast.

Terror from the sky: Pterodactylus

IT!

Diversity is great, and variety is spice.

I'm all for this idea.

However, the programmer himself has shown some inclinations on this idea.

Basically, he doesn't want to increase the game size too much; he wants to keep it lower as various devices have various storage capacities.
(Keep in mind, the game supports Android version 2.something... think of devices that use Android 2... they're not really booming with capability of performance or capacities...)
The colour change thing (and size thing) are minor code additions, that use 1 skin to make several monsters.
Each skin is a ton of animations, and it takes up space in the game. This method is simply used to keep size down.

Also, would more skins increase load times, thus increasing lag?
I'm no programmer, so I'm not sure, but I think this is how it works.
Ever notice, how most maps don't have a strong variety of creatures?
I always thought that this kept the game slightly faster (less items to load)... now if you populate a map with 20 different kinds of monsters... idk...

Anyway, yeah, I'd love to see more varieties of monsters, not just variations of existing ones... but we have to consider everyone here, as the minimum requirements for the game are set low, and I'm assuming they are wanted to be kept that way. If we can do this in a way that takes all of this into account, I bet the programmer would jump on it (he gets passionate about some content ideas, I've seen it, and this could be such an idea if possible).

I think the most likely way to introduce new graphics into the game would be to go through the old ones and delete the many which have differently colored variations and redo them with the "new" recoloring method.. this would free up game space for additional graphics. HOWEVER, the ones which are redone this way would not be as good or as varied as what are currently in game (not to mention that many of the new recolored ones use an old version as their base, so they would all need redone as well) - everybody who has purchased a skin would likely be disappointed in the outcome, and the time involved in such an endeavor is considerable... anyway, there's my 2¢ as to how to make it possible

blitzcraig wrote:I think the most likely way to introduce new graphics into the game would be to go through the old ones and delete the many which have differently colored variations and redo them with the "new" recoloring method..

I had to double check to see the extent of this.
I can say, this has already been done for some skins. Mostly monsters.
But, there could possibly be more done I think, if anyone is willing to make such an attempt.

I would be willing but it will take me some time due to RL duties I'll be soon working under FIMA contracts helping people get back into dry homes. Also my kids trashed my computer so I'll have to replace that to do this. If anyone else is willing please do post here and contact administration team for slight assistance. I will soon begin what I can on my Android phone. It's more difficult but designs can be done lol

I just had a thought, but someone more experienced than me (Comp) will have to check. If a skin is modified, and then a second filter is added, or even a third, would they render? If so, we can remove the extra animations (such as war dog and brown wolf) and replace with a filtered version, and reduce the size of the app as a result. Since only comp can (legitimately) compile an app to test, perhaps he can answer this. This can also lead to modifications of the modified skins, as well, allowing much more customization of skins...

madmaniacal1 wrote:I just had a thought, but someone more experienced than me (Comp) will have to check. If a skin is modified, and then a second filter is added, or even a third, would they render? If so, we can remove the extra animations (such as war dog and brown wolf) and replace with a filtered version, and reduce the size of the app as a result. Since only comp can (legitimately) compile an app to test, perhaps he can answer this.

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here... it sounds just like what was mentioned above.
Some skins already do work like this - the skin has a base skin, then the filter is added to change colours.
This is applied to (almost) all player skins, and several monster skins (but not all are done yet - that's what we're talking about).
But you're mentioning animations... so I'm confused....
The way the game is set up, you can't reduce the animations for a single skin.. but you can duplicate it and recolour it using the colour matrix.

For any interested in seeing which have been done (and which have not), the file you're looking for is in the map editor (not sure if it's available on forum).
The file is entities.list (simple text file), and it's found in the assets folder.

When looking at a skin, it can be "unique", or, it can refer to another skin, with a "matrix" option (followed by a bunch of numbers).
The idea to reduce app size discussed here is to take the similar ones that are not done this way, and recolour the primary one via colour matrix to achieve a result that is (almost) exactly the same as the existing unique skin.

I only went into detail because, if someone who's not sure about this wants to do it, they can.

If any gm has a link to the (witch) skin please share it with me through pm. If it already has walking animations correct me if I'm wrong but all it will need is the attacking and dying animations then it can be applied to the server as a new skin and IG enemy witch will cover two often requests 1 a female mage skin can be added to the registering screen and 2 it can be set as a low enemy and can be collared and applied for a higher level enemy and being that the skin is already in the game it shouldn't take up much more space on the server. Just a thought.