DD/Campaign/Overview

From Unknown Horizons

This page is part of the Unknown Horizons design document. Please discuss everything concerning this topic on the "discussion" tab of this page. If you´re not sure whether your ideas are fitting the Unknown Horizons style, either use the discussion page, talk to us, or edit the "Questions" section of this page, but please don´t directly edit the other parts.

Proposal

Summary

Unkown Horizons should have at least 1 campaign. A campaign should be structures just like in nearly every real-time strategy game: There are predefined maps with predefined goals (Defeat 1 enemy, Have 3 settlements, settler level > 3, ...). At first, you can only play one of those maps. If you succeed, you can play the next one.

A campaign can tell a story, but doesn't have to. The story is told via texts, that are displayed before, after and during the game. This text can be illustrated with sound and/or gfx. There should be certain events, that happen at a time, that is influenced by the player. (e.g. big pirate attack when you have 400 settlers).

The campains should be roughly defined in the DD as own page.

Also, there should be a special campaign, that acts as a tutorial. (see DD/Campaign/Tutorial).

Implementation related note

1. Events. An event is a data structure containing 1 or more conditions and 1 or more actions. The game keeps evaluating those conditions (meaning you don't have to worry about this). As soon as _all_ of those conditions evaluate to true, all actions are executed. Then the event is marked as 'done' and not considered any more. See appendix for specification of conditions and actions.

2. Storing a scenario. The special features of a campaign are defined in a yaml file. (e.g. events, goal conditions, texts). See appendix for the exact format specification.

3. Storing a campaign The campaign itself is just a file, containing only references to the maps in a special order. NOTE: this hasn't been implemented yet.

4. What a scenario is: A campaign is a 'normal' map, with special events. Nothing more :)

Made campaigns

It should be possible for everyone to create campaigns, for that the best way would be to use the FIFE map editor for it. With the editor it must be possible to start events depending on a special time or event, like 120 minutes after game start or 200 of inhabitants. These events will be linked by e.g. pop up messages or other actions (like creating an enemy, or destroying a building, etc...).