TheRexYo
Queen
(For those of you who just want to see what this suggestion is about, skip ahead to the bolded text. Otherwise, if you want an in-depth concept for it, read on.)
Awhile back I suggested that an "Ant Browser" should be added to allow people to add any ant type to their colony. While I still believe that all ants should be playable, that idea wasn't well-designed. Instead, I propose that a full-on "Colony Editor" could be added to the game. This tool would provide an interface through which players can create a new colony and modify its properties, from ant types to improvements. The colony could then be saved as a "Colony Setup" file that can be selected for use as a Freeplay Colony. As I recall, the guys at Slugdisco (if any of you are reading this, I congratulate you for not being daunted by the massive wall of text that lays before you) believe having unplayable ant types in the Formicarium would upset the game's balance. I now present two potential solutions to this contingency:
1) Add a flag to custom colonies that prevents them from being loaded into the Formicarium.
2) Remove any Formicarium data from the file* and store the file in a separate registry (in terms of files, a registry is another word for a 'folder', if anyone's wondering) dedicated to custom colonies. Though it would require the game to read two directories to get the list of colonies to choose from, it would be a lot easier (and better protected, at least against file-editing) than adding a flag to the file.
I would also like to mention that if a custom colony would be loaded into the Formicarium, it would probably crash the game since it wasn't made the same way and thus would lack the associated level data for the colony. The easiest way to avoid this is to prevent them from being loaded at all, as is achieved by the two aforementioned fixes. Solution 2, in particular, would be particularly effective at avoiding this, since there would be no way for the Formicarium to read the file at all (since it is stored in a separate folder and thus would not be included in the list). This would prevent save editing the file to get it to open. However, since the ultimate result of opening a custom colony in the Formicarium is a crash, it wouldn't really matter whether or not the user does that. I mean, if they're going so far as to edit their save file just to get a crash, why not let them?
* I believe that the only Formicarium-related data currently saved in Colony files happens to be references to the actual Formicarium level data, so this may not be necessary either way.
Anyway, thanks for reading the in-depth explanation. If you are confused at all, feel free to read the bolded overview below.
=======================================================
Feature Overview:
Awhile back I suggested that an "Ant Browser" should be added to allow people to add any ant type to their colony. While I still believe that all ants should be playable, that idea wasn't well-designed. Instead, I propose that a full-on "Colony Editor" could be added to the game. This tool would provide an interface through which players can create a new colony and modify its properties, from ant types to improvements. The colony could then be saved as a "Colony Setup" file that can be selected for use as a Freeplay Colony. As I recall, the guys at Slugdisco (if any of you are reading this, I congratulate you for not being daunted by the massive wall of text that lays before you) believe having unplayable ant types in the Formicarium would upset the game's balance. I now present two potential solutions to this contingency:
1) Add a flag to custom colonies that prevents them from being loaded into the Formicarium.
2) Remove any Formicarium data from the file* and store the file in a separate registry (in terms of files, a registry is another word for a 'folder', if anyone's wondering) dedicated to custom colonies. Though it would require the game to read two directories to get the list of colonies to choose from, it would be a lot easier (and better protected, at least against file-editing) than adding a flag to the file.
I would also like to mention that if a custom colony would be loaded into the Formicarium, it would probably crash the game since it wasn't made the same way and thus would lack the associated level data for the colony. The easiest way to avoid this is to prevent them from being loaded at all, as is achieved by the two aforementioned fixes. Solution 2, in particular, would be particularly effective at avoiding this, since there would be no way for the Formicarium to read the file at all (since it is stored in a separate folder and thus would not be included in the list). This would prevent save editing the file to get it to open. However, since the ultimate result of opening a custom colony in the Formicarium is a crash, it wouldn't really matter whether or not the user does that. I mean, if they're going so far as to edit their save file just to get a crash, why not let them?
* I believe that the only Formicarium-related data currently saved in Colony files happens to be references to the actual Formicarium level data, so this may not be necessary either way.
Anyway, thanks for reading the in-depth explanation. If you are confused at all, feel free to read the bolded overview below.
=======================================================
Feature Overview:
- An editor that allows you to make a custom ant colony that can be selected in Freeplay when setting up a new game.
- Editable aspects of a colony include: Available units (ant types), individual unit max upgrade levels, and major and minor improvements for ant types that have them.
- Custom Colonies cannot be selected for Formicarium use to prevent crashes and maintain the game's balance.
