IDEAS FOR RYZOM

On the Ryzomnomnom Wiki http://en.ryzomnomnom.com/wiki/Animals_of_Atys there are 'Unimplemented Animals'.

- The Baldusa - which 'the Trykers used as mounts long ago'
- The Prakker
- The Sagass - also used as a mount or packer

None of these aquatic animals is agressive. Unlike the fish we have all seen in the game these were meant to interact with players in the water.

It's too easy to take refuge in the water. Why not activate these forgotten monsters of the deep and add a few aggressive species too.

Hmm. I like it. Opens up a lot of RP and gameplay facets. Of course, for this to truly work it would likely mean the water is no longer safe, or that a homin would have to learn aquatic fighting (I'd oppose neither change), but the idea of a fish mount is very interesting.

since you dont have to make them aggro (and the wiki-link descibes them es non-aggressive), the water remains safe :)

I hope they will be implemented: wiki's pictures 're very cool, and I like the idea Tryker can have a water mount (even if I'm not Tryker :D).

Maybe this implementation can lead to evaluate adding even aggro water mobs, but this involves the ability to fight in water (more anims, more work, and so on).

I remeber this question being asked in 2004 after release .... as I recall there was a z-axis issue ..... getting the larger 3 D models to move up and down in the z-axis (up and down) was a programming issue.

I realise that the Z-axis is problematic - its commonly quoted as the reason why we can't jump ingame. However, would moving fish around be any different than Gingos moving up and down a hill on land? I know it is clunky and looks ridiculous at times, but it is doable, surely.

Maybe it should help selecting TWO "layers" of mobs' swim altitude: "surfaced" and "submerged", and they should continue to (2D x/y) move in these 2 layers, just avoiding obstacles and ground below them, not having a real 3D water movement.
The "switch" from submerged to surfaced and vice versa can also be an animation, not a real movement too.
Even when submerged or surfaced, they should move over a(n inexistent) plane, with no hills: just taking another direction when at a border.

Now I don't have a clue about how the game is coded when it comes to "in water/on land", but as long as you can set creatures to only stay in water, just as those we have now only stay on land, I say why bother with having them swim up and down?

The Z-axis might be a big issue with the fish, but why not just make a model that is placed in such a way that it will display just below the surface of the water. Add some animation where it swims up and down, but let the model itself reside so that all of it is below the surface of the water, or in the case of mounts; so the seat sticks up. Having to add in all the code for having fish in two different states, submerged and surfaced. This way you also dont have to bother with if they swim through the bottom, as there is no actual "plane" on the bottom, that things can follow, rather it appears to just be flat ground with a transparent effect and then some painting on the background/sea floor.

It will take quite a lot of work, making the models and animations, having them move smoothly and all, but it would definately be a very cool addition.

Since I am a tryker and we have just about all the water, everything above is in no way biased ;)
So get this done, so we can have something to attract the tourist zoraï. Maybe make them only aggressive to matis while you are at it, so we can give em some payback for all the times us poor trykers have been hunted down by dogs and hungry matis while sightseeing in the forest.

@Gasket: I think you was talking about my post, so... I explained in the wrong way, sorry.

I didn't mean the water mobs have to swim every time from the two "layers", submerged and surfaced.
I meant to have a behaviour like many sea creatures, which usually stays under sea level (like roaming on the submerged layer), and occasionally emerge (like whales, to breath). How much occasionally is up to Dev's decisions, but I thought "not too frequently". Anyway, your post can be right if the client don't thinks "here is a mob" at some X,Y position, when I try to swim *over* it and makes a "collision". ;)

To all the rest I agree. *tosses some cookies to gingos around Yrkanis* ;)))

The way the Atys world works is based upon a wireframe model....take a window screen and bend it up a bit to shape a hill....you can walk up the wirefrane to the top of hill.

You can NOT exist at 2 points in the Z axis...... you can't be below the wire frame and you can't be above the wireframe. You must be at the "surface".

In water, tho we have the illusion of a surface your toon can not be below the surface.....these fish mobs, to be relistic would have to be abke to move up and down and that's where the problem is...3D objects can ony exist at the wireframe surface.

Of course every rule has an exception....go into a cave in PR and it seems as if you are at a different point on the Z axis......but then every been smacked or feared by a Vorax when he's 60m above ya head ? He exists at same z point, yu do.

One simple solution to this, and it will make sense on an ecological point of view, will be to implement only benthic mobs.
Benthic means that they are crawling on the bottom. As we cannot dive to kill them in melee (due to Z axis restriction), we will have to have a special range attacks like magic or special range weapons. Which are only active in the water.
I guess the fact that we cannot attack in water is just a matter of activating a flag. Simple deactivate the flag if these weapons are used. Not a big thing in programming.

Ok, not all is done. Looting now !
The mobs will "float" on the surface once killed and will be lootable.

Maybe I am wrong, but it seems feasible.

EDIT:
I forgot one point: it will make it possible also to have the toon walking on the sea bottom with special equipment to breath under the water... And create missions under the water. And greatly extend the "active" surface of Atys...

I think the biggest obstacle to implementing water mobs, is how are they supposed to defend themselves when you can hit em with spell from the land. The z axis issue is easy to fix if you just have the animation do all the submerging/emerging from water, much like the birds bob up and down.

That one, I find it rather easy, with 4 rules:
Anyone in water, toon or mob, is vulnerable to water spells. Once on land these spells are not effective.
Water spells can be cast only while inside water.
Mobs can also cast water spells.
One is vulnerable to water spells only when he/she/it is in the water.

EDIT: To stick the mobs to the sea bottom only makes sense as we could see the waters are very transparent, so probably not much to eat. I see very well kind of trilobites, sea scorpions, electric mats etc... projecting poisons, darts, electricity, sound etc... It will be pretty nice. But I keep on with the walking on sea bottom with a diving suit... That will be awesome. Btw, the heavy armour helmet is very similar to diving suit.

Currently you cant do anything in the water and what exactly is a water spell?. Just because i can think of something, doesnt mean that its easy to code.

A "water" spell seems very like a "normal" one, but with the "is_in_water" flag inverted: probably normal spells have a flag like this (even if with another name: I didn't look at the code), to prevent casting from water. Water spells should have this flag reversed to avoid casting from land.

But I propose, instead of working on a spell's flag, to work on aggro only:

1) mobs which walk/fly on ground should not enter the water (as it works now), so they can't reach you and, with time, this should break the aggro.

2) mobs which can cast/emit fire/other similar(*), even if you're in the water, continue to cast while you're in their cast range, then the aggro breaks and they restart to patrol.

3) water mobs will do the same, "reverted": not get on ground, cast anyway while you're in range.

This way, undoubtly, waters can become a little more dangerous as nowadays (e.g. a stinga near a lake can cast on you even if you're in water: you've to swim fast to get out of cast range) but make it possible to use the currently used spells by all the mobs, without the need to implement "water" ones.
(btw: if you target a stinga while it's in water you can cast on it, today, and it will cast back to you)

(*) I know that some mobs don't really "cast" (e.g. kincher "cast" is a special attack), but I think we can consider it like a "cast", for this post's pourpose.