Oh, no! God NO! IT’S RISEN FROM THE DEAD AND IT WANTS MY SOUL!

I’ve recently installed Spam Karma 2 in an attempt to mitigate how much comment spam I’m getting. None of it ever shows up on the site – the default WordPress install is good at catching comment spam. But suspicious comments just go into the moderation queue, where I have to sort through them manually, and that’s just not possible any more.

Spam Karma 2 automatically kills comments that look like spam – I won’t ever see them. Which means that there’s a slight chance that it will kill the occasional legitimate comment. If you have trouble commenting now, please feel free to email me – I want to know about problems so I can fix them. Hopefully this will make the blog easier to maintain without impacting legitimate discussion.

There’s a surprise coming this weekend!

My gosh, what could it be?

Merry Christmas to everybody!

Yeah. Hi.

Okay,

I know, the site hasn’t been updated in over a week. And I was supposed to run a contest last week. All I can say is that we’re down to less than two weeks on Sims Castaway Stories and that’s taking up all my time. That also means that I didn’t get to go to the lecture last night, thus there is no recap. I apologize.

And I just had to wade through seven hundred spam comments.

This project will wrap up (or at least slack off) soon, though, and things will get back to normal. Just in time for me to start working on the holiday dinners!

This week has been a busy one for me and the weekend will probably be worse. So posting will be slow. But I’ve made at least a little progress on Planitia, and the first demo should be coming up soon.

Summer vacation is finally over, and my son David couldn’t be happier. He loves school so summer was hard on him. He’d ask me every night, “School tomorrow?” and I had to keep telling him, “Not yet.”

But today he finally started first grade! It was pretty funny…when the bus came he practically dashed for it, as if he were afraid it might leave him behind.

I’m pleased to say that he learned a lot over the summer…he can read and write a good number of words. Just yesterday I watched him write the word “poem” in his notebook…I never taught him that one. I have no idea where he picked it up. He appears to be ahead of where he should be from a learning standpoint, and his social skills are improving. I think he’s going to be all right.

All right. I’ve thought a lot about this, and I think I’ve got my god powers nailed down.

Basically I wanted god powers to be split into different schools which the player would then improve over time. I rejected the “classic four” of earth, fire, air and water since they are beyond cliché at this point; anyone who uses them deserves a quick nun-style whack on the knuckles.

Magic: The Gathering’s five schools of magic are extraordinarily well done, but I didn’t want to rip them off directly. Plus I wanted at least three powers in each school, which would have meant fifteen powers. That would have been hard to do while keeping to my second rule – that each power be distinct.

Populous 2 had six schools, but several of them are weak and all the “good” powers could be easily consolidated down to four schools.

So that’s what I did. There are four schools of magic in Planitia:

Yellow – Earth effects

Red – Fire effects

Blue – Sky effects

Green – Plant/growth effects

Now, let’s get back to the second rule. I wanted each god power to be distinct and have its own role. So I made a list of what god powers can effectively do in Planitia:

Create units

Flatten terrain

Improve terrain

Damage or kill units

Throw units around (important because units take additional damage from falling and can be knocked int water or off the map, plus looks cool)

Uneven terrain (requires the opposing god to smooth it out before it can be used again)

Ruin terrain (requires the opposing god to improve it before it can be used again)

With that in mind, here’s what I’m thinking:

Yellow School (Earth Effects):
Flatten – Flattens terrain, fixes earthquakes, allows villages to grow
Earthquake – Land unevener, unit thrower

Red (Fire Effects):
Flame Column – Moves around randomly, ruins land, burns building and instakills units – Powerful but uncontrollable

Green (Growth Effects):
Bless – 3×3 cell area – Fixes ruined land, allows villages to grow faster (the bless wears off, but the ruin fix is permanent)
Swamp – Any unit walking into it dies, lasts 1 minute or until it sucks up three people – Area denial

Blue (Sky Effects):
Lightning – Single unit instakiller
Lightning Storm – Area denial – hangs over an area and zaps anyone (FRIEND OR FOE) who comes into it, lasts 1 minute or so

Now we come to the BIG effects, the ones that can end a game quickly. In order to get a major effect, you must max out two neighboring schools of magic.

Yellow + Red = Volcano. Creates a mountain of ruined land, damaging anyone in the affected area over time. The volcano will spew fireballs which create Flame Columns when they hit the ground for one minute, then the volcano will go inactive. The volcano cannot be fixed until it goes inactive. Since an army can quickly run away from it, it’s better used on villages than armies.

Red + Blue = Meteor. A meteor descends from the sky on the targeted area, badly damaging every unit it directly hits and throwing any units nearby a long way. Does not ruin land and does not affect buildings, so it’s better used on armies than villages.

Blue + Green = Healing Rain. Creates a cloud of healing rain that hangs in the air for one minute. Any friendly unit that comes into the affected area is instantly fully healed. Can really take the edge off a meteor or volcano.

Green + Yellow = Golem. A massive earth golem is created that immediately heads for the nearest enemy unit and attacks it by kicking it. When that unit is dead it heads for the next one, etc. One golem can take on an entire army and villagers are pretty much defenseless against it, but once you create it you cannot control it. (It won’t attack your units, though.)

Max All Schools = Armageddon. Clicking this button turns every unit on every side into a Barbarian and causes them to seek out and attack the nearest enemy unit. When the fighting is done the side that still has units is declared the winner of the game. Enemy players can still use god powers, but since army units do not regenerate mana once they run out they won’t get any more. Do NOT cast unless you’re damn sure you not only outnumber the enemy, but that he doesn’t have a Meteor or Golem up his sleeve.

CURRENT PROBLEMS WITH THIS SYSTEM: I’ve only got one fire effect. (Honestly, how many different ways can you burn things?) The two Blue effects are too similar. “Bless” and “Flatten” are absolute necessities so it seems kind of mean to force users to waste their experience points buying them.

Your thoughts?