Sever: Explained in Full

I realize that I haven't explained clearly what Sever is all about. I've spoken mostly to myself in this blog and haven't given any readers a chance to understand what the hay is going on. I would very much like to get your input, so I'm going to explain it as best I can.

For starters, imagine you're designing a connect-the-dots picture, no intersections. Say some impatient kid is connecting the dots right as you draw them. In other words, every time you make a dot, the line makes its way to your pencil in realtime. Now, say the path we are making can split into two lines like a Y, then three, four, and so forth.

Now lets throw in another person at the other side of the sheet drawing his own dots. How dare he? And to make things worse, he's crossing your lines with his own. To your surprise, the lines he crosses are severed and all lines beyond them disappear. Your ears are steaming now.

You start making dots like mad, hoping the kid connecting them can keep up. You start cutting your enemy off, driving him back to where he started. Finally, when he only has a few dots left on the page, you cut off his first line and everything disappears. You have effectively conquered the page.

That's Sever.

Back to reality (meaning the Seververse), there's no page, no impatient kid, no pencil. The dots are, in Sever terminology, called Nodes. The lines are called Routes, each individual segment called a route Section. These terms are merely a working vocabulary, subject to change.

There are a few more mechanics to make the game more interesting. Instead of a kid drawing the routes, there are little people building them. These people are little dots that run mindlessly back and forth through the routes. Every time a person runs into the end of an unfinished route section, the section's length increments. Once the section is complete, the people then begin to build the node in the same fashion.

These people are generated at a consistent rate by the two connected dots that each player begins with, called Father Nodes. The section connecting them is called the Soul Section. When the source section is severed, the player is finished.

A player can sever his own routes if he chooses. However, when a route is severed, all people within it are lost and must be regenerated in time. If he's not in a hurry, he can retract his routes, drawing them in at a rate slow enough for the people inside to retreat to safety. This is what happens to the offensive route in a severance.

There are different kinds of nodes. Each one varies in a the following properties: radius, spacing, branches, speed boost, and person generation rate. Radius is the size of the node. Spacing is how much space is required between this and another node owned by the player. Branches is how many branches can follow this node. Speed boost is how much of a boost to give each person that passes through the node. Person generation rate is how many seconds between each person generated (0 if none). At the moment, I have only four different types:

Father Node: Gives a speed boost; generates people; doesn't split the route; not buildable.
Sub Node: Builds fast; doesn't split.
Switch Node: Splits the route in two.
Accelerator Node: Gives a boost; doesn't split; large spacing.

That's the current status of the game, only there is no multiplayer or AI. If you've read my past posts (you don't have to; I'm writing this to compile all the important stuff into one post), you'll know my future plans. However, for the sake of clarity, I'll give a short list:

1) Multiplayer
2) Fog-of-War
3) Map Obstacles
4) AI
5) Scripting

Multiplayer can't be done (with my experience) until XNA 2.0 is released in the next coming months (hopefully). But I plan to get to work on it as soon as I can because I can't truly playtest until I have an opponent that fights back.

Fog-of-War was the last task I had been working on when I took my hiatus to work on RefLib. I hadn't yet put any code into it because I was still brainstorming how I would implement it in Sever. It was (and is) a daunting task, but it is doable.

Map obstacles are required if I'm going to make unique maps, and as of yet I'm trying to figure out how to implement them in a way that's workable with AI pathing and performs well with collision testing.

AI is very daunting. I've read up on pathing, which doesn't sound so bad, but getting the AI to make a plan and implement it is beyond me. This feature I will put on the backburner until I'm ready for it.

Scripting is definitely doable, but it's useless without AI. It would only be used on a single-player campaign, and a single-player campaign makes no sense if the baddies have no AI to drive them. Until I do the AI, Sever will be a multiplayer game.

So that's the plan. As I've mentioned, I'm working on RefLib right now, so Sever will have to wait at least another month. Once Sever is back on track, I will start on the fog of war unless XNA 2.0 is out, in which case I will set to work on the multiplayer.

Please, please, please comment. Tell me what you think. Give me suggestions. Criticize me. Ask questions. Please.

Thanks for reading!

clevceo