Dynamic Warfront & Clans

WORG's very first map.  Black represents
one low level clan, and red represents
another.  Can you guess where the red
clans stronghold is?

Warfront
What you see to your right doesn't look like much, but it is a visual representation of this world beginning to come to life.  Everything in this post is already in the game, although I must admit it is pretty buggy.

I have recently programmed in the preliminary code to control the movement of NPCs, Tree Species, and Clans across the game world.  Each world is broken into a 20x20 grid like the one you see here and each piece of the grid is up for grabs by clans.  Clans choose certain zones as strongholds and focus their forces at these strongholds, engaging other nearby clans in battle.

Clans are Unique
Clans are dynamic groups of NPC's with personalities and traits that dictate their movements in an inter-clan war for territory.  So far there are several traits in the server code that are controlling the clans activities...

1. Civil Unrest controls how likely the clan is to split up into 2 clan groups, one with (Rebel) at its end.
2. Arrogance controls how likely the clan is to choose a target stronghold to attack which is currently owned by a clan with higher level and momentum.
3. Aggression controls how likely a clan is to attack wandering players or go to war with other clans.
4. Wanderlust controls how nomadic the clan is, if the clan has a high wanderlust they will change their stronghold more often.
5. Level controls how powerful the clans NPCs tend to be.
6. Momentum controls how well the clan is fairing in war against other clans.
7. Professional Preference controls what types of professions NPCs of that clan tend to be.
8. Name Loyalty controls how likely a clan is to change their name.  Rebel clans have a very low loyalty to their name and will change it quickly.  In the future, I hope to make it possible for players to influence the choice of their favorite clans name, and even become the leader of that clan.

NPCs Travel and Battle

Even when players are not playing WORG, the NPCs are battling against each other for control of strongholds and zones.  NPCs tend to stay close to their stronghold, and if that stronghold moves then the NPC will attempt to move with it, travelling across zones.  If the NPC battles with another NPC or with a player and loses, they will die and that specific NPC will be gone from the world forever.

Here is a newer map with 4 clans.  The
person symbols are strongholds, the
shield is a town, the lightning is a
clan's target for their moving stronghold. 

Players Influence the Outcome of Clan Warfare

By killing clan members you harm that clan.  If you and your friends target a clan long enough, you might even drive it out of existence entirely.  This process could take months, however,  And other players who have invested time in building reputation with the clan you hope to destroy will no doubt work to stop you.

Right now this is all in the game, except for reputation building between players and clans.  This is a huge part of what I have been hard at working doing over the winter break, and I am not going to get another chance to work on the game until February.  In February I will be focusing on bug fixes before working on network play.

A note about these Maps
The maps I show pictures of in this blog post are of day 0.  As time passes, battlefronts will become more rigid because the zones surrounded by enemy influence will fall easier than the ones surrounded by allies.

Until then,

Lss