Re: [Wesnoth-dev] The problem with Knalgans....

[David White]

Richard Kettering wrote:

> We have a problem in some of our developmental mindset regarding units.
> Personally, and this is based on comments I have gotten from different 
> people regarding the mermen, I think we should adopt a policy of 
> "Build it and they will come."
>
> Our number 1 problem is in getting art.  A lot of people can build 
> custom units, but few of them are well drawn, and even fewer have good 
> animations.  I think we should plug in most things with decent art 
> that don't conflict with our fantasy world.  Unless the unit branches 
> from an existing unit - I say we "include" it with a palatable set of 
> stats.  By this, I mean that we put it into the game files, but not 
> necessarily into any of the campaigns or multiplayer eras.
>
> These units, just like freim's new desert tiles, are materials to 
> build things from.  They were not made in response to need, they were 
> made to pre-empt need.  Wesnoth worked just fine with sand being used 
> to represent desert.  No one NEEDED desert.  But it is quite clearly a 
> monumental improvement to have it available.

I tend to agree with the overall philosophy, however, why do we have to 
actually ship the images and unit stats with the game? We've already had 
a system where we had a 'library' of graphics in the Wiki, and any 
campaign designer could cherry pick it for their use as they wanted. 
Perhaps the system needs to be revised to combat the Wiki vandalism 
problem, but the point remains that if the units aren't actually used, 
I'm not sure they have to be shipped with the game. Shipping them with 
the game also restricts the campaign designer somewhat by saying "this 
is the stats the unit should have," while just providing images 
externally gives the campaign designer more implied freedom to use the 
images as they want, and assign them stats and so forth.

Sure, if a unit has a use in the official version of the game, such as 
in the 'Classic' era, then we can include it, but I don't see a reason 
to otherwise. Especially since if the unit isn't actually used, it won't 
be playtested, and so we'd be including a whole heap of units with 
untested and unbalanced stats. Would we really want to do this?

David