External containers
From Neverend
In order to process a large amount of small objects in an area, many objects and terrain will count as external containers. External containers have a set number of spaces for items to appear on, and a set type of item to be placed. A tree will only have fruit in one of its spaces, while a table can have nearly every item placed on it. Some containers encompass nearly all items, while others are restricted to a select few. Weapon wall mounts are restricted to swords and shields, and animal head mounts are restricted to animal heads. Shelves are restricted to smaller items and not large items. Terrain is divided into patches that have a limited number of tiles for items to be placed. When an item is placed on the ground, it becomes part of the external container. The land tile allows nearly all items to be placed on it, but only has a limited number of spaces on it.
Terrain includes grass, flowers, plants and trees as being within the land container. The model for each object takes up a randomly placed footprint within the grid of this container, so no more than this amount of grass or trees occupies the same space. Trees and large plants also have rules for not growing too close to each other.
Crop fields and orchards are external containers that arrange objects in a grid. This includes crops, vegetables, fruit, bushes, and fruit trees. These objects are evenly spaced in the area.
External containers can hold other objects that are external containers. A fruit tree is an external container that has space for X number of a specific fruit. The spaces are set on the tree in specific area, but the amount of fruit is less than the amount of spaces available, and fruit is displayed in random spaces, giving the appearance of random placement.
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[edit] Accessing external containers
The purpose of external containers is to be more efficient than individually placing each object in the world as a targetable object. The player or NPC is interacting with an external container, such as a tree, crop field, field of flowers, beach, woods, orchard, dirt, road, sidewalk, table, desk, counter, roof, or shelf. When interacting with the container, the player or NPC will move towards the location of the object, and use a pick or harvest animation. This gives the illusion of selecting an apple from a tree, cutting an individual stalk of corn, and picking an individual flower or mushroom. Instead, the container is deactivating its item model for that location, and putting it in player or NPC inventory. A farmer can appear to reap every piece of wheat in a cropfield, but is simply moving to each predefined item grid and having it deactivate, while increasing wheat in the player inventory. The illusion is further created with a chopping animation, and a destruction animation for the crop, and leaving a destroyed model temporarily instead of blanking out.
Item grids can deactivate one grid and activate another with a different object, for example chopping a tree to a log, cutting a log into smaller logs, turning logs into planks, and turning planks into items. If this is done in the same area, then the item grids are deactivating to destroy the old object and activating another tile with the newer object displayed, so the log tile goes off and a tile with planks goes on. Risidual effects such as sawdust can also be turned on temporarily.
[edit] Destruction effects
The external container makes it easier to destroy objects and leave semi-permanent marks of destruction. A fireball spell cast on a plot of land will deactivate the crops, and activate tiles displaying a burning crop animation, brushfire, fire effects, ash effects, and deactivate while activating charred earth tiles. This allows an entire field to be destroyed without having to target every crop or deal it individual damage. Tiles are simply turned off, replaced with destruction effects, then replaced with charred landscape. The charred landscape remains until replaced by grass or new plants. If attacked in this way, the container may lose its "crop field" status and revert to a default land area, meaning crops will no longer grow unless the area is made into a crop field again and replanted.
[edit] Examples
- A beach grid shows a seashell. A player wants to pick it up, and accesses the beach container, moving towards the seashell and deactivating the seashell, adding a seashell to player inventory. The player can drop a seashell from inventory and place it in the external container of the beach, activating a tile with a seashell.
- A girl is picking flowers in a field, and ten grids are showing flowers. She accesses the external container, moves to each grid with a flower, deactivates it and adds a flower to inventory. When deactivating, a "pick flower" animation is used. When dropping a flower, the field will show a picked flower because the item is no longer a plant.
- Siege weapons are throwing fireballs at a town. All land being hit has its tiles replaced with damaged dirt or road, and charred dirt or road. These tiles will continue to show charred and damaged tiles until replaced.
- Loggers are cutting a tree. When the tree dies, its grid becomes a grid with a stump model, and a log animation follows tied together with a grid being activated showing a log. The falling animation and log creation are part of the same process. Loggers can turn the log into smaller logs and planks.
[edit] Deactivation
When in heavy combat or sieges, external containers are not as important, and more priority is turned towards the battle. Land displays less detailed tiles without focusing on individual flowers or grass. Crop fields may use generic crop models to display large areas of field rather than focus on individual crops. Buildings will not care about their wall mounts, banners, or signs, and simply display abstract models with little or no interaction. If the wall is destroyed, the items contained in it will be lost.
[edit] Buildings
Buildings are handled similarly. Buildings can be default models of an entire building, and they can be custom made buildings consisting of multiple parts. A building acting as an entire building will have spaces to display wall mounts and tapestries. The entire building is an external container for these items, but has no individual parts to keep track of.
A building made of custom parts will have each custom part as part of a container. The container has four walls, a ceiling, a floor, and other objects that make up the building. Custom buildings must display these pieces constantly until they become damaged or destroyed.
Damaged pieces will replaced their space with a damaged model, based on how badly damaged it is. A wall at 70 percent, 50 percent, and 25 percent will show successively more damage. When badly damaged, models will also have new hit boxes, defining a lower wall, rubble, holes and gaps in walls. Players can enter through these areas. The damaged wall is still a wall and still contained within the building, but is a damaged wall model instead of a normal wall, and has the hit area of a damaged wall.
Several damaged wall models can be chosen at random or based on the type of attack, allowing more variety in wall damage. Note that damaging part of one building will change the other models of the building to reflect an overall damaged status. Attacking one wall will reduce HP of adjacent walls and replace adjacent walls with a more damaged model.
OR: the area of wall that is hit will have a specific marking or hole based on the type of attack, allowing holes to be created by replacing wall grids with empty grids with no hit box.
When completely destroyed, the container will deactivate the wall and replace it with a destroyed wall. The destroyed wall will show rubble and debris, and may have a shallow hit box that can be walked over. Destroyed walls as temporary and dissapear over time.
Buildings must have at least two walls to stand. When a building only has one wall, the entire building will be replaced with a collapsing building model and animation, clouds of debris, and then building rubble that will remain temporarily. Collapsing building models exist for several types of collapses. The appropriate model is chosen based on what walls were remaining when the building was destroyed. For example, a collapse from the corner of a room, from the side of a room, a collapse with a roof falling, and a collapse with no roof.
OR: Each individual wall segment is destroyed or collapses on its own, including the roof that falls as its own object, then turns to rubble.
