Oracle - Discussion Thread

[WindHunter]

Responsible members of the Skylords Reborn team recently met to discuss possible changes to campaign maps. What is outlined here are the proposed changes to the map Oracle. These changes are not final and are only proposed. As a warning, other map projects such as more RPvE presets and Defensive RPvE have a much higher priority for our team. As such, these, or any campaign map changes, may not happen for a very long time. 

Some changes here are firmer than others, all italicized proposals have accompanying explanations for why we are considering them, but they are the most tentative of all the proposals.

Proposed Changes:

1.      If the ritual is successful, the player gets control over some fire units. If failed, they stay neutral. This way succeeding on the ritual means something.

[Reckoning]

Can we include a skip option for the dialogue during the ritual? It's actually pain waiting 3minutes until they finished their talk every time you wanna run this map

[Majora]

On 1/2/2022 at 4:08 AM, Reckoning said:

Can we include a skip option for the dialogue during the ritual? It's actually pain waiting 3minutes until they finished their talk every time you wanna run this map

I'd like this as well. Its especially tedious because the last part of the map suddenly gets a huge difficulty spike. I had to do the map 3 times in a row because I kept failing in my original expert run. Not sure if its technically possible though. 

[Dutchy]

In my opinion it does not make sense that 1 map has a skip function and the other's do not. 
For example, on Mo, when you arrive in the top right, there is also a dialog. For speed reasons (and maybe others), many would want to skip that as well. 

If there would be a "skip" button implemented, I would love to see it done in every case, not just one. 

[Reckoning]

Like dutchy said I'd love to see it on multiple maps, but the worst case is definetely oracle which is why I posted it here

[LEBOVIN]

Eh i don’t think this will happen any time soon, different languages have different length of speech, and some map scripts require these „breaks“. This would already  be a lot of work to change it just for one map without breaking functionality, an insane endeavour for all. 

Edited January 7, 2022 by LEBOVIN

[Sacriefice]

Don't think the dialogue is that bad on this map, gives you some time to build some defenses. King of The Giant is worse if you manage to clean up everything before they arrive.

I noticed a bug on the left side of the map.

If flying units get to close to the edge of the map they disappear (visually) and become un-selectetable.
When I tried to select my Windhunter by the group, the game immediately deselects them. I managed to pull them out by spamming '2' and RMB though.

This could be quite painful if you play on expert and not only your units are gone but they block unit space.

[Trando]

Hello, not sure if this is the right location for this but normally i believe Skylords to be a very selective game, while speedrunning oracle a bit i found it alot of pain, that it involves randomness, meaning the spawning location of the 4 wagons, which render 15 out of 16 starts to this map completly useless, because you want a specific order in which the wagons appear, and others are just plain insta reset. So my Idea would be to fix the spawn of 4 of those stone locations, so that first you need to clear all parts of the map and second it is fun again to speedrun this map. Is there a reasoning other than time that speaks against this? Would love to hear feedback for this

[LEBOVIN]

1 hour ago, Trando said:

Hello, not sure if this is the right location for this but normally i believe Skylords to be a very selective game, while speedrunning oracle a bit i found it alot of pain, that it involves randomness, meaning the spawning location of the 4 wagons, which render 15 out of 16 starts to this map completly useless, because you want a specific order in which the wagons appear, and others are just plain insta reset. So my Idea would be to fix the spawn of 4 of those stone locations, so that first you need to clear all parts of the map and second it is fun again to speedrun this map. Is there a reasoning other than time that speaks against this? Would love to hear feedback for this

I do get that this randomness is annoying because it is only discovered later where these locations are.

I could imagine we can briefly reveal them for 0.1 seconds at the start of the game and hide them right afterwards again. This should leave a visual clue of removed fog of war on the minimap where to expect them, allowing for instant restarts.

[Loriens]

On 2/1/2023 at 11:15 PM, LEBOVIN said:

I do get that this randomness is annoying because it is only discovered later where these locations are.

I could imagine we can briefly reveal them for 0.1 seconds at the start of the game and hide them right afterwards again. This should leave a visual clue of removed fog of war on the minimap where to expect them, allowing for instant restarts.

That's even far better idea than my desire to get rid of this randomness completely.
Is this kind of scripting hard?

Edited May 1, 2023 by Loriens

[Loriens]

Why do we need ugly skip function at all?
Let's do it this way - you can click device from the very beginning of dialogue to spawn spell, if you do it outside correct time, ritual is broken and Umbabwe immediately spawns.
If you everything correct and in time you get small reward, useless for pro players, like additional Fire Tribes troops around.
Or let's say achievement - Perfect Ritual. Thus there will be only 1 time at all, when you will need to complete it.

Edited May 2, 2023 by Loriens