Shaking background tiles like grass, for example, probably won't look good. It will be possible to replace tiles, so for example grass into the dirt, wooden floor into the cracked wooden floor, etc. I'm considering if this should be tied to damage or animations.
For example, the starting "crater" with dirt tiles and broken trees, I think it would be cool if something like this would be the effect of earthquake ability.
I see. Wondering if making small adjustments to fire tile height (like in the case of Fire Pillar) over slow intervals (when animations would play anyways?) if it would have a satisfying effect. Essentially Height and Color representing intensity of "environmental fire". From a post you made earlier it sounds like you could be grappling with that question already :P
In my experience I tended to use Earthquake in the exact same spot repeated times, it'd be neat if it caused a progressively deeper/bigger crater the more you use it in the same location.
I can see the height manipulation working for the Mammoth Walk you mentioned, we'll see. :)
Animations have elevation too, the meteor is an example where it flies from the sky to the ground, but for the flames I see something like that the other way around. Particle emitter would generate glyphs that would go up and disappear after a moment, so the intensity of flames could be conveyed with intensity of such glyphs too.
Ahh cool, I hadn't even considered glyphs moving freely and being emitted like particles. Brain still leaning towards being stuck in traditional ASCII representation mindset :P Quite the interesting engine you've built already, I expected a lot more of the thoughts that have been thrown at you overall would be outside of viability.
I've seen you've been elsewhere concerned about telegraphing to new players their context in the world. I'm guessing as the engine is basically now you'd be able to, on game start, render some animations before the character can input actions? Thinking an intro in some variable order of
1)Meteor/Godsoul crashes towards ground/character's 'host'
2)Crater is created, depending upon race/class combination influence spreads out in the immediate zones area, e.g. necromancer kills trees in radius from impact zone, physical classes get a shockwave that knocks trees over, inquisitor/warlock spread some form of fire/magic
My 'head canon' imagined that above was happening already :P The main problem I see with this is first impressions for new players. If anything actually manages to get killed in the shockwave, would they get exp? If fires start spreading or something otherwise creates a hazard, I could see this leading to a quick information overload and an "ahhh what's happening???"
Yes eventually I want what you described, the animation could be played right now at the beginning, but the crater creation can't be done until v0.3.
As for the fire spreading, potential issues with killing something on initial destruction, it's going to be challenging to balance gameplay and squeeze as much fun from it as possible, but we'll figure it out. You guys will be like "I want this torch to burn the whole forest", and I'll be like "no, no you can burn one tree", and then we settle on a couple of tiles. ;)
Oh we're going to break much more than the forests and the fires I assure you :) Related to that, I'm not sure if you've seen it before or even have the time with everything on your plate, but I think this blog post from the creator of Rimworld concerning storytelling and emergent complexity in game systems might be interesting to you:
https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TynanSylvester/20130602/193462/The_Simulation_Dream.php
Sometimes I disagree with Tynan's conclusions but I think it has some particularly relevant considerations with what you're working on now.
I've read it, and I've seen his GDC talk about storytelling. I've heard about the Ultima ecology story before too. It's easy to get into a trap of simulating everything. I still have a spreadsheet with about 50 types of food for Soulash. Well, the game was supposed to be a trading game then so it made "some" sense. Game development is magic. Smoke and mirrors essentially. :)
