Plantman Specs-
Start out as a flower by The Forest Heart, in some forest quest somewhere.
Press A to toggle the Change Bodies menu - move yourself as a cursor to another nearby playerless plants to take it over-you can go into other levels, but it has to be within 10 tiles.
Press S to attack
Press Q to toggle the Spawn New Node menu - creates a new plant within a radius of 10 tiles from your current body. This costs the plantman equivalent of gralats(or MP? Bombs?), Life Points-they slowly increase the longer you stay in one body, then stall out for a while after you change.
D to regenerate, I guess.

Plant Types:
Flower-Watch other players. Totally invulnerable. You get Life Points quickly in this form. Generally dissolves when abandoned.
Venus Flytrap-bite other players. Can only take a few hits. Regenerates slowly, expensive to spawn, can only move and attack inside a 3-square radius (tethered).
Bramble/Rosebush-slash other players with thorned vines. Cannot move at all, can attack within 5 square radius, less effective than a Flytrap bite, less expensive too.
Tumbleweed-can move freely, but cannot attack. Cannot regenerate, turns into a flower when destroyed. Very expensive.
Lillypad-like a tumbleweed, but only works in water.
Allergy-The most expensive form, sort of a Swamp Thing/Tree Man/Ent body. Can move anywhere a human can, slow, powerful, regenerates quickly, but you get no life points in this form. Turns into a flower when destroyed.
Spitter-Like the flytrap, but it fires arrows. Takes ten seconds to charge each one, max of 30.
Tree-mostly just to be a wall, it's a big flower that blocks and can be destroyed eventually.
Forest Heart-Even more expensive than Allergy. If you make one of these, you're independant from the other plant men and get a whole lot more life points per turn. You can also inhabit it to allow other plantmen to join your kingdom. When it's destroyed, you go back to the main collective's control.

one of the big advantages of this race is that they're an instant quest for everyone else: Just set the forest heart so that when it's destroyed, nobody gains life points for a week while it regenerates, and everyone there gets a fullheart/Bomy health...

Thoughts? It's way different than Graalian or Bomy, I hope it wouldn't be deathlessly boring for the average Graalian, living as a immobile plant and slowly gathering strength to take over the world...I imagine while some would stay in the forest, others might declare independance, set up their own bases, maybe put the forest heart in the depths of their kingdom's stronghold and act as its defenses. Since any node that is uninhabited goes under AI control, they're a great defensive race...constantly evolving, becoming stronger....

And here's a concept sketching of it, layered 16.7 million color png...probably gonna have to save and open this one, but it's easier to extract the sprites this way. ^_~

if joo cant move around there is no point :(:(:(
it sounds really cool
but you cant move around *control+T*

You can move from body to body, and some bodies can move around regularly.

ocool

yes

So should I make it freeserver-style and hope someone with NPCServer skillz is inspired enough to translate it? ^^;

I think it should move by traveling under ground:obut everyone hates me, so blah!

*hate* Grrr....

who designed those plantmen? they look cool =D what server are they for?

I did with some other guys who seem to have vanished, G2K1, and the original idea I think was that they go from one plant to another by roots, which is why you have the 10-radius limit.

Should probably be 1-radius for moving ones? Except lillypads I guess, they need to be able to jump walls

swinging vines and stuff, like there stem connects the head and it can swing around... and stuff... wut am I talking about? oh well, everyone hates me:o

nice idea
peco

Start status: Flower
Commands (Weapons): S-Attack
A-Change Bodies
--Move to a body within 10 and hit A when your "cursor" lights up
--hit D to just return to your Forest Heart; useful when under attack, or when stranded.
D-Cancel (usually grayed out), Special Attack.
Q-Spawn New Node Menu-either your actual weapons screen, or a pseudo screen, either works.
--Spawn Flower: Cost 20, gain rate=2x, cannot attack, invulnerable. This is the default form. You can make a chain of flowers to get across vast stretches of land, but unless you know where you're going, you might want a movable body.
--Spawn Tree: Cost 200, gain rate=*1.5, cannot attack, 5 hearts, regen rate=1x. A living wall.
--Spawn Tumbleweed(Gnome? Sprite?)/Lillypad: Cost 50, gain rate=/4, cannot attack, 3 hearts, no regeneration. This is the cheapest mode of transportation. When destroyed, turns into a Temp Flower; the tumbleweed turns into one wherever it lies, but the lillypad warps back to the forest heart. Temp Flowers are just like Spawned Flowers, but they destroy themselves when you leave-it's basically so you don't get totally stranded.
--Spawn Bramble: Cost 100, gain rate=1x, attack=1, 4 hearts, regen rate=/2. In this form you're basically a 4-heart newbie with 2 really big newbie swords in the form of thorny vines which swing around you when you attack, or both in one direction if you press a direction when firing.
--Spawn Flytrap: Cost 150, gain rate=1x, attack=2, 4 hearts, regen rate=/4. You can actually move a little in this form although you are tethered, and you have the equivalent of a blood axe with which to snap at players.
--Spawn Spitter: Cost 150, gain rate=1x, attack=special, 4 hearts, regen rate=/4, reload rate=1 arrow/10 seconds. All you can do in this form is change directions and fire arrows; you are allowed to move like the Flytrap, but only within a couple tiles. You can hold up to 30 arrows, and the body gets another one every 10 seconds-you don't get to take them with you.--Spawn Allergy: Cost 350, gain rate=/4, attack=3, 5 hearts, regen rate=1x. This is the big draw; once you've been a plantman long enough you can become this ultimate killing machine. They're pretty slow though, and turn into a temp flower when destroyed, natch.
--Spawn ManOfWar: Cost 600, gain rate=/4, attack=special, 3 hearts, regen rate=0.5x. This body is a cross between a spitter and a lillypad....the rest should be sort of obvious, uh? When destroyed in the water, you return to a temp flower at the forest heart.
--Spawn Forest Heart: Cost 1000, gain rate=+1 bonus to spawner, no attack, 20 hearts, regen rate=1.5x. The oldest and most patient plantmen can create their own breakaway colony by creating their own Forest Heart. Like a Bomy creating a kingdom basically, and compatible with them; you place your Forest Heart in the Dustari Castle and expand defenses out from there. Only the leader of the Forest can enter the Forest Heart; for the default Forest, there is no leader, for the other kingdoms the creator is the leader. From the Forest Heart you can invite members to join your Forest, banish accounts from your Forest, and set another account as ruler of your kingdom. When your Forest Heart is destroyed, all players in your Forest revert to the default Forest; when the default Forest Heart is destroyed, the rate goes down to /4 for a Graal week while it respawns.
--Join Forest: Only appears when a Forest Owner selects to invite your account into their forest. Selecting it displays the Owner and the invitation message, firing it changes your alliance and warps you to their Forest Heart as a Temp Flower. (You are not allowed to keep your old body, that belongs to the other Forest! The points are yours to keep though)

Sounds nice and like ready to be implemented :)
The only thing that might be a problem is do you
have something to do besides morphing and attacking?
May be it should be like a subworld or a special
server? Subworld like each player has a plant
representation in the flower world and can switch
there by using some item

Maybe a strategy game could be made.

yeah the flower world hidden to protect the gaia where all the magic plants live peacefully and have evolved to help make gaia grow stronger by produce enrgy for it. the human-flower could be in the labs as a discovery

One of the things I am thinking of is, perhaps another form would be wood sprites? Maybe instead of the tumbleweed, they can play as a wood sprite, a little green garden gnome that is treated like a Bomy by all scripts, so they can still do everything a Bomy can do...or maybe a human, but it would be so small!
And/Or the Allergy form can do everything a Human can do...their primary function is to be a defensive race, they live to defend the colony, so buying a bow and a bomy pet are irrelevant. Of course, if they use gralats for life points (1 gralat=10 life points?), they could be PKed and PK others for wealth, perhaps as you've said they could also use The Forest Heart as the entrance to their RootWorld? In the RootWorld they go around as wood sprites and can buy and sell upgrades for life points, say, get an upgrade for 500 gralats (A shield), and any body they are in gets extra armor, or an upgrade to do more damage, ooh, or an upgrade to spit fireballs in Spitter mode! That could certainly work...
The trouble is that most of these purchase options are in the Q menu, you buy the spitters and flytrap bodies, etc...but you can get most of those for free if they're available, so it is tricky.

Hm. Seems like I'm the only one still working on it. Oh well, spent a little time doing the graphics for the Forest Heart, Flower and Spitter...the coding should take me roughly forever....=_=

looks like something of mario

Here's where it is now...as you can see, I've got some work to do! Need to make better selection system, etc...graphics!=my strong suit

When there's 9 flowers all connected in a square, the middle one can press something and merge to make a SUPERFLOWER! :D

I like the idea.
The pictures look like something out of Yoshi's Story, but it's still good.

Yeah, like I said though, my graphics skills are nonexistant...it'll be good enough for a template anyway. I should probably get back on this thing, I stopped when the spitter kept hitting the player...

2 years later - PW hosting's up and the idea revives. ^___^

What?!?

Whoa, I hardly remember this, wait are you saying you're going to finish this? *gives cookie*

well, it would have been nice then, the coding would have took a little longer back then, now it shouldnt be too hard, still a nice idea

That was the plan. I got someone who offered to make all the graphics, but he's since backed out. I might develop it on Graalympus as a sub-world, a minigame or something. I have a project or two to wrap up first, naturally, but I think I can get this old fossil running again.

Nice Nice.
Let me get eaten by plants, as a beta tester.

Yeah, I'll probably have a trick to getting in and post the directions here so anyone who cares can beta test.

Yeah ill be all over that

And you can just walk by my plant, Spark :eek:

Here's the sprite sheet so far. It's kinda rough, but I thought I'd get some feedback before finishing it up. No spot for the ManofWar, but I figure that'll just be a direct amalgam of spitter and lillypad anyway.

Hey, the Tree should have things coming out of the bottom of it, like big nasty vines, so its more interesting other than red eyes, that would make it cool then.

Looks good Thym. This is one of the better ideas I have seen.
I would be glad to help you with graphics.
If you want me help email me here, [email protected] with your aim name so we can chat over aim :)

Euh, maybe. But I don't want people getting the impression they can attack with the tree, because they can't.

MadWolf, ever since DarkCloud decided he was immune to the Distributing Personal Information About The Admins clause my AIM's been invitation only, so it wouldn't help much; I'd need yours first. Good to know there's yet another graphician that's willing to help out...that's what, the third one this thread? ^_^

Updated graphics. Guess I'll start on ganis. If anyone wants to be the king graphician they can finish up the sheet - fill in a tumbleweed in the Roll section (it rotates 60 degrees each frame, and reversing the animation reverses the roll obviously, so it's only a horizontal roll and a vertical. If I had a decent pattern I could do it with a gradient overlay and the Spherize tool, but I don't), fill in the Forest Heart with 3 frames of animation, and the spitter (basically the same layout as the flytrap, but spitting arrows instead of biting; if you scroll back, I usually depict it as a flower pursed up. The first two frames are idle, the third frame is only used for the spitting animation). Then I can generate 10-12 sprite sheets by color-rotating this thing and we'll be all set.

Updated again. Mostly fixes and I added a layer of leaves to the bottom for death animations.

It all sounds pretty cool. I'd probably design it slightly differently, but that's just a matter of individual style. If you need someone to script anything interesting (and ideally clientside - that's where all the fun is) that doesn't require much effort, I'm your guy :cool:

Dig it. Right now I'm mired in GaniLand, but if I get out yeah, I'm probably gonna need GUI stuff.

It's a very uhh.. unique idea ^ ^
I didn't know you worked so much for Graal2001
i thought you worked on Classic.