Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Squeegy]

Nothing like throwing insects at adventurers.

[Armok]

GAAH! I thought this was about the story A Kobolds Quest.   x_x [/of topic]

[Squeegy]

Heh. Have you played the game, Armok?

[Armok]

One time, long ago when I played all the games just because they are made by Toady.

[Kagus]

I'm bringing this back to life.  Yes, that's right, I'm excercising my necromantic skills.  It's still a somewhat fresh corpse, but I've got to start somewhere.

Anyways, I just recently played a bit of Kobold Quest.  I've gotta say that I both love it and, in a way, hate it.  It's got so damn much potential that I can barely play it without my mind wandering off into what it could become.

There's not a whole lot to it, but I keep going back for more...  I guess those afterlife slugs left a bit of odorous resin on me, and I'm still having effects.

I always find myself down to that one last kobold after a while...  I can never keep the other guys alive.  I had a short stint where I had three alive for a while, but one guy eventually ran into a wall and was slaughtered and another one (a wrangler by that time) also got cornered after a good pit jammed at an essential moment.  The third guy went on to become a warlord and slay several arrogant peasants with thrown bugs (I think he actually killed three or four by himself just with tossed bugs).  He was slain by an adventurer who dodged three pits, one of which had a measly two bugs, another with a more respectable four bugs, and my failsafe pit with six bugs in it.

That adventurer went on to become a knight and slay a mighty overlord, along with a lich and a few other assorted monsters.

It's a bother getting three or four bugs in a pit, ever tried six?  Took me ages.

I keep thinking about how it could be made into something more.  I'm definitely no good at commanding a warren full of kobolds, especially one at a time, so some sort of automation would be wonderful.  Perhaps you play as just one kobold, aiding your clan in the defense of the little cave?  Get special abilities related to your chosen path (blue or red), and have some way of getting those damned bugs to stay in the pit for a few seconds???

I know that Kobold Quest isn't going to go beyond what it is now, but it's still fun to think about it.  More fun than trying to figure out how to replicate it in DF, anyways.

I am also delighted with the fact that I managed to do away with one of my previous adventurers.  Eme, the cutpurse, met his end in the second kobold cave he came across.  Stung by a hell worm, bringer of nightmares.

I love the random creatures.

EDIT:  Oh, did I mention that I've got it running in the background so I can listen to that music?

[ April 30, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]

[Toady One]

Yeah, it's too bad.  I think X was going to give some of the adventurers diverse powers when they start specializing, but that was back when it came out.  It could also recount some of their scorelist adventures in more randomized detail (it'll just pick boss monsters with subordinates now as you can see in the raws).  As for the actual game, yeah, allowing you to set an AI for each kobold would be good, even if it's just to give them an option to snatch up a bug when they see one and return to a spot.  It would also be good if you did gain more powers to be worth those extra XP it displays for you.  Right now, you're just worth extra XP on the name alone, which is sad.

[ April 30, 2008: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Kagus]

Well, the source is still out there, so there's always a chance that some new dedicated nutcase could pick it up and work on it.  It is kinda funny having the XP essentially just show you how much you're worth to the adventurers, seems very fitting somehow.  

Lessee...  What all can we dream up to slap onto Kobold Quest...  Trainable war maggots?  Bag-O'-Bugs reloadable trap?  

As far as actual suggestions, some kind of notoriety system would be nice.  That, combined with more traps, both placeable and natural (like the pits), would make for a very interesting difficulty change.  You start out with random wildlife checking out the cave, and then some peasant wanders in and gets his face melted off by a moon scorpion, bane of worlds, and then it works up from there with more peasants, hopeful adventurers, town guardsmen, and so on and so forth until you get your ears handed to you by a spell-slinging mage and a paladin companion with his +3 divine two-handed sword of smiting.  

I encountered something interesting in the game.  You can apparently "bait" pits with kobolds, although this isn't recommended unless you've got a bug-stuffed pit to work with.  In order to kill a kobold, a peasant has to walk onto its tile.  If the kobold happens to be standing on a pit, the peasant makes a check against the pit before hitting the kobold, and if he fails you get one giggling kobold and one very dead adventurer.

By the way, love the voices.

[Toady One]

Actually being able to go out and swipe stuff in little pregenerated town maps would be fun, but it might be too far afield.  It would give you something additional to do with your cave though, and you could bring a creepy critter or two along for the ride.  It reminds me of the forest spirit game we were going to do where you play a wispy sort or spirit that lures away children that get lost in the woods near villages and then sylvanizes them and has them lead armies of mutated forest beasts back to destroy the town but that got folded into DF future plans, pretty much.

[Kagus]

Can't wait to see it.  Sounds like great fun.

One thing would be going out and stealing things yourself, which would require an actual world to steal from and adventure in.  Another thing would be to send out a few of your AI kobolds to go on a raid of their own, and perhaps bring something interesting back.  This would let you get away with having them just disappear for a while and then come back with great rewards (or, y'know, not), without actually needing a world to do it in.  You'd sacrifice having a few helpers in the cave for the prospect of great riches coming back in, like a rusted short sword or some berries.

[DDouble]

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
<STRONG>Actually being able to go out and swipe stuff in little pregenerated town maps would be fun, but it might be too far afield.  It would give you something additional to do with your cave though, and you could bring a creepy critter or two along for the ride.  It reminds me of the forest spirit game we were going to do where you play a wispy sort or spirit that lures away children that get lost in the woods near villages and then sylvanizes them and has them lead armies of mutated forest beasts back to destroy the town but that got folded into DF future plans, pretty much.</STRONG>

Please tell me this is the secret project! It's like being a zombie lord, but more hippy friendly...eco-zombies I guess. This sounds really fun!

[Toady One]

Nah, it's not.  We actually started it back a couple years agoish, and you could move the wisp around and get the kids to follow you into mushroom circles where they'd be suspended.  And you could grow flowers and otherwise beautify your woods.  We were just starting up the town with the humans logging some of the trees when we were sort of looking at the plans for it and thought it would just work out a lot better with everything else in DF to back it up, so it was stopped.  It was called Little Lord Animals.

[McDoomhammer]

Sounds awesome.

[Puzzlemaker]

Well, downloaded the game.  Totally going to edit the source.  Fun fun.  I have few ideas of easy things to implement.

[Kagus]

Such as?  Please tell me we've found our kobold messiah, dear Puzzler.

[Puzzlemaker]

quote:Originally posted by Kagus:
<STRONG>Such as?  Please tell me we've found our kobold messiah, dear Puzzler.</STRONG>

Well, for instance, there is already code for adventurers to wander around, see something, and charge at someone.

This can easily be copy+pasted, then modified so instead it makes kobolds wander around, if they see a bug they pick it up, if they see an adventurer and they are holding a bug they throw the bug, and if they aren't holding a bug they run from the guy.

From there, maybe a system involving "Shinies".

No promises though.  I don't have too much free time, and I don't know if I can even get it to compile.