You thought I had stopped. Wrong! Here are some comments and/or ideas on the next release and on some things needed...
"Mayhem Visits the Quaint Thorpe"
/Real Buildings (with Doors and Windows!)
|City Walls
|Roads
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These are nice, and they don't seem THAT hard to program.
I suppose that a building/wall could be considered somewhat like
a BIG item that is on the ground, while roads are just alterations
to the ground by trampling it(like making trampled dirt roads)or
by placing stone blocks on them.
Also you should start implementing the concept of "ownership"on
these things, so If you try to destroy these buildings(not impossible
if you are a titan or a strong human with a pickaxe)the owners and/or guards.
I would also like VERY much if you would allow the player to construct his
own buildings. This would use an interface similar to the current one for making
pants/shirts and so on, but to build an house you would most probably
use wood. You might use stone if you managed to get some from the ground(pickaxes
again!). Of course building a big villa complete with a swimming isn't easy, but
then all that I'm asking is to be able a little hut or a wooden cottage. Obviously
WILL also require a lot of time in addition to work. It's not like you can patch
two or three wooden planks together and then have a nice home.
|Put in some decent creature AI (or at least begin)
|Starting conversation interface with shops
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AI is important, but for the moment we can be happy with 'decent'AI, as you
say. Basic AI would, for hostile creatures, be mostly knowing when to attack,
when to retreat and where to aim their blows. Guards would try to kill
a player who steals from shops. There should be some kind of legal system...
but that's for the future!
About AI, it might also be nice to put some complex spell that allowed
you to charm creatures into following your orders. Charming shopkeepers
would be a way to steal, but the guards might not like this use of magic...
Regarding conversations, some basic things that should be in would be
asking for directions, asking for local shops, local creatures and so on.
You should also be able to at least TRY to barter with anyone.
|Weapon and armor stores
|Combat style teachers
|Magic shops
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We REALLY need to be able to buy and/or make some different kinds of armor
and weapons. We need different types and forms of swords, daggers, knives,
axes, spears, halberds, maces, hammers, and maybe flails and whips.
For armor, we should also have helms(possibly open-faced), boots,
gauntlets and leg-guards. These could be done in many ways.
You could make an extra-thick shirt or pair or pants and call
it 'cloth armor', use the skins of tough creatures to make hide armor
or you could make more complex armors like chain and scale mail(that would
make dragon hunting useful, but scales can also be made of bone or wood).
Plate mail would also be appreciated. Also, shields should be in,
The problem is...how would the player build the more complex armors in-game?
That would require the addition of mining and forging...And these would probably
very complex things.
Some ideas for basic enchantments on magic items. Since this is a wonderfully
complex game, we can't have things like a +1 sword or a +4 armor of deflection.
No! We need things that somewhat make sense..
armor:
increased durability/hardness, reduced mass(these refer to the armor...not to the wearer!)
boosting strength by some amount, making areas covered by the armor heal faster
weapons:
increased durability & hardness(that would simulate a plus to damage, by virtue
of allowing you to penetrate armor and tough skin. also, when real parrying will be
in, you will be able to cut lesser weapons), increased edge for beheadings and mutilations
with a 'blade of sharpness',
striking part(not the hilt, hopefully!)being red-hot or freezing and causing appropriate wounds, arrows that fly farther and explode on contact, items that return back to you when you throw them, draining stats, blood or energy.
'Slaying'weapons could probably work with reactions. For example a DragonSlayer(TM)
sword would be set up to dissolve and/or burn the dragon's flesh once in contact with it.
Also it would be nice to have sullies.
other items(rings, amulets, articles of clothing):
increased durability & hardness...ON THE WEARER'S body, improved healing rate,
making the wearer not bleed(Excalibur's scabbard had this),
boosting stats by some non-trivial but nice amount(+10 for a decent item
sounds Ok to me).
Also note that in most RPGs you can't get the effects from more than 2 rings.
In armok we should be able to do so! The only limit to how many rings you can wear
and get magic effects from should only be the ones that can fit around your
fingers and toes, and you could also have the rings adapted to be earrings.
All magic items might have a chance to emit light or to have symbols floating around them.
And some items could be "activale", that is not always on. They might have charges,and
once they are finished you can just throw the item away, or the charges might be
restored by a magician, some strange ritual or just with time. For example
you could have a talisman that once per day allowed you to become a giant(doubling
all your dimensions and giving appropriate strength bonuses to support your now
massive weight)without bursting your armor, or a sword that, in addition to being
very sharp, could also detonate enemies on command.
|Curses (undead, etc.)
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Yup. You would(should) be able to be a vampire, a zombie, a mummy or
a ghost, or you could meet them in your travels. Or you could
use some corpse processing + spell. It's not that hard:
for a mummy, you would have to clean it by removing all rottable things
like organs, washing the body and then having it dry in the sun. Then
you would embalm it or something and cast your spell, and you would have
a servant who is much stronger, faster and tougher than a zombie, but
not more intelligent(and somewhat more vulnerable to fire).
Being a ghost could also be simply done as just being a soul without the body,
but capable of using some specific magics(like telekinesis).
When the player slays a very important NPC we could have it, after some day,
turn into a Revenant and hunt the player. Might be a nice surprise!
Lycantropy/theriantropy would also be nice, but I suppose that actual
morphing is much later in the list. And we would need actual moon phases.
There should also be many non-undeath non-turn-into-a-man-eating-monster-at-full-moon
curses. These could also be simple things, for example being attacked by relatively
pacific animals(yup. attacked by rabbits and ants. scared?),
Cursed items...I might have placed this under the above section but still...Anyway,
unlike other games we could have cursed items that you can remove or throw
away if you want, but that you WON'T easily know are cursed, or that compensate
the curse with good bonuses. Or perhaps they are actually items with great powers,
but every time you use time it costs them something, like you loose 1 from all
your mental stats, or you the item drains blood from you.
some cursed item effects: decrease stats, gradually becoming smaller and smaller,
rings that crush your fingers, amulets of strangulation, armor of stritulation,
I hope someday we can have the game generate great artifact with apprpriate
drawbacks. Think to Stormbringer. It DID try to control it's wielder and do things
that aren't nice, but still it was a very powerful item, able to penetrate most
armor and damage outerworly creatures, not to mention the main power, that of
absorbing the vitality of your adversaries.
|Correct Post-Travel Mode Placement
|Refine the Civilization Entities
|Add Local Civilizations below the World Level
|Fix some strangely placed building bugs (yet to be created bugs, but there will be some)
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Nice things too. I haven't got much to say on these, honestly.
I would like to see some bandits, travelers and highwaymen on the round, though,
and for people in different towns to wear different kind of things and carry
different types of armor and sell different things and so on...
SOME GENERIC COMMENTS:
This release will, hopefully make the game MUCH more enjoyable and allow some kind of continuity and REAL meaning to the game. You might be gain money by selling off
body parts of animals, or chooping trees(how would you carry the trunk, though?
if you are an human you should be able to use some sort of 'drag'mode).
You could then buy some nice, useful items, especially armor and weapons, but
you might also be able to create them yourself.
Also, since we are going to have curses and some character continuity...
THINGS THAT WERE IN THE PLAN FOR "You Finally Aren't Naked":
GENERIC THINGS TO DO FOR THE NEXT RELEASE:
Descriptions for body parts. They are there in the encyclopedia, but
not in-game for severed limbs and organs.
Add waiting options like "wait until sunrise"or "wait until sunfall". This
is useful for creatures that turn that turn to stone during the day, and then
it's irrealistic for them to have to wait in 8 hours chunk instead of just when
they regain movement. This wouldn't be that useful for shadow demons, assuming
they found a place to hide during the day, because how could they notice when it's
actual sunrise?(perhaps by watching outside from the cave but it might be dangerous).
Some creatures could actually have perfect timing or an internal clock and thus
would be able to wait until precise times.
Fix the Editors to appear in ALL resolutions, both in full screen and in windowed
mode.
Allow a preview for the player deformations. Also, It might be nice
(and possibly not that hard) for customizzation to allow the starting player
to have symbols on some body parts...that is, tattos!.
Not THAT important but would look nice.
Also allow 'blank'symbols, and then when they are used in game you could
select their color.
Symbols might also look nice if we found a way to put them on armor/weapons:
something like the smith's signature, for example, or the symbol of a certain army.
And they are VERY important things for things like flags and a Knight's shield.
Also, it would not be bad if we allowed the player to make his simbols using
colors and a 'Painting'(or 'Drawing'skill). They player would simply use
a modified symbol editor in game, but he would be limited by the size of
the thing he is painting on and the colors he possesses. Colors would
be obtained mostly from plants(berries) and minerals, but you could use other substances
as well... "Wow, that shade of red looks like REAL blood." The actual design
that would appear on the item would be somewhat modified by the player tools
and/or dexterity. Also a design could be stored in the player's memory.
Sculpture might be somewhat harder to do, but I can think of a nice way:
It would be done by starting from a block of some hard material(usually stone,
but also bronze or bone)and then crafting it either from memory or model, for example making a sculpture of that dragon you slew, or part-by-part, with an editor
that would allow you to make abstract figures, like a four-armed humanoid and so on.
Music is mentioned in the Future page under "Interface".
"Perhaps in certain contexts the player might play notes on an instrument. These could be played through the speakers for added effect... will have to look into it."
This doesn't look that HARD, compared to other things you did. We could also
associate specific notes and generated sounds to animals, but also to cultures, so
for example different civilizations/subcultures would automatically make musics with
different moods, notes and rhym. A war march would sound very different from a
drinking song!
Fix the starting material for weapons.
Some of the densities for materials are off. I may have already said this,but..
(pure)Gold is 19.3
Platinum is 21.45
Mercury is 13.6
Silver is 10.5
Ice has a density somewhat lower than that of Liquid Water. Probably around
0.95
Copper is 8.93
Nickel-Iron might be right at 7.4, but pure Iron is around 7.86
Also it would be nice to start thinking about the possibilities of basic
"alloys"with properties derived from the % of materials forming them.
Of course, you can't make alloys with everything. In the editor we could simply
select with which materials a material might be alloyed with. THEN we could
choose if the alloys properties are generated completely using some kind of calculations
OR we can customize the alloy while still allowing for different % of metals.
This is important not only for various kinds of steel, but also for
currencies...
So for example we could have different coins with different percentages of
gold and silver(from what I know, in the ancient world and in the Dark Ages all coins
had value because of the material they were made of - not because of the authority of the state who minted them).
Some smart guy might even try to cheat merchants by minting his coins using a much
lesser percentage of gold. Of course since most merchants aren't fools they could
check the coin's weight using a scale.
In Item Editors:
Implement components that are actually more than one part. Without this, you
can't do things like scale and chain mails.
[ August 27, 2005: Message edited by: Zonk ]
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Topic: A New Rant (Read 14123 times)