Print

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

[Cthulhu]

Flying car handwave:  People get killed in the thousands every year on regular highways, can you imagine if they were doing it 30 or 40 feet up in the air?


Anyway, I like the idea of primary and secondary attributes, so we've got the basic stuff

Muscle
Constitution
Coordination
Intelligence
Charisma
Willpower
Perception

(Something minor.  Coordination is really similar-looking to constitution.  I think the attributes should be differentiated a bit more, and I'm not opposed to the default STR, CON, DEX, INT, CHA, WIL, PER)

And then secondary attributes that are based on the others.

Reflexes - Ability to avoid danger and take advantage of momentary opportunities in combat, function of Coord and Perception

That's the only one I can think of at the moment.  Maybe not make them full-on attributes.  Also, while abstracting stats out is cool for NPCs and stuff, I'm a little leery of doing that for the player, and I think they should have a more detailed view of their character.

[Tellemurius]

you forgot luck, everyone needs luck or has luck just at different levels.

[Deon]

Luck should be a "hidden" stat . Like a hidden fun stuff. It should be affected by various stuff like amulets, praying and curses, but the player should not see it to avoid total metagaming. You can determine someone's reflexes, IQ, weight or strength but I doubt you can deteremine one's luck too easily, and let it be that way, it's more fun when a player carries some ear necklace around WITHOUT knowing if it adds something or not.

If you need a spritework, just ask. And I hope it does not end as a "spore roguelike".

Who's working on it again?

[Cthulhu]

Luck should be a "hidden" stat . Like a hidden fun stuff. It should be affected by various stuff like amulets, praying and curses, but the player should not see it to avoid total metagaming. You can determine someone's reflexes, IQ, weight or strength but I doubt you can deteremine one's luck too easily, and let it be that way, it's more fun when a player carries some ear necklace around WITHOUT knowing if it adds something or not.

If you need a spritework, just ask. And I hope it does not end as a "spore roguelike".

Who's working on it again?

This is supposed to be a realistic RPG as far as I know, I highly doubt stuff like amulets, praying, and curses will be implemented.

I'm not sure we need luck at all.  Successful criminals make their own luck.

[Soadreqm]

Also, while abstracting stats out is cool for NPCs and stuff, I'm a little leery of doing that for the player, and I think they should have a more detailed view of their character.

It'd definitely be helpful to see them as numbers during character generation, assuming you have control over that rather than just picking a pre-created job background out of a list. Which might be interesting, by the way. Make the character feel more like a part of the world.

But yeah, I don't really see a point in not displaying your own stats as numbers. It might help immersion, I guess. And numbers are clichéd, yes, but I don't really see why we should avoid that. Clichés become so because they work. There's enough novelty factor in the premise. As Mr. King's trolling efforts have proven, controversy is the best possible advertising. If the marketing department discovers that this looks too much like average roguelike #57 and nobody is interested, we can just add something horrible like eating fetuses. Add some concept art to the menu screen background of someone eating a fetus. Bam, instant fame.

Speaking of immersion, I'm not sure if the "developing psychological problems"-mechanic is a good idea. The various forms of madness are a cool feature, but they enforce this arbitrary barrier between the player and the character, and I don't think that should be a mandatory part of the game. I would suggest letting the player pick them at character generation, like CrimsonKing's mockup.

[Ochita]

This seems interesting. Are you going to include things like hollow-point and such? (Bullets)

[Grendus]

The problem with "developing psychoses" is that it's unrealistic. Hit men don't become serial killers, serial killers are mostly made in childhood (number one common trait is inconsistent discipline, according to an FBI study - either the discipline was completely random or ridiculously harsh). They may be drawn to that particular career choice due to their own desires, but it doesn't make them suddenly want to start killing more. However, if we assume your character has the general background to develop these things, what would be more likely to trigger them would be a stressor. Generally speaking, any non-genetic mental disorder is almost always preceded by a period of high stress. So for example, if your character is a thief, he might become a kleptomaniac after the death of a loved one, or after being nearly beaten to death by cops or something. A hit man with a serial killer background might suddenly hit on his fantasy (which was hidden from the player) and start suffering from stress and desire to do... something to that NPC he just saw. Fulfilling the fantasy would remove the stress, which would be very difficult to calm otherwise.

I think the problem with this simulator being a general crime simulator trying to pick up fame in the wake of the SKRoguelike is that serial killers are not normal killers. They kill for a reason nobody can understand, they do strange things to satisfy an internal urge that even the killers themselves don't know the source of, and they are rarely interested in what normal people would be. They can't be reasoned with like a normal human, the link between them and their victims has more to do with their internal fantasy and random chance, and they are often unable to control their actions unlike a regular criminal who could stop, albeit with some danger. Treating them like a normal criminal works for a game, but if, as Cthulhu says, you want realism they have to be treated as a third classification of human being - law abiding, criminals, and serial killers. Trying to model them with the same motivations as normal criminals won't get you the depth of immersion you're hoping for.

[Cthulhu]

I'm thinking we should just divorce entirely from the serial killer thing.

If you want to go be a serial killer, the framework would probably be able to handle it if we do the things we're planning on doing, but I don't see why we need to make it a full-on simulation seeing as we have all these other things we can do that aren't so alien to our normal non-crazy minds.

[Lap]

Amulets and magic? What?

think the problem with this simulator being a general crime simulator trying to pick up fame in the wake of the SKRoguelike is that serial killers are not normal killers.

I think it's a nonissue because SK's aren't the focus of this game. If they're in the game they'll just be gimmick characters. It'd be like playing a zombie in Rogue Survivor. Yea, you could do it and it might be fun, but that's not what the game was built around. If someone wants to make it really detailed it's a framework so you can easily add in detailed SK stuff with all the correct motivations, psychology and whatever else you want.

I'm thinking we should just divorce entirely from the serial killer thing.

SK's are just a blurb in class selections right now. It effects nothing we do until we decide to throw em in or leave them out at the end. Way more basic stuff needs to get done.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

I'm intrigued by this, but I'm not entirely confident in my programming abilities. I suppose I'll poke around TE4, and see if it makes sense. If I find I have the time and motivation to contribute, I'll see if there's anything I can help with.

[Lap]

It'll be a bit easier to play around with stuff when the basic foundation of our work is there. There's some things like inventory that aren't present in the example module.

Anyways, I've been tooling around and I implemented sprinting and sneaking as well as most of the stats we talked about. Haven't done anything with luck yet.

Location based damage is another thing that needs to be decided. Are people just blocks of HP's or can their limbs be targeted and mangled?

[Soadreqm]

On game terms, what would be the difference between a serial killer and a regular protagonist? They'll both be killing people, most of the time. Just the psychological thingamajigs that FORCE you to kill people in a particular way or suffer stat penalties? Yeah, that doesn't sound like it'd be too hard to do afterwards if someone feels like it.

As for the amulets and magic, well, there's a lot of settings you can pick for a crime-focused game. Assuming we want a modern time period, with guns but no robots, the sliding scale goes through:

Completely mundane: There is no God, magic isn't real, and you can die from stubbing your toe on an upright nail and getting a nasty infection which you can't get treated because the police are looking for you.
Action film: Presented as the previous, but really isn't. Some people can shrug off major injuries and perform superhuman feats of endurance and acrobatics. Some people might have unexplained, seemingly supernatural abilities, such as knowing when their loved ones are in danger, or winning at games of chance way more often than they statistically should. This is where a luck stat would start affecting something.
Somewhat plausible: Things like ghosts unambiguously exist, although more focused magic might still be an esoteric art left for NPC voodoo priests. Some people routinely cheat death. The Joker might have just been bleeding to death inside a burning building that exploded and then collapsed, but he's certainly going to come back.
Urban fantasy: The world only makes sense as long as you don't look at it too closely. In reality, there are secret societies of vampires and wizards and werewolves everywhere. Mythological creatures abound.

And of course anything between these, or any combination of any elements. Like a world where vampires rule the night but nothing else supernatural exists and plot-important people die in car accidents.

I don't think realism should be paramount. Nor should it be confused with detail. I think that for gameplay purposes, the protagonist should be more resilient than real humans are. And that having to deal with the vengeful dead would be cool. Actual charms and amulets and plus five vorpal handguns might very quickly become too silly, though. And getting the game to a point where you can attack an enemy and die should probably be a priority.

[Cthulhu]

I was thinking have a separate (invisible) HP value for each body part.  Maybe start with just head, torso, and limbs, but possibly eventually moving on to a more detailed set up.

Each body part would have a pretty high number for HP (To facilitate damage multipliers and stuff, which would get problematic if each limb only had 10 or 20 HP), and depending on the attack type and the body part being attacked bonuses, multipliers, etc. are added.

So, like, arms and legs would take more damage from slashing and blunt weapons because they're thin and easier to chop off.  The torso would take more damage from piercing weapons because it's full of organs, and the head should take high damage from anything.

Maybe at certain amounts of HP the performance of the limb degrades, or maybe certain attacks increase a value separate from the HP (Sort of like Deep Wounds in Lusternia.)  You do x hp damage, lowering the limb's HP; and y wound damage, increasing that value, and as y increases the risk of debilitating injury to the limb increases.

At 0 HP or certain wound effects the limb would be rendered useless, or the player killed if it were the head or torso, with various satisfyingly gory effects.

At least, that's what's been floating around in my head.

Ninja:  I say somewhere between mundane and action film.  Obviously no one wants to lose a character to something ridiculous like an infected toe stub, but otherwise realism.

[Ochita]

On game terms, what would be the difference between a serial killer and a regular protagonist? They'll both be killing people, most of the time. Just the psychological thingamajigs that FORCE you to kill people in a particular way or suffer stat penalties? Yeah, that doesn't sound like it'd be too hard to do afterwards if someone feels like it.

As for the amulets and magic, well, there's a lot of settings you can pick for a crime-focused game. Assuming we want a modern time period, with guns but no robots, the sliding scale goes through:

Completely mundane: There is no God, magic isn't real, and you can die from stubbing your toe on an upright nail and getting a nasty infection which you can't get treated because the police are looking for you.
Action film: Presented as the previous, but really isn't. Some people can shrug off major injuries and perform superhuman feats of endurance and acrobatics. Some people might have unexplained, seemingly supernatural abilities, such as knowing when their loved ones are in danger, or winning at games of chance way more often than they statistically should. This is where a luck stat would start affecting something.
Somewhat plausible: Things like ghosts unambiguously exist, although more focused magic might still be an esoteric art left for NPC voodoo priests. Some people routinely cheat death. The Joker might have just been bleeding to death inside a burning building that exploded and then collapsed, but he's certainly going to come back.
Urban fantasy: The world only makes sense as long as you don't look at it too closely. In reality, there are secret societies of vampires and wizards and werewolves everywhere. Mythological creatures abound.

And of course anything between these, or any combination of any elements. Like a world where vampires rule the night but nothing else supernatural exists and plot-important people die in car accidents.

I don't think realism should be paramount. Nor should it be confused with detail. I think that for gameplay purposes, the protagonist should be more resilient than real humans are. And that having to deal with the vengeful dead would be cool. Actual charms and amulets and plus five vorpal handguns might very quickly become too silly, though. And getting the game to a point where you can attack an enemy and die should probably be a priority.

If you could somehow make those go on a slider it would be amazing, however I will just say Action film to somewhat plausible

[Soadreqm]

It'll be a bit easier to play around with stuff when the basic foundation of our work is there. There's some things like inventory that aren't present in the example module.

Anyways, I've been tooling around and I implemented sprinting and sneaking as well as most of the stats we talked about. Haven't done anything with luck yet.

Location based damage is another thing that needs to be decided. Are people just blocks of HP's or can their limbs be targeted and mangled?

Ah, yes, the inventory. Shall it be a simple list with no indication as to how you are carrying all this crap, or a hermetic inventory management puzzle with pockets and backpacks with specific volumes and gun holsters at specific locations in your body and needing your hands free to pick things up and hiding lockpicks in your mouth?

I think location based damage would be good, if the engine bends to it. Then again, I'm a sucker for unnecessary detail, and absolutely adore Toady's system of keeping track of every scar.