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[Sowelu]

Current progress as of 11/14/2010:



New version.  20101114d is user controllable:  Click your guys, tell them where to go.  Select someone by clicking on their feet, or by clicking on their portrait, or by pressing 1 through 4.  Space to pause/unpause.  When you have someone selected, click anywhere to go there, "F" -> click to flee there (same as walking but won't autoengage), "A" -> click an enemy to target that enemy.

There's a few unpleasant graphical glitches, and many grid-related issues.  Right now all movement occurs on a grid, but I am going to rip that out completely and replace it with something more true to the original and less glitchy.

But for now, I'm essentially done with combat.  I'm going to move on to adventure mode / cards, now.  Once you can ditz around in town, I'll start linking that back to combat and implementing a proper party.

Grab it here.  .NET 4.0 runtime is here.  SdlDotNet runtime is here.

-------------

What it says on the tin.  Reasonably faithful to the original re: combat and CYOA-style interactions.  Improvements:  The possibility to be evil, better balance, a whackton more intriguing puzzles and things that need proper non-dull investigation, reduction of grind if possible, and let me throw in my own idea here--maybe some enhancement to the 'leave a party member behind' so you can let a wounded guy rest for a while and keep adventuring and have him meet up in another town, then leave a couple other guys there to study religion and saints and stuff while your beefy guys stab some bandits.  I dunno.

Like six people were talking about it in the "bad games that need sequels" thread, so I'll throw this out here and see if anyone bites.

Needs programmers first, and ideally folks with solid experience in designing and holding together long-term projects.  I'm sure not going to do it alone, but I'd happily do some chunks.  Any volunteers?

[G-Flex]

Some people on the old Yahoo Groups mailing list/group thing for Darklands were talking about that, but not in any way I could get behind. I think one of them seriously wanted to do something in the Oblivion engine, and... no.


I would personally rather just have Darklands with the same gameplay paradigm, but with more content and problems taken care of.

CHARACTERS

• More balance in terms of skill gain. Some skills (Woodwise, Ride) are extremely difficult to gain, yet others (weapon skills) are extremely easy. The relative usefulness of skills might also have to be called into question, without borking the realism of anything.
• Better balance in terms of attributes. In Darklands, it's way too important that everybody in your party be extremely buff and durable (read: High Str/End is mandatory even for your priest-healer-dude). Also, the starting backgrounds (craftsman, peasant, nobility, etc.) have different starting attribute values, and lower attribute values are NEVER worth additional money or career opportunities, seeing as how you never get to actually increase attributes (with the exception of the Schrat quest).
• Being able to actually backtrack during chargen. I don't think you could do this. It would be nice to be able to go back to the previous step without starting over, or better yet, see all career steps at once in a sort of flowcharty fashion, to get the big picture and make it easier to plan things out. Between this and the previous two suggestions, if implemented well, I think chargen could be as organic and effortless as they intended, or at least close to it.
• Slightly more lenient age-related penalties. They're just freaking harsh as it stands. Maybe this would be less important given the above points, but they're still harsh. I'll explain more in detail below.

WORLD CONTENT

• More content! Someone in the other thread mentioned political intrigue being a planned thing for the never-released sequels, and that interests me. Fleshing out the political and religious organizations in general would be nice, so that the world really feels like a world, and not just a collection of random towns with loose associations between them.
• More/less reason to do certain activities. Raubritters brought in way too much loot and reward money, and some quests (like the fetch quest type things) hardly get you squat but are still painstaking.
• Speaking of which, less obvious "THIS VILLAGE IS FREAKING EVIL" flashing sirens in your face. It should take some effort or knowledge to recognize that a village is evil, even if that just means knowing which saints are fake.
• More and better puzzles! I really like the dwarven puzzles, but more variety would be nice, although staying away from annoying adventure-game style stuff might be advisable. Or maybe not, since if the game were to have more content, you'd be able to avoid them without missing out on as much of the game.

ITEMS/INVENTORY

• Make armor quality less annoying. It was a royal pain in the ass to have to carry around multiple sets of armor because there was literally no way of repairing it if some dumbass vulcan shot fire at it twice. Perhaps armor should have current/max quality instead, or something like that, so it can actually be repaired, and make fairly few effects lower max quality (or have it only drop if the current quality drops too low)?
• Better weapon balance. Not that the balance wasn't mostly realistic (and it was pretty detailed, too), but there was almost no reason to use plenty of weapons, even cost-wise.
• More in-game info on what the weapons and armor actually freaking do. Very little of this is presented in-game; for most of it, you have to look at the cluebook (which is thankfully at least available in PDF form).
• Carried weight should matter. As-is, you can carry eighty suits of plate armor no matter how weak you are, as long as you aren't wearing them. It should count for something. Maybe give the player some sort of cart/wagon/other device to hold more outside of combat?

OTHER

• Better graphics. This probably goes without saying, but any modern remake of Darklands needs to have higher-resolution graphics. Even in its own engine, it rightfully ought to have included more player character sprites than it did (4 or 5? Seriously?). Not that it would have to be in 3D or anything, but still.
• A better user interface. As mentioned above, more information needs to be given, and it also needs to be given in a better manner in some places. Character control in combat (and inventory control) could be better managed through well-applied use of mouse controls, pop-up menus, and so forth.
• Better AI. In some cases, the AI just fails completely. For instance, if a ranged-weapon character (e.g. an alchemist throwing potions) gets out of line-of-sight with you, it forces him into melee mode... even if you eventually get back into his line-of-sight.
• Minor gameplay tweaks that aren't really worth getting into, like some attack types taking too long.
• Random, weird bugs. For instance, if you have a guy wearing 38q mail, and he has another set of 38q mail, the game will consider the same item in some respects, like if the quality of one degrades, so will the other. Some saints also have bugs associated with them, like one fire-protection saint giving you PERMANENT protection accidentally. There's also a bug where you can get to the raid-the-raubritter's-castle screen after you've just defeated him and torched the place, allowing you to fight him as many times as you want. That sort of stuff.

[Sowelu]

Oh right!  I forgot about the mailing list.  Yeah I eventually unsubscribed because it was, well, not a train wreck...more of a train just sitting there on a wooden trestle, slowly rusting, as the trestle makes loud noises while very slowly falling apart.

I agree completely with all the points you suggested.  And heck, I'd even suggest that selling armor should go out the window.  I mean, is there a big aftermarket for armor?  I always thought plate mail was (to some extent) custom-fitted.  And nobody wants to buy a suit of armor that's covered with sword holes.  No...Salvaging goods from your slain enemies seems like more of a poor-peasant profession, scrap harvesting, not work for heroes.  Heroes shouldn't bother with it, the rewards shouldn't even be worth the effort, compared to riding back to town unencumbered and claiming your reward.  What kind of heroes lug a cart full of dead peoples' armor around?

Also yeah graphics.  There were indeed only four player sprites:  Classic hero, token chick, funny-hatted thin guy, and big fat friar.

Stats could be fixed to some extent by tweaking the point-cost curve a lot.  Okay, so everybody puts their str/end at a minimum of 35/35, and a lot of people leave their charisma and perception at the lowest levels for their non cha/per tanks?  Well, make it cost 0.1 CP to increase a score that's ~10, compared to 2 CP to increase a score that's at ~35.  Oh yeah you bet people will think twice about that, you just have to screw with the curve.

I had some thoughts about handling more interesting NPCs.  So you come to the city walls at night, right?  And the guard says "Oh hey who goes there".  You've got your 30% chance of using your fame to talk your way in.  Well...It seems to me that it should track a small handful of gate-guard NPCs.  Maybe you never learn their names, but it would be super sweet if it would tell you "You recognize this guard as the one who let you in last week".  Minor touches.  "One of the guards at the gate caught you stealing a few days ago, and throws a suspicious glance your way".  It doesn't need to give you that much interaction--but you track a pool of oh 10-30 guards, give them some very basic state, and switch up their "schedules" every week...  Well, consider that a power goal.


If I wanted some programming support*, what languages would I be restricted to?  I really, really like C#.  I would love to try and do this in C# + SDL.  But if the only other interested parties will only work with Java or something, I can probably handle that, just get it figured out ahead of time!

* This is still speculative.  This is not "Oh hey we are getting this project off the ground".  If anything, it might turn into "Let's build a combat demo and see what happens".  If we're lucky enough to get that far, and "what happens" is super sweet, then we keep going.

[Muz]

I actually have an open-ended RPG idea quite well planned out, but it's certainly not a Darklands remake. Darklands would probably be the same kind of subgenre to squeeze it in. Hmm... maybe I'll post it later in the Creative Projects section.

[Zangi]

I'd give it a try.  Can't make it though.

[Sergius]

I had created a SourceForge project called DarkWorlds, but never got to the programming part due to other stuff. Then the project got taken over by some other person due to inactivity. It was going to be an engine almost identical to Darklands but would have allowed any setting (sci-fi), etc. Oh well.

Now I realize I shouldn't have bothered with SF and just tried to code it secretly until it was enough for an alpha release or something.

[G-Flex]

And heck, I'd even suggest that selling armor should go out the window.  I mean, is there a big aftermarket for armor?  I always thought plate mail was (to some extent) custom-fitted.  And nobody wants to buy a suit of armor that's covered with sword holes.

It probably depends on the type of armor, the condition, and who you're selling it to. You could probably always find a sucker (or just someone without a lot of money) to buy quality armor at a low price that happens to be sort of ill-fitting on him or has a few patched-up spots. I don't think you'd need to disable it entirely, and if you start talking about custom-fitting, then you have to question, say, switching armor between your own party members, or using the armor retrieved from enemies in ANY fashion, etc.

No...Salvaging goods from your slain enemies seems like more of a poor-peasant profession, scrap harvesting, not work for heroes.  Heroes shouldn't bother with it, the rewards shouldn't even be worth the effort, compared to riding back to town unencumbered and claiming your reward.  What kind of heroes lug a cart full of dead peoples' armor around?

Smart heroes, if the armor is still salvageable/salable.

Also yeah graphics.  There were indeed only four player sprites:  Classic hero, token chick, funny-hatted thin guy, and big fat friar.

Haha, yeah, I loved the big fat friar. I think the funny-hatted guy was some sort of knight, but I'm not sure. Then, of course, you had that weird color bug that occasionally gave one of them fluorescent hair and clothing.

Stats could be fixed to some extent by tweaking the point-cost curve a lot.  Okay, so everybody puts their str/end at a minimum of 35/35, and a lot of people leave their charisma and perception at the lowest levels for their non cha/per tanks?  Well, make it cost 0.1 CP to increase a score that's ~10, compared to 2 CP to increase a score that's at ~35.  Oh yeah you bet people will think twice about that, you just have to screw with the curve.

I think it also has to do with a couple other things, though. For instance, End/Str also serve as your HP. This isn't necessarily a horrible thing, but maybe it's way too linear a relationship or something. That, and strength is a necessity if you want to equip any decent armor at all.

If I wanted some programming support*, what languages would I be restricted to?  I really, really like C#.  I would love to try and do this in C# + SDL.  But if the only other interested parties will only work with Java or something, I can probably handle that, just get it figured out ahead of time!

I wouldn't consider C#/.NET with SDL a bad move at all, although you'd have to be smart to ensure any sort of cross-platform compatibility at all.


One of the major problems here would be reverse-engineering the original game itself. How much do we really know about how it calculates things? It's hard to say much except for what's explicitly stated in the cluebook, and I know I'm not up to disassembling and reverse-engineering the entire game.

[Sowelu]

I wouldn't try to reverse-engineer it.  First off, we need a new engine, and the rules for the adventure system are very well-established.  Mostly.  In combat, the exact mechanics might be a little wobbly--the hintbook says exactly how it works but it might be wrong, but in any case we would want to re-balance it (make hammers and flails suck less, maybe give shields at least a small effect against non-ranged weapons, and test test test).  Graphics are nice but could use remastering, the sprites especially.  Saints are a decent candidate for for rebalancing.  And while we COULD theoretically rip the adventure text straight from the original datafiles, it's got so much other data embedded that we would want to do it manually, I think.  At least it's all in one place for good transliteration.  The stat checks could also use rebalancing, I mean, who the hell even knows what stats are checked in the university or when talking to alchemists?  It's NOT what you think.  Hell, it's not even what I think either.  I couldn't hardly figure it out!

I'm actually not sure whether a straight remake is the correct approach here, or a "sequel" set in a neighboring country with a remastered engine.

[Gunner-Chan]

I don't think TOO much should be directly changed. Re-balancing yes, especially on making certain weapon and armor choices more worthwhile. Some of the big changes that should be made in my opinion though would be as already said making the hamlets harder to tell are cults, and really importantly might be making Raubritters actually challenging. As they stand they're money and reputation faucets.

What really needs work is the ride skill. There's currently no point to ever buying horses. Also pack animals would be a good idea I think at least for the strange carry weight thing.

The political intrigue and towns being more interconnected is a great idea though. Feuds between different city states and such could open up a whole new line of quest types and other such things.

I don't think the armor selling should be messed with TOO much though. There'd always be a market for Plate since this is around the time collectors took in sets of armor too. And odds are any suit of armor you find with q > 20 is likely something someone might want to display. And the lower armor would likely be pressed into the city militia. There's always a market for weapons and armor.

[Sowelu]

Hmm, okay, that sounds worthwhile.  So we work on combat first (because seriously--anyone can make a CYOA game and then embellish it with stats, but unless there's combat, the project will go exactly nowhere; prove the hard part can be completed early on).  Then, I dunno, a simple straight port of the CYOA city stuff.  And after that, an en-masse effort to do the content + content improving?

It occurs to me that reverse-engineering the map format will be exceedingly useful.  Oh yeah.  And our remake wouldn't have that "ugh just let me cross the river I don't want to go into the city ARGH NOT AGAIN" issue!

...I need fewer different projects to work on D:

G-Flex, is that volunteering to help program that I hear over there?  And yeah .NET is cross platform alright thanks to Mono, so it's at least theoretically a solved problem.  I fully understand if you don't want to jump on the coding until I've whipped out a proof-of-concept combat engine, but once I've produced something, would you be interested?

[Soulwynd]

If I'm allowed my 2 cents. I'd love to see this game with a simultaneous turn based mode, instead of just real time with pause.

[Cthulhu]

More varied COYA would be cool too, it's annoying when you know exactly what's going to happen and eventually I just start skipping through them without reading.

[G-Flex]

(make hammers and flails suck less

The military hammer was the best weapon in the game. It was lightweight, fast, had decent damage, and had better penetration than almost every other melee weapon.

I'm actually not sure whether a straight remake is the correct approach here, or a "sequel" set in a neighboring country with a remastered engine.

Any particular reasons why?

What really needs work is the ride skill. There's currently no point to ever buying horses.

If your whole party has horses, you travel faster, which is important in Darklands since time matters. Being mounted also makes it easier to escape from certain overworld encounters, and there's always that encounter with the knight who challenges you to an impossible-to-fucking-win riding/jousting contest.

The political intrigue and towns being more interconnected is a great idea though. Feuds between different city states and such could open up a whole new line of quest types and other such things.

The problem here is that I doubt any of us are historians, and one of the key hooks of Darklands is its historical accuracy.

[Sowelu]

Well, it's true, any time we want to change some historical data, we need to really bury our noses in some books.  But I think we're all okay with that here!  Politics *would* be interesting though.  Would you make the historical borders change semi-accurately over time?  Or would you just unleash semi-random wars and stuff that change them in believable ways?  How much CAN the players impact the world anyway?  I mean, you can only give them so much power, right?  If they end up with too much political power then they stop being heroes, and if they can just stride in and take on an army then it's no longer Darklands.  Yeah you can dispatch scouting parties of folks you don't like, but it shouldn't have that huge of an impact or it just doesn't feel right, you know?

The military hammer was the best weapon in the game. It was lightweight, fast, had decent damage, and had better penetration than almost every other melee weapon.

Hm, I thought the mace was the best one and I never used anything else--except for the really really big hammers vs. heavily armored guys when I had no potions.  Penetration 4 IIRC, and its max strength was like...I dunno, 25 or thereabouts, which means that your strength-40 guy gets truly obscene damage bonuses using it.  I think it was tied with the military hammer for speed, or maybe faster.  Military hammers on the other hand also had great penetration and higher damage, but their max strength was 99, so your strength could never exceed it for that damage bonus.  Then again I might have misunderstood the algorithm--it was kind of a weird one--or I might be mistaking hammers for flails.

I'm actually not sure whether a straight remake is the correct approach here, or a "sequel" set in a neighboring country with a remastered engine.

Any particular reasons why?
[/quote]
I was thinking that it would give us more freedom when expanding the CYOA options, and it would give players a truly new experience.  But we don't need to move if we're just adding a whole ton of stuff, and we'd probably lose a lot in the process, so I'm happy dropping that idea.

If I'm allowed my 2 cents. I'd love to see this game with a simultaneous turn based mode, instead of just real time with pause.

Huh.  What does that add?  (Don't know, am curious.)  It seems like it would take more effort to run, since you would be repeating orders and hitting end-turn a lot.  There's not much in the way of complicated tactics since face it, most of the time your strategy is "surround a choke point and stab things", "put your backs against a wall and stab things", "run up to the nearest guy and stab him", or optionally, "shoot them first, then stab them".  Turn-based doesn't add much to that.  Also, consider that Planescape etc. is technically simultaneous turn-based.  Real time with paused goes VERY handily with simultaneous turn based; they approach being identical as you make the turn length lower.

[Soulwynd]

Huh.  What does that add?  (Don't know, am curious.)  It seems like it would take more effort to run, since you would be repeating orders and hitting end-turn a lot.  There's not much in the way of complicated tactics since face it, most of the time your strategy is "surround a choke point and stab things", "put your backs against a wall and stab things", "run up to the nearest guy and stab him", or optionally, "shoot them first, then stab them".  Turn-based doesn't add much to that.  Also, consider that Planescape etc. is technically simultaneous turn-based.  Real time with paused goes VERY handily with simultaneous turn based; they approach being identical as you make the turn length lower.

I'd hope the combat would become more than just the examples you pointed out. I just think when you have a fixed time, it takes a wee bit more of tactics and thinking than real-time with pause. Course, both are very compatible and would be extremely simple to implement one along with the other as a simple toggle. I might feel that way because of my memories of how clumsy combat could be in that game and I kept wishing for a turn based mode.

Frozen synapse is good example of how much fun a simultaneous turn based game can be. Then again, it will depend on how complex the command queue will be in the game.