Dungeon MAster : yep, Jack Vance seems to be quite interesting thogh I only rea one book a long time ago. did you know there is a RPG on based on the Lyonesse serie there is even a website. hehe

Rune MAster : agreed, there are plenty of resources on the Net for magic. The best must be Wicca, because of the amount of stuff they put online (look for Books of Shadows from covens to understand. I got one with a good several thousands pages of rituals, very very detailed )
Personaly I have gathered an enormous amount of stuff on astrology. It helps to create very cool characters. Just choose a time of birth, and look for the birthchart !

Dwarfsoft : definitely agree with you. My forst motivation for looking up magic on the net was to create a more interesting way of making magic in RPG. And god there are some better ways out there !

Now what about SHARING those lovely gems from everywhere on the Net !!!

In some sort of Misc. Reference section ?

youpla :-P

Fine... Ill forward all 50MB of web pages that I D/L for research... You can have the fun that I am currently having sifting through it . I assure you that once I have analysed the lot, the gems will be pollished and U/L to my site (see sig). But if you want to do the same as I did... Go to your fav search engine, and type in "Magic" then "spells" then "wicca" then "norse" then .... you get the picture... don''t bother reading the page, Save As is the secret! Save the whole f***ing lot of it so you can sift through it later (Saves Inet bill when you do it). I did the exact same thing for getting my Iso engine

That is 1 gem

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

I think the important thing is just to make sure that you get inspiration from things other than games. If your getting all your inspiration from other games, your bound to end up making an uninspired clone. (And no, combining two genres and saying: "but its a cross between Deus Ex and Diablo, nobody''s ever done it!" doesn''t count as inspiration )

----------------------------------------
Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant and she fell on me? Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny.

Thats why I lurk in NG''s and BB/MB''s . This is also a congrat to myself for making Martyr . Anywho... You ABSOLUTELY need to get some inspiration from ANYTHING other than games, go out for a hike/walk, get out in the air (I am generally talking about summerish weather, I am NOT going out in our current weather here! ) talk with others, argue (always fun ) and generally do things that don''t even have any link to computing (other than maybe you all have used one). I enjoy playing pool with the boyz and we generally hang out together and throw ideas around (and food for that matter ).

The main inspiration that you can have is yourself, but the way to be inspired by yourself is by taking time to step back and take a look at yourself. Best advice I can give you on this subject


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

quote: Original post by ahw

Are designers geeks or actually literate people

youpla :-P

Yes.

------------------------------
#pragma twice

I would class myself as both

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

Hehe For me, I think I am a geek with a life, and I can read books different from computer manuals or sci-fi/med-fan.

Anyway, i was asking not because I lack inspiration (god I wish I could actually code everyting I am thinking about), but rather because I like crawling the Net and finding those gems we were talking about. Sadly, 2 Gb are not a lot to save all the stuff I come across. But I''d love to share if there was a need for it. And since we are on a game designer site, I thought that non related inspiration sources would be a nice little touch.
Wouldn''t it ?

Anyway, I''ll sleep happy if no one needs it, it''s just i thought it was a good idea

youpla :-P

ps (dwarfsoft : I see I am not the only one to crawl search engines and love the save as Web Page button. do you try the "follow the link" variant as well ? )

I am sure that everybody here would be really interested in your pearls of wisdom... of late I have stoped sifting through the piles of garbage for any more gems... I do have a lot on spells though, and if you want to ask people who are more qualified (or claim to be ) there is a ng somewhere (try mydeja.com).

I know, though, that I am interested to glean any pearls that anybody feels free to share, I know I have been giving away a lot of my game to cause discussion here at GDNet. If I finish it, there will be no story because you will all know it (If you don''t know what I am talking about then STAY AWAY FROM NPCAI AND THE AI SECTION OF GDNET ALTOGETHER! It is radioactive and causes damage to your health! )


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

Sources of inspiration can range from reading a book, to watching a movie, to dating someone (explain "Queen of the Amazon" ).

- DarkMage139
++++++++++++++++
I can do things, things you never knew,
I can change your world if you only knew.

I can do miracles if you want me to.
Anything is possible, I'll prove it to you.

Edited by - DarkMage139 on July 31, 2000 1:05:58 AM

LOL! I agree... I know who my princess NPC is ... That is if I actually have a monarchy (it is variable at the moment... a boolean value that is currently set on FALSE ). Anyway, the main NPC of my fancy will definitely be modeled on my g/f


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)