I''ve been thinking on that Magic system where you had to draw a symbol. Theoratically players could use the best spell when they''re still at level 1! That''s not something you want

Why not make it a bit simpler, by taking a 9*9 sized grid (or any other size) and let the player fill some grids (grids have to be connected vertically, horizontally or diagonally). Lets say you can fill 4 spots in the beginning, so there are enough combinations to explore (combinations are randomized each time you start a new game, to avoid cheating). At some point in the game (preferably when a player has made enough progress in the story), the number of spots that can be filled has can be increased, so that players can use/find more powerfull spells. There are many ways to extend this system, but I think this way it''s good enough.

quote: Original post by Arjan

I''ve been thinking on that Magic system where you had to draw a symbol. Theoratically players could use the best spell when they''re still at level 1! That''s not something you want

Why not make it a bit simpler, by taking a 9*9 sized grid (or any other size) and let the player fill some grids (grids have to be connected vertically, horizontally or diagonally). Lets say you can fill 4 spots in the beginning, so there are enough combinations to explore (combinations are randomized each time you start a new game, to avoid cheating). At some point in the game (preferably when a player has made enough progress in the story), the number of spots that can be filled has can be increased, so that players can use/find more powerfull spells. There are many ways to extend this system, but I think this way it''s good enough.

You''re idea would work well enough interface-wise I think. But I also think that it is a little ''stiff'' for my taste. Somehow connecting dots on a pre-drawn grid seems to me to be a little too abstract and ''mathematical''. It reminds me of the way the ''hack'' skill is used in System Shock 2. It was good in that game and it will also fit as magic system in some fantasy games. But somehow I feel that it would remove a degree of freedom and therefore some of the ''mystery'' connected with magic.

(Well, can''t really explain why, but thats how I feel )

Rather than just forcing the wizard to use only level 1 spells while he is still a ''newbie'' he should be allowed to cast all types of spells. If he accidently draws a level 9 spell then let him try to cast it. There would be a (very) small chance of sucess and if he fails he may ''lose control'' of the magic and it may give a completely unpredicted result, it may just do nothing or it may snap back and damage the casting wizard. If the game uses the ''channeling of magic powers'' scheme suggested in dwarfsofts doc it may be that the power just burns him up (or renders him unconscious).


Regards

nicba

I read the start of your document and wrote down things I would love to see.

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

What''s with statistics?

To avoid powermaxing you could set an attribute that basically says "after level x you get no more experience for performing this task." Using your example, a level 1 cleric gains a good bit of experience the first time he casts the "Heal" spell. Each consecutive cast would earn him less and less experience. The more experience the player has with each spell the more proficient they are. So after he casts heal on say, 200 people, he only earns like 3 experience points and 1 proficiency point. The incentive to heal people after the person is fairly proficient at it would be the player''s karma and reputation levels -- if he comes across an injured person that asks to be healed, his positive or negative response would effect those attributes accordingly.



Reincarnation

You could handle this with a business model. Certain NPCs raise their children to be "hosts" for reincarnated spirits. When a person dies their other party members bring them to a church where they pay the priests to transfer the spirit of their fallen comrade to a host body that they either bring with them or choose from the available NPCs. If someone dies in the wilderness their body stays there unless somebody picks it up to transfer their friend to. The dead bodies go through a decomposition process, so if someone wants to provide a body they better find someone who just recently died.

When a person dies their spirit is still able to move around in the world so they can find a friend to pay for a transfer to a new body or pick up their old body before someone else does. Dead bodies are able to be pilfaged, so a player that dies better hope their friend is nearby.

Of course, the elite [super-high level] clerics, monks, and sorcerers could also transfer your spirit to a new body. But like the statistics method above, proficiency and experience comes into play. Someone just learning to do it may screw up and not transfer all of the stats correctly.

Transferrance performed by an evil person will effect your karma in a bad way, likewise transferrance performed by a good person has a positive effect on your karma.

To make things even more interesting, vagrant spirits can be transferred into other races. After a human dies his spirit can be placed in a humanoid body (orc, goblin, troll, elf, etc).



Magic

As previously mentioned, each spell should have its own experience and proficiency gauges. People do not become experts on something the first time they do it. But there are four different types of magic: earth, fire, wind, and water. Say that the Heal spells are members of the earth and water groups, not only would the proficiency at casting Heal increase, the earth and water groups raise their respective proficiencies. Future spells that fall into those groups would have an increase over the base proficiency level.

quote: Original post by nicba

Hi

I was just taking another look on your doc to see what you have added since last time I read it. I have some comments:

1) Free Saves vs Save Spots:

About save games there''s another method to limit cheating by saving. Instead of allowing players to save everywhere you could limit saving to speciel areas. For example you could require that the user must be in a Temple with a special "magic Portal" or "Ressurection Unit" to allow the saving. Furthermore you could require the user to pay a fee to the priest of the temple for using the save game function. I think it could work well if implemented in a way that fitted the game universe.

(Im not sure if that what you meant by the "engrave symbol" idea but it sounded a bit to me as you where free to engrave those symbols whenever you wanted.)

Yeah, I haven''t finished expanding on this idea... Expect some new updates as of 0.02.02

quote:
2) Inventory and container objects:

Well, Im not sure I agree with the "Multiple backpacks" idea. Sure it would be nice. In some games it can be very frustrating never to have room enough in ones backpack. But how should the poor hero be able to carry two ore more backpacks (And probably fight monsters at the same time)?

I think you missed the point... I meant either the Horadric cube (to store a slight ammount more) for Diablo II, or a system where YOU HAVE TO PICK the backpack. You can get a new one, and then put stuff in it, but you can''t carry around 2 and expect to carry everything. Weighting might be a better solution, so as not to allow the player to stock up on heavy armour... Addition time

quote:
Also, putting a chest in your backpack doesn''t increase the total room for objects. So just because you have a chest in the inventory you shouldn''t be able to cary more stuff. The chest should take up as much room in the inventory as there is room in the chest.

Ummm... see Diablo II, you actually have to use up space to increase the space. What I am suggesting is that if you buy a pouch, you could hang it off your backpack and store more gold. It needs to have limitations, because there is NO WAY that you can carry around a chest in your backpack... At least, not a full sized one

quote:
But I do agree on the orientation thing. If you include the added realism of limiting the amount of stuff the character can carry, you must also provide the means for him to organize his possesions somewhat intelligent. Just be careful not to overdo it. I wouldn''t sit and solve a puzzle just to get room for a new sword when I should be (role)playing instead.

I am now thinking about having a completely open backpack (reletively unlimited space) that is bound only by weight... and the more you carry, the less speed or agility you have . But that is to be decided on implementation... more additions.. Thanks

quote:
3) Choosing your character or the "Which one is better" syndrome

I have recently been reading a lot on the Elfwood Library. Many of the greatest and most intertaning stories there seems to have been written as a background story for a pen-and-paper RPG. And I came to wonder why people aren''t writting these kind of stories for CRPGs. Especially online multiplayer games could benefit if everyone was required to write a background story for their character, I think.

This was suggested by Ingenu, but I haven''t added to it as yet. It is just notes (as you can see). You bring up a valid point. A player must first have a background. The child scene is basically where you play a child in a shortish scene, non-threatening encounters and activities determine what character you become. It is about finding the mindset of the player... Very interesting thought by Ingenu I think

quote:
4) Co-operation of casting, bringing in a helping hand

That is really a wonderful idea. But why limit it to magic. Also the quest and puzzles could be fun if they required persons with different skills to work together to solve it. For example you could have a quest to retrive some holy item. To get to the item the heroes must first pass some monsters (warrior skills needed), then go through a trap infested labyrint (trap-detecting thief skills needed) and finally break a magical seal (magic abilities needed).

That kind of thinking is great, but this really requires an MMORPG before it is really feasible. I like the idea, but for single player it would be difficult. But maybe this would give the player a reason to balance their characters skills/abilities... A new addition

quote:
5) Transportation or "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!":

Another wonderful idea. I have not much to say to this except that it may be difficult to limit the game area if you give the player too powerful transportations. If they have a horse they might wonder why they can''t just drop all the stupid quests and ride off to the neighboor kingdom. Or if they have a ship they might wish to try to cross the ocean.

LOL! That is what I want to allow in my world... Fully open, unlimited randomly generated maps... A bit difficult to implement, but still good. If the player doesn''t complete the quest in a given time, then just outlaw them from that province... adds more to the Players character, and also adds more to the story . I love it when people bring up arguments against me, that work FOR my system ... But it really is only good for my system... But you could always limit the playing feild, or put a boundry on them until they complete that quest

quote:
6) Passive actions, "Eating, sleeping and relieving oneself"

I think you better elaborate a bit on this one. I know what you''re talking about and thinks its really good idea. But that''s only because I''ve read the original post from Taharez.

I think it is time to note that any of the short headings with really short text are in note form. They are for future elaboration and are not whole.... I am stupid for not having mentioned it before

quote:
7) Beggars and thieves, preventing the player from leaving cash lying around:

That''s another really good point. You can''t leave your possesions lying around everywhere and then expect them to be where you left them when you come back. But that leaves me with another question. Why is it that there''s always chests, weapons and other precious items lying about in the middle of nowhere or in every random dungeon or cave you happends to stumble by?

That is a good point and is duely noted. Maybe think of a new system that allows such, or just make sure that the items are only dropped by creatures, or given to you by creatures... At least you might be able to explain why a creature is there

quote:
8) Linking eating and sleeping with energy

This point is not new, but I just came to think of Baldurs Gate where, when you slept, you sometimes dreamed and the dream (sort of) revealed more of your character and the story. Sometimes you even got a new magical ability after a dream. That made it somewhat worthwile to sleep. Maybe you could add that to the doc?

Yep... doing so... Its a GREAT point... but sleeping mainly came around because of my crazed idea... Do you think that the idea would work... I sure hope that it would open peoples eyes to the blindness of murder based experience. Go the Skills!

quote:
Well, that''s it for now. Keep up the good work!

Regards

nicba

Cheers, Hope to hear more from you... It''s people like you that I count on for imrpovements



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quote: Original post by Arjan
I''ve been thinking on that Magic system where you had to draw a symbol. Theoratically players could use the best spell when they''re still at level 1! That''s not something you want

Two solutions (I can''t believe I didn''t add this to the doc *sigh* )

1. The symbol is always randomly decided, it is different each time you play, so if you used one you hadn''t already been told, you could do some damage to yourself.
2. The spells are still advanced by skill levels (how much you use them) and you could require them to have learned the spell first... I can''t believe I didn''t add that.... It was my intention to

quote:
Why not make it a bit simpler, by taking a 9*9 sized grid (or any other size) and let the player fill some grids (grids have to be connected vertically, horizontally or diagonally). Lets say you can fill 4 spots in the beginning, so there are enough combinations to explore (combinations are randomized each time you start a new game, to avoid cheating). At some point in the game (preferably when a player has made enough progress in the story), the number of spots that can be filled has can be increased, so that players can use/find more powerfull spells. There are many ways to extend this system, but I think this way it''s good enough.

I like your idea... It goes in the doc

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

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quote: Original post by nicba

Hi

I was just taking another look on your doc to see what you have added since last time I read it. I have some comments:

1) Free Saves vs Save Spots:

About save games there''s another method to limit cheating by saving. Instead of allowing players to save everywhere you could limit saving to speciel areas. Regards

nicba


Edited by - nicba on August 14, 2000 2:49:57 PM

Yeah that''s like in the Nes game Dragon Warrior. You could only save the game when you talk to the king in that main city. Then I remember one point I couldn''t enter the town for some reason...like the king was pissed or something...then I couldn''t save the game. So, you by having particular places where you can save allows you to really control saving a lot.






"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." --William Blake

"The road of excess also just ends up making me tired because I'm too lazy" --Nazrix

quote: Original post by Steven Edwards

I read the start of your document and wrote down things I would love to see.

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

What''s with statistics?

To avoid powermaxing you could set an attribute that basically says "after level x you get no more experience for performing this task." Using your example, a level 1 cleric gains a good bit of experience the first time he casts the "Heal" spell. Each consecutive cast would earn him less and less experience. The more experience the player has with each spell the more proficient they are. So after he casts heal on say, 200 people, he only earns like 3 experience points and 1 proficiency point. The incentive to heal people after the person is fairly proficient at it would be the player''s karma and reputation levels -- if he comes across an injured person that asks to be healed, his positive or negative response would effect those attributes accordingly.

Sounds very similar to my ideas, but I think that the variation can be added to the document... For a cleric, the experience should increas more quickly than a warrior who was doing the same. This would place people back in their own character. Also, as mentioned before (possibly in a different thread) nobody wants to powermax on the first time they play. Maybe if the skills are all evenly spread and all required in the game, this can be accomplished... what do people think?

quote:
Reincarnation

You could handle this with a business model. Certain NPCs raise their children to be "hosts" for reincarnated spirits. When a person dies their other party members bring them to a church where they pay the priests to transfer the spirit of their fallen comrade to a host body that they either bring with them or choose from the available NPCs. If someone dies in the wilderness their body stays there unless somebody picks it up to transfer their friend to. The dead bodies go through a decomposition process, so if someone wants to provide a body they better find someone who just recently died.

I really like this idea... This is DEFINITELY going in . It''s really good to see some originality from all you guys

quote:
When a person dies their spirit is still able to move around in the world so they can find a friend to pay for a transfer to a new body or pick up their old body before someone else does. Dead bodies are able to be pilfaged, so a player that dies better hope their friend is nearby.

You would have to find a way of explanation for Single player, because there aren''t too many buddies that wander around with you ready to pick up your carcass... But I am having a thought here... maybe this would give you a reason to take a buddy with you? (NPC Buddy). They could grab your body and run. hehe. There needs to be other possibilities...

Oh yeah, if you die, this goes for armour stealing idea... The thing that killed you can use your armour (if feasible, some monters are far too big or small for this) and so you have a new challenge of getting your stuff... kill the monster WITH your stuff

quote:
Of course, the elite [super-high level] clerics, monks, and sorcerers could also transfer your spirit to a new body. But like the statistics method above, proficiency and experience comes into play. Someone just learning to do it may screw up and not transfer all of the stats correctly.

Maybe they get the chance to practice on NPC''s so as to increase their skills. But if they fail, then they get a bad rep. So then they might be exiled from certain places. There might be other ways of increasing these abilities too... Good idea

quote:
Transferrance performed by an evil person will effect your karma in a bad way, likewise transferrance performed by a good person has a positive effect on your karma.

Noted...

quote:
To make things even more interesting, vagrant spirits can be transferred into other races. After a human dies his spirit can be placed in a humanoid body (orc, goblin, troll, elf, etc).

Hehehe... this is the firts idea I had. You didn''t get a choice over the race of the character that was to play host for your spirit. This may give you new or enhanced abilities. It might cause you to lose others... more reasons to stay alive

quote:
Magic

As previously mentioned, each spell should have its own experience and proficiency gauges. People do not become experts on something the first time they do it. But there are four different types of magic: earth, fire, wind, and water. Say that the Heal spells are members of the earth and water groups, not only would the proficiency at casting Heal increase, the earth and water groups raise their respective proficiencies. Future spells that fall into those groups would have an increase over the base proficiency level.

Thats damn right, noone is an expert, which is where the skill based advancement system comes in. True that it is a little complex and requires a LOT of variables, but it really gets you using what you want...

Note: Not all magic is earth, fire, wind and water... it is ONE of the MANY systems. You could use all, or one, it doesn''t require it .

I do like the system, it really goes along the Katherine Kerr "five humours" idea. You need to maintain the correct balance, but you can call upon the kings of the elements (humours) to aid you. You missed "Aether" as the fifth humour though

Looks like I have some more typing to do

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quote: Original post by Nazrix

Yeah that''s like in the Nes game Dragon Warrior. You could only save the game when you talk to the king in that main city. Then I remember one point I couldn''t enter the town for some reason...like the king was pissed or something...then I couldn''t save the game. So, you by having particular places where you can save allows you to really control saving a lot.

Yeah, for some reason I forgot to add this... Will be done

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I had an idea concerning drawing symbols to cast spells.
Maybe when you had enough skill with a spell(or had cast it enough times), when you cast it again the shape you were supposed to draw would appear (faintly at first) on the screen.
example : you want to cast fireball, and have to draw
/\O
but after having cast the spell twenty times, when you draw
/\
the circle (O) you also need to draw appears so that it''ll be easier to do it correctly.
Ugh.
This is hard to explain.

Runemaster
Join the Game Developers SiteRing !

Well try.. I am listening

Um... So, you want them to draw the symbol as many times as possible before they cast? This increases the power of the spell? Hmmm. Interesting, but difficult. It makes it hard for combat like that. If we refer to my good old friend ''Pug'' (Raymond E. Feist) then he can cast more powerful spells when aggravated. This would really be more suited to an advancement system. After the spell has been cast many times, the spell then gets more powerful. So you get rewarded for using a single spell often.

You may be required to use various spells at different points, this also works in the other system. I think that you might be making it too difficult for the player... Unless I am not understanding your system (quite likely... hey, I am only [partially] human )

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