quote: Original post by DrMol
...and send them all to the admin and see if your response was on par.

Since I came on this board I have posted a few things, and none seemed to have any annyoing effect on people. But hey, thats just how I see it. Perhaps this board is not for me, but I am hoping that just because I annoy one person, doesnt mean I annoy the rest.

Uh... you annoyed at least 3 just with your intial post in this thread. (That doesn''t count the group that bypassed it as the latest starry-eyed misquided newbie thread.) As for admins... the casual observer would notice that my response to you drew applause from one of them. Perhaps you ARE viewing the world through a paper towel tube.




Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

quote: Original post by Lohrno
Innocuous -- I didn''t realize that either, but I don''t know,
IMHO I wouldnt take anything from UO as almost anything they do
is kinda a hack job.

That''s true any more...

quote: In my exteremely limited expereince at the
beginning of UO (Yes I''ll admit a bit of newbieism, but from what
I saw I was able to make the conclusions I am making, I played
for 1 month) They would remove 1 bug, and add 2 more.
Yeah, thats not design, but anyway, they werent thinking right
when they let everyone have a house in such a small world.

I started playing on Day 2 (I was on a business trip on the 1st day!). I then played for about a two years before I didn''t have time anymore. My brother still plays because he is supporting a popular add-on tool he wrote. I agree that they had some issues... however, much of it can be attributed to the fact that they were breaking new ground. The rest is largely because they were trying to do TOO many things to please TOO many people. Basically, they fell into the same trap as the Federal Government! The result was the same, too. It was a hodge-podge of crap that was cumbersome and occasionally contradictory.

However, their skill system was very popular and often praised with one exception - the gain rate was too quick and the atrophy rate was too slow. That was largely to cater to people as I mentioned. People wanted to be good quickly - there was a large dichotomy between the no-real-life people who played 8 hours every day and the guy who would play a couple of hours on the weekend. The latter was always envious and at the mercy of the former. The atrophy rate was tweaked for the people who were bitching about not being able to be everything at all times. They may work their asses off exclusively to get a particular skill very high - and then when they tried to do the same with their second favorite skill, the first would drop like a rock due to inattention. Would they lose it all? No... but these players had the expectation that they could retain Grandmaster status on something that they were not continually practicing. The result was a cheapening of the concept of master or grandmaster (99 or 100%). What should have been a rarity and reserved only for the most dedicated to ONE particular emphasis turned out to be commonplace.

Aside from these rate of gain/loss issues, the underlying concept of the skill system was fantastic. You could gain a skill in 2 ways - Doing it or watching it. Even that latter was subject to the limits of proximity and would only help you so far. For example, you couldn''t watch people cooking and get more than a passing knowledge of it. It was realistic in the sense that you could lift yourself out of having a 0 knowledge level just by observing someone else doing it. I believe, as well, that the person you were watching had to be a certain amount higher than you were or else you couldn''t glean anything from their actions.

As for the "doing" part of the equation. You advanced by trying alone. If you tried to pick a lock... 20 times... and kept failing all the time, you took a little bit of comfort in the fact that you were getting better at it by trying.

One of the interesting curves that was always in question, however, was the rate of gain as you continued to work on something. This is related to what I mentioned earlier. In theory, if you start a skill at 0, the earlier attempts should net more of a gain... and likewise, the later ones should only marginally help you out. For example, the first 10 times you try to pick a lock, you may get 1 skill point each attempt - bringing you to 10. After that, you may get 2 skill points for every 3 attempts... meaning you have to work 50% longer to move from 10 to 20. This sort of diminishing returns would continue until you got to the point where only after repeated attempts would you get 1 additional point... let''s say 20 attempts to move from 60 to 61. The result SHOULD be that you have to beat your head against a wall to get from 99 to 100!

Keep in mind that you should also be fighting an atrophy curve that is time based. If you decide to take a break from your lockpicking and go work on your lumberjacking, your lockpicking should begin to decay. Certainly, the rate of atrophy should not be precipitous. If you just spent 30 minutes working on your skills, you should not have that evaporate during the next 30 minutes. However, it needs to be steep enough so that it doesn''t allow you to jack up 5 or 6 different skills to ungodly levels without any risk of losing too much ground.

One of UO''s answers to this was the skill cap. Once you achieved a certain numerical sum between all of your skills, you got to the point where adding one to a skill you were working on would reduce whatever skill you hadn''t used in the longest time. This was not a horrible punishment for most players. All it tended to do was work AWAY from the concept of the reasonably rounded PC to one that had a handful of killer skills (pun not inappropriate there) and a huge array of little used throwaway skills. This was further augmented by the fact that as long as magic was one of your primary facets, you didn''t need things such as cooking, lockpicking, hiding, detecting hidden people, etc. There was a spell that did it for you rendering many of the skills useless in the presence of magic. Of course, the balance of mages in UO is a complete thread in and of itself.

quote: Like maybe a mage in battle (who is pelting rats with fireballs according to true computer mage standards(see Thread about mages here) suddenly goes ''Wait! I know how I can do this a little better next time!''

That is EXACTLY what happens.

Incidentally, Lohrno... you don''t have to hit return at the ends of your lines as if this were a typewriter... just keep going until you get to the end of a paragraph. You use up less vertical space on the board and it makes it easier for us to use your quotes without having to rearrange the ends of your lines.

Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

Alright, I didn't want to take sides in this flame war (and I still don't) but I think you guys have been unfair to DrMol. So I'm just gonna point out a few things...

quote: Original post by InnocuousFox
What is even more amusing - and smacks of you being all of 14 years old...

Ya know, this whole flame war wouldn't have started if you had left this paragraph off your post. In fact, even though you obviously aren't 14 (judging by the intellectual parts arguements, this paragraph looks a lot like something one would write (only slightly more witty, thanks to the pasty white programmer stereotype, which I fit).

quote: Original post by dwarfsoft
*applaudes InnocuousFox*

I remember when I had such hopes and dreams, and at least I started off on the right foot , but as with all hopefuls, theorists and theologists - eventually everyone learns the truth (which is out there btw) its really f***ing hard to do it right.

If you remembered when you had those aspirations (which I admit I was still having a few months ago, drunk on newfound C++ knowledge, and still do upon occasion), why couldn't you understand that DrMol would eventually leave the phase you were describing and be polite to him? You admitted that you were there yourself, so why not stop there and let him find his own way out of the metaphorical forest? I do respect the points you have made when not escalating the flame war.

quote: Original post by InnocuousFox
Brilliant! That kinda sums it up, doesn't it? Are you going to the GDC, Dwarf? I need to buy you a beer!

The above also applies to you, InnocuousFox.

quote: Original post by astrum
But you two have read WAY to much into a simple sentance.

quote: Original post by InnocuousFox
I didn't. I infered an attitude from an opening post and a series of haughty replies. None of which were yours.

*sigh*...It really is too bad that we can't possibly convey all the subtleties of speech in written language (at least not in any language I know of)...how do we know that he meant to be haughty, and isn't it quite subjective? I didn't percieve him to be haughty, even when provoked.

quote: Original post by InnocuousFox
Fantastic... but I was speaking to DrPunk.
...
And if you believe that all is possible by simply claiming you know better, then you are delusional.

Sorry, but this kind of thing does come off as haughty to me.

quote: Original post by InnocuousFox
The same question can be asked about his original post - a pointless rant that furthers no one but himself.

I think you mist part of his origninal post:

quote: Origninal post by DrMol
What do ya think?

All DrMol wanted was an evaluation of his version of an idea that others have had before. And I do like his solution to the problem of retrying an action until you succeed. The question everyone needs to ask themselves is this: Is it so terrible that people like DrMol and my inexperienced self come up with ideas that have already been implemented? Or is it a good thing that we, in our (or at least my) limited experience, still had the same good ideas?

quote: Original post by InnocuousFox
DrGod
...
the pubescent head of DrCocky
...
DrPhallus

Perhaps this is why (taking a cue from your sig) DrMol wants to see you reduced to a mathematical equation, and sooner rather than later.

quote: Original post by DrMol
Look I can do the same thing:
Incestuous Fox, Idiotic Fox, Imbicilic Fox, or repalce all the Fox with F**k. How do you like that? Is it as witty as when you did it? I bet you get pissed and rant back.
Or in response to pastey white programmer and DrPhallus
how bout I call you the Greasy little rat and Mr. Dick?

ROFLMAO!!!! He's got you there, Innocuous.

quote: Origninal post by InnocuousFox
Uh... you annoyed at least 3 just with your intial post in this thread. (That doesn't count the group that bypassed it as the latest starry-eyed misquided newbie thread.)

He didn't annoy me. More importantly, he didn't provoke anyone. And anyone who posted in this thread shouldn't have unless they thought it had more merit than how you described it.

Okay, now I've had my say and I won't mention the flame war again unless someone decided to flame me. Don't think I'm trying to be self-righteous, either. I suppressed the urge to mock the the more susceptable posts at least five times in the process of writing this post. Now I'll get back to the discussion.

quote: Original post by DrMol
OOProgrammer,
maybe the PC could go research himself, using whatever can be thought up...that is the tough part...but can hire assistants and then sort of peruse them, and their experiments. And experiments going worng. A la Dungeon Keeper 2's cutscreens. ButI want to stay away from cutscreens personally. It is too limiting and eventually the player will have seem them all and turn em off. Maybe it would just take spectacular writing on the part of the researching. Hmm, anyone want to voluenteer what they think they would spell researching would be like if they were doing it? Not should be like or what is implementable (IFox). But what it would be like in your head.
If you wanna, anyways.
DM

Alright, DrMol (or is it Dr6.0221367x10^23? Did I guess the meaning of your name correctly?) I agree that cutscene books would be quite limiting in many types of games. But the player wouldn't see them again, unless they wanted to. The point of my cutscene idea was to give the player a clue that they will only use once, in most cases. However, if you wanted to make a game that was specifically about being a "true" mage, I think the cutscenes wouldn't be limiting at all, and are the best solution to the research problem I can come up with.

Anyway, I think that if I were researching spells, I would be spending as much time in the library reading about how the ancient masters did it as I would spend experimenting directly, i.e., varying my mental/emotional state when casting (at the least I would find out how it affected casting), trying different gestures (if involved in casting), and varying the wording of spells (if spoken). If I was still an apprentice, I would also spend a great deal of time learning directly from my master. Of course, I find the idea of being a talent (or "natural") preferable to actually having to learn to cast and spend huge amounts of time researching, even if I wouldn't be able to achieve the power of a trained mage. (Although I don't see why that would be, except to balance a game, seeing how talents have an inborn abiltiy to perform magic.)

EDIT: fixed an unforseen problem with nested quotes.

---------------------------------
"It's groin-grabbingly transcendent!" - Mr. Gamble, my teacher, speaking of his C++ AP class

Edited by - OOProgrammer on March 3, 2002 2:37:19 AM

OOProgrammer:
Check your email first, I had an thought that maybe you can add a bit to.
But anyways,
Mol it is..Agravadro''s number. The Dr. is somewhat of a nick I recieved in HS.
Anyways,
That actually soudns really cool in the right light. The more experimental parts, I mean. I do know that it would be a shot at a target audience, no matter what you did, and I do know that it probably wouldnt be worth doing, but as a mental exercise....

Maybe there could be less importance with directly researching and more on aquiring. Like shopping the streets, going out on quests, whatever, in the whole goal of aquiring stuff. Maybe before hand, the world design could incorporate some famous writings and tombs instead of the good ol'' Scroll of Disintegrate, or the generic books of Diablo 1. And not one, but a whole slew, like Master Maldov''s Guide to Infernal Morse Code. And Malicious Mike''s Meaningless Manifesto of Mortuaris Mortemis. Like in Harry Potter and his whole aquisition of books. And some would be in librarys in cities and whatnot. IT would be a whole subgame in itself. And then you would go down to the local blacksmith (the only kind of smith *usually* available in RPG''s), have him make you a compass, a latern, a birdcage. then you collect objects and make yourself tools. Find skeletons and all that. Strange looking things like Astrolabe whatevers.
In the Key of Solomon, King Solomon''s spell recipies call for something like lamb''s blood, bat''s blood, wax from the hive, papers made from sheep skin, all made by the mage...In just about any magic book you could find that mentions pendants, the pendants must be made by the mage himself...A slew of possibilites there...Planescape:Torment did this somewhat.
And maybe the reason people would research would be to see the results. Like show them what they can get if they research, and spend time with this system, so give them a hook. Keep producing cool enough stuff until they finally realise "Hey, this system is really cool." Or is that an unlikely conclusion?

Sorry so much went up into that. When I get hold of an idea (I assume that it is my own, though not necessaceraly original or that it has never been thought) i tend to type everything that comes in my head, regardless of it is longwinded or rehashing or unstructured.

Astrum, I think you hit a nerve. Um, I know that it has been done in Dungeon Keeper II, but I do not know if it has been done in any RPG, althought I could be wrong, but skill degradation sounds like the way to go. Not necessarily attached to any opposite in my mind at this point, but I can see it working. I thought up something for a game I am doing, the Fitness stat. When you are idling about in town, you know, checkiong out leads and quests, just chillin'' (this game will allow you to have quite a sedimentary lifestyle), then the stat will decrease. However, when you are out trekking the wilderness then it will increase. M2C.

didnt get the email astrum. Give it another whirl.

Yeah, ok they did have some good ideas in UO. But I dont know in your previous post, you said that say fighting rats increased your attribute, I think it'd be more appropriate to actually increase the skill sometimes. (Although the point is a little bit moot, as the effect is almost the same.) Like you get some kind of flash of brilliance sometimes from just being bored or thinking to yourself. It'd be kinda cool to make it seem like our characters in these games think for themselves a little bit. =D I never noticed that my skills would go up by watching anyone btw...maybe I was not patient enough though. I assumed it was broken. Yeah, the skill system like you describe is kinda cool. I don't know, I wanna see it implemented better once though! =D I'd like to see characters actually say 'Hmm... I wonder if I...' or think it at least in a little cartoon bubble kinda way! =D In UO, your skills atrophied if you didn't use them for long enough. What I'm suggesting is almost like the opposite. Maybe they should atrophy, but after a long while. Or maybe if you are sitting there hitting that practice dummy for 1 hour, your character gets really sick and tired of it after a while and goes 'Screw this, I wanna go bake something.' Just so that you dont have that macroing and powering stuff going on. Like give our characters a little more personality too. (Not that we dont give enough but...) I am against it to the extent of bodily needs. and I dont want to hear 'Drat! I must find a lavatory!' in the middle of the huge fight with the big bad guy!

Thanks for the comment about the text btw...I was wondering why my text looked so weird! =D (other than content)

OOProgrammer: I think they dropped it before you stepped in, you may be just adding fuel to the flames. While maybe DrMol was a little hard on Innoc, and Innoc was a little hard on DrMol, I think all of that was unnecessary to post, and I'll leave it at that.

-=Lohrno

Edited by - Lohrno on March 3, 2002 2:00:04 PM

quote: Original post by OOProgrammer

Anyway, I think that if I were researching spells, I would be spending as much time in the library reading about how the ancient masters did it as I would spend experimenting directly, i.e., varying my mental/emotional state when casting (at the least I would find out how it affected casting), trying different gestures (if involved in casting), and varying the wording of spells (if spoken). If I was still an apprentice, I would also spend a great deal of time learning directly from my master. Of course, I find the idea of being a talent (or "natural") preferable to actually having to learn to cast and spend huge amounts of time researching, even if I wouldn''t be able to achieve the power of a trained mage. (Although I don''t see why that would be, except to balance a game, seeing how talents have an inborn abiltiy to perform magic.)

I like this idea of course, but I don''t think the masses would. At least as far as emotional state. Sheera the mage would have lasted that spell today but her guildmaster really put her in a tiff! Or maybe she overdid the spell a little, instead of casting one fireball, she got really angry, and casted ''Insane enclosing walls of flames and destruction'' on the goblin. It adds some depth, but most people aren''t that patient. They''d go ''I found a bug!'' I cast fireball on that goblin, and instead it cast IEWOFAD. And it used all my mana! Waaaaaaahhh!! Maybe I''m a little condescending about most people in MMORPGS, but I think maybe not. If you look at ALL the powergamers out there...

-=Lohrno

DrMol:
I like the spell component quest idea, but keep in mind that no matter how fun the quests are, a few (very few) players are going to moan about having to run around for however many minutes just to get one measly spell. Of course, we don''t care about what they think, now do we?

What I''m really looking for is not just a good magic system, but a magic system that exists for a reason. How many games actually explain where magic came from, why it was created, and who maintains it? I don''t like how so many games just assume that magic is, and always has been there.

Lohrno Part 1:
Yeah, they were finished by the time I got there. But I had been away for 24 hours, and was more than a little annoyed at the continuation of that flame war. I just felt like stepping in and trying to get everyone to stop and think for a minute before flaming more.

Lohrno Part 2:
I''m glad that you like my idea(s) about magic use, but I wasn''t really talking about anything in a game. I was responding to DrMol''s request for ideas about how we think magic would work abstractly--not in a game. I don''t really think that it will be possible for any game to ever make use of a player''s mental state in such a way as I described, unless computer''s learn how to read minds.

I''d like to add one thing, though...strong emotions such as anger wouldn''t necessarily have an adverse effect on spells. It would depend of the person casting. A disciplined mage (in other words, one with reasonably good willpower and concentration) who has just seen his brother killed would probably channel his anger (unconsciously) into his magic, resulting in a large crater where his brother''s murderer was standing a few seconds before. An undisciplined mage would more likely fail to cast or miscast in some way, such as missing the target or doing less damage. But we don''t need to worry about that until computers can read minds now, do we?

---------------------------------
"It''s groin-grabbingly transcendent!" - Mr. Gamble, my teacher, speaking of his C++ AP class

OOP:
That is the real crux of it isnt it?
The origins of magic! I have thought about this quite a bit. It is tough. I got around to 2 broad explanations: A Scientific approach, and a..well..magical approach.

The scientific one is something that is VERY different, and is one of those love or hate things.

Where Magic is only another type of energy: mechanical, radioactive, electric, magnetic, chemical, magical.
I set up a few equations to deal with the basic tenats, but didnt really go into detail with it, since I completly forgot about it, and at the present time, I am not modeling my magic system all that much. That is for later.

The second type would be a sort of "If you''re playing this game, then you will like this definition, althought this sort of thing isnt anything you couldnt find in a widely read book" Basically, it deals with gods and whatnot, but the gem of it is, and I think I posted this somewhere...

Here is one from the Real v COmp wizards thread:

If you are imbued with magic at birth or whatever some starting point, you can take drugs to give you power (Now that SHOULD be original ). For example, if you are an Astral Sailor (magic class in my RPG design), you can take Opium, or Brilliance to allow you to travel the multiverse. If you are a Druid, you can take Feral Root to gain power, if you are a shadowlogist, you can take Shadow and you will slip off into a coma and gain control of you shadow and walk him around. Of course these will have drawbacks, notable addiction, physical weakness, etc. The Feral Root maybe gradually makes the player more like a wild animal, given to uncontrollable impulses. Only drawback is that everyone and their mother (maybe just the mothers) will want the game banned.


And here from brain drain by astrum,
A thought of mine:

Mana is in the multiverse, all the planes except ethereal. When a spell is cast, the mana conglogulates (whatever) in the ehtereal and is zapped down, either through the proper pathways that are used to access the multiverse, or across the layers themselves, rending the fabric that holds them together. A mage would set up a lab somewhere and draw the energy in either way. But the weavers (yes, from Loom) would come and fine him if he took it directly, but give him a check if the magic was routed correctly. Something like that.

I suppose that neither really tell how magic came about, but tell how the spells really work, which is an improvement.

Hmm, there is, as I understand it, two kidns of magic, magic from dieties, and magic from nature.

Something I forgot to mention in my description of the UO skill system. There is no such thing as an overall character "level". So really there isn''t anything like "leveling up" in there. EVERYTHING is based on the 40-50 skills.

Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"