Making a game

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Although you provided plenty of ways to get the jewel back it's still only a fetch it quests where you predetermined skills and character decide how you would acquire the jewel. What I think would be a good tweak is to be asked to look into the theft of a temple jewel, then you have a choice to get it back from the thief assuming you find him or to see who ordered the theft and why, uncovering something deeper then a theft of a jewel.

I can live with that

It's never happened to me for some reasons.

Are you talking of CRPGs or of real life?

Thanks for the luck, no advice is meaningless :wink:

Boobies!

 

[Vault Dweller]

If my adventurer has a ton of money I would want him to say "shrew dungeons, I'm buying a beach house".

Agree, money is the reason for any adventuring to begin with. If my character can buy a small kingdom like Conan why bother with some silly quests. So my character would be dirt poor having just enough to restore supplies always one step short from hitting the jackpot sorta like Jeff Peters and Andy Takers

 

[Vault Dweller]

It's never happened to me for some reasons.

Are you talking of CRPGs or of real life?

Real life

 

[GreenNight]

I wanz to hepl U 'cos your tha B3st!!
I'm in ihghschool and not know pragramming or drowing but all say I'm very inteligent and have lots of ideas!!

:twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :shock: :shock: :D :D


enough kidding.
Ok, best whishes and all that. Now some idea to offer quests:

What do you do when you arrive to a new town? You got some money, but probably not much, so you'll have to get a job (buuuu boring, but realist), spend your money until you are dead broke (ale & whores) or start a crime career (U R dangerous).

Let's think about them in reverse order. If you start pickpocketing people, entering into houses, robbing in the highway and such "evil" acts some things are bound to happen. You may be looked suspiciously (no known job and money and you're a stranger in a village), guards might come after you (if they know you are the thief) or the local thief guild may want to contact you, to either kill you or let you join their ranks.

If you start spending your money as if it would never end thiefs may come after it. If you pay some drinks some people may start to like you (until you're broke). And.. well... drunkenness makes strange friends, specially if a slave merchant captures you when you're completely drunk.

And if you get a job it won't be in a responsability charge. Caravan guard (as in Falout), and you might get some better jobs if you prove your worth. Guard, but not captain or anything similar. Bounty hunter needs no explanation, you bring the head they give you the money, no questions asked. Perhaps the blacksmith needs an apprentice. Some hard work that'll give you little money, but you'll be able to use the forge, when job's scarce, to make your own sword. Or, if you know enough about something, start your little shop, selling love potions and snake poisons, with ingredients harvested with your own hands in the woods, where strange creatures live, and where things happen.

And while living there you could see thieves working, denounce them or tell them to train you. Invassions ocur, and villages need to be defended, And if you want to forge a magic item you'll have to go to search the strange materials needed, not only spending XP and money (unless trivial).

There are lots of things to do in a living world. Not all look like quests, and not all should. But if things are well interconected it can be a great experience.

Well, a litlle quest example. There's a beggar asking for money, you could give him some spare change, he could try to rob you (random event) or nothing of it could happen. He needs the money to pay a debt, if he doesn't get it in a week he'll be killed, if he tells somebody he'll be killed (and so he doesn't tell you by default). If you gain his total trust (time, conversation, bribery and being with him alone) he'll tell you the story. If he dies, people will look you suspiciously. If you help him you'll be in trouble, but if you double cross him you might have have a leg to the undeworld (or to a grave).

mind dispersing, too late here.

Good luck and... will it have a GNU/Linux port? :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

http://www.elfcom.us/

i maek taht websight plz let me join ur tem

 

[Vault Dweller]

There are lots of things to do in a living world. Not all look like quests, and not all should.

Right on. I want to make a game that's based on logic of a situation, and quests where you have to perform a single deed for a reward and personal growth are ridiculous.

Good luck and... will it have a GNU/Linux port? :wink:

Absolutely! What's a port?

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

http://www.elfcom.us/

:shock: Teh goggles they do nothing!

 

[Volourn]

Llama's site rulez! :shock:

 

[plin]

VD, are the graphics on the engine you want say, worse than geneforge 2? or the exile games?
And it sounds like you have alot planned already, but, would you want to do a present age CRPG?

anyways, good luck with it

 

[Greenskin13]

Thanks for the luck, no advice is meaningless :wink:

Okay then, maek teh gurlyz h4awt plzzzzz.

Personally, I wouldn't mind Avernum/Exile style graphics. Heck, you could do this game is ASCII and that'd still be grand.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I think you should team up with RaySoft which made the critically acclaimed Kar Warz and recently cancelled Pimputation.

I would like to see the NPCs in the game actually make differences instead of depending on you to do it all. Also more tricking people like telling them to meet you at a place, then go to their enemies and tell them to meet you at the same place to kill each ones off. In some console games they had the generations system which I kinda liked, you have a child and when you die off you play your child.

Your gonna have to plan way ahead and set up all the tree diagrams and paths in the game. Most likely your games going to suck, but you have to start somewhere. Even more likely your game will never get finished. You could use the NWN builder I guess?

 

[Vault Dweller]

VD, are the graphics on the engine you want say, worse than geneforge 2? or the exile games?

Similar

And it sounds like you have alot planned already, but, would you want to do a present age CRPG?

If I were to do a present age crpg, I'd do something like that. As I recall it started as a joke, but then I thought it would actually be a good idea for a game.

Most likely your games going to suck, but you have to start somewhere. Even more likely your game will never get finished

It could suck, but I'll definitely finish it. I tend to take thing I'm paying for seriously.

You could use the NWN builder I guess?

I thought of using some free engine, but most of them including nwn don't support the level of complexity I want and I don't want to end up making one of those games I criticize so often. Besides, I want to be able to sell the game and see if I can make a business out of it. I'd rather be making games for a living then what I'm doing now.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

I wish you luck in your endeavour, VD. Don't have much in the way of knowledge that I can pass on to you and any advice I could give has already been given by some of the others here. Just one request though: Have some hot npc chick in it who you can go up to and have your character say "U haev niec boobz. Ken I lic tehm?" :D

 

[Amerestatistic]

I guess it says something about the current state of the genre that I'm genuinely intrigued by a game some guy on a forum says he's gonna make...

Good luck.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Anyway, fellas, thanks for your support, it really means a lot to me. Now I have 2 questions: perks and levels.

I don't like levels, imo, they serve no purpose, your progress and development is shown by skills. There is also no reason to wait till you level up which could take awhile in some cases to assign a couple of critical points to a skill. Quests should give you some xp points which are actually skill points. I really like how Prelude to Darkness handled it. I'm not copying their system, of course, but that's the direction I want to go to. So let's talk about levels, who likes them and why?

Second topic: perks. Since the game wouldn't have levels, the best way to assign perks would be after certain events. That, of course, means that you wouldn't be able to pick them to add that extra flavour to your character. So if you want to have that option I'd attach it to certain skill values. For example, you increased you melee skill to 75 (Fallout value to make it more familiar), you can pick one melee related perks (anything that helps you in a fight, from damage to health bonus). What do you think?

 

[Azael]

An alternative to that would be that Fate Points (or whatever you call the points you get for quests and such) could be used either for skills or perks. In that case the player gets a trade-off. Does he invest his hard earned points into his Sword skills in order to hit more often, or does he use them to purchase the Amplify Damage perk so that when he does hit, the enemy gets really hurt? I'd also have some unique perks available for quest rewards, I'd make him unique so that the player doesn't feel cheated if he finds out that instead of spending his points on Improved Sword Whacking, he could just have cleared out the rats from the sword master's wine celllar (please don't put a quest like that in the game).

I agree on levels though, they always felt like a strange construct to me. "Wow, I killed another goblin and suddenly I can take more damage!". Seriously, WTF?!

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Levels are just an indication of character growth. They're more like markers indicating you've reached a certain point where your skills might improve.

Somewhat off-topic, but... VD, do you consider including something like sentient weapons? The other day i was thinking up of including them in a game, but twisting their usual commonplace. Instead of having a sword scream at you to hit harder, you might need to scream at it to perk its blade up. Or even need to sing to a two-handed sword (and depending on what you sang to it, you'd get different attributes on it, like bonus to hit, to your AC, to its damage or to its slashing values, etc). A shield that constantly asked to be clean and in top shape (it could even complain about its age depending on the number of times you blocked a blow, thinking that the scratches and dents made it the equivalent of human wrinkles). Or an axe with a conscience problem, too fed up with killing, that needed some motivation.

 

[MrBrown]

Second topic: perks. Since the game wouldn't have levels, the best way to assign perks would be after certain events. That, of course, means that you wouldn't be able to pick them to add that extra flavour to your character. So if you want to have that option I'd attach it to certain skill values. For example, you increased you melee skill to 75 (Fallout value to make it more familiar), you can pick one melee related perks (anything that helps you in a fight, from damage to health bonus). What do you think?

The best way to do this IMO is to have levels that function as a measure of how experienced the character is, but which don't actually give all of the abilities. For instance, if you assume that your system is 1-10 abilities and 1-100 skills, you could measure a characters level from (abilities*10)+skills. For instance, at 6 abilities 5 and with 6 skills at 50, you'd have 600 of these points. 1-500 could mean level 1, 501-1000 level 2, 1001-1500 level 3, etc. Then you could award perks whenever the character reaches a new level; but advancing in skills would be still independent from the levelling system.

Also, keeping some kind of system to measure how experienced the character is, would be useful in general, IMO.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Levels aren't a big thing to me. I can do with or without them. Not like I'm gonna cry either way. As long as there is character development, it doesn't matter really.

Perks however are a nice touch and definitely something I like to see in a game. However, there are some things not done too often in CRPGs that you might wanna consider. For instance, the melee skill in your example above. Let's say I get my skill up to 75 (again, going for the FO thing) and I get to choose a perk. Well, okay, let's say you have choices of perks. But let's also say that instead of a perk, I can take a specialization. Let's say, for instance, long swords. From that point forward, I would get a bonus to my melee skill when using long swords. FO has small guns and big guns skills, but take it one step further and combine the two but allow for specializations. For guns though you don't have to get technical as far as specializations go. No "Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum" specializations. Instead, just categorize it as handguns/rifles(shotguns)/smg/machinegun/heavy machinegun. Now you'll wanna make the bonus worth it. Maybe say +20% to hit and a better chance for criticals when using that specific weapon type.

As for perk types. here are some suggestions:

Trick Shot - Gives the character the ability to ricochet ranged weapons off a surface to hit targets behind cover. All this effectively does is cuts any cover bonus an enemy might have down by 2/3. This is of course if you are allowing for cover bonuses.

Combat Empathy - The character can read his opponents well and knows what attack they are about to use at any given moment. This effectively doubles their defense bonus during combat but only applies to melee combat and requires a high skill level before it becomes available for choice.

Crack Shot - The character suffers no penalties to his combat skill for called shots and can effectively increase the range of his weapon by an extra 50%. This would also require a high skill level and apply only to ranged weapon combat.

I'll give you more suggestions for perks if you want. Those are just off the top of my head at the moment.

Oh, and if you do allowed for called shots, please let us be able to shoot boobies.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Does he invest his hard earned points into his Sword skills in order to hit more often, or does he use them to purchase the Amplify Damage perk

You can ony increase skills with XP, the only way to get perks is to participate in some activities (quests and actions) or as a reward for skills development and dedication.

'd also have some unique perks available for quest rewards, I'd make him unique so that the player doesn't feel cheated if he finds out that instead of spending his points on Improved Sword Whacking, he could just have cleared out the rats from the sword master's wine celllar (please don't put a quest like that in the game).

Of course, I know what you mean, quests related perks are unique, and unlike skill perks they usually involve reputation and thus have both positive and negative values. As for pests, like I said before, no pest control quests.

I agree on levels though, they always felt like a strange construct to me. "Wow, I killed another goblin and suddenly I can take more damage!". Seriously, WTF?!

My sentiments exactly. WTF?!

 

[Vault Dweller]

Levels are just an indication of character growth. They're more like markers indicating you've reached a certain point where your skills might improve.

I'm going for the real life thing whether it's good or not. If you're good at something, then you are good at something. Simple as that.

Somewhat off-topic, but... VD, do you consider including something like sentient weapons?

No can do. Technological limitation at this point, but I always liked the idea of a bond between a man and his sword: Elric and Stormbringer, that's sort of things.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The best way to do this IMO is to have levels that function as a measure of how experienced the character is, but which don't actually give all of the abilities. For instance, if you assume that your system is 1-10 abilities and 1-100 skills, you could measure a characters level from (abilities*10)+skills. For instance, at 6 abilities 5 and with 6 skills at 50, you'd have 600 of these points. 1-500 could mean level 1, 501-1000 level 2, 1001-1500 level 3, etc. Then you could award perks whenever the character reaches a new level; but advancing in skills would be still independent from the levelling system.

An interesting system, but I want to keep it as simple as possible. If something doesn't serve any purpose, then it gotta go. I believe that perks should be attached to skills, and in many cases they are, there were many perks in Fallout that had a skill value requirement.

Also, keeping some kind of system to measure how experienced the character is, would be useful in general, IMO.

Well, if you see a bunch a bandits and you know you can handle them then you are reasonably experienced at that point. If they kick your ass, then I guess you're not. Live and learn Arcanum, imo, was a good indication that levels are useless, I never looked at my levels but at my skills as they were a true indication of what I'm capable of.

 

[MrBrown]

An interesting system, but I want to keep it as simple as possible. If something doesn't serve any purpose, then it gotta go. I believe that perks should be attached to skills, and in many cases they are, there were many perks in Fallout that had a skill value requirement.

Nothing wrong with keeping it simple. However, the problem I have with your current approach is that it makes certain skill ranks more valuable than others. For instance, if you give a perk every 25 skill ranks, then you'll have players taking skills up to 25, 50, 75 etc. Encourages min/maxing, which is IMO a bad idea. The least you could do is at least have those ranks cost more (ie, going from 24 to 25 costs more than going from 23-24), assuming you're going to handle buying skills similarly to FO.

The ideal system (for perks attached to skills) in my opinion would be to have a system where one skill rank = one perk. This of course would need a different skill range, say 1 to 10. And alot of consideration on how the rest of the system works with that.

Well, if you see a bunch a bandits and you know you can handle them then you are reasonably experienced at that point. If they kick your ass, then I guess you're not. Live and learn.

I meant it as in for the developer. Sometimes you might want to scale XP, enemies, etc, based on that. Nothing wrong with not having a simple measurement (or not having stuff scale), but it's definetly something you should take into consideration before you start creating the game itself.

 

[Vault Dweller]

For instance, the melee skill in your example above. Let's say I get my skill up to 75 (again, going for the FO thing) and I get to choose a perk. Well, okay, let's say you have choices of perks. But let's also say that instead of a perk, I can take a specialization. Let's say, for instance, long swords. From that point forward, I would get a bonus to my melee skill when using long swords. FO has small guns and big guns skills, but take it one step further and combine the two but allow for specializations. For guns though you don't have to get technical as far as specializations go. No "Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum" specializations. Instead, just categorize it as handguns/rifles(shotguns)/smg/machinegun/heavy machinegun. Now you'll wanna make the bonus worth it. Maybe say +20% to hit and a better chance for criticals when using that specific weapon type.

Good point, let me think about that, thanks.

Trick Shot - Gives the character the ability to ricochet ranged weapons off a surface to hit targets behind cover. All this effectively does is cuts any cover bonus an enemy might have down by 2/3. This is of course if you are allowing for cover bonuses.

No can do, technological limitations, besides, I don't think that arrows ricochet well (correct me if I'm wrong).

Combat Empathy - The character can read his opponents well and knows what attack they are about to use at any given moment. This effectively doubles their defense bonus during combat but only applies to melee combat and requires a high skill level before it becomes available for choice.

I like this one. It makes sense, and it supports lighly armored characters.

Crack Shot - The character suffers no penalties to his combat skill for called shots and can effectively increase the range of his weapon by an extra 50%. This would also require a high skill level and apply only to ranged weapon combat.

This sounds too uber to me: you have no penalties and you can hit anything you see.

I'll give you more suggestions for perks if you want. Those are just off the top of my head at the moment.

Yep, keep 'em coming. One rule though, it has to make sense, i.e I don't like slayer/sniper perks that upgrade each hit to a critical.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Nothing wrong with keeping it simple. However, the problem I have with your current approach is that it makes certain skill ranks more valuable than others. For instance, if you give a perk every 25 skill ranks, then you'll have players taking skills up to 25, 50, 75 etc. Encourages min/maxing, which is IMO a bad idea. The least you could do is at least have those ranks cost more (ie, going from 24 to 25 costs more than going from 23-24), assuming you're going to handle buying skills similarly to FO.

First of all, thanks for criticizing, that helps to see things that I could miss otherwise. Second, higher skills would require more xp to increase, and as for min maxing, that's a good point. The way I see it people who want to min/max would do it anyway. My job is to make other skills and perks more attractive (a fighter should see good reason in supplementing his fighting skills with non-combat ones as in keep pumping his long sword skill up. 3=2+1 if you know what I mean.)

The ideal system (for perks attached to skills) in my opinion would be to have a system where one skill rank = one perk. This of course would need a different skill range, say 1 to 10. And alot of consideration on how the rest of the system works with that.

While that sounds good, that's make perks less special. Considering that a char would probably have to be at 7 to be decently good at his main skill, and 3-4 in at least 3 supporting skills, that's 16-20 perks plus the ones that comes from quests. That's too much, they would either make a char too powerful or become meaningless like "you get another 2% to hit". I want to have fewer perks but make them good (not uber though) and make you really think about which one to pick.

but it's definetly something you should take into consideration before you start creating the game itself.

Good point, thanks for the advice.