Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

What the fuck is taking so long?!!

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
I decided to start posting short updates to a) show that the project is not dead and b) to entertain you with crazy game development stories.

For the last 4-5 months we've been working on the combat system. While it sounds simple (I kill you with death -> u die lol!!!!), it's actually not. And no, I'm not taking about all kinda hit/miss calculations, clevar AI, the ruleset, or anything remotely interesting. I'm talking about some annoying, minor, but time-consuming crap like dropping and picking up weapons and other junk.

Our general pick-up system is simple. You click on the eye icon* and get a window that shows you all available (not in containers) items in each map(!). We have, basically, an invisible container where all the local junk is contained and dropped into when you discard an item or kill someone. Since we don't have a lot of junk lying around that seems to work well. All ingredients (leafs, sulfur, etc) are also in the container (different areas have different items - there are no leafs in desert locations, obviously). The access to the ingredients is skill-based. Let's say there are 40 "healing" leafs in an area. If your alchemy is 50, you only see 8 leafs in the pickup box. You can't see any items, weapons or ingredients, on the ground; everything is handled via the pickup window.

Anyway, moving on. In combat your can't access the general pickup window. Some battles involve allies and smarter testers waited for a better equipped characters to die and then grabbed their stuff telekinetically, being 5-10 squares away. That didn't work for us, so we had to change it. You can pick up only what's on the square you stand on (think XCOM). That way if you see a dropped weapon and you want it NOW!, you move your ass to that square and pick it up. Alternatively, you can wait for the battle to be over and then pick up everything through the general pickup window.

Now, that seems to work, but you can't see items that are on the ground, which creates a problem. Yesterday my character was disarmed by NPC A and then was knocked away by NPC B's hammer of painful death. So, here I was, disarmed and far away from the square with my axe. What was worse I couldn't even remember which square it was after the NPCs moved a bit. So, we decided to use the NWN2 "lootbag" system, which I hate with passion. We wasted a few weeks trying to come up with a better system and trying different things, but failed. Well, we'd have stupid little chests instead of bags. After a battle is over, the chests will disappear and all the loot will go into the main invisible chest. So, that's the kinda stuff that we are dealing with at the moment, in case someone's wondering.

* It also gives you a description of the area in the interface text box.
 

Hazelnut

Erudite
Joined
Dec 17, 2002
Messages
1,490
Location
UK
Why have you decided not to show actual items on the ground in your spiffy 3d engine? That's not something I would have expected.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Hazelnut said:
Why have you decided not to show actual items on the ground in your spiffy 3d engine? That's not something I would have expected.
Well, placing leafs/roots and small piles of sulfur/black powder on the ground would have made the game look like HoMM. I've always liked single window pickups (Realms of Arkania), so that's why we went with this option. At first, we didn't have any pickup options during combat, but ever since the disarming got implemented, we had to do something.
 

Koby

Scholar
Joined
Aug 8, 2006
Messages
356
You don’t necessarily need to do it in the elaborate way: if it is solely to address the "in the heat of battle problem" just add some kind of indicator to the square that tell the player "this square has staff lol ktnxb", it can be a small fucking yellow exclamation mark for all I care.
untitled3js2.png


*edit
And then you can say your game incorporates rouge like elements :P

**edit
If look/examine doesn't take AP (in combat) you can give the player the option to look at the square ("you see a magically floating yellow exclamation mark").
 

Hazelnut

Erudite
Joined
Dec 17, 2002
Messages
1,490
Location
UK
Vault Dweller said:
Hazelnut said:
Why have you decided not to show actual items on the ground in your spiffy 3d engine? That's not something I would have expected.
Well, placing leafs/roots and small piles of sulfur/black powder on the ground would have made the game look like HoMM. I've always liked single window pickups (Realms of Arkania), so that's why we went with this option. At first, we didn't have any pickup options during combat, but ever since the disarming got implemented, we had to do something.

Okay, I meant that you keep your invisible area 'treasure chest' idea and add anything that's laying on the ground and on corpses but it's only accessible outside of combat. But if someone drops a sword, I'd expect to see a sword on the ground not a chest... does that make me a graphics whore then? :lol: I also love the single window pickup idea - not suggesting that pixel hunts or anything should replace that. Hope that's clearer, now must get on with my prep for a training session I'm running.


EDIT: Koby is probably right, and I'm probably a graphics whore. (hey I like Morrowind...)
 

Jora

Arcane
Joined
Mar 14, 2003
Messages
1,115
Location
Finland
Would it be possible to allow only the items that were dropped by the player to appear in a universal pickup window during combat? You wouldn't have to worry about players scavenging items from fallen enemies/friends or trying to remember the exact square they were disarmed on.
 

Spectacle

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 25, 2006
Messages
8,363
I agree with koby. If you can't have appropriate models for each type of dropped gear appear on the ground, it's less immersion breaking if the generic item indicator you use looks like it's part of the interface rather than part of the world.

edit: Meh, I feel dirty just to have taken the word "immersion" into my mouth. Talk about a word that has been abused by PR departments.
 

Monolith

Prophet
Joined
Mar 7, 2006
Messages
1,290
Location
München
How about different "placeholders" for different types of items? If implementing that includes too much coding, then fuck it, but otherwise it shouldn't be that much of a problem and surely is better than a chest.

And how about making the tiles around your character available as well? Could reduce frustration if you drop your weapon and got knocked away.
 

Hazelnut

Erudite
Joined
Dec 17, 2002
Messages
1,490
Location
UK
Jora said:
Would it be possible to allow only the items that were dropped by the player to appear in a universal pickup window during combat? You wouldn't have to worry about players scavenging items from fallen enemies/friends or trying to remember the exact square they were disarmed on.

But then you don't have the cost of moving to the correct square. Oh, and I agree if the representation of a dropped object is not related to the object then it should be an interface thing like the squares overlay.

(definitely getting back to the training slides now!!)
 

merry andrew

Erudite
Joined
Jan 17, 2004
Messages
1,332
Location
Ellensburg
I'd prefer to see a more vague indication of something being on the ground. Maybe have the square it's in highlighted somehow and when you mouse-over it you can access a list of what your character can see or infer is there?

You could even alter the detail of the list based on proximity. From afar, you notice leaves on the ground... when you're closer, you notice 5 leaves on the ground. Have the necessary proximity for detail depend on a perception stat or something.

In other words, make it perfect but hurry the fuck up.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Jora said:
Would it be possible to allow only the items that were dropped by the player to appear in a universal pickup window during combat? You wouldn't have to worry about players scavenging items from fallen enemies/friends or trying to remember the exact square they were disarmed on.
That was the source of many heated internal debates. In the end I agreed that you should be able to use/get access to all available items on a battlefield. If someone throws a spear at you, you should be able to pick it up and "return it to the sender".

Fryjar said:
I even found a pic of the game's current state which depicts the new improvements.
This picture is ILLEGAL! It's from an unoptimized build!!!! Please remove the link immediately.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
He can just call them Space-Romans instead and say it takes place on a distant colony in a world far, far away. Easy.
 

vazquez595654

Arbiter
Joined
Jul 21, 2005
Messages
1,090
Location
Malta
Can you make the game more like different. You know like with different stuff. And then add other different stuff that is different from the original different stuff that was different. Otherwise I think the game may be boring.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2002
Messages
2,443
Location
The Lone Star State
Glad to hear we're not playing hunt the pixel. That would have really turned me off of alchemy.

I agree with using an exclamation point or another interface highllight showing something rather than a bag or chest. It's less corny than seeing somebody toss a spear which then gets enveloped by a magic bag the second it lands. Not that it's that big a deal, I remember rats carrying locked and trapped treasure chests in Ultima V that never really bothered me.

And do kindly hurry the fuck up. These wankers asking you to spend two years polishing the stupid thing are just going to ensure you're well and truly burned out before you've released your first game.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
At least it is 3D now, cause kids won't pay for a 2D game of course.
 

Ander Vinz

Scholar
Joined
May 25, 2007
Messages
645
Vault Dweller said:
Our general pick-up system is simple. You click on the eye icon* and get a window that shows you all available (not in containers) items in each map(!).
So you can just push "take all' button and move on?

Vault Dweller said:
So, we decided to use the NWN2 "lootbag" system, which I hate with passion. Well, we'd have stupid little chests instead of bags. After a battle is over, the chests will disappear and all the loot will go into the main invisible chest.
Didn't play NWN2, but is it something like Arcanum's "pile of junk" chest? And what's the difference between chests and bags?
 

Section8

Cipher
Joined
Oct 23, 2002
Messages
4,321
Location
Wardenclyffe
He can just call them Space-Romans instead and say it takes place on a distant colony in a world far, far away. Easy.

Game Changing Roleplaying

Space-Romans

As a Space-Roman, you basically do the same sort of things normal Romans do, except you're from Space!
  • Imagine all the cataclysmic magical damage in the world was actually caused by crashed spaceships, which were taken away by the empire to a secret research facility
  • Whenever you talk to an NPC, pick the weirdest dialogue choice, because you're actually an alien
  • Maybe pretend that you were caught by someone so you wrestled with them and they fell on their paper knife, then do things like jump from roof to roof in an attempt to escape the law
  • Collect all the Ayleid statues and use them to restore the ancient ayleid cites

Also:

I agree with koby. If you can't have appropriate models for each type of dropped gear appear on the ground, it's less immersion breaking if the generic item indicator you use looks like it's part of the interface rather than part of the world.

edit: Meh, I feel dirty just to have taken the word "immersion" into my mouth. Talk about a word that has been abused by PR departments.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Ander Vinz said:
Vault Dweller said:
Our general pick-up system is simple. You click on the eye icon* and get a window that shows you all available (not in containers) items in each map(!).
So you can just push "take all' button and move on?
Yes.

Didn't play NWN2, but is it something like Arcanum's "pile of junk" chest? And what's the difference between chests and bags?
Bags are for fags. Real men use chests.
 

Ander Vinz

Scholar
Joined
May 25, 2007
Messages
645
Vault Dweller said:
Didn't play NWN2, but is it something like Arcanum's "pile of junk" chest? And what's the difference between chests and bags?
Bags are for fags. Real men use chests.
How masculine of you. But still?
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom