A request for next Teudogar version

[Anonymous]

Make a button in the options screen with which one can disable magic.

Although the magic in Teudogar is relatively nicely done, I still think it's a bit too much fantasy.

It's also overly powerful.

So I'd like to see a button with one can change magic settings, for instance in three settings:
- No spells, no potions
- No spells, only potions
- All magic

Perhaps the Berserker spell should still be functional, because there is very strong historical evidence for it, and it's not magic persé.

 

[Wolf Mittag]

Well, most of the 'magic' in Teudogar is based on the assumption that if everybody believes in a concept, this belief by itself makes it a strong force, even if the concept is factually untrue and the belief irrational. Historical sources indicate that almost all Teutons, and even most Romans, believed in magic. In my opinion, their belief in the effectiveness of magic made 'magic' actually effective for them: I.e., it's not the curse per se, it's the reaction of a superstitious person to that curse that counts, and that makes this sort of 'magic' a reality in a society where most people were extremely superstitious. (And I think it's almost impossible to grow up in a society without more or less accepting most of the religious or ethical convictions that everybody believes in. If everybody believes in magic, so will you, at least to a certain degree.)

So a person who got cursed would have been very likely to lose hope and confidence, thereby turning the 'curse' into a self-fulfilling prophecy: His belief to be doomed to fail would cause him to be timid and not put 100% effort behind his action, or to give up at the first sign of resistance, thus causing him to actually fail (thereby, by the way, reaffirming everybody's belief in the effectiveness of magic). (Teutons may have been particularly vulnerable to this due to their belief in 'Heil' (good fortune/fate), i.e., that the outcome of one's actions depended just as much on one's good fortune as on one's own efforts.)

However, I agree that the Weaken, Protection, Frighten, and Dominate spells go a great deal beyond what is historically documented and realistic. In reality, Frighten would have worked only if you were a priest (people knew attacking a priest would bring his god's wrath on them). Weaken is basically just another word for Curse, but is too powerful, especially when combined with Curse. And Dominate can't really be justified, nor can Protection be: Increased confidence may be great for helping you act successfully by encouraging you to apply 100% of your skills, but it's difficult to see how it could help you react more effectively to your enemies' attacks. So I may optionally or generally disable the Dominate and Protection spells, and reduce the effectiveness of Bless and Weaken.

As to the potions, these are mainly based on the placebo effect, and therefore, I believe, not that unrealistic: Like in today's clinical studies of new medications, a significant number of patients from the test group, who received sugar-pills without any pharmaceutical ingredients, but who believed they were getting the real medication, will actually show strongly improved health afterwards - caused by nothing more than their own belief in their 'medication's healing power. So I think that Stay-Awake, Love and Virility make some sense as placebos, and Poison, Antidote, Sleep and Berserk make pharmaceutical sense as well (there's a posting somewhere in this Forum about Berserk and the toadstool mushroom). As far as I know, people's knowledge of pharmaceutical herbs has been quite good ever since the Stone Age. But yet again, most of these potions are far too powerful, and I maybe ought to reduce their effectiveness. And I need to make sure that the purely make-believe potions (those without actual pharmaceutical ingredients) will work only if the person receiving them knows what he is receiving and believes in its effectiveness.

Thanks for your idea of disabling magic via the options menu! I think what I'll do is offer a selection 'Magic: realistic/powerful', with 'realistic' reducing most spells'/potions' effectiveness and disabling those that are obviously unrealistic.

 

[Adam P]

I think, perhaps, there is more power in magic than we give credit, more than a placebo... It was firmly believed since "the stone age", at least up until "the age of reason" when nothing exists outside of a test tube. There is far more to this world than flesh and blood. But that's just the belief of a dumb american right?

It does seem to be way too powerful though, if you dont kill the priest with your spear first shot you gotta grab your spear and run until it wears off and snipe again.

If you do add an option, it might work better if it were chosen at the start of the game
(instead of flipping it off and on everytime you get cursed). Another option would be, you meet priests if you learn magic, you dont if you dont.

 

[Anonymous]

Wolf, I agree that the magic in Teudogar is quite realistic, and much more so than in other games.

I was initially very pleasantly surprised to see it done this way. But at some point in the "against Rome" plot, all my combat eventually came to depend on magic, and that's a bit much for a warrior.

If you are going to implement the button, I'd probably play on "realistic", but there are probably people who want to play without any magic (excepting perhaps the pharmaceutical potions).

Perhaps another idea, is making the player have some control over his "faith" stat. Faith is something of a choice in real life as well, and I suppose that in ancient Germania some people were more religious and/or superstitious than others. By having low faith, magic used against you should also become much weaker.

(off topic)
Adam, re. magic in real life, as a Christian, I agree that there is more than flesh and blood, as you put it. But because of my beliefs, I also have problems with accepting the Germanic view on religion as the truth. At the same time, it would be unrealistic to bring Christian beliefs into the Teudogar world, so I'm happy with how things have been done in the game. It would be even better if the "magic" button :wink: becomes a reality.

 

[Anonymous]

The above post was by me...

 

[Anonymous]

I loved the way magic was done in the game and I liked how it was logically justified. I agree that in the later game I was constantly blessing, cursing and breaking. It made the player rely too much on luck (if you don't successfully bless yourself in the first round then you will be cursed and have no hope of surviving).



(off topic)
As of yet there has been no clonclusive evidence of anyone posessing supernatural powers, despite thousands professing to so at this time the only logical conclusions are that:

a) Magic does not exist and has never existed.
b) Everybody who possesses magical talents are hiding their abilities, despite the millions of dollars that they would earn for displaying them (based on humans natural instincts to gain more wealth and power this is hardly believable as it would require every person possessing any shread of magical ability to hide it from everyone else).
c) In the past people possessed magical abilities but somehow we have lost our magical abitlities (although in my opinion this is hardly a logical conclusion).

It was firmly believed since "the stone age", at least up until "the age of reason" when nothing exists outside of a test tube.

Possibly because nobody understood the reasons behind every natural phenomenon? You have to remember that at one time most people believed that an earthquake was their god shaking the Earth, not simply tectonic plates moving. For hundreds of years people believed that the Earth was covered with a tent-like piece of cloth that held back a large body of water which sometimes tore, creating rain. Lightning was God being angry again, not simply basic electricity at work, positive charge attracting negative ones. Many people still believe that diffraction of light was only invented after a huge flood, which killed all life on Earth, except those which Noah saved, which is genetically and physically impossible due to the genetic variation that exists among members of the same species and the vast number of species. Humans have always loved to make historical events, we love to exagerate and make things more dramatic than they really were. Anything that they can't explain using their current knowledge they attribute to magic or some deity. That's not to say that it's mpossible for a deity to exist and to have created the universe billions of years ago, it just so happens that almost all attempts at attributing things to a god have been either logically explained or debunked as myths.

 

[Anonymous]

I meant to add my name to the previous post and I forgot to mention something:


Perhaps you could make it take time to change your beliefs? There would be a slider underneath a belief bar. The belief bar would show your current belief and the slider would show what you want to change it to. Every day it gets closer to what you want it to be.

| |||||||||||..... | Current
| |||||............. | Goal

To change to the decreased level would take several days so you can't just change it during a fight or overnight.



I don't really think that this needs to be changed. I'm fine with the way that teudogar is now and this isn't really needed. I'd prefer that Darghul came out that little bit earlier .

 

[Erik]

Being able to tone down the 'magic' sounds great, something to suit all.

I stumbled upon an crpg in making today, http://ashes.lalista.org/. Probably nothing new to the frequent codex posters. Anyway to the point:

When I looked at the screenshots i directly thought of Teudogar(2). The colours, art and general feeling of the screenshots (and consequently the engine) felt like something suitable for Teudogar 2.

I know you have put a lot of work into the updated Dhargul engine, but will you ever be able to reach any medium to high resolutions with it, implement snow, etc.?

So if you ever want to make a Teudogar 2 in 3d (or just want to be inspired) you might want to consider their engine.

Cheers!!!!

/Erik

Ps. Looking forward to Darghul just the way it is! Ds.

 

[Adam P]

The Duke, sorry for my delayed responce.
This is hardly the forum for a discussion of philosophy, which I didn't mean to start.
However if you would like to message me I would be happy to straighten you out on Christian beliefs that you seem to be a bit cloudy on. As well as provide some evidence and logic behind these beliefs.