Ladonna:
Thank you!
sum up DARGHUL in a sentence:
Something for almost everyone, due to its freedom of action and large array of gaming possibilities, offering lots of choices, and the freedom to focus on whatever particularly appeals to you.
The background is that Teudogar was mainly focused on dialogs and political thinking, with some occasional combat in between, little exploration, and not much gaming action: You spent most of your time talking or thinking, and only rarely actually _did_ something. It definitely wasn't a game an analphabetical person could play.
In contrast, DARGHUL offers much more in exploration and real action - things to do, not just matters to contemplate. There's still lots of dialog, but you're now free to decide whether to make this the main subject of your gaming, or whether to focus on other kinds of gameplay action, such as exploring, fighting, dungeoneering, pilgrimaging, producing things, trading, treasure-huntung, recovering magical objects, perfecting your skills, learning spells, reading books, talking to people, completing subplots, and, of course, saving the world. Additionally, different starting choices during character generation (male/female, knight's/wizard's apprentice / craftsman / good-for-nothing etc) encourage you to select a somewhat different course and play in a different way each time you start a new game.
Igor: street performer, bard, artist:
Absolutely; I love this. Also, it's fairly easy to implement (basically I just need to modify the player_goes_fishing() function), and a nice touch while playing. So you'd double-click on your flute or fiddle, and depending on your skill and the location you'd chosen, you may or may not have earned some money or food an hour or so later.
Don't know about other kinds of art; maybe you could paint; there aren't any paintings in the game world so far, and paintings as such are a fairly modern concept, too (antiquity only knew wall paintings/frescoes, or mosaics). Still, I might introduce this. So provided you've acquired a canvass, frame, colors etc, you might select an art style (classical, baroque, expressionist, abstract, kitsch) and a subject (portrait, landscape, erotic), and then see if you can find a buyer for your product. (Depending on your painting skills, and wise choice of potential customers, I'd expect portraits, kitsch, and porn to bring the most money.) (Still have to see how well I can implement this; I need some bits for quality, style, and some for completion status (finishing the thing would take a while, not just one session); the subject could be derived from the tile number; however there'd be a problem with portraits due to lack of space for the NPC number of the portrayed; so I may have to introduce an extra data table, which would complicate matters.)
Another fun option may be writing (novels (quality influenced by several of your skills), advice (quality depending on your experience/skill level regarding the subject), journals, poetry, or propaganda/commercials).
Creating statues would entail many technical difficulties (difficult to move; might block NPCs' way); so I'll skip this. Maybe telling stories, in a Homeric fashion, enhanced by your experience/exploration. Maybe performance art/acrobacy/dance, similar to music.
Basically, all of the art creating jobs would build on the produce_something and bartering functions, and the entertainment jobs on the player_goes_fishing (performing an action, you get something (or not), depending on your environment, in this case, any present NPCs, who'd form your audience). Begging would work like this, too (charisma required).
Any other ideas for what you could produce/perform?
Offering services
would be more difficult to implement since it'd require real interaction with your customers. E.g. you might offer medical services if you can cast the healing spell; but I don't know how I could program your customers. Same goes for, say, offering 'private dances' (since we discussed entertainment jobs above; might be lucrative if you're a female player). Or maybe porter, carrying things (if you're strong).
But maybe I'll solve this just like street performing: You simply go to some crowded place, select action 'Offer this or that service'; the palette fades out and some time passes; and depending on your skills, location, people present, luck etc, you may or may not have found a customer. You'd then be told the result and proceeds (e.g. 'You earned 35 silver coins for fixing a guy's broken leg.'). Street-vendoring (food and beverages), or offering day-laborer work such as working on a farmer's field for a day could also be implemented in this fashion. All of this via Actions Menu, and then selecting the particular service you intend to offer/perform (availability depending on your skills/circumstances). Your money/skills/reputation etc would of course be adjusted a small bit every time you do anything of the things mentioned above, so you'd actually gain experience and get better at providing this.
Any other ideas for what services you could offer?
trade:
Well, I've been thinking about how I can fit a production/trade system into the existing game world. What I've come up with, conceptually, is this:
You can hire a guy with a pack-mule, or several of these, and assign him a fixed trade route (by defining the route in a screen similar to the Teudogar's Travel Screen, i.e., clicking on the locations).
Next, you'd be shown a table of the route to be traveled, e.g. A(starting point)-B-C-D(end point)-C(returning home)-B-A(returned to starting point). At each stop (start and end location as well as all locations passed on the way plus return), your caravan can
1) pick up stuff (from any storehouse/mine/merchant's shop/craftsman's shop you may own in this location), or
2) buy stuff (anything any merchant, craftsman or raw materials producer in this location offers, or
3) deliver stuff (previously bought/picked up, to your storehouse/shop), or
4) sell stuff (en gros, to merchants in this location).
You could select this for each stop by clicking on (pickup)/(buy)/(drop)/(sell) and selecting the details from a menu (e.g., buy -> list of all local merchants you know of -> list of all products the selected merchant offers).
Your caravan could access only those locations you've previously explored or heard of, and only deal with those merchants you have previously talked to or heard of. And pickup/drop would of course only be available in locations where you have acquired a storehouse or shop.
How much your caravan could buy would depend on your funds, and how much it could carry, on the number of mules. Funds might be added/deducted from your bank account, so no gold would have to be carried around. (You might also leverage your trade by buying merchandise on credit.) The risk of your caravan being robbed would depend on the number of guards you hired (if any). The driver and his mules, and the guards, would cost you money every day.
The entire thing would be virtual, i.e., apart from the initial hiring dialog, you'd never actually get to see your caravan; all you'd see would be the goods piling up in the assigned locations. A global overview table would help you keep track of your caravans, re-assign or fire them etc. Wage costs and available workers/mules would limit the number of caravans you could keep employed.
So the easiest thing you might do would e.g. be to have your caravan buy a mule-load of amphorae of wine in one city and transport this to the castle of the knights' order, and sell it directly to the castle's storage master. Provided the price difference is sufficient to cover your caravan driver's wage, you'd make a profit. Or a different scenario: You've invested in a mine and acquired the rights to a monthly share of mined iron. Your caravan picks this up, picks up some coal in a 2nd location, and drops both iron and coal in your smithy in a nearby city; it may also pick up some surplus finished goods from there and transport these to your shop in a different city; before returning once again to the mine, perhaps carrying some provisions to sell to the miners.
selling stuff:
I'm solving the underlying lack-of-demand problem by simply assuming that the cities are in fact large, and the actually visible population represents just a small part of the total. So whatever you produce/offer will be bought to a certain extent.
Apart from selling specific goods or raw materials to merchants or craftsmen who'd re-sell or process them, you might also set up your own shop in each city, by buying/renting a house (via dialog). (I can circumvent most problems with this by preparing just one suitable house/room per city, with a sufficient number of containers, room for tools, sleeping places for your workers/clerks etc; you'd get assigned this after paying.)
That way, you could sell any item that exists within the game world, finished or used goods as well as raw materials or whatever (though useless things may not find buyers). Your caravans would deliver everything to this house; you'd hire someone who'd sell these goods to customers (tavern/dialog); and you'd set selling prices per category (e.g. weapons: expensive, leather goods: average/cheap, tools: fire-sale etc) (dialog with your clerk, or maybe via a global overview table/menu).
Your clerk would then, over time, bit by bit, automatically sell everything you put in your shop/storehouse (including possibly your accumulated booty from dungeoneering). How much (if any) could be sold would depend on local demand (influenced by population numbers and character, type of goods, prices set by you, competitors, items already sold etc).
production:
For simplicity's sake, let's say whatever house you acquire would already have a fireplace, a basic set of tools, a good number of boxes/chests, and room for several workers to work, live and sleep.
You could then add specific tools (cauldron, loom, smithing tools, etc) (dialog/local enterpreneurs), and hire specific craftsmen (cook, potter, tailor, leather producer, smith) (dialog/tavern) (with apprentice/average/master skills; that'll determine what they can produce). That way, you could turn your shop into a craftsman's shop/factory, producing and selling e.g. bread, pots, yarn/cloth/clothes, leather/leather goods/armor/torches, weapons/armor/tools/jewelry.
With your your caravan(s), you'd procure the necessary raw materials (wheat, coal, iron, clay, wool, skins, lumber, gold) from respective producers, or you could also buy semi-finished goods from other craftsmen (yarn, cloth, leather, wooden sticks), and you could transport surplus good to other cities (selling them en gros to merchants, or delivering them to another store you've bought there).
(As to materials, you might perhaps buy a stake with certain producers, such as an iron mine, entitling you to a certain quota of the production, which your caravans could then simply pick up.)
(Any other products/crafts? apart from furniture or other immobile items, which I can't do.)
(Other raw materials: Additionally, for trading, meat. Anything else?)
(In summary, as product categories, I'm thinking of food, household items, clothes, arms, armor, tools, jewelry. Anything else?)
So basically, I'd need to implement:
- a data table of all merchants/producers for every location, with their inventories (available goods) and selling prices, goods they can produce, production rates, goods they're currently producing, raw materials they need, willingness to buy other goods, and do you know of this merchant. This table would include your clerks and craftsmen.
- a demand data table for every location (what quantities of what type of products at what price would be bought there).
- a product data table listing days required for production, required raw materials, required craftsman for all producable goods.
- an production and inventory system, with buildup (every listed merchant, including people employed by you, producing stuff), inventory management (placing/removing produced stuff into/from containers in each merchant's house, counting how much is left), and sales (reducing inventory depending on demand, adding funds to your bank account), and employee management (deducting their wages, adjusting their skill levels).
- a caravan table (trade route, location, inventory, action for each trade route stop, number of mules, number of guards).
- a system for certain craftsmen to appear in taverns, where you could hire them, and to put hired employees and bought machinery into your shop.
- some statistics to help you keep overview (your inventory/production/shops/employees in all locations)
Much of this can be recycled from how slaves produce stuff and from how merchants clear their inventory in Teudogar; so most of the things difficult to code are already in place, and setting up and managing above data tables would be the main work to do.
Still, it's a fairly complex business. I'll probably not be able to implement this with the initial release (unless I put off the release even further); so I'm thinking of providing this as an add-on; that way, I'd just have to lay the most basic foundations right now.
Anyone any additional thoughts/ideas/suggestion regarding producing or trading, or, for that matter, anything else relating to this game? Please keep posting - thank you.
