new Teudogar

[D4rkSh4d0w]

Hello Wolf and RPGCodex forums,I have few suggeestions about teudogar. If release of Darghul wont be delayed you can work on it
Because the original teudogar was excellent game, I suggest to create the game as old teudogar with new contest...create 1-2 new game spots or how I can call it and enhance the old...like that the game wont end with some texts, but like if you join Legion, you will fight with barbars as roman soldier...the next thing i´ll suggest is to create crafts, as blacksmithing or leatherworking, adding option to create houses and place furniture (like you will buy some place at any of villages and start building your house, it will auto drain your money for it...the u will buy furniture at some merchant and place it in your houses...destructible building can be nice too , possibilty to get slaves by capturing robbers (few will join few will fight) and add slave market , If you follow storyline and become king of your tribe add some administating things like building baths and that..if you follow storyline alliance with rome u will fight with other enemy tribes, start building roman structures in villages of your tribe...walk in roman cities...

okay I have many ideas but I dont post them all now....

I want to ask you if darghul will become avaible for beta testing sometime? I was writing to your teudogar email 1-2 years ago, you say me that I can test when its avaible (mikkloko@centrum.cz

Ty,
D4rkSh4d0w

 

[Wolf Mittag]

Hello D4rkSh4d0w,

by now, I've implemented (at least partially) many of the suggestions you make here.

crafts, as blacksmithing or leatherworking - implemented; see my reply in the Darghul/New thread

create houses - in progress; see my reply in the Darghul/New thread

destruct buildings - I'm working on that.

place furniture - still some difficulties with that; I can have you create furniture, but would need to enable you to move it around, which is technically cumbersome since e.g. a table consist of several different tiles; also, there'd have to be some solution to prevent you from locking in NPCs by e.g. placing a table in front of the door - i.e., they'd have to be able to push this aside, or some other solution, all of which is complicated by the multi-tile-ness... Still, I intend to do this in the long run.

buy/capture additional slaves - I like that but need to improve NPCs' artificial intelligence before I can do that. (At present, NPCs don't really 'know' the location of chairs, tables, beds, work places etc. So they can't decide on their own where to go; instead, for each NPC, the places where he/she works, eats, sleeps etc need to be manually assigned. This needs to be automated; only then will adding NPCs during the course of a game be possible.)

new game plots : Basically, the historical events would suggest a trilogy: Teudogar 1- Alliance with Rome, Teudogar 2 - Roman Rule, Teudogar 3 - Rebellion against Rome (see the 'Teudogar 2' thread, where this has been discussed in detail).
However, what I could perhaps do additionally is to, so to speak, create short stories instead of full-length novels. E.g. an episode where you could live as a mercenary, or another, as a henchman to an Teutonic nobleman, or your life as your tribe's new chieftain etc.

Wage war, build public buildings, expand/found cities etc: I think there's a conceptual problem with ideas of this kind. A role playing game like Teudogar is extremely detailed, and this high level of detail and game depth is, in my opinion, one major fun factor of RPGs.
However, this detailedness also makes RPGs ill-suited for very complex scenarios. E.g., imagine leading an army of 10,000 warriors: You'd have daily meetings with a dozen generals and many of the 100-200 lower ranking officers; you'd have to worry about providing food, arranging logistics, finding places to camp, marching routes, equipment, payment, troop morale, intelligence reports, finding/avoiding the enemy, finding suitable places for battle, battle order, directing battle, pillaging, caring for the wounded, and countless other things: Without a great degree of simplification, it would be absolutely impossible to play such a role within the 1-2 hours per day that one might perhaps spend in front of the computer.
So the only viable solution would be to leave out everything that's not absolutely necessary, e.g., skip all the marching, preparations, and just focus on the battles, or, more strategy-like, focus on the basic preparations and make the battles a brief affair.
All very well, however, the result would be conceptually totally different from a role playing game like Teudogar; in fact, it would be easier to write a new strategy/battle game from scratch than to add these elements to Teudogar.
That's not to say it can't be done. But I think the main strength of RPGs is in scenarios of limited complexity, e.g., villages instead of huge towns, duels instead of battles, expanding your hut instead of building new cities: With a RPG, these small things can be done in great detail and with deep game depth, in a fun way, and within a reasonable playing time. Since this is what the genre and technology is best suited for (in my opinion), I think I should primarily focus on these kinds of non-complex scenarios.

Beta testing DARGHUL : when it's ready to be tested. As long as there are still incomplete functions and known bugs, it wouldn't make any sense for testers to 'discover' these and notify me about them. (However I'll sooner or later post a link to a beta version in order to get some feedback and criticism; of course I'll notify you as well as everybody else who volunteered to take a look at the game.)

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions!

For all reading this post, there is a pretty comprehensive discussion of a possible Teudogar 2 and 3 in the 'Teudogar 2 (topic restored)' thread.