Teudogar suggestions thread

[Erik]

Hi all! I couldn't find one of these, suggestions seem to be spread around, so I'll start one.

I downloaded the demo two days ago and are expecting the full version tomorrow or the day after (I really fell for this one), so this is based on the demo and from what I have picked on thie forum. They are not listed in any order, and some may already have been proposed.

• 1. All non-random NPC:s could have their own names instead of man, noble man, blacksmith etc. They all seem to be individuals in how they are scripted, and probably in their abilities etc, so why not give them proper names. It might get a bit old after you name the 101st farmer (if there are so many), but IMO it would add to the feeling. Some could also have epitets (is that the world in english?) to place them in their roles/trades, like Henkel the blacksmith, Ivor the tanner, Cadrick (slave), etc.
  
  2. Henchmen. This seem to be a popular demand. Your freed slaves could be offered/offer themself to become henchmen, sons of your friends could join up, people from other villages who heard about you, and so on. You would have to pay them something every week or month, equip them, feed and house them.
  
  Interaction could be kept rather simple with some simple missions for them to carry out until told otherwise, like Hunt (they fish/hunt a few hours a day and produce a small surplus of food), Guard (they watch your farmstead during the day/night), Follow (they come with you on your journeys and protect you when needed), Fire (you let your henchman go, maybe only possible if he has let you down by running away during a battle, slept with your favorite maid, stolen something, etc). And should you ever run in to trouble in their vicinity they would of course come running to assist you.
  
  They could also have a level of loyalty that improve/get worse according to your actions. If you forget to pay them on time, if you are generous with gifts, if you lose/win your battles, if you commit dishonourable acts their loyalty would change. This loyalty could effect how well they serve you and if they are prone to let you down.
  
  You should also be able to practise combat with them and to order them to practise with another one of your men (if you would have more than one).
  
  For gameplaying reasons the number of possible henhcmen should be kept down. Four or five maybe depending on your fame, perhaps a few more if you become king.
  This would also allow you not to evolve into a 'superman' to be able to stay alive in the later stages of the game, but be depending on a few followers to handle tough situations.
  
  3. Name your weapons. Give that favorite sword of yours its own name, be it poetical or crude.
  
  4. Refining of objects. Smoke fish, make sausages, lay/make traps, learn blacksmithing etc. It's fantastic how you can interact in the game already, but more things can be added (I believe you have announced this will be further developed in Darghul).
  
  5. Interior design. Decorate your farmstead/meeting hall. Make (carpentry) a table, move around the boxes and carpets/furs, buy some chairs, etc. I love how you can hang weapons and trophys on the walls, this can be further improved. Maybe through an editor which allow you to export your house into the game.
  
  6. Freed slaves. I don't know exactly how they work but I have freed a my 'cow-keeper' and my maid. But what do they contribute with? From what I can see they produce no products at all, at no surplus food either. Even though they are free they still are members of the household living of and on my land and should keep working on their trades producing some, though less, of what they used to...
  
  7. Open game. The plot of the demo finished many hours ago for me and I have since then been traveling around, making friends and enemys, fighting, hunting and fishing, trying to pull as much as possible, praticing my skills, building on my fortune and so on.
  
  The point is that that has been as much or maybe more fun than following the actual plot. I expect the full version to provide much more, but I would hate to end the game just because I have made king over my tribe. Instead I could go on and just enjoying the world of Teudogar. And maybe I will be able to. I will soon see.

Sorry for the long post, but expect even more after I get the full version. And thanks for a great game this far.

Regards
Erik

Ps.
I love the historical and non-fantasy enviroment of the game, even though I understand that it makes for extra work. But that is one of the things that makes it unique. By coincidence I borrowed 'The battle that stopped Rome' by Peter Wells http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall04/032643.htm just a week before I found Teudogar. Quite the introduction to the game.
Ds.

 

[Wolf Mittag]

Hello Erik, thanks for your posting. I'm glad you've enjoyed the game so far; and I hope you'll receive your full version CD soon. Now, many thanks for your suggestions:

1. All non-random NPC:s could have their own names
Right; there are about 150 NPCs who have something real to say (plus I guess about 50 or 75 or so slaves). Of these 200 or so NPCs, everyone has his individual animated portrait; but at present, only about 50 have an individual name, i.e. the rest are just referred to as "slave", "henchman", "trader" etc. (By the way, so are the main characters, at least at first: even if someone does have a name, it's not displayed until you've talked to or about them.) So giving names to everybody would be about 150 names to add (or maybe 100, if I leave out other people's slaves) - that can be done.

2. Henchmen.
I've put this on my long-term ToDo-list. While it'll be awfully difficult to program the thousands of details involved with this, it'll definitely add a great deal of "gameplay substance", giving you much more things to do, and, almost equally important, something to waste your money on.
Assign tasks: Yes, I like this idea. Loyality would be fundamentally important, and would give you an additional incentive to do glorious deeds.

3. Name your weapons.
I like this but have no free data bit left. I may still do this if I rearrange the way weapons data is stored (perhaps by removing blessing info from actual weapons object and making it part of an extended weapons info table); that might also create room for poisoning weapons (though that'd be for DARGHUL, not Teudogar, since this was no historical practice). Still the rearrangement of data and data conversion of all existing weapons would be quite messy; so this'd be something I'd rather do later than sooner.

4. Refining/using of objects.
Yes; basically everything you see ought to be usable in some way.

5. Decorate your farmstead/meeting hall.
Several people have requested this, and I agree it'd be fun. Over the medium term, I want to implement at least free placement of decorative items.
However, with making/buying/moving furniture, there are limits to how far I can do this, because NPC artificial intelligence is actually not that great: NPCs do compute their walking routes etc in realtime; but they rely heavily on prepared data tables telling them where to find beds, chairs, tools and so on (of course I could update these whenever you move a piece of furniture); and they can't do much without pre-set daily schedules with clearly defined locations for each activity (where to sit, sleep, etc). They can find alternatives if their intended location is blocked; but they lack the intelligence to make free choices on their own that would look/feel really natural.
Let's take having dinner as an example: One would expect/want King Heremod to take the place at the top of the table, his chief aides close to him, and people out of his favor quite far away at the lower end of the table. Of course this is no absolutely necessary feature, but it wouldn't look/feel right if it wasn't that way; it would strongly reduce the atmosphere of that dinner scene. Now, I (the developer) am aware of the ranks etc of people and can therefore manually place them correspondingly when creating the game world; but the NPCs themselves don't have enough information about this social dimension. Consequently, if you'd be able to move chairs, I may improve their artificial intelligence as to enable them to still find some place to sit, but it'd take a whole new dimension of artificial intelligence to enable them to find a place to sit that would seem to be a natural/reasonable choice and would make the entire dinner situation look/feel right.
A more basic isssue is that by moving items that one can't walk over, you can block NPCs' way; and at present they lack the intelligence to do much about this; of course it's not difficult to program them to e.g. push aside a box you've placed in a doorway; but this is one more example of how each of these gameplay possibilities would require a huge number of improvements to artificial intelligence.
Of course in the long term, it will be worth the effort. Gameplay would profit greatly from this, and improved NPC artificial intelligence would offer many more gaming possibilities. Plus, if I'm to implement henchmen who're following you around, I'll have to do much of this work anyway. However, since this is really huge, this is more of a long term goal than anything I can do right away.

6. Freed slaves.
They still contribute by producing food (check the boxes in your house). (In contrast, when you kill your slaves/freedmen, there won't be any new food produced in your house.) Also, the herdsman should still manage your cattle. However the entire idea of setting them free is that, from now on, they're free to produce for themselves (no longer for you); so basically a bit of food as a sort of rent/tithe will be all you still get from them, plus of course their willingness to fight for you. It's supposed to be raw deal for you; that's precisely the reason why, in the real world, people generally didn't set their slaves free.

7. Open game.
My idea was that you can always actively end the game via the Actions Menu (left side of screen), or, in a few instances, via some key dialogs ("Now, let's wait for the Roman army to arrive, and the subsequent battle."): Unless you do this, the game never ends.
However, what it does not offer is to let you live through the period afterwards (after becoming king/after the battle/etc), because the game-ending events would change the game's world so fundamentally that letting you continue to play in that changed world would basically require an entirely new game (game world, dialogs).
E.g., consider you've formed a tribal alliance and have the bad luck to be defeated by the Roman armies; this would obviously require a completely new game world (all settlements burnt down etc), not to speak of the changes in peoples' lifes and consequently, in what virtually every person would say to you. Life after the defeat would basically be an entirely new game.
Another part of the problem is the realistic nature of game ending goals - these often take time to archieve. I.e., in a fantasy setting, killing the main Evil Super Monster Opponent will plausibly instantly solve all problems and end the game plot immediately, without having too much impact on settlements or peoples' lifes or dialogs or your own circumstances; consequently, continuing playing is no problem at all. But reaching a historically sensible goal like e.g. becoming king is a task that will require many long, boring months of intrigues and policy (and often, simply waiting for opportunities). Consequently, in Teudogar you can place yourself in a position that will eventually lead to the desired outcome; but you can't immediately realize and then live your goal, since that'd take many months if not years; so what you get in Teudogar is not the real experience of living your realized goals, but merely an outlook of what will be the consequence of your deeds and the position you've placed yourself in.
It's quite a different matter with fantasy; in DARGHUL, once you've saved the world, King Gibur will be happy to instantly make you Duke of Ranaghol, and you'll be free to spend an eternal playing time living your new (though not that eventful) ducal life...

historical and non-fantasy enviroment of the game, extra work.
Indeed, writing a historical game (when as strictly authentic as Teudogar generally is) takes about 10 to 20 times the amount of work a fantasy game of comparative size would take. So although the result may be somewhat unique, it's basically a lunatic waste of resources on part of a developer.

Sorry for the long post
Just the opposite: Thank you for taking so much time and effort to give me feedback and suggestions! These will certainly help me to improve the game; though I will only be able to implement them bit by bit over time (at present I'm working intensely on finally finishing DARGHUL, and still have quite a huge amount of work in front of me until it's finally complete).

 

[Erik]

Ok, I finished both storylines, quite the adventure.

One question for you. Is there any way of unlocking all the map locations for some free adventuring while you 'wait for the roman army'?

Ps. The game was in my mailbox on Tuesday morning. 2 1/2 days of delivery, very good. Ds.

 

[Wolf Mittag]

Hi Erik,
> any way of unlocking all the map locations for some free adventuring
Well, usually you'd have to talk to people to learn about all locations & be able to travel there. However, you might use the cheat mode: During the game, type ",cheat" (comma before the "c"), then keep the "W" key pressed before & while using the travel screen; that'll make all locations available.

 

[Jora]

Some suggestions for T2 and DARGHUL:

1. An outdoorsman/tracking skill would be nice. It could be used to avoid bandits ("You see five heavily armed robbers on the road. Do you want to avoid them?"), find animal or human tracks and tame animals (a dog companion would be nice).

2. I would love to play a bard who wanders from village to village learning new songs and sagas from witches and old men and performing them in inns and royal halls for a couple of silver coins and a bed to sleep in.

3. More locks and pockets to pick!

4. As many others have said, it would be fun to able to start a fight with people other than henchmen. I understand that the historical nature of Teudogar sets some limits to this, but please oh please make it possible to challenge noblemen to duels in DARGHUL so that it's not called "ambushing unsuspecting people" and there isn't a lynch mob with super weapons waiting for you just outside the village.

 

[Wolf Mittag]

Hello Jora,

1. outdoorsman/tracking used to avoid bandits : I like this & will implement a function that'll stop and warn you when there are enemies ahead (provided your skill level is good enough). Also, in dungeons, some message like "You small Orcs" or "You see Skeleton tracks" might be nice and would be easy to implement.
(Animals acompanying you are about as difficult to program as human henchmen; so this'll have to wait until I've implemented these.)

2. bard, wanders from village to village learning new songs and sagas and performing them : That's a very Teutonic idea and would fit very well into Teudogar's world. As you say this, I notice there's indeed a lack of sagas/good stories in the game; though Teutons were definitely fond of telling such. When I do a re-release of Teudogar at a later date, I'll see what I can do there; though I've no concrete idea yet (e.g. the hospitality custom would grant you free food and a bed everywhere, anyway), however being a bard might make you a much more popular guest (some positive consequences); and of course you could earn some money with that; well, I'll have to let these ideas ripen a bit; but I like the overall concept.

3. More locks and pockets to pick! : These are everywhere in DARGHUL. (There were no really such things in barbaric Germania.)
Maybe I ought to de-criminalize pickpocketing in DARGHUL? At present you get a charisma malus from it, since Teutons considered it extremely cowardly to steal; in their opinion, if you're a man, you have the duty to fight and then take openly whatever you desire. In a fantasy world such as DARGHUL, people might have a different mindset; though that'd maybe require the introduction of character classes; i.e. a thief naturally wouldn't suffer loss of charisma from stealing; but a paladin would; etc. Lots of extra work; but might be a way to deepen immersion. Well, perhaps in the medium term; anyway, at least breaking locks etc is sufficiently provided for in DARGHUL.

4. As many others have said, it would be fun to able to start a fight with people other than henchmen : Right; I've added a "challenge to duel" command to the Actions Menu in DARGHUL. Of course not everyone will accept; and I still need to increase NPC artificial intelligence a bit in that respect in order to prevent you from killing off your enemies one by one; there ought to be resistance when you challenge more than 2 or 3 people from the same group/house...

Many thanks for your suggestions!