ChickenMcOwnage on 16/7/2005 at 23:45

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I'm a huge fan of randomization of content in games. In a way, though, I completely agree with you. In my opinion, the problem with random maps isn't that the "human" feel is lost, it's that random maps are never given much thought by developers. It's not that computer-generated maps *can't* be good, it's just that developers only put a minimal effort into them.

Ok. So, there are many different ways of implementing random map generation. 1) The rogue-like way: go tile-by-tile and carve out tunnels and rooms. Works well enough for ASCII rogue-likes, but not nearly good enough for a 3D immersive environment. There is, however, a slick project called DungeonMaker ((http://dungeonmaker.sourceforge.net/) link) which uses genetic algorithms to create maps far superior to Angband's or Nethack's maps. 2) The puzzle-piece way: Like diablo 2, select premade (human-made) pieces at random and plug them into eachother. Looks and feels far more natural. The downside is, however, a lot of the "magic" of random maps dies when you start to see pieces you've already seen before. I mean, it just starts to get lame.

So for this project, I'm working on a kind of balancing act between those 2 different ways. In other words, I'd like to have a mix of handmade and computer-generated rooms and passages. I hope the results will be to everybody's liking.

The random quests will work the same way. They are predefined rooms, or series of rooms, that get generated and connected to the rest of the map. So there won't be any completely random quests like "kill 5 ____ and I'll give you a ____ for a reward." I like your murder mystery idea. I have a big list of possible quests, with a murder mystery as one of them, but the idea of having a different killer each time is fantastic. I'll see if I can implement something like that for the quests.

I realize that searching for quest items might be a pain sometimes. I've been thinking of ways to give clues to the player. What I've come up with so far is to have things like scratchings on the walls, or pieces of paper lying about that will give clues (other than NPCs giving you clues, as well). We'll see how it works.

Some treasure chests may be empty, or just filled with garbage or useless items. However, if a particular chest is in a hard to reach area (up high, or behind a secret door), guarded by a particularly nasty baddie or a group of baddies, or located in an area with traps and locked doors, you can be sure that there will always be something that's worth all the trouble. On the other hand, I don't want to give the player a treasure overload either (somebody posted something about that earlier).

Thanks for your time and ideas!

~Mark

Woodmanzee on 29/7/2005 at 12:56

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Greetings all.

I've just finished Arx Fatalis for the second time, and I have to say it's one of
my very favourite RPG games, standing solid next to U8, UW, EOTB, Zelda 64,
Chrono Trigger, Betrayal at Krondor, Fable and Albion - not to mention System
Shock 1/2.

It's difficult to distill even some of the essential factors that make those favourites of mine so attractive and addictive, but I'm going to try so that I can come up with some constructive suggestions for CMO.

1. The U7/U8 system of loosely drag/droppable items to repositionable bags &
paper dolls has long been a favourite of mine. I appreciate how having an actual open bag on screen makes immerses me in the game more. It feels more realistic than any kind of menu or HUD-type system, which can usually only serve to remind you of technology, that you're staring at a computer screen.

2. How many of you have played Arx and wanted just a LITTLE bit of monster respawn? I don't think there would be any way to get Am Shegar to level 10 unless you murdered every innocent living soul in the game. I just loved chopping goblins in two and blowing their heads off with fireballs!.. There just weren't enough of them!
Respawn is good, but only when it's not presenting a consistent near-death challenge to the player. It needs to be at that 'fun' level.

3. I support the previously-mentioned idea for musical magic, think not only LOOM, but Zelda 64: Ocarina of Time.
Also, think U8 Pagan. IMO the richest aspect of that game was the magic system - each with its own unique methods and spells. I really enjoyed messing around with all the little reagents and taking the time to learn & perform the spells. Of course, the system wasn't exploited to anywhere near its potential - the linear course of the game causing one to usually use magic only when it was essential to the plot.
Not forgetting Arx, I loved the rune-drawing system - it was a bit tricky, but when I got the knack of it, it was a joy to use and very satisfying.
I would suggest several magic disciplines, each using their own methods and with their own advantages and drawbacks, and being able to use them in a free-form way in keeping with the randomness of the levels.
What about a kind of fetish-based magic - something like voodoo or shamanism? That kind would rely on reagents and objects of focus/power, like the necromancy in U8...

4. On the subject of combat, how about the use of fighting game style combo-moves you can learn from NPC trainers or magic scrolls? You could have sets of skills for different types of weapons that make them much more effective than before, like backstab for a dagger, overhead chop for an axe, or blocking/parrying combos with a sword + dagger or two axes for instance.
Ever played Barbarian - when you could do that overhead swing to decapitate your opponent? Or Zelda 64 with that 360 degree sword slash? Samurai Shodown, anyone?
You could daze certain enemies, and then finish them off spectacularly Mortal-Kombat style for bonus XP!

5. instead of XP, the player could rely on DP (Deity Points) to spend when levelling up - different gods grant you favours for doing things they favour. A bit like virtues in Ultima, but with more scope for modification. Think also

good/evil balance in Fable. For instance:

-Murder innocents and steal to get dark points.
-Do good deeds and slay undead etc, get light points.
-Use fire magic and get fire points, applies to other magic discplines.
-Fight with light weapons and get more speed/guile points.
-Fight with heavy weapons and receive more strength and constitution points.
-Use ranged weapons more and get accuracy / wind points or something.
-Discover prayer scrolls and shrine tokens to offer to gods for their favours.

I think this system could be more original, and also makes the player's character develop according to their actions and choices, not just getting generic 'points'

for killing things like in an arcade shooter.

6. A choice of race/gender - no need to go into too much detail over this.

7. As in Arx Fatalis again, I spent a lot of time not just tinkering with my character, but with the objects I discovered. Being able to bake apple pies was a watershed moment in gaming for me - I never knew virtual cooking could be so much fun! Of course UW did this first, but on a more rudimentary level.
I eventually found that I wanted to tinker with things MORE than the game would allow, much more. Once I was introduced to that level of interactivity I just wanted it to be more real, to be able to bake chicken pies, for instance, to enchant food with magic, poison food and asassinate enemies, drink hallucinogenic herb potions and go on vision quests, make hand grenades from iron, gunpowder and cloth, stitch together furs to protect me from the cold, make paint from oil and ground pigments - and smear it on the walls, or all over me so my guardian spirit will protect me in battle.

Define your own gameplay.

The web of possibilities that stem from such simple object interactions is simply fascinating, something I at least want to see taken much further when (if) Arx 2 comes around...


Summary:
1. Menus & HUD divorce the player from reality. A minimal, natural, graphical
interface immerses the player (especially in a medieval scenario).
2. A bit of monster respawn can help keep interest up in a game.
3. Differing disciplines of magic make for a rich variety of gameplay.
4. A variety of learnable weapon skills and XP bonuses for combo-death moves.
5. Level up with favours from the gods.
6. Choice of race/gender.
7. A Complex system of interactive objects food/magic/weapon/clothing/etc).


My two cents on generated gubbins:
I think generated environments are a great idea - think of Dungeon Hack. Not the best implemented example, but an original game that has replay value. Also think of Elite, or Frontier for that matter - the star systems were always the same, but generated from a random seed, and there were as many as stars in the galaxy (~100 billion).

Doesn't everyone always find that playing an RPG the second+ time round is nice, but somewhat tainted by one's prior knowledge of the game, because the original sense of the unknown is gone? Generated random maps & items, done right, can freshen the game on replay at LEAST as much as choosing a different class of player or abilities.
(unless of course you're playing Diablo again, in which case it becomes a little differently tedious and just as impossibly hard)

I'll post more suggestions when I think of them.
Hope you're still making good progress.

ChickenMcOwnage on 29/7/2005 at 19:22

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Wow, it's so great to see people interested in this and shelling out excellent ideas! Thank you all! To address what has been said so far, here goes:

Draggable items, bags, and UI: at the very least, there will be a System Shock-esque inventory, where the player can drag items from the game into the inventory or vise versa. I've thought about bags, and I always liked bags in say UW and U7, but as far as actually implementing them, I'm unsure. The way I see it, it's an extra hassle to program for something that's cute but not completely necessary. I have minimal item code in the game at the moment. I'll really think about this. The benefit of having bags and pouches is that a smaller space of the screen is needed for the inventory spaces. (by the way, the inventory "screen" will be like in Diablo, where it can be popped open or closed, and takes up half of the view screen)

Lately I've been designing the UI. It's definitely a challenge to have as much information as possible in as little amount of space. So far, I'd like to have a little scrolling "scroll" at the bottom, which will have things on it like "you hit the goblin for 4 points of damage!" or "you see a fluorescent green potion." Perhaps this can be popped open or closed as well. It's too early to really think to hard on these details, though.

Respawning baddies: You know, I've always hated respawning monsters. However, I can see your point. Now that I think about it, a monster respawning every once in a while, just to keep you on your toes might not be a bad thing. I may make it so that when you leave a level, then come back to it, there may be a few "wandering monsters" in previously cleared areas. But yeah, definitely just enough to keep you on your toes. If there's too many, it will turn into just hack-and-slash. Plus, you need areas safe enough to sleep in!

Musical and/or voodoo/shamanistic magics: I think that just one magic system is complex enough. So far, the magic system will be similar to UW's: collecting runestones that are used to form words of power. Each runestone's abilities are randomized at the start of each game. This way, you don't know how to cast any spells other than the ones you start with. There will be scrolls and spellbooks and spell trainers, who will tell you what certain runestones mean, and what combinations will form words of power. Anyhoo, that's my idea of the magic system so far, but I'm afraid it might be too tedious. Will people want to rediscover spells over and over again? What I do know is that I want runes that can be collected and can form spells (like in UW). You'll be able to assign spell combinations to the number keys or function keys to make casting spells in battle easier.

Another form of magic (sort of) I've been really thinking about it alchemy. Certain reagents (mold, ferns, spider eggs, etc.) can be combined into empty vials to form potions. Again, while this could be cool, would it be tedious collecting the ingredients and figuring out the recipes? (again, recipes would be randomized each game). Alchemy, by the way, would be a character skill which also helps identifying magic potions.

Musical magic... I'm not so sure about this. It is definitely a neat idea, but I don't think it's different enough from runic magic to be worthwhile. I would like to have musical instruments in the game which, when used, cast some sort of magic spell or ability. For example, a lute that you find and identify. When you "use" it, it calms down all the enemies in the area. Or a panpipe as someone suggests may put an enemy to sleep, or call up a horde of rats that attack your enemies. As far as making an actual system for musical magic, I'm not convinced it's worth the time it'd take to program it all.

Shamanistic/Voodoo magic... I really like the sound of this. It's cool to have a darker, more sinister form of magic. I think that the powers you could have using dark magics could be really cool. I never really liked using expendable reagents to cast spells, and I think collecting them might be a little tedious. This may end up being something like the musical instruments; items of power can be activated for special magical abiliies. I like the idea... we'll see!

Combat: As far as fighting goes, I agree with Malygris' worries about the outcome of battles depending too much on reflexes and coordination. I've been thinking about the idea of using one mouse button for your weapon and the other for raising your shield. It might be cool, but I'm not so sure it will be suitable for this particular game. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by fighting combos. Fighting, in my opinion, should stay rather simple. There will be "special moves," however. So, if you've ever played any of the fallout games, you'd know about the Perks that you acquire every few levels. There will be numerous perks/special abilities in this game as well which will be used for further customizing your character. At the moment, I have a rather extensive list of perks grouped into 4 categories: Warrior, Rogue, Mage, and General. Some examples of perks: Better Criticals, Adrenaline (when health is below 50% you cause extra damage), Meditation (mana regenerates faster), Pyromancer (fire spells deal more damage), Quick Reflexes (chance to evade ranged attacks and certain spells), Anti-Mage (resistance to all spells including your own self-cast spells). The perks will give a huge amount of replayability and customization of your characters. So far I have a list of about 50, roughly 12 per class. So, if you want a tough brute, who hits hard but slow, then that's possible. On the other hand, if you want a fast, dexterous fighter specializing in smaller weapons, that's doable as well. So combat will be more of preparation and strategy as opposed to action-packed hack-and-slash.

Leveling up; good vs. evil: The idea of having a deity is an interesting one, though how much effect it will have on the gameplay is questionable. As far as getting rid of experience... I don't know. I like the XP system, and I was never really a fan of the "the more you use it, the better at it you are." While it makes complete sense in the real world, it's harder to customize your character. I've never played Fable, so I don't know how they do it, but I thought that this was the worst part about Dungeon Siege. I also played a few MUDs that used this system, but it seems like it's really hard to get just right. I think there should be shrines or trainers, and you get your skills from them. Chances are you'll be putitng points into whichever skills you're using anyway.

Race and gender: definitely gender. I'm not so sure about races. It would be easy to do if it was just statistical changes during character creation, but if NPCs react differently to different races... I mean that would be awesome, but WAY too much work.

Interactive objects: this would be great to have, but it's another one of those cute but pretty much unnecessary things. I especially liked making the fishing pole, an actually useful item, in the Ultima Underworlds. Interactive objects is certainly a possibility, but to what extent I can't really say. I personally can't think of too many combinations of objects that could be useful.

Random levels: I think it's hard to envision "good" random levels because nobody has ever really made a really "good" random level generator before. I totally agree with hand-crafted levels looking and feeling so much better, and they're something that you can never fully replicate randomly. But, think of the levels in this game as being strewn with hand-crafted areas and connected by a series of random tunnels and rooms. And, not only that, but many of the hand-crafted areas you play through the first time won't appear the second time you play, so you'll have all new hand-crafted areas to adventure through. One of my top priorities is to have cool, interesting levels with a high level of replayability.

Progress: yep, I'm still making progress on the game, although nothing exciting yet. It's very hard mentally to continue working on a huge project by yourself. Even if you know you can do it, the sheer amount of time and work you know you have to put into it is extremely intimidating. So thanks for all of your encouragements and ideas. The time you guys put in just to post helps more than you think. Can't wait to get something playable ready so everybody can start testing it! ;) :thumb:

Shadowcat on 30/7/2005 at 01:13

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Wow... lots to read there, and I've only skimmed through it, but as far as combat concepts go, take a look at the (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67956&page=1) Arx 2 suggestions thread from a little while back... that had a lot of discussion of this sort of thing. You might find some ideas that interest you.

Spitter on 30/7/2005 at 09:53

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Yes! I hate games where you are allowed other options besides just killing the bad guys - sneaking past them or talking your way through - but you get little to no experience from that, essentially crippling your character should you opt for non-violent approach. I'm looking at you, Arcanum.

Another option is to ape the XP system from Deus Ex - you don't get any experience at all from enemies, so your approach to dealing with them doesn't matter. The XP is only gained when reaching areas (both mandatory and bonus places) as well as fulfilling objectives. This might/might not suit the game, however.