About the way city are represented

[Lews Therin Telamon]

I've thought why have explorable cities like zendar when you can have nice looking and useful cities instead?
The other cities are more fast to explore, the only problem is the need to walk by npcs....

A game that has a good city system is absolutely Freelancer.


In Freelancer (FL) this is the place you get off with your spaceship, in M&B we can get the center of the city instead?


The bar in FL, the tavern in M&B?


In FL the trader, in M&B the always fascinating merchant guild, maybe a separate npc to get a work from (caravan master)


This is the trading menu, you can find brief description and a list of all the places you know about and the prices you get for trading with other cities.


You can equip your ship here in FL, in M&B one can afford of the generous amount of goods a smithy has for sale.


The "garage" where you buy and sell ships, in M&B what about the stable master for horses?


In FL you can mess with certain NPCS if something goes wrong, can't be the same for M&B?


At the bar rumors are all-day-routine, why not in the tavern? It add to immersion and you may discover new secret locations and perhaps romance of the kingdom.


Complete information of the city...planet (well it's a 5 huge galaxy game), we can have a bard to complete the cake.

For clear: the city works like a point-and-click game, with the top menu which let's you explore the city and if you click on npcs you can get to talk with them.
Each click you make, on an active spot-npc, activate an in-game cinematic (skip with ESC button) for immersion purpose.

I think this way you can make best looking, much more faster to interact with and lifelike cities, without compromising the load on low-end PCs.
If you like take a ride in the demo, it's worth the download imho.
Freelancer Trial

Let me know what do you think.
ps.: sorry for the high load of thumbs

 

[Ingolifs]

It will be done in the fullness of time.

 

[JohnathanStrange]

Lews Therin Telamon

Good post, excellent use of examples to support your idea. I think that your suggestion should be easier to implement than creating cities like Zendar throughout the game - though I don't mind how Zendar works now.

A menu-driven city seems more within the realm of possibility for M&B than most suggestions.

I had a similar idea awhile back; see http://taleworlds.com/v-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1955&highlight=menu; where I suggested something like your idea.

 

[phantom_tranger]

i like it how it is with the walking around and stuff but i dont like how when you leve some places you start back in the center

 

[Berny]

and if they citys get bigger... you could ride your horse around it!

 

[Lews Therin Telamon]

A menu-driven city seems more within the realm of possibility for M&B than most suggestions.

plus you don't have to walk by if you got a super heavy plate armor and 0 athletic

I had a similar idea awhile back; see http://taleworlds.com/v-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1955&highlight=menu; where I suggested something like your idea.

the idea to have different kinds of things for every city looks right, and maybe different places too

 

[Cosan]

and if they citys get bigger... you could ride your horse around it!

First good idea you've had in ages....

 

[GonZ]

Good post, nice examples.

In the short term I'd like a development on the menu system or at least a system where you could point and click on doors then characters to interact.

I do like Berny's idea though. Massive amount of work to make good but... In an ideal world cities and towns and villages would have unique street layouts, be populated with lot's of npc's and be constantly changing.

Wandering around on foot or on horse would be great. Having a city you could wander round and interact with would lead to a whole new crop of player scenarios too. Off the top of my head:

City guard - maintaining law and order
Bodyguard - assigned to merchant or royalty etc
Assassin - take out the rich merchant, visiting dignitary, rival etc
Thief - speaks for itself
Spy - lot's of potential scenarios off spy alone. in enemy cities, get information buy maps etc
Spy catcher - find and kill enemy agents

And in general much more versatility - not one inn, but six inns. Not one merchant but a whole market that sort of thing.

--

p.s. I've heard good things about freelancer, I would download the demo but I just can't risk getting into any more games at the moment, desperately resisting the urge to buy BF2.

 

[david2609]

itd be good if the actual villagers in the city would move around too, so for exaple you see traders coming and going and in taverns (with tables and bars) there at waitresses and people getting drunk instead of just standing there like in zentar.

 

[Taal]

yeah, this is probaly on the list of things to do

 

[JohnathanStrange]

I would really be surprised (and delighted) if a two-person company were able in a practical amount of time to create a couple of dozen elaborate, interactive 3D cities with unique street-layouts filled with wandering NPCs, and plenty of interactive detailed buildings to enter. If a small indie company were to produce something like a medieval GTA: San Andreas, I wouldn't discourage that.

I'd just assumed that a menu-system would be a much more practical solution and not just in the short term. It's a shame that it's dismissed with something like Well...that's OK, I guess, but here's the real deal that involves massive amounts of work but ...

I think many people are going to be disappointed with anything less than a game that would take more time and resources than a small company can likely afford.

(sorry, I should stick to single sentence seven word posts where I just write: Cool, I would love to see that.")

 

[Ingolifs]

(sorry, I should stick to single sentence seven word posts where I just write: Cool, I would love to see that.")

Apology accepted.

 

[mfberg]

I would just like to be able to point and click to move to the stall or door instead of hold my movement keys down. It looks like the other towns are getting set up sometime, I guess we'll just wait and see.

mfberg

 

[Mooncabbage]

I think that's a good idea. Actually having to walk around is a pain in the ass, as most of the time I don't even WANT to do anything in the city. Freelancer is similar, with most, if not ALL the action taking place outside the cities, and so the stream-lined 'Interface' style cities make life a LOT easier. I can't imagine I would have played the game for very long if i'd had to walk everywhere, stops in towns where tedious enough as it was.

 

[Evangolis]

Greetings, I'm new here. I've played .623 and .632 versions at this point.

I like much of the game, but it seems to me that the way cities are setup, there is a real danger of repeating a mistake I have seen in other games, specifically in Freelancer and Sea Dogs, one which their DOS/Console predecessors, Privateer and Pirates! avoided.

The problem is that while having explorable areas and rumors hidden on NPCs in those areas can be a nice thing at first, after awhile you start to get sick of walking to the inn, manuvering to the Innkeep, doing your business, then repeating for the merchant, then checking for rumors, etc. It took me a long time to realize that what was bugging me about Freelancer was all the little cutscenes I'd seen a thousand times, and that navigating the cities in Sea Dogs was wasting time I wanted to spend playing the game.

Here then is my suggested solution. Keep the navigable cities, it can be fun and interesting to do a few times, but put a mostly transparent menu on the lower left hand side of the screen. This menu would have buttons on it which were highlightable on mouseover, each marked with the functions of one of the various NPCs (Innkeeper, Goods Merchant, Arms Merchant, Trainer, Rumors, etc). Clicking on a highlighted button would spawn you facing the appropriate NPC at talking range. Some buttons, Rumors and quests being a couple of examples, would only appear (or highlight) when there was a new rumor available, to save you from having to constantly talk to NPCs and get nothing but useless default text for fear that you might miss plot elements. Multiple available Rumors might either have multiple buttoms, or might include a number showing how many rumors are currently available, or activate a popup menu listing each source NPC if more than one rumor was available, or simply re-highlight after the first rumor is accessed.

This would mean that you could just play the game, instead of wasting time steering around the streets and fiddling with your facing.

 

[Ingolifs]

I'd like the ability to have to walk to each place manually first time around, but as i go to each place, i 'unlock' the ability to press tab and go there via a text prompt, like how it is in non-zendar towns.

 

[powerg8]

I like the that idea to.Would it be hard to put into the game?

 

[No name]

Yeah, the 'unlock movefast option as i explore' seems like a good compromise between people who want to explore and others who want it fast fast chop chop.

Personally though, i think its for M&B's best interest that it sticks to the Zendar-like format. For those who play Freelance(i am one also), It gets really dull after a while when all planets operate the same to me. Thats why i dont do merchant in that game. And for Huge castles like Sargoth, that format wont do justice to the city. I'm sure everyone here wants to see Sargoth in all its splendor with manned walls and vibrant town with the higher caste strolling in the gardens and armed patrol keeping watch and court ladies waiting by the road to catch your eye... Yeah, you'll get it. Its about an immersive atmosphere and freelancer couldnt do that because of that system. Yeah, thats what it think, but i think Ingolifs idea is really good. Besides, we could have suspicious npc hiding in some dark alley to give you some extra special quest or sell some stuff

By the way, it'll be fun if you could make trouble in the streets of Sargoth and have watch guards chasing you. And be able to kill annoying shopkeepers.

 

[pkt-zer0]

A "living" environment in a city would be fun, that's for sure. But that would make sense for time to pass normally in cities then. I'm all for the fast travel menu and keeping this menu system. There could be some background animation or static picture depending on the place you're in (Kinda like in I-War 2: Edge of Chaos).

 

[JohnathanStrange]

Greetings, I'm new here. I've played .623 and .632 versions at this point.

I like much of the game, but it seems to me that the way cities are setup, there is a real danger of repeating a mistake I have seen in other games, specifically in Freelancer and Sea Dogs, one which their DOS/Console predecessors, Privateer and Pirates! avoided.

The problem is that while having explorable areas and rumors hidden on NPCs in those areas can be a nice thing at first, after awhile you start to get sick of walking to the inn, manuvering to the Innkeep, doing your business, then repeating for the merchant, then checking for rumors, etc. It took me a long time to realize that what was bugging me about Freelancer was all the little cutscenes I'd seen a thousand times, and that navigating the cities in Sea Dogs was wasting time I wanted to spend playing the game.

Here then is my suggested solution. Keep the navigable cities, it can be fun and interesting to do a few times, but put a mostly transparent menu on the lower left hand side of the screen. This menu would have buttons on it which were highlightable on mouseover, each marked with the functions of one of the various NPCs (Innkeeper, Goods Merchant, Arms Merchant, Trainer, Rumors, etc). Clicking on a highlighted button would spawn you facing the appropriate NPC at talking range. Some buttons, Rumors and quests being a couple of examples, would only appear (or highlight) when there was a new rumor available, to save you from having to constantly talk to NPCs and get nothing but useless default text for fear that you might miss plot elements. Multiple available Rumors might either have multiple buttoms, or might include a number showing how many rumors are currently available, or activate a popup menu listing each source NPC if more than one rumor was available, or simply re-highlight after the first rumor is accessed.

This would mean that you could just play the game, instead of wasting time steering around the streets and fiddling with your facing.

Good post, I was revisiting this thread with the intention of just writing "Cool, I would like to see that" and going on my way.

I usually try to see a suggestion with the idea of "Is this reasonable for a small company?" but I think many other posters (not you) begin and end with "This is what I ideally want: I want it all" and propose with suggestions that are interesting but less likely to happen when a small company is tasked with implementing it.

I like the shortcut idea so that even if the cities were navigable, you would still have the option of just getting on with it and finding out what the latest rumour was, the next mission available, what the merchant had, etc.

Sid Meier's Pirates! has my favorite quick solution (Yes, I'm aware other games use this system too): a menu screen with places I can visit, click I'm there, and click The Barmaid gives me secret info, click I hire the twenty buccaneers drinking at the table, click I talk to the Bar Tender, etc. because wandering the streets of a pirate city is cool the first few times but tedious thereafter.

Anyhoo, back to our regularly scheduled postings about dozens of cities filled with thousands of citizens, bandits, merchants and soldiers.

(I kid, for all I know, the finished version of M&B will have dozens of cities filled with... )