Started playing Darklands again...
- 主题发起人 Seengs
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Pnakotus
Sergeant at Arms
I'm pretty sure the fully-patched version I've got is version 437 or something ridiculous like that. I *MAY* be getting my old MPS games confused, that might have been Civ. Definately one of those games with the text-mode config thing, though. I'll check when I get home.
Darklands-style M&B is the best idea ever, by the way.
Darklands-style M&B is the best idea ever, by the way.
I have the (or at least, a) patched version. I'll have to look it up (it's on another PC). I know the patch fixes a lot of serious crash bugs, which were potentially damaging to the system. And bryce, maybe I'll try tinkering with it again. But I can't think of what new to try.
Seengs
Recruit
A map about the size of m3 should cover it all. If cities could be made 100% menu driven, would that cut load times and such?
Another question... Could all roving bands of NPC's on the map be given generic names like "large group of horseman", or "caravan", or "small party" and then the actual description of the party only be given when you make contact?
Another question... Could all roving bands of NPC's on the map be given generic names like "large group of horseman", or "caravan", or "small party" and then the actual description of the party only be given when you make contact?
fisheye
Grandmaster Knight
Load times? Which load times... scene load times?
Map size can cause significant lag on startup. So you want a mid-size map, no more than twice the size of Native. I would try to fit most of the Darklands map in there but scale it down. Doesn't matter if you can traverse the whole thing in 2 days, as long as it's recognizable as roughly Germany-shaped.
Roving bands can have anonymous names and the members of the party can be hidden, so yes. I would do most random encounters by just spawning the encountered party right on top of the player so they can't see it coming.
Map size can cause significant lag on startup. So you want a mid-size map, no more than twice the size of Native. I would try to fit most of the Darklands map in there but scale it down. Doesn't matter if you can traverse the whole thing in 2 days, as long as it's recognizable as roughly Germany-shaped.
Roving bands can have anonymous names and the members of the party can be hidden, so yes. I would do most random encounters by just spawning the encountered party right on top of the player so they can't see it coming.
Pnakotus
Sergeant at Arms
Kissaki 说:
Yeah, my version is '483.07', so it's both 483 AND .07.
It's a shame that all the stuff they cut out leaves the game awesome until you 'finish' it. There's not alot to draw you back once you've killed half a dozen dragons and SATAN. You start out so rubbish but get incredibly awesome pretty quickly, too.
bryce777
Count
Pnakotus 说:Kissaki 说:
Yeah, my version is '483.07', so it's both 483 AND .07.
It's a shame that all the stuff they cut out leaves the game awesome until you 'finish' it. There's not alot to draw you back once you've killed half a dozen dragons and SATAN. You start out so rubbish but get incredibly awesome pretty quickly, too.
Oh come now - it's only Baphomet.
my advice:
first, use a big map. ignore the extra minute of loading. you won't regret it. there is a sense of expansiveness and distance to a large map with small icons (0.1 size). plus, it leaves room for expansion, without clutter.
second, set the storyline. the original Darklands had the slow buildup to kill Baphomet, with dragons and witches and raubritters and whatever along the way. this can be one of several storylines - develop a battle of financial supremacy between the lending houses, merchant wars for access to city trade, political struggles to control a city, criminal struggles within a city. i think 10 storylines is a good goal, each with at least 12 pieces (or acts). should occupy you for a while, combined with 100 random events that are recurrent.
third, limit the party, by size and by who you can recuit. recruit only NPC/companions. perhaps a storyline and quests or level limits that trigger the recruitment. maybe only up to dozen companions. this insures a sense of pressure or creating an atmosphere of intensity knowing you have limited resources, particularly when deciding to do battle or to run.
fourth, challenging enemies - maybe set a scheme that icreases your enemies weapon skills, weapons, and armor based on your level.
more importantly, in my opinion, there needs to be an internal quest or challenge - to get a higher reknown/reputation than the last game, to keep all your minions alive, to own that castle or town, to gather great riches and land, all of the above and whatever more, so that, when you end the mod (or reach its conclusion or when you die) you are scored on your accomplishments.
i have a nice base map of germany (actually, a very hi res of the entirety of europe)that might be easier to edit if someone wants. PM if you want it. pretty much shows the area and the major rivers. pretty nice, two color light blue and white i think. no terrain or forest. i also have a hi-res of 14th century germany which is pretty neat too, made 1420 or so. maw
first, use a big map. ignore the extra minute of loading. you won't regret it. there is a sense of expansiveness and distance to a large map with small icons (0.1 size). plus, it leaves room for expansion, without clutter.
second, set the storyline. the original Darklands had the slow buildup to kill Baphomet, with dragons and witches and raubritters and whatever along the way. this can be one of several storylines - develop a battle of financial supremacy between the lending houses, merchant wars for access to city trade, political struggles to control a city, criminal struggles within a city. i think 10 storylines is a good goal, each with at least 12 pieces (or acts). should occupy you for a while, combined with 100 random events that are recurrent.
third, limit the party, by size and by who you can recuit. recruit only NPC/companions. perhaps a storyline and quests or level limits that trigger the recruitment. maybe only up to dozen companions. this insures a sense of pressure or creating an atmosphere of intensity knowing you have limited resources, particularly when deciding to do battle or to run.
fourth, challenging enemies - maybe set a scheme that icreases your enemies weapon skills, weapons, and armor based on your level.
more importantly, in my opinion, there needs to be an internal quest or challenge - to get a higher reknown/reputation than the last game, to keep all your minions alive, to own that castle or town, to gather great riches and land, all of the above and whatever more, so that, when you end the mod (or reach its conclusion or when you die) you are scored on your accomplishments.
i have a nice base map of germany (actually, a very hi res of the entirety of europe)that might be easier to edit if someone wants. PM if you want it. pretty much shows the area and the major rivers. pretty nice, two color light blue and white i think. no terrain or forest. i also have a hi-res of 14th century germany which is pretty neat too, made 1420 or so. maw
fisheye
Grandmaster Knight
Good points regarding map size, I concur.
Regarding NPCs vs enemies. Originally Darklands had 4 core party members and +1 joinable NPC (Hansard etc). Typical enemy party sizes are not more than 20 or so, average around 10 or less. I think a similar approach would make a mod that is very RPG-like.
Say, maybe 6 core party members, each one with a specialty (Traps, Prayer, Alchemy, Blacksmithing(?) ). Opponent parties are average 10 and not more than 20. However, the enemies are significantly stronger than Native; similar to like 10 Drantons if you're fighting the Raubritter and his personal guard. Of course your guys will have the chance to significantly get stronger in battle as they gain levels, more than in Native.
I think this will give a much different feel to M&B. Normal M&B feels typically like a mass melee, not so much an individual encounter between skilled duellists. I think it would be great if in combat, you actually felt some fear and respect for the enemy you're attacking, rather than the usual "gotta kill this one in one hit so I can kill the other 20 of his friends before they kill my useless troops".
Regarding NPCs vs enemies. Originally Darklands had 4 core party members and +1 joinable NPC (Hansard etc). Typical enemy party sizes are not more than 20 or so, average around 10 or less. I think a similar approach would make a mod that is very RPG-like.
Say, maybe 6 core party members, each one with a specialty (Traps, Prayer, Alchemy, Blacksmithing(?) ). Opponent parties are average 10 and not more than 20. However, the enemies are significantly stronger than Native; similar to like 10 Drantons if you're fighting the Raubritter and his personal guard. Of course your guys will have the chance to significantly get stronger in battle as they gain levels, more than in Native.
I think this will give a much different feel to M&B. Normal M&B feels typically like a mass melee, not so much an individual encounter between skilled duellists. I think it would be great if in combat, you actually felt some fear and respect for the enemy you're attacking, rather than the usual "gotta kill this one in one hit so I can kill the other 20 of his friends before they kill my useless troops".
ronin47
Sergeant at Arms
Hi People,
great to hear that someone acutally started something like a DL-Mod.
I am working myself on an Mod with 15th-Century Germany-Scenario, although on a much smaller Scale and concentrating more on the Details and the Warfare in this Time. My Mod maybe never sees a Version worth Downloading (and I had to completely start over last Week) due to having 70 Hours-Week, though I´m happy others working on a similar Scenario!
great to hear that someone acutally started something like a DL-Mod.
I am working myself on an Mod with 15th-Century Germany-Scenario, although on a much smaller Scale and concentrating more on the Details and the Warfare in this Time. My Mod maybe never sees a Version worth Downloading (and I had to completely start over last Week
) due to having 70 Hours-Week, though I´m happy others working on a similar Scenario!Seengs
Recruit
Im willing to wait on load times to have a bigger, better-feeling map. I loved that the travelable area in DL's was so huge.
A small party of all npc's sounds like the way to go to me as well. Random encounters can then be quite varied in my opinion (from very small group of pilgrims to the rare large band of bandits) to refelct realism. Large bands DID travel around, and smaller parties DID have to run/bribe/talk their way out of trouble sometimes.
I love the text menu, choose-your-own-adventure feel of DL's... could it be possible with M&B to have menu driven occurences/events that affect your party that do not necessarily involve combat?
Last thought for now... Could each and every city be it's own faction and your reputation in a particular city not harm/help your relationship with the others? Or would the land need to be divided into provinces or somehting?
A small party of all npc's sounds like the way to go to me as well. Random encounters can then be quite varied in my opinion (from very small group of pilgrims to the rare large band of bandits) to refelct realism. Large bands DID travel around, and smaller parties DID have to run/bribe/talk their way out of trouble sometimes.
I love the text menu, choose-your-own-adventure feel of DL's... could it be possible with M&B to have menu driven occurences/events that affect your party that do not necessarily involve combat?
Last thought for now... Could each and every city be it's own faction and your reputation in a particular city not harm/help your relationship with the others? Or would the land need to be divided into provinces or somehting?
I remember Ronin47 talking about Darklands, months ago.
I'm not so hot on the medieval Germany setting but this is the kind of mod I think is worth doing. I was looking at the quests list a week ago trying to think how they could be implemented. Honestly, it doesn't seem too hard if you just gradually add to it.
I'm not so hot on the medieval Germany setting but this is the kind of mod I think is worth doing. I was looking at the quests list a week ago trying to think how they could be implemented. Honestly, it doesn't seem too hard if you just gradually add to it.
Hellequin
Sergeant at Arms
Following up on some of the above...
I had the same thought Maw did, with regards to other possible 'endeavours' within the Darklands paradigm. But, you know what? That's sprinkles on the glaze on the icing on the cake. I move we shelve that thought until about a year from now, and only then revisit it.
Honestly, the more we can simply take Darklands' standard as the standard, the better. Let that be the rule of thumb except where necessary. Minimizes the decision-making process, which can be slow and contentious, and lets things focus on the implementation. For instance, Darklands had four PC/companion slots, except under rare quest-driven exceptions; I say we keep the exact same limit unless we find a good reason. There are more hirable companions than this, with various specialties, just like there were more ways you could build a character in DL; you have to pick a subset of the available specialists.
Code for party size would have to be hand-limited, instead of using the Cha/Leadership rules, since we can suppress the Leadership contribution but not the Cha portion; say, every game half-hour, check party size, and the last party member on your list approaches you and you have to choose someone to dismiss. Alternately, we could set the Leadership bonus to zero (see below), which would mean one companion per point of Cha. Not a bad idea IMO, even though it breaks the "Use DL standards wherever possible standard" rule of thumb, simply because it's far less coding. Let's start with that.
Fisheye's suggestion about enemy strength is well taken, although some DL enemies (thugs etc) were no better than they should have been; maybe make 'em lvl10-15 or something, to make up for M&B's greater player-skill element. But yes, tough enemies should be nasty-nasty-nasty. Our companion characters can be made extra tough for their level, I can think of a few ways to do this. (For instance - check hourly; if NPC has leveled up since last check, add 10pts to all proficiencies and 1pt to his lowest 'key skill'.)
Reputation in Darklands was quite different from M&B relationships; better to implement it as a variable (I suggest slot1 of each town gives the PC's local rep) and ignore the standard M&B relationship rules. Thus M&B factions are equally background/unimportant, used mostly as identifiers on the map or something. (Ooh - the city groupings, things like Elbe River Cities, would show up alongside the city name if implemented as factions. That'd be cool.)
If we're using a big map, then we must make sure that a warning about load times is in place somewhere on the initial splash screens. Given that, I have no issues with it (although Winter said something on the Storymod forums about having had issues with the game if his map boundaries were beyond some limit). If we do find that we're limited I'd rather see a subset of the map with travel times still an issue, than a shrunken version of the whole Germany; let's assume that if support for a larger map goes on a wishlist for Armagan, we'll see it eventually, and until then a small subset of Germany will still give us what we want.
There's some new functionality we'll want, and some lost functionality; I move that we reconcile the two wherever possible. For example: the Leadership skill, no longer used for party size, could instead become our equivalent of "Speak Common," at which point skill checks to it will be frequent whenever you choose a "try to convince them of X" menu option. Or, indeed, perhaps we make Leadership do double duty; in the party leader and some companions (the rogues and nobles), it functions as Speak Common; in priest types, it functions as a combination of Darklands' Speak Latin and Read&Write skills. (That is, it helps you earn money and do tasks requiring scribing, or talking fancy to scholars and priests; it helps you research saints.) The functionality of Darklands' wilderness skills gets covered by checks to Tracking or Pathfinding, as seems most appropriate at any given time. The specialists' skills of Alchemy and Religion, those I would propose we cover under the (now useless) Prisoner Management skill. (Prayer Management and Philosopher's Stone Management respectively?) For all of those characters, asking them "Tell me about yourself" gets you first a splash dialogue which explains (say, in square brackets) the translation of that specific skill for this character, then after an "I understand" response, you get their stats page.
At first, the primary character will not have the option to be the group's priest or alchemist. We may, or may not, be able to introduce that functionality (go to Party screen and Talk to yourself?), eventually. But IMO it's definitely a refinement we do not need right away. So it's talking to your priest that gets you prayers; talking to your alchemist gets you potion stuff.
I intend to have Virtue be no longer a skill, but rather a characteristic of the party as a whole, when I code the saints' stuff. Simpler is better. If people really object I'll change it later.
Oh, and I have a thought on a name... "Darkerlands."
I had the same thought Maw did, with regards to other possible 'endeavours' within the Darklands paradigm. But, you know what? That's sprinkles on the glaze on the icing on the cake. I move we shelve that thought until about a year from now, and only then revisit it.
Honestly, the more we can simply take Darklands' standard as the standard, the better. Let that be the rule of thumb except where necessary. Minimizes the decision-making process, which can be slow and contentious, and lets things focus on the implementation. For instance, Darklands had four PC/companion slots, except under rare quest-driven exceptions; I say we keep the exact same limit unless we find a good reason. There are more hirable companions than this, with various specialties, just like there were more ways you could build a character in DL; you have to pick a subset of the available specialists.
Code for party size would have to be hand-limited, instead of using the Cha/Leadership rules, since we can suppress the Leadership contribution but not the Cha portion; say, every game half-hour, check party size, and the last party member on your list approaches you and you have to choose someone to dismiss. Alternately, we could set the Leadership bonus to zero (see below), which would mean one companion per point of Cha. Not a bad idea IMO, even though it breaks the "Use DL standards wherever possible standard" rule of thumb, simply because it's far less coding. Let's start with that.
Fisheye's suggestion about enemy strength is well taken, although some DL enemies (thugs etc) were no better than they should have been; maybe make 'em lvl10-15 or something, to make up for M&B's greater player-skill element. But yes, tough enemies should be nasty-nasty-nasty. Our companion characters can be made extra tough for their level, I can think of a few ways to do this. (For instance - check hourly; if NPC has leveled up since last check, add 10pts to all proficiencies and 1pt to his lowest 'key skill'.)
Reputation in Darklands was quite different from M&B relationships; better to implement it as a variable (I suggest slot1 of each town gives the PC's local rep) and ignore the standard M&B relationship rules. Thus M&B factions are equally background/unimportant, used mostly as identifiers on the map or something. (Ooh - the city groupings, things like Elbe River Cities, would show up alongside the city name if implemented as factions. That'd be cool.)
If we're using a big map, then we must make sure that a warning about load times is in place somewhere on the initial splash screens. Given that, I have no issues with it (although Winter said something on the Storymod forums about having had issues with the game if his map boundaries were beyond some limit). If we do find that we're limited I'd rather see a subset of the map with travel times still an issue, than a shrunken version of the whole Germany; let's assume that if support for a larger map goes on a wishlist for Armagan, we'll see it eventually, and until then a small subset of Germany will still give us what we want.
There's some new functionality we'll want, and some lost functionality; I move that we reconcile the two wherever possible. For example: the Leadership skill, no longer used for party size, could instead become our equivalent of "Speak Common," at which point skill checks to it will be frequent whenever you choose a "try to convince them of X" menu option. Or, indeed, perhaps we make Leadership do double duty; in the party leader and some companions (the rogues and nobles), it functions as Speak Common; in priest types, it functions as a combination of Darklands' Speak Latin and Read&Write skills. (That is, it helps you earn money and do tasks requiring scribing, or talking fancy to scholars and priests; it helps you research saints.) The functionality of Darklands' wilderness skills gets covered by checks to Tracking or Pathfinding, as seems most appropriate at any given time. The specialists' skills of Alchemy and Religion, those I would propose we cover under the (now useless) Prisoner Management skill. (Prayer Management and Philosopher's Stone Management respectively?) For all of those characters, asking them "Tell me about yourself" gets you first a splash dialogue which explains (say, in square brackets) the translation of that specific skill for this character, then after an "I understand" response, you get their stats page.
At first, the primary character will not have the option to be the group's priest or alchemist. We may, or may not, be able to introduce that functionality (go to Party screen and Talk to yourself?), eventually. But IMO it's definitely a refinement we do not need right away. So it's talking to your priest that gets you prayers; talking to your alchemist gets you potion stuff.
I intend to have Virtue be no longer a skill, but rather a characteristic of the party as a whole, when I code the saints' stuff. Simpler is better. If people really object I'll change it later.
Oh, and I have a thought on a name... "Darkerlands."
bryce777
Count
"Code for party size would have to be hand-limited, instead of using the Cha/Leadership rules, since we can suppress the Leadership contribution but not the Cha portion; say, every game half-hour, check party size, and the last party member on your list approaches you and you have to choose someone to dismiss. Alternately, we could set the Leadership bonus to zero (see below), which would mean one companion per point of Cha. Not a bad idea IMO, even though it breaks the "Use DL standards wherever possible standard" rule of thumb, simply because it's far less coding. Let's start with that. "
Right now I just check the number of companions before allowing a new companion to join.
Right now I just check the number of companions before allowing a new companion to join.
fisheye
Grandmaster Knight
Very good points Hellequin.
Dagorkan: Creating new effects for skills is not much effort. Reading out a skill level and making a comparison for a skill check is like 2 lines of code. Suppressing skill bonuses is harder, but there aren't really any skills to suppress. We just let them function as normal. It doesn't matter if 10 leadership allows you to command a giant army; you simply won't be able to find any regular troops - there's nobody on the overland map, you only get random encounters via game menus. And NPCs will only join if you have 4 members or less. Same thing with prisoner management: go ahead and take all the slaves you want, nobody will buy them. The good thing is that we can set this all up, then later when skills become moddable it will just be a skill renaming, all the code remains the same.
Dagorkan: Creating new effects for skills is not much effort. Reading out a skill level and making a comparison for a skill check is like 2 lines of code. Suppressing skill bonuses is harder, but there aren't really any skills to suppress. We just let them function as normal. It doesn't matter if 10 leadership allows you to command a giant army; you simply won't be able to find any regular troops - there's nobody on the overland map, you only get random encounters via game menus. And NPCs will only join if you have 4 members or less. Same thing with prisoner management: go ahead and take all the slaves you want, nobody will buy them. The good thing is that we can set this all up, then later when skills become moddable it will just be a skill renaming, all the code remains the same.
