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vitaminx wrote:If you're looking for a name for the game then it would be important to know something about the story.
Do you have a storyline already? If not then it'd suggest to think of a storyline first.

just my 2 euro-cents,
vitaminx

Yes, I need a storyline. If you are willing to write something...

Username wrote:Yes, I need a storyline. If you are willing to write something...

Hmmm, don't know, I'm struggling a bit with organizing my free time.

But anyways... will the game be in a Tolkin-based world? The monster names suggest so...
And is it a "serious" game or can there be parody, sarcasm and funny stuff?

vitaminx wrote:

Username wrote:Yes, I need a storyline. If you are willing to write something...

Hmmm, don't know, I'm struggling a bit with organizing my free time.

But anyways... will the game be in a Tolkin-based world? The monster names suggest so...
And is it a "serious" game or can there be parody, sarcasm and funny stuff?

My initial idea was to do some Japanese-ish theme with this country's mithology during its ancient times. But if you don't know much about this topic, then you may want to do something else

In this case, I think the Tolkien-based games "market" is pretty saturated, so I would say:
· Hyborean age (Conan and the like) without Orcs, Trolls and Goblins. But there are undead and demons, probably dragonkins (I'm not sure)
· Only humans, i.e. no elves or dwarves. Several races of humans, some are born to battle, other to sail and other to trade.
· Huge world, so someone born in the south may never known what's going in north. Most people doesn't know what is happening thousand miles beyond the city walls or villages, so only a few people is aware of a possible evil threat.
· Magic is pretty inaccessible since it is really expensive to find someone to teach you, and casting a magic spell requires some extra ingredients such as a focus stone, a special ring, or some natural ingredients like uncommon herbs or minerals, etc... But the magic effects can be seen all around, for example, some King may have an enchanted living armor as bodyguard, or a building may have some magic so any thief can't open the doors, and so on...
· World geography based in an very ancient Earth Planet geography, when continent were placed almost all together (this for example)
· There are not treasures like in an MMORPG, in the sense that a treasure here is probably a outstanding sword left in a hidden tomb and with a lot of gold coins scattered all around. So, magic items do not exists in the strict sense. A copper sword is worst than a Iron sword, but "Titan's Sword of the Infernal Slaughter" do not exists. But an outstanding quality Copper Sword may be better than a Very Bad quality Iron Sword.
· There is probably an evil thing that is spreading and threatening the world. Maybe in a shape of demon, a shape of destructive cult or a shape of a mad king. But as told before, common villagers are unaware of this. They have their own problems (sidequests?), personalities, etc.
· There are no quests like "Go my cellar and kill 5 rats". Instead, there is a Journal where all relevant info will appear, something like "I met XXXX NPC in the city. He told me that his cellar was full of rats". The player may go to the cellar and investigate what is wrong there. Or "In the City of AAAA, I met with prospector Hammerhead. He thinks that there are strange noises deep in his mine".
This is basically the "quest" system in some games like Morrowing.

just had some thoughts, what about something like this:


As a boy (or girl) you eat accidently from a psychedelic ("magic") herb, you have a vision of a fundamental evil which is in the world.

The evil is everywhere, but usually not visible, only with the means of magic one can see it.
The evil doesn't directly "kill" people, instead it influences the subconsciousness of people so they start to do evil things. As they are not aware of the evil they think it's coming from themselfes and they try to hide it.

The kid (you) grows and - as your parents are peasants (or some other low-class workers) it's your daily duty to work on the field (or whatever profession you have) to one day run the farm (or workshop) yourself.

However, this experience from the past never really leaves you alone, and one day you are simply unable to lead this simple life forever, you MUST find out what you saw when you were young.

So one day you explain to your parents that your must go and search for answers. Your parents try to understand you and let you go.

The first thing is that you need to look for the plant from your childhood - you barely remember how it looked like.
That could be the first "quest".

In the the game you discover the whole dimension of evil that's happening here (which is everywhere, as I said - so it's pretty huge), you find out where it comes from and you find ways to fight it.

Along the way you also have to live with the ignorance of the people who might or might not understand what you're up to.
There may be people who understand you (there may have *this* feeling that there's something wrong) and it depends on your skills and persuation to explain it to others.

This way or another you find allies and make foes on the way.

There's a commodore 64 mockup at the end, feel free to use the tiles if they suit you. If you don't know what tile represents what, or if you can't figure out how the tiles connect to each other, I could help you out with some explanations

Username wrote: - Plenty of quests and sidequests like in ye ol' good times: quests are not mandatory tasks you must do to advance in the game. They are just annotations in your journal that may help you to find something or solve some problem.

Very nice!

I'm also coding an old school rpg.

How do you did the questsystem? I mean how do you organize the quests and the dependecies from other quests, npcs and items.

For item i use an "component based object system" similar to this post.

SiENcE wrote:
How do you did the questsystem? I mean how do you organize the quests and the dependecies from other quests, npcs and items.

Actually, I need to start the quest system, but i got some pseudocode and the how to implement it.

Basically, quests are given by NPCs when talking to them, or by events when triggered by the player.

I call a procedure to check the possible quest. This quest may have up to two requisites: a quest requisite or an item requisite. When the player triggers the event or the dialog, the game executes that procedure, which will check if the quest to be given mets both requirements.

For example, an NPC dialog calls the procedure to give the quest BBBBB, but this quest requires that the player had completed quest AAAA before, and that the player has CCCCC item in inventory. If any of those conditions are not met, then the quest is not given, and the NPC will trigger some other dialog such as "I'm sorry, I don't have anything to say to you" or whatever other dialog I define.

Quest completed by the player are saved in a table as a simple quest code text string, for example player.quests = {"quest1", "quest2", "quest3", ...}
When I need to check if quest BBB requires "quest1" to be completed first, it is just only to check that table and know if "quest1" is there.

For item requisitesis the same, just run through all inventory slots and check if there is such item.

Requisites are stored in the quest data itself.
Something like this

quest = {questID = "BBBB", questRequire = "quest1", itemRequire = "Bloody Ring"}

SiENcE wrote:For item i use an "component based object system" similar to this post.

I already implemented all items the next way:
(sorry if the explanation is a bit long)

Items are defined by a alphanumerical string in this fashion:
(the "|" are separators to show each part of the string)

TT | 00 | SSS | 000

where:
TT = item type or cathegory, such as weapon, defense, consumable, jewel, material, crafting, etc, for example, WP for weapon, DF for defense, and so on
00 = item weight, from 0 to 99.
SSS = item sub type or sub category such as short sword, plate mail, diamond ring or copper ore, for example, CSS may be Copper Short Sword, or SHM could be Smithing HaMer. You may note here that you can find different items with the same sub type. It doesn't mind, since different item categories discard similar subcategories, for example, you may have CSS with WP, wich will be WeaPon > Copper Short Sword, but you may also have CSS with TL (Tl = tools), which could be Carbon Smithing Sharpener, for example.
000 = item quality, going from 001 to 200, in my game. This acts as a efficiency multiplier. For example, a short sword with 100 quality will deal 3 damage, but with 200% quality will deal 6. Quality =/= durability. Quality = overall efficiency. Can't be modified

An example:

WP02SDG050 = Weapon | 2 pounds weight | Steel DaGger | 50% quality




Once I got the item code, it is just a matter of substring it and return the values.

When I show items in inventory, I only need the item type, subtype and weight.
All other data is stored in the base item itself, not in the item code. This is, there is a table with all possible item types and subtypes with all needed data such as image, damage, defense vendor value, and so on.

Inventory slots is just a 2-dimension table/array where the item codes are saved.

When using item from the inventory, there are only two controls: arrows to move cursor, and RETURN key to use the item.
Because the item types or categories (weapon, defense, jewel, consumable etc...) are limited (actually 6 or 7 only), I only need to call the "use_item" function with the item code. This function gets the item category and executes the appropriate actions, that would be equip weapons, drink/eat consumables, show crafting window when using tools, and so on.


I hope that is what you were asking for.

Trihook wrote:There's a commodore 64 mockup at the end, feel free to use the tiles if they suit you. If you don't know what tile represents what, or if you can't figure out how the tiles connect to each other, I could help you out with some explanations

Can I use those tiles too? I like them a lot!

However, I won't be able to use them unless you put them under a formal license. My projects tend to end up being uploaded to free software/open source sites and they are really pedantic about licensing. Saying "the creator said I could use them" won't cut it. The common license choice for free art is CC BY-3.0 these days (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) Could you release your tileset under that license?

If you do you can increase the chances of it actually being put to use by uploading it to OpenGameArt (http://opengameart.org)

Username wrote:I hope that is what you were asking for.

Yes of couse and thanks for this explanation!

My quest definitions look like this.
I attach the starting questnumber to an npc or item.