Skadoomer wrote:
You know, i never considered this, but i havn't come up with a good solution to how the player heals themself yet. I don't like the idea of medkits lying around, and getting healed after each kill (like in American McGee's Alice) dosn't make gameplay challanging enough. The only struggle i have with this is the fact that it would need to be explained before gameplay started. However, i've been teetering on maing a training level to explain gameplay (like MM2 and Half-life did). That just clould work.
Maybe have some sort of system where when you kill a monster you have a chance of obtaining their soul. These souls could be a form of experience and at set places, you can use them to heal or upgrade a weapon perhaps. But then you'd have to deal with what if a player is good enough to not get hurt, then he only gets that much stronger since he doesn't have to use points into healing themselves. Unless maybe it takes one soul to heal, and maybe 15 for the first level in a weapon.
As for how the player finds out how the world works, a seperate training level could work, or through some design, start the game out with basic missions that cover each point of gameplay. Can't think of too many examples, but how GTA 3 explained the rules was nice and more enjoyable than reading a manual or following directions in a training level. Just depends on the system you choose to use.
why not, if not for my sake, for everyone elses.
This one system isn't very complex, as I was quite young when I came up with it. I didn't know that much about programming, so I just did what I could. It's very basic (no pun intended), but it works. Some of this won't apply to what you are doing, but I thought I would explain most of it anyway.
Your character has a few stats, strength, defence, magic points, health points, level, experience needed.
Strength is straight damage done to a monster's health plus a modifyer number between 1 and 100 where under a certain value is a miss.
The magic system was simple. When you used magic, it did damage equal to the number of magic points you have, then takes away 10.
Defence is how much less damage is done to you, as monster strength is same as your strength.
Monsters have only 2 main stats: strength and health. I must have meant to use a monster defence, but forgot to use the variable in the fighting mechanics.
Levels, experience, and the monster stats are tied together. The experience needed to gain a certain level is a total of the experience needed for the last level plus your current level times 5. So if you start out at level one, and need 10 for level 2, you'd need 10 + 10 and for level 3 you'd need 35 and so on.
After killing a monster, the experience gain would be the monster's strenth divided by 2.
The code for the battle portion is here:
[spoiler]10 IF ST>1 THEN GOTO 790 ELSE END
20 PRINT "Press any key.":WHILE LEN(INKEY$)=0:WEND:CLS:RETURN
30 PRINT "your status:"
40 PRINT "level="LEVEL
50 PRINT "health="HP"/"MXHP
60 PRINT "magic="MP"/"MXMP
70 PRINT "strength="ST
80 PRINT "gold="GOLD
90 PRINT "defence="DEFE
100 RETURN
110 PRINT C$"'s status:
120 PRINT "health="MH
130 PRINT "strength="MS
140 PRINT "gold="MS
150 RETURN
160 IF HP<1 THEN GOTO 180
170 RETURN
180 PRINT "You have died"
190 PRINT "your code is:
200 PRINT " "HP"-"ST"-"MP"-"GOLD"-"FL"-"DEFE"-"NPR"-"EP"-"LEVEL"-"MXHP"-"MXMP"."
210 END
220 IF MH=1 OR MH>1 THEN RETURN
230 PRINT "you killed the "C$
240 PRINT "your health is at "HP"/"MXHP
250 PRINT "your strength is at "ST
260 PRINT "your magic is at "MP"/"MXMP
270 GOLD=GOLD+MS
280 PRINT "your gold is at "GOLD
290 EP=EP+MS/2
300 IF EP<NPR THEN PRINT "you have "EP"/"NPR" of the experience to get stronger"
310 IF EP>NPR THEN GOTO 320 ELSE RETURN
320 ST=ST+10:MXMP=MXMP+20:MXHP=MXHP+MS:DEFE=DEFE+1:LEVEL=LEVEL+1
330 EP=EP-NPR:NPR=NPR+LEVEL*5
340 HP=MXHP:MP=MXMP
350 PRINT "you got stronger!"
360 GOSUB 20
370 PRINT "your status"
380 PRINT "level="LEVEL
390 PRINT "hp="HP"/"MXHP
400 PRINT "mp="MP"/"MXMP
410 PRINT "strength="ST
420 RETURN
430 IF MP<10 THEN PRINT "out of magic"
440 IF MP<10 THEN RETURN
450 PRINT "you cast a spell!"
460 MH=MH-MP
470 MP=MP-10
480 GOSUB 220
490 RETURN
500 PRINT "1=fight 2=magic 3=scan 4=status"
510 INPUT A
520 IF A=1 THEN GOSUB 600
530 IF A=2 THEN GOSUB 430
540 IF A=3 THEN GOSUB 110
550 IF A=4 THEN GOSUB 30
560 IF MH>0 THEN GOTO 500
570 GOSUB 20
580 CLS
590 RETURN
600 PRINT "press any key
610 WHILE LEN(INKEY$)=0
620 O=O+1:IF O>100 THEN O=1
630 WEND:CLS
640 IF O>69 THEN GOTO 690
650 PRINT "you did "ST+O" damage to the "C$"!"
660 MH=MH-(ST+O)
670 GOSUB 220
680 RETURN
690 PRINT "the "C$" is attacking!":PRINT "press any key"
700 WHILE LEN(INKEY$)=0
710 E=E+1:IF E>100 THEN E=1
720 WEND
730 IF E<60+U THEN GOTO 750
740 RETURN
750 IF DEFE=MS OR DEFE>MS THEN PRINT "you are too strong too get hurt!":RETURN
760 HP=HP-(MS*Q)+DEFE
761 PRINT "the "C$" did "(MS*Q)+DEFE" points of damage to you"
770 GOSUB 160
780 RETURN
790 '[/spoiler]
The variables should be easy to figure out as in the first few lines, most of them are identified in the part where it tells you your stats before a fight. MH = monster health, MS = monster strength, NPR = needed experience for next level. Q = difficulty modifyer (between 1 and 3).
Also, maybe a sample list of monsters would help in understanding how I had it setup. They are in order of appearance, and until a certain point, you only fight one of them (as it was a pretty linear game).
[spoiler]MH=50 : MS=25 : c$="rat"
MH=100 : MS=25 : c$="imp"
MH=500 : MS=40 : C$="dragon" (floor one boss)
MH=200 : MS=30 : C$="spider"
MH=210 : MS=20 : C$="snake
MH=900 : MS=35 : C$="wolf" (floor two boss)
MH=1000 : MS=50 : c$="grffen"
MH=1000 : MS=65 : C$="man eating plant"
MH=3000 :U=3: MS=100 : C$="ant" (this one was in a special room, where if you rentered, you'd fight it again.)
MH=HP+2000 : MS=ST : C$="Knight (floor 3 boss)
And after this point, the monsters would always respawn, so you could power level off them (until you went to the next floor, since you can't backtrack), which is more a more suited model for a doom mod where you fight many of the same monsters.
spiders, wolves, and ants, as previously mentioned
MH=1000 : MS=100 : C$="ant" (weaker, but you'd fight them more often).[/spoiler]
So yeah, no idea if that helps or just wastes your time by reading it. I worked out the experience levels by making a floor, playing through with the values I set, and if it was too easy, made the exp needed more strict, or the gave the monsters more health, or changed the experience needed * level multiplier. It was all based on the feelings I got when playing, and when a section was complete, I'd work on the next floor, and repeat. Later on, I could just guess what to set monster health at, how many to put, and it worked out sometimes on the first try. It's the starting of the base system that is hard.
The other 'system' involving spells I've already mentioned the basic formula for it. You need 100 points per skill level, and every time you use it, you get [10 minus skill level points]. so from level 1 to 2, you'd use it 12 times at 9 points gained each time.
The healing spell had a 'healing potential' for each level (5 * healingLevel). The amount healed was random +/- 5, with a max healing power equal to the healing potential. It worked out quite well and I sometimes regret abandoning that project. I might use some of the ideas I had there in my current project, as I want to incorporate an rpg system to it as it's not going to be a frag fest like most other mods are. I think now that custom weapons are available, I'll have better chances of doing this.
New weapons would be available from a shop, bought with money. Money could be found laying around in hidden places (I wanted to make a world with lots of nooks and crannies to explore) or by doing quests for people (reward system). You'd have a purse to carry the coins, and could obtain larger ones, or multiple ones to carry more coins with (really, just a max money variable).
Again, I hope I didn't waste your time by rambling on about pointless things.
