Foreverhood sanity stories
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Skadoomer
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DoomRater
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justin023
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Snarboo
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An RPG, by definition, doesn't have to be turned based, or have multiple member parties. The purpose of the RPG is to play a role, and that can mean any number of things. In the traditional sense, it might mirror D&D, but when you get down to it, it can be much more than that. I believe that an RPG shoud let you play a larger role than playing as the character and guiding him, such as in Doom, and requires that you have more control of the whims, needs, and ablities of the character. In essence, you become him and make his decisions outside of what he kills or how he completes a level.
On that note, that are many ways to handle a role playing system. The traditional way is through experience points that build up, and when you reach a certain amount, you gain a level. Another way is to give the player points, orbs or whatever for completing certain actions and let them augment themselves how they see fit. Another way is to make the player skill directly related to what he does or what items he is in possession of. For instance, if the player practices lockpicking, he will get better, while a more advanced lockpick would allow the player to pick locks faster than a makeshift one. The thing I think of with the Foreverhood is uniqueness. I would really hate to see it bogged down in more traditional RPG systems.
Instead of a point based system, what about a meter that fills everytime the player kills an enemy and absorbs their soul? Such soul energy would be used to power weaponry and abilities, and depending on which skills are used, they are leveled up. A player who prefers a brawny approach would use the souls to power his weaponry, either letting him use better weaponry at the cost of more souls or making his weapons more and more powerful, at the detriment of other abilities. Such a system rewards the players for using his powers how he sees fit, while also punishing him for letting others go to waste, making it harder for those abilities to be improved later on.
However, I doubt such a system is possible in ACS, and if it is, it might be more trouble than it is worth. It would also require a reworking of the gameplay to use the soul system, and that's just too much work at this point. I'm just musing right now.
On that note, that are many ways to handle a role playing system. The traditional way is through experience points that build up, and when you reach a certain amount, you gain a level. Another way is to give the player points, orbs or whatever for completing certain actions and let them augment themselves how they see fit. Another way is to make the player skill directly related to what he does or what items he is in possession of. For instance, if the player practices lockpicking, he will get better, while a more advanced lockpick would allow the player to pick locks faster than a makeshift one. The thing I think of with the Foreverhood is uniqueness. I would really hate to see it bogged down in more traditional RPG systems.
Instead of a point based system, what about a meter that fills everytime the player kills an enemy and absorbs their soul? Such soul energy would be used to power weaponry and abilities, and depending on which skills are used, they are leveled up. A player who prefers a brawny approach would use the souls to power his weaponry, either letting him use better weaponry at the cost of more souls or making his weapons more and more powerful, at the detriment of other abilities. Such a system rewards the players for using his powers how he sees fit, while also punishing him for letting others go to waste, making it harder for those abilities to be improved later on.
However, I doubt such a system is possible in ACS, and if it is, it might be more trouble than it is worth. It would also require a reworking of the gameplay to use the soul system, and that's just too much work at this point. I'm just musing right now.
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wildweasel
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Cases in point: Ultimas 8 and 9.Snarboo wrote:An RPG, by definition, doesn't have to be turned based, or have multiple member parties.
Ultima 8 has this type of system (gain strength and dexterity points directly by using melee attacks), as well as Final Fantasy II (as seen in the Origins set). It does work quite well.Another way is to make the player skill directly related to what he does
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Skadoomer
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True, but it worked faily well for hexen II. I was inspired mainly by that, even though the rpg element is almost transparent after you obtain your classes special skill.justin023 wrote:If I was going to make an RPG system it would definetly be ACS only. I wouldn't want an RPG system in one of my Doom mods though because any FPS is only capable of being about 10% RPG.
What about a more creative aproach, like being able to level up your weapons, but only giving the player so many points so you must choose which weapons you want to level up. Its a twist on the way the new castlevania game handles the innocernt devil the player recieves. This way you have a full range of possiblilities, do you level all your weapons up to a mediocre level or have a few strong weapons?Snarboo wrote:I believe that an RPG shoud let you play a larger role than playing as the character and guiding him, such as in Doom, and requires that you have more control of the whims, needs, and ablities of the character. In essence, you become him and make his decisions outside of what he kills or how he completes a level.
This is the approach i'm going for right now. However i'm stull researching the statistics of doing thigs this way, which has forced me to make difinitive choices about every other aspect of the mod (how many weapons, how many monsters, ect)The traditional way is through experience points that build up, and when you reach a certain amount, you gain a level.
I'm looking for structure to give the player reasons for doing things. After recieving the comments from the IGF judges, their biggest complaint (outside of a few textures) was the game didn't give you enough to do. You basically wondered around confused and listenign to other characters talk and tell a story that you where a part of. To give a general idea, the game started a lot like half-life. No weapon, listening and mildly interacting with a few talking characters.The thing I think of with the Foreverhood is uniqueness. I would really hate to see it bogged down in more traditional RPG systems.
I need something more, and i think i've found a systen that has a lot of evidence of being sucessful.
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justin023
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True, but when I think of a classic example of an RPG, I think Final Fantasy, not Strife or Hexen 2 (Which I didn't even know had an RPG systemSnarboo wrote:An RPG, by definition, doesn't have to be turned based, or have multiple member parties.
)It is definetly possible and wouldn't be nearly as complicated as writing an RPG from scratch in C++. It wouldn't be possible to make Final Fantasy in ACS, but it would be possible to create systems for: experience, item use, item purchasing, magic, and money. Also a HUD display for these things would be needed.However, I doubt such a system is possible in ACS
A few things I would do in an RPG type mod:
- Magic skills such as temporary flight, invulnarability, invisibility, or speed could be acquired by equipping a special item that would level up after each battle (think Final Fantasy 6)
- Items come mostly from shops instead of laying around in the map
- Use a keybinding to show player stats and experience instead of showing them all the time.
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chopkinsca
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Adding a leveling up system can make a project much more complicated, but rewarding in the end. Basically, you first have to decide in what ways you want the player to grow stronger. Will they gain experience from killing monsters? or how about using weapons or spells. Or maybe finding hidden items that add a stat. Whatever route you take, you'll need to do a lot of playtesting for small changes at first until you get a feel for the system you have setup.
My suggestion would be to just set the monsters to an amount of experience (more for harder monsters) as you see fit, then add an experience table as you see fit. Doesn't matter if it's balanced at all, just play through as far as possible and get a feel for how it works with your game. Then later you can say 'I don't want to gain 15 levels off of killing a few blobs, so I'll lower their exp or increase exp between levels." Once you have the starting point balanced, you move on to the next little section and make tweaks there and as you go on, you can make better guesses as to what exp levels you need to set.
Come to think of it, I've tried 3 different rpg systems in different forms (1 was a basic text base rpg written in basic, the other two where a doom project which I abandoned, remade, then abandoned again):
he first was a simple 'get experience needed, gain a level, stats go up, needed experience grows'.
Second was based on using skills which would level up after using them a certain number of times (based on: exp += (10 - SkillLevel) ) where skill level is from one to ten. Later levels would obviously be more powerful. Only had a heal spell implemented though, but others could easily have been done, even more so with custom weapons (which the lack of at the time was why I canceled it). You could make limits on the levels you can gain on skills until you 'learn' the next level from a person or item perhaps. Then you can train the skill to whatever level that person taught you about. Could be applied to weapons with a call to an acs_script in their function (zdoom should have custom weapons 'soon', if not, gzdoom). Also could apply to health after getting healed by various means or just by getting hurt (would need a script to activally monitor health to check if it drops and could add slowdowns).
Third was based on finding items/people that would give you certain abilities such as health/ammo regeneration. Higher levels would mean your health/ammo regenerates at a higher rate.
If you want the formulas I used, I don't mind posting them. They aren't complex and I've long abandoned them.
I think that this project would need a unique system to fit in with the rest of it. A generic leveling up system might just take away some of the magic feel I imagine would be present in playing it. Then again, I have nothing except a few screenshots and a description to go on, so in the end only you can know what's best for it. We can only give ideas (no idea if mine actually helped or not).
Regardless, I can't wait for this project to be completed. And I almost never look forward to anything.
My suggestion would be to just set the monsters to an amount of experience (more for harder monsters) as you see fit, then add an experience table as you see fit. Doesn't matter if it's balanced at all, just play through as far as possible and get a feel for how it works with your game. Then later you can say 'I don't want to gain 15 levels off of killing a few blobs, so I'll lower their exp or increase exp between levels." Once you have the starting point balanced, you move on to the next little section and make tweaks there and as you go on, you can make better guesses as to what exp levels you need to set.
Come to think of it, I've tried 3 different rpg systems in different forms (1 was a basic text base rpg written in basic, the other two where a doom project which I abandoned, remade, then abandoned again):
he first was a simple 'get experience needed, gain a level, stats go up, needed experience grows'.
Second was based on using skills which would level up after using them a certain number of times (based on: exp += (10 - SkillLevel) ) where skill level is from one to ten. Later levels would obviously be more powerful. Only had a heal spell implemented though, but others could easily have been done, even more so with custom weapons (which the lack of at the time was why I canceled it). You could make limits on the levels you can gain on skills until you 'learn' the next level from a person or item perhaps. Then you can train the skill to whatever level that person taught you about. Could be applied to weapons with a call to an acs_script in their function (zdoom should have custom weapons 'soon', if not, gzdoom). Also could apply to health after getting healed by various means or just by getting hurt (would need a script to activally monitor health to check if it drops and could add slowdowns).
Third was based on finding items/people that would give you certain abilities such as health/ammo regeneration. Higher levels would mean your health/ammo regenerates at a higher rate.
If you want the formulas I used, I don't mind posting them. They aren't complex and I've long abandoned them.
I think that this project would need a unique system to fit in with the rest of it. A generic leveling up system might just take away some of the magic feel I imagine would be present in playing it. Then again, I have nothing except a few screenshots and a description to go on, so in the end only you can know what's best for it. We can only give ideas (no idea if mine actually helped or not).
Regardless, I can't wait for this project to be completed. And I almost never look forward to anything.
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Skadoomer
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That was the basic idea, but it would help to see a working system first to see how they balanced out there leveling systems. I've been reaing a lot of D&D books which have given me a basic idea of how to weigh out expierence points and how much you need to kill before you level up (although D&D is overkill compared to what i'm looking to do)chopkinsca wrote:My suggestion would be to just set the monsters to an amount of experience (more for harder monsters) as you see fit, then add an experience table as you see fit.
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.Only had a heal spell implemented though, but others could easily have been done, even more so with custom weapons (which the lack of at the time was why I canceled it).
Already in, and working wonderfully. I'm personally excited as hell for custom damage types (which can have their own defined pain and death state.(zdoom should have custom weapons 'soon', if not, gzdoom).
why not, if not for my sake, for everyone elses.If you want the formulas I used, I don't mind posting them. They aren't complex and I've long abandoned them.
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chopkinsca
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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.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.
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.
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.why not, if not for my sake, for everyone elses.
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.
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Skadoomer
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I'm opposed to the soul adding to expierence because of the direction i'm going to be structuring leveling up. Basically you level up your weapons by using them, and whoever you kill with that weapon gives expierence to that weapon. Giving the layer the option to level up weapons freely would go against that system. However, in terms of healing it sounds like an idea worth looking into. I like the idea of souls giving you ammo to your heal weapon (which would be a spell). I still have some old math for my ACS enemy drop proability function that could be useful here.chopkinsca wrote: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.
The basic mission idea is out because of the current game structure. You start off in heavy battle to help the pacing of the game and just follow the path from there. I could try to work in some stuff into the begining, but because of how this project has evolved, its audiences are mostly that of the art community that havn't played a video game since pong or super mario. Video game illitericy is my main concern here, So the training level would just be to get them setup with the basic actions of moving and loking around the environments. I'll figure something out, but until then i'm still planning on making a demo level to catch the non-gamers up to speed.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.
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Skadoomer
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Incase you missed the updates on doomworld and newdoom, foreverhood has updated not the webpage but the Mod Database website as well as its own personal myspace page (which seems to be more about me than foreverhood these days) because my web service is retarded. Incase you havn't seen eithe rof those, i recomend you checkout the mod database site for new screenshots and the myspace page for the begining details about foreverhoods updated story. Its been tied into norse mythology moreso now to help players understand the relationships between land and inhabitant. Fianlly, visit the wads in progress page for open GL shots of the new indoor areas.
But back to the delemmas with the webpage. I donno about you guys, but the design is getting old. It takes too much time for all the individual images to load, and content is expanding in a way that makes it hard to easily add it nto the current sceme of things (like the screenshots for example) Therefore, i'm drafting up a simplier desin for the webpage, but i want to hear from you guys first. What would you change if you had the option? What stuff do you like / hate about whats there now? If you could, post a link to specific info you think is important for the re-design to have. Persoanlly, i would love to have an rss reader built into the new site so i can broadcast my moddb and myspace postings directly to the foreverhood main page so when something is updated, it gets put up directly to there. In terms of writing(or download a free reader) i'ms still in the dark about. Furthermore, i'm not aware of any real consequences of rss feeds. Anybody have any say or objection to them?
But back to the delemmas with the webpage. I donno about you guys, but the design is getting old. It takes too much time for all the individual images to load, and content is expanding in a way that makes it hard to easily add it nto the current sceme of things (like the screenshots for example) Therefore, i'm drafting up a simplier desin for the webpage, but i want to hear from you guys first. What would you change if you had the option? What stuff do you like / hate about whats there now? If you could, post a link to specific info you think is important for the re-design to have. Persoanlly, i would love to have an rss reader built into the new site so i can broadcast my moddb and myspace postings directly to the foreverhood main page so when something is updated, it gets put up directly to there. In terms of writing(or download a free reader) i'ms still in the dark about. Furthermore, i'm not aware of any real consequences of rss feeds. Anybody have any say or objection to them?
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Skadoomer
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Paul
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