Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kusgnos]

Xegeth lent an idea on locational damage here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=64902.0

I go for locational damage. Make things a lot more interesting, and flavorful. As for an inventory, that's a neat idea to have the player organize the inventory, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be to code it up. Though, maybe it'd be neat to have an inventory, then you could have container objects that are set as hidden, so if you put something in it and someone searches you, they might not see that you have it. Or just have certain objects automatically be hidden, like small knives or such.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

On game terms, what would be the difference between a serial killer and a regular protagonist? They'll both be killing people, most of the time. Just the psychological thingamajigs that FORCE you to kill people in a particular way or suffer stat penalties? Yeah, that doesn't sound like it'd be too hard to do afterwards if someone feels like it.

As for the amulets and magic, well, there's a lot of settings you can pick for a crime-focused game. Assuming we want a modern time period, with guns but no robots, the sliding scale goes through:

Completely mundane: There is no God, magic isn't real, and you can die from stubbing your toe on an upright nail and getting a nasty infection which you can't get treated because the police are looking for you.
Action film: Presented as the previous, but really isn't. Some people can shrug off major injuries and perform superhuman feats of endurance and acrobatics. Some people might have unexplained, seemingly supernatural abilities, such as knowing when their loved ones are in danger, or winning at games of chance way more often than they statistically should. This is where a luck stat would start affecting something.
Somewhat plausible: Things like ghosts unambiguously exist, although more focused magic might still be an esoteric art left for NPC voodoo priests. Some people routinely cheat death. The Joker might have just been bleeding to death inside a burning building that exploded and then collapsed, but he's certainly going to come back.
Urban fantasy: The world only makes sense as long as you don't look at it too closely. In reality, there are secret societies of vampires and wizards and werewolves everywhere. Mythological creatures abound.

And of course anything between these, or any combination of any elements. Like a world where vampires rule the night but nothing else supernatural exists and plot-important people die in car accidents.

I don't think realism should be paramount. Nor should it be confused with detail. I think that for gameplay purposes, the protagonist should be more resilient than real humans are. And that having to deal with the vengeful dead would be cool. Actual charms and amulets and plus five vorpal handguns might very quickly become too silly, though. And getting the game to a point where you can attack an enemy and die should probably be a priority.

If you could somehow make those go on a slider it would be amazing, however I will just say Action film to somewhat plausible

That actually sounds pretty easy to do in and of itself, though of course agreeing on how to do all the supernatural shit (and actually implementing it) would add a lot more work, unless it was only trivially different from the mundane stuff, in which case there wouldn't be much point to it...

It occurs to me that it could trivially be done by having the base game having all the mechanics implemented, but drawing on different npc archetype/item lists, so that a Realism mode wouldn't have varying luck stats, or any kind of "burn luck/some other luck-related point to survive massive damage/retry a missed attack/whatever" ability, nor would supernatural beings spawn nor supernatural items drop, while Urban Fantasy mode could have all of the above.

Assuming you're not planning to hardcode all the items and npc's, that would just boil down to a menu option on starting a new game amounting to "Which data set would you like to populate the world from?"

And of course actually creating and implementing the mechanics for all that, which would take a good deal of effort and work.

I quite like that idea myself, and since I'm not actually too concerned with my ability to pick this up, I suppose I'll take a look at the engine once I've sorted things out with a friend of mine who's holding a grudge over a drunken fight (like a fucking child ) since I need cigarettes and can't get out to get any when I'm not going out and doing shit.



I'm on the side of location based damage, and a more complex inventory layout. Thus, placing things in pockets, pouches, packs, but also an idea of straps/belts, like you'd get with some guns, or on packs, and needing one's hands free to use an item (perhaps a coordination check to accomplish simple tasks with your hands full?), perhaps even allowing for multiple items to be carried at once (think a bundle of something, or a precarious stack held between one's arms and one's chest), along with a fuzzier encumbrance system than "59.9 weight units and you're perfectly fine to run a marathon across the city! 60 weight units and you can't budge an inch, or have trouble walking across the room (lol STALKER),".

I suppose there are lots of little details that are very much irrelevant to getting it working in the first place, but these are things to keep in mind.

[Lap]

How would you guys feel about using a skill system like this:

Thievery- X points
    Pickpocking - Y Points
    Lockpicking - Z Points

You can put points or train thievery which general helps all the sills in the subsection or you can specialize specifically in just lockpicking.

[Funk]

This seems interesting. Are you going to include things like hollow-point and such? (Bullets)

the T Engine will not have any trouble doing hollow-point,  full metal jacket bullets and plan lead bullets.

im thinking for haveing maybe 4 ammo types

HP(hollow-point)  higher odds of Critical wounds but worse vs bullet proof vests

FMJ( full metal jacket) your every day bullet and the base line

AP(Armor-piercing) the best vs bullet proof vests but only make small wounds

Explosive bullets,rare and prohibited but when thay work thay make large wounds.

For armor maybe two types melee and guns.

gun armor will have 6 levels based on RL's NIJ Standard-0101.06.

[Cthulhu]

I think we should stick with basic mechanics for now.  We've got plenty of time for all that once the foundation is laid.

[Ochita]

Sounds good.

[Lap]

Regardless of subtypes or categorization we need to compile a list of skills so I'm just throwing out whatever comes to mind:

-Lockpicking
-Hotwiring
-Electronics (perhaps hotwiring goes into the electronics category)
-Smooth Talking
-Streetwise
-Firearms (with subtypes for every class)
-Explosives
-Leadership
-Haggling
-Pushing (getting people interested in things they normally wouldn't even buy at any price)
-Urban acrobatics/Parkour
-Martial Arts (maybe specific ones for nonlethal or submission holds)
-Melee Weapons (possibly subtypes for weird ones like chains)
-Driving
-Disguises
-Mechanics (subtypes for certain specialized modifications)
-Computers
-Sneaking
-Pickpocketing
-"Looking for something that essentially means being able to blend into a crowd"
-Fitness (climbing, running...)
-Throwing

[Ochita]

Computers could go into electronics. Martial arts can be just that. Melee weapons are subtypes (Knives, clubs, pistol whipping (its all in the technique), whips and a possible home-made?

[Soadreqm]

How would you guys feel about using a skill system like this:

Thievery- X points
    Pickpocking - Y Points
    Lockpicking - Z Points

You can put points or train thievery which general helps all the sills in the subsection or you can specialize specifically in just lockpicking.

I can see that working if you're using points to buy skills rather than training them by use, but there's the problem of where you get the points. Just killing enemies to gain experience and levels doesn't really work because that would leave stealth-based characters forever stranded to the bottom of the experience ladder. For a train-by-use system, I think it'd be better to just have similar skills give bonuses to each other. Both require finger dexterity, so being an expert pickpocket also helps when opening locks? I'm not familiar enough with either to tell whether that makes sense. How about making training the skill also slowly train the associated attribute, so that becoming an expert pickpocket would also make you more dexterous, thus helping with locks?

That actually sounds pretty easy to do in and of itself, though of course agreeing on how to do all the supernatural shit (and actually implementing it) would add a lot more work, unless it was only trivially different from the mundane stuff, in which case there wouldn't be much point to it...

A setting slider in the game options would be just super if it's feasible. Yeah, I guess most of the hard work would go into implementing the vampires in the first place, and making the game not use them if the option isn't set would be easy.

I'm on the side of location based damage, and a more complex inventory layout. Thus, placing things in pockets, pouches, packs, but also an idea of straps/belts, like you'd get with some guns, or on packs, and needing one's hands free to use an item (perhaps a coordination check to accomplish simple tasks with your hands full?), perhaps even allowing for multiple items to be carried at once (think a bundle of something, or a precarious stack held between one's arms and one's chest), along with a fuzzier encumbrance system than "59.9 weight units and you're perfectly fine to run a marathon across the city! 60 weight units and you can't budge an inch, or have trouble walking across the room (lol STALKER),".

A really complex inventory layout could both help with immersion (I have this knife in my right jacket pocket and I can take it out this quickly), and hurt it. (What do you mean, "no free grasp"? Just pick up the fucking knife!) The inventory should be easy to manage so that it doesn't ACTUALLY become an annoying puzzle you must wrestle with every time you pick something up. Try playing a game of DF Adventure Mode without a backpack. It's terrible. There should be plenty of ways to carry items (like bags, backpacks, tool belts, pockets, holsters etc.) and the item size and volume restrictions should be fairly lenient. And maybe letting you carry an unrealistic amount of things in your hands, so that if you just want to grab a shitton of stuff and haul it to the other side of the room without worrying of things like stealth and acrobatics penalties, you can do that easily. Giving a lot of really small movement penalties for carrying everything might be good. Having any amount of weight on you starts slowing your running speed, but you can still walk normally with a heavy load. And if you're carrying something weird where it's visible, people should get suspicious.

Speaking of taking knives out quickly, what're we planning to do with time? It might be cool to have things like western-style gunfights where the winner is the guy who draws faster. Would it be worthwhile to separate the actions of drawing, aiming and firing a weapon, so that spraying a magazine of bullets vaguely to the right direction would take next to no time, and pointing the bloody thing at the target would be the involving part?

skills

Would "explosives" be, like, operating explosives or making them? It could be split to "electronics" for knowing how detonators are put together and how you defuse them, and "chemistry" for mixing together your own bombs. Chemistry could also be used for making and identifying poisons and drugs and such. Also, some kind of medicine skill, for basic first aid and generally treating yourself when injured.

(Oh no another wall of text I'm sorry I'm just excited about this)

[Ochita]

(Oh no another wall of text I'm sorry I'm just excited about this)

We all are.

[Lap]

A good point was brought up about skill progression and the general feel of the game.

Item based<------------------------------->Character Based

Roguelikes fall somewhere on this spectrum.

The item based side says that skills are extremely hard to improve and the most important determining factor in the firefight is going to be who's got the bigger gun. These types of games tend to have a "live fast, die hard" approach. Your starting character can usually take out plenty of cops if he finds an assault rifle early. However, you're far more likely to die yourself and every encounter has a potential for great danger.

Character based games will have the newbie character firing like a stormtrooper while the experienced gunman will snipe off your eyeball. Most commercial games are extremely heavy on the character side. Roguelikes tend to have a bit more item focus.


So for one....how far can skills progress? Are they mostly static from creation? How much more relatively powerful is an endgame character from a starting one?

We've also got the choice of action hero style vs. a more realistic approach so throw in your votes.


If an experience point system would be used we wouldn't be leaving the stealthers in the dust. Exp would just be provided for completing goals instead of just killing someone. So if you were assigned a job to get some piece of art, it doesn't matter if you kill everyone in the museum, sweet talk your way in, or just break in at night, you'd get the same EXP. Also probably would need a way to get XP from minor milestones throughout the game to keep it from being 100% mission based.

If we do a skill based approach where skills improve with repeated use I don't want it to devolve into sitting in a corner picking and relocking a box to improve skills. Grinding up skills is something for MMO's. This is supposed to be fun. Paying a trainer seems fine, but what are the limits? Is it just money? Time? Some artificial level limits? Rarity of trainers?

Unless we can find a really good way to prevent boring skill grinding I'm leaning more towards applying XP from goals.

[Cthulhu]

Trainers can only get you so far.  I can see meeting a professional locksmith and getting up to 40-60% (Assuming a percentile skill system for the sake of an example), but after that you're going to have to go out and practice on real locks.

[Strange guy]

I think the distinction in character power should mainly exist in the lower skill levels- which means you'll often be able to make do with what you start with, but if you want to do something new you'll have to practice a bit. This allows a bit of flexibility but also makes how you start important. While better items should be nice they should only become important when you have decent skills- no point using a more powerful gun when you can barely handle the recoil of your current one, but with some more skills it will become a straight upgrade. So basically skills first early game and items (as well as information, allies and other such stuff) late game, though you'll still want to improve your skills later and get decent equipment in the beginning.

From a realism point of view I prefer skill based, though as you mentioned it created some issues. Skill should be trainable up to a low level with nothing but the appropriate equipment- trainers and a training command. But later on you should need to do the skills in a dangerous context. For example if you are aiming to improve lock picking you could set your character to train with a box and wire for say 2 hours so you get a basic level of understanding. You could then try to pick someones locks to learn under pressure. If you did it the other way round you'll be panicking and not know what to do in the real situation and then have nothing left to learn with the box. One thing you'll need to do is make different tasks equal and not encourage grinding. For example giving someone a weak gun so gun fights last longer and they gain more xp could be an issue. Also sneaking, talking and the like should give enough xp to compete with combat.

Sorry for rambling on here.

[Lap]

Trainers can only get you so far.  I can see meeting a professional locksmith and getting up to 40-60% (Assuming a percentile skill system for the sake of an example), but after that you're going to have to go out and practice on real locks.

How does this stop me from having to grind away somewhere safe just picking locks to improve skill. It also makes some skills absolute nightmares to level up. We also get a situation where with things like sneaking where the player just turns on sneaking and sneaks absolutely everywhere. Then to counteract this the skill improvement rates need to be lowered, forcing legitimate players to have to grind their sneaking skill.

[Lap]

A couple of games that just came to mind might help with some inspiration.


Rogue survivor - No matter how you survive you'll get a point at the end of the day. You're not forced to kill anyone or play a specific way. Unfortunately, survival simply isn't a viable milestone for our game.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - EXP from killing monsters goes into a pool. When you use skills it will put a portion of that EXP towards the skill. It's a mixed system that prevents players from having to train skills instead of just letting the player play. It also prevents someone from just getting a lot of EXP and leveling up totally unrelated skills they've never used before. I like the balance. If applied to our game, EXP would be obtained from goals and not just killing.