Author Topic: Brainstorming Inventory: Radical Other Ideas.  (Read 29502 times)

Offline Dizzard

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Re: Brainstorming Inventory: Radical Other Ideas.
« Reply #15 on: November 29, 2011, 01:27:45 pm »
I don't like the idea of this inventory system, it seems like something that would be neat at first but would get annoying and feel too constrictive after the novelty has worn off. On the other hand I wouldn't mind something being done to the current inventory, I wish there was a way I could leave items at home and not have to bring everything along with me.

I can confirm that from my own experience with this game in earlier states, actually.  Feeling "less real" with the warp system as it currently stands is something that bugs me, but I've not thought of or seen any other model that meets all the criteria for actually retaining fun gameplay without boring stretches of repetition, so less real is the unfortunate side effect.

I have a radical idea (in which case this thread is perfect  :P)

How about increasing the amount of currently playable/controllable characters from just one to maybe three or five. So it would be sort of like a team (task force whatever you want to call it) This way you could remove the warp potion and have an option to set a particular character to "head home". They'll pathfind their way to exit the tile (or alternatively just vanish and reappear at the closest settlement after a certain period of time has passed) and then move from tile to tile until they reach the designated(or closest) settlement. In the mean time you can switch to another of your team and take care of another mission. You'll get a message when you're other character has arrived home at a settlement. This way you're jumping between missions (so it's like the "meanwhile" in a story) while you still get the concept of spending time heading home.

To be honest, I always wondered what it would be like to control more people at once in AVWW. That way it would seem more like there is a group of people doing scouts/discovering the world rather than one sole hero. It seems more natural to have a sort of task force.

I feel in my head that this would work....but I'm not typing it out that well. :S


Offline Hearteater

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Re: Brainstorming Inventory: Radical Other Ideas.
« Reply #16 on: November 29, 2011, 01:29:39 pm »
I don't know if you'd even consider it, but would a topic on other warp mechanics be useful?  I think the current completely open warp ability, while it makes things very convenient, makes it hard to provide any cross-chunk challenges.  Since you have a forum for brainstorming stuff it might be helpful.  I did notice free ability to warp anywhere at any time isn't in the immutable design goals :) .  And it seems a few people have some thoughts on warping that might make sense to consolidate into a single thread.

Offline x4000

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Re: Brainstorming Inventory: Radical Other Ideas.
« Reply #17 on: November 29, 2011, 01:39:57 pm »
Re: the monster stuff not really being turn-based yet, that's quite true, but mainly because we haven't started implementing macro-game combat yet.  That's a pretty cool and pretty involved thing the way Keith has it planned, and we've not talked about it yet just in case something doesn't work out there, but it actually adds a whole extra genre into the mix if we can pull that off (and no, it's not tower defense).  Right now the wandering monsters are just water-down tiny foes that you can easily defeat alone and on-foot.  That was never the plan for long-term monsters that are more directly related to the overlord and such.  You'll be seeing some monster bands that veritably feel like an army, and dealing with those yourself in adventure-mode would be night impossible. 

Having to figure out how to deal with them in the strategic side so that you can get past whatever they are blocking in the adventure mode has been a goal for us from the start.  And being able to use your NPCs, in the macro game, to "soften up" an overlord keep that is vastly more powerful than the current versions currently are, is another similar thing.  Send in the army, bash up their army, then send in the lone hero to kill the leader.  Etc.  Like I keep saying, right now what you're seeing with the strategic parts of the game is something like 10% of what we have planned for even 1.0.

The exploration side of things for the macrogame is the one part that is really fully fleshed out, I'd say; and you're right, that really ties across in both sides much better than the rest because of that.

In terms of the monsters advancing toward your town, you're right you'd never go fight them on foot if they were too strong, but by the same token those monsters wouldn't even exist or be advancing on you in the first place if you weren't playing the strategic side of the game.  And if you just hate strategy games and want to spend hours overleveling them by 20 levels... well, that certainly is another way to play, right?  Not a particularly fun or rewarding way, but there's no reason that shouldn't be valid.  And if someone has "uber skills" and wants to try to level an army with their one dude, well, that's an interesting challenge that I guess they ought to be allowed to try their hand at a few times, too.

It is true, of course, that with AI War one of the things that is really compelling is that any action you take isn't something that is cost-free.  Since the AI reinforces over time and aggresses against you periodically, if you're spending a lot of time overpowering the AI piece by piece, that's just letting the AI build up somewhere else.  And obviously that's a key mechanic to AI War.  With AVWW... at core this is meant to be a more relaxed game than that.

The above all said, Keith sent me an email this morning talking about some ways he was thinking your ideas, or something very similar, could work in multiplayer or solo as an optional thing that players can toggle on kind of like the difficulty toggle settings.  The key features of his ideas were: 1) it's an optional thing that hardcore strategy fans can turn on (ideally to some reward, or else just for the extra interest/challenge), and 2) it still doesn't cause things to happen invisibly behind you when you're out adventuring, it just forces you to stop adventuring and take a strategic turn when you've reached the end of your counter.  There were a couple of specific variants he'd suggested based on your comments, and I'll make another brainstorming thread where that can be discussed separately.

That whole thing really is against the core design of the game, but then again so is any hardcore platforming component, and I want to have those as an optional thing you can do in this world, too.  Lots of things can be done, from all sorts of genres, that conflict with the core design of the game -- so long as they are optional.  In this specific case it will be difficult to make it optional and yet still meaningful as a way to play, but I think it can be done.  Minor factions and such in AI War are all optional, of course, but they are really a lot of the spice of that game.  I guess I'm coming around to seeing this -- essentially -- variant of the core game being kind of like an AI Modifier or a Minor Faction, just not something you select in a central lobby.
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Offline Dizzard

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Re: Brainstorming Inventory: Radical Other Ideas.
« Reply #18 on: November 29, 2011, 01:50:55 pm »
With AVWW... at core this is meant to be a more relaxed game than that.

It seems like a real contradiction to describe a game that involves trying to survive in a strange dangerous world where time and space has been ripped apart as a "relaxed game". That's totally not the perception I was building of this game...

I suppose you mean in regards to AI War, AVWW is a relaxed game? I haven't played AI War (well actually I tried the demo but couldn't really get into it...I'll try again though) but I'm guessing it's pretty ruthless in terms of the AI harassing you?

Offline x4000

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Re: Brainstorming Inventory: Radical Other Ideas.
« Reply #19 on: November 29, 2011, 02:07:35 pm »
I have a radical idea (in which case this thread is perfect  :P)

That actually is really interesting.  But I made it it's own thread: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9528.0.html :)

I don't know if you'd even consider it, but would a topic on other warp mechanics be useful?

Boom: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9527.0.html :)

With AVWW... at core this is meant to be a more relaxed game than that.

It seems like a real contradiction to describe a game that involves trying to survive in a strange dangerous world where time and space has been ripped apart as a "relaxed game". That's totally not the perception I was building of this game...

I suppose you mean in regards to AI War, AVWW is a relaxed game? I haven't played AI War (well actually I tried the demo but couldn't really get into it...I'll try again though) but I'm guessing it's pretty ruthless in terms of the AI harassing you?

Perhaps "relaxed" is the wrong choice of words.  I guess I feel like AVWW should be relaxed in the same sense that Silent Hill, Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Civilization, or most FPS games are.  In those games, nothing happens without your instigating it (in solo play).  Even if the world is horrific and stressful, or a warzone, you can hang out in some area and nothing really happens except some predictable scripted events or maybe a few smaller enemies walking by.

Not to say that there aren't more harried parts that are more kill-or-be-killed, but that's very different from a game where you lose the ability to control the tempo if you don't act.  The auto-scrolling stages in Mario games are a good example of a less-relaxed gameplay style, actually.  If you just stand there, you will be pushed off a cliff or squashed on an obstacle, so you have to keep moving at least at the minimum pace the game dictates.  In AI War, or really any RTS game, if you just sit there doing not much of anything then the enemies are still using that time to actually build up and come for you, so you can't afford to waste time just sitting there thinking, or playing around with the units, unless you pause the game.

So it's really not a question of relaxed or not, it's a question of who sets the tempo: the player or the game itself.  In AVWW, the idea is that overall you set the tempo as you play, with some exceptions.  Even Mario has the occasional forced-scrolling segment, of course; and even in a relaxed game like Minecraft, the day/night cycle is out of your control and the night is a lot more dangerous until you learn the basics.  But overall in Minecraft, I'd still say that you set the tempo, as if you choose to spend your whole session exploring, building, or mining, it doesn't matter: you can mix and match or specialize in one activity as much as you want.  Also with Mario, those forced-scrolling stages are usually somewhat optional, so that if you really hate them there is some mechanic where you can skip them (all the way back to Smb3, even).

So that's all I meant.
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Offline Hearteater

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Re: Brainstorming Inventory: Radical Other Ideas.
« Reply #20 on: November 29, 2011, 02:45:46 pm »
It seems to me some of the survival feel of a game could come from the early part of a world and taper off.  So at the start you have a bunch of "quests" you need to do to survive (no time limit, and no limit on how many people you can lose doing them).  Things like finding food, clearing monsters, etc.  This would give the new player more structure to their early explorations.

Offline maaltan

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Re: Brainstorming Inventory: Radical Other Ideas.
« Reply #21 on: August 01, 2012, 02:44:19 pm »
This thread is kind of old, but i couldn't find a better place to mention it.  I found some screenshots of the early alpha builds and noticed it was in a zelda top down like perspective.

If the engine is still lingering around somewhere it might be cool if that could be used for the village.  What this would give us is the ability to arrange the bonus buildings (maybe the other buildings if you want to go that deep) .  Maybe give proximity bonuses to how you arrange the buildings, etc.  it would add a lot of depth to the city building aspect of the game.    Maybe put some micro biomes in there (muddy ground, grassy field, hills, etc) as well.

The negative (positive?) side would be that the actraiser comparisons would be complete.