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driftmoon modding ideas!

Endymion 14 years ago

If you're going to limit the amount that can be eaten at a time I'd suggest adding a little stomach shaped bar or something that appears and fills up when you eat so you can clearly see how much and when can you eat. Plus then you can make foods that are more filling than others so you can save those potions that won't instantly prevent you from eating another bite to when you really are in trouble and use something heavier and less rare normally. It'll also make those potions feel more valuable and special. Also having different digestion times and colors in the bar for different foods might be worth considering.

mexis8 14 years ago

Venom to be honest i dislike you

.

[Edit by Ville: Stop that right there. Issues argue, not people.]

Grim Reaper 14 years ago

"ville" said:
-Make it possible for the player to eat one item of food/potion every minute or so.

How do you plan on informing the player how much time must pass before he can eat again? Perhaps WoW-style cooldown effect (which looks very similar to the "estimated time before training/building is complete" effect from C&C games) on all the affected items?

E_net4 14 years ago

"Grim Reaper" said:
"ville" said:
-Make it possible for the player to eat one item of food/potion every minute or so.
How do you plan on informing the player how much time must pass before he can eat again? Perhaps WoW-style cooldown effect (which looks very similar to the "estimated time before training/building is complete" effect from C&C games) on all the affected items?

This is a good idea. If the character could make potions out of ingredients and food, then this would also prevent him from making dozens of potions per minute.

Anonymous1157 14 years ago

You COULD just use a construction timer like in Notrium. Hey, it might even make porting/remaking Notrium easier if such functionality already existed!

ville 14 years ago

For the food, I could make the character say "I'm full", or I personally like the idea of all the edible things showing a cooldown meter. I'll probably include such a system to all inventory items, but it will obviously need to be categorized so that using one type of food prevents eating other types of food for a short time. Something similar could go for combat skills, which I'm planning to make more effective but have longer cooldowns.

MageKing17 14 years ago

"Anonymous1157" said:
You COULD just use a construction timer like in Notrium. Hey, it might even make porting/remaking Notrium easier if such functionality already existed!

I'd like the engine to be flexible enough to allow the implementation of a minigame for such tasks if the modder wanted one. System Shock 2's hacking/repair/upgrade minigames may have been overly random, but they were far more fun than rolling dice or (even less fun) just having the computer tell you if you succeeded or failed (of course, BioShock's minigame was far too skill-based, since you could hack everything you found with little effort... but then, BioShock wasn't really an RPG at all).

Grim Reaper 14 years ago

"MageKing17" said:
of course, BioShock's minigame was far too skill-based, since you could hack everything you found with little effort...

Except when the game chose a pipe pattern that was impossible to finish.

And yes, minigames sound like something that could be fun for item crafting. Perhaps, if the player finishes the minigame fast/well enough, s/he gets either more than the regular amount of the crafted item, or perhaps gets/learns how to craft something completely different?

Anonymous1157 14 years ago

How did you end up having me say what he said in his quote box?

Grim Reaper 14 years ago

"Anonymous1157" said:
How did you end up having me say what he said in his quote box?

By not removing the [ quote="Anonymous1157" ] bit, I suppose. :S

Man, why do I keep doing that?

ville 14 years ago

Minigames do sound great, but how would the modder define them? I can't think of anything but that I would have to make them first, then they could be activated on demand, changing some parameters perhaps.

There's the option of creating the minigames as word puzzles using the talk system. There were plenty of those in Baldur's Gate, and I thought some of them were pretty good. But it wouldn't fit for repetitious tasks like item combining.

Grim Reaper 14 years ago

"ville" said:
Minigames do sound great, but how would the modder define them? I can't think of anything but that I would have to make them first, then they could be activated on demand, changing some parameters perhaps.

There's the option of creating the minigames as word puzzles using the talk system. There were plenty of those in Baldur's Gate, and I thought some of them were pretty good. But it wouldn't fit for repetitious tasks like item combining.

Maybe have the player choose between regular item combining (progress bar) and the minigame version, where the minigame version has a better chance of teaching the player how to combine something new?

E_net4 14 years ago

Perhaps you could add a small mini-game window that would stand on top of the main window and contain its own map. The user would interact to special objects in that map with the mouse.

MageKing17 14 years ago

"Grim Reaper" said:
"MageKing17" said:
of course, BioShock's minigame was far too skill-based, since you could hack everything you found with little effort...
Except when the game chose a pipe pattern that was impossible to finish.

I have never encountered a BioShock pipe minigame that was actually impossible to finish. I usually just failed to reveal the critical pipe in time (on those safe hacks where I actually failed), and the chances of that can be reduced with the plasmids that slow down the flow (if there was one, I think there was) and reduce hazards.

Pete 14 years ago

Naaa, I remember getting the finish piece being surrounded by alarm pieces multiple times. Lucky you?

ville 14 years ago

I moved the food talk to a new thread, let's reserve this for modding ideas.

MageKing17 14 years ago

"Pete" said:
Naaa, I remember getting the finish piece being surrounded by alarm pieces multiple times. Lucky you?

I have literally never seen such a thing. Either I'm dead lucky, or you're very unlucky.

Regardless, that's all a bit off-topic, when the point is about minigames in Driftmoon.

"ville" said:
Minigames do sound great, but how would the modder define them? I can't think of anything but that I would have to make them first, then they could be activated on demand, changing some parameters perhaps.

If the modder can define UI elements that pop-up on-demand, move around dynamically, and give back response upon various kinds of interaction, minigames are easily possible. Of course, it also makes it possible to add things like a Tetris screen or Minesweeper or other silly little things, but that pretty much comes with being able to manipulate UI elements (and even without it, for those of you who remember that extremely silly Tetris plugin for Morrowind, which had the buttons be activators in the game world and the "screen" be a bunch of floating Dwemer blocks).

"ville" said:
There's the option of creating the minigames as word puzzles using the talk system. There were plenty of those in Baldur's Gate, and I thought some of them were pretty good. But it wouldn't fit for repetitious tasks like item combining.

That's the weakest kind of mod-based UI interaction. It's neccessary for some things (Fallout 3's CRAFT mod uses a dialogue-based menu for its easy extendability, for instance), but it would be nicer to have better options available.

Anonymous1157 14 years ago

I once played... jeez, I don't even remember what it was called. It was an MMORPG set in space where one had complete control over a ship and it's endeavors. Notably, it featured space stations for trading posts, and landing on a planet.

... Anyhow, in said game, there was a C plugin interface with a few finished minigames, like Sudoku and Tetris. If you can identify the game, you ought to look into how it does it.

Amarth 14 years ago

One could use dynamic linking to allow basically arbitrary minigames to be created. Or, well, arbitrary game mods - once you allow unchecked machine code to be linked in, you have no control over what happens. I doubt it is worth the effort (or risk) to do something like that - especially when Ville has stated that modding should be done as much ingame as possible.

ville 14 years ago

Yes, while many of you do know how to code, I don't actually expect a lot of people to use any fancy C interfaces that I could cook up. If some kind of minigames outside the actual world will exist, I think these would have to be coded by me and allow some parameters for modders.

Quanrian 14 years ago

"ville" said:
Yes, while many of you do know how to code, I don't actually expect a lot of people to use any fancy C interfaces that I could cook up. If some kind of minigames outside the actual world will exist, I think these would have to be coded by me and allow some parameters for modders.

Look at how the scripting is done with Unreal 3 Engine, after seeing it in a video, it looks extremely intuitive. You are literally creating a flow between different script parts. While some people would rather just use raw code like C or possibly even Javascript, I believe the greater masses can deal with less is more a lot easier. I know how the scripts used to work with the engine, given its history, so if not too much has been changed, just leave things largely alone and there will be a fair learning curve. I still say you need to cue scripts through the animation module because that seemed like the logical direction things were heading.

Pete 14 years ago

I rather like the I/O system in hammer (source editor), but I guess that's up to personal taste (and the fact its the only thing I learned to use).

MageKing17 14 years ago

I'd rather a Python interface than a C interface.

quzbuk 14 years ago

Even though you said there would probably not be much in the way of assembling from raw parts I have an idea that I've sat on for about 6 years now. I had originally thought to make a Notrium fantasy mod and had a spell system using the build from raw parts of Notrium. The player had a stone cube and could find runes to attach to the cube in different configurations. The order of build would dictate the spells to be channeled through the cube. I was partially ripping off the rune magic system from Ultima, and partly from a home-made wizard rpg my friends and I had started to design years earlier. I had even thought of using different base shapes for the spell devices as a means of "leveling up" the spell casting, and as a not too subtle nod to tabletop RPGs. Tetrahedron to start, then a cube, etc.

Anyway, I was never very good at the art, and my Notrium mod never got beyond a few weapons, potions, and that spell cube. The main point here is that that mechanic of building up from simple components was one of my favorite things about Notrium, and I think it makes for an amazing mod tool.

EDIT: Also Quanrian never gave me my cool prize for solving the Var' Equinallin riddle. I guess the statute of limitations is less than six years, hehe.

ville 14 years ago

You've got a good point there, spells can be combined of raw ingredients. I was thinking of something like herbs for Driftmoon, they could use the same system.
I wonder how would it work? Do you drag the item on top of another to combine them? Or put them into a container and click a button? Or do you have a recipe book where you click on a recipe, and it checks that you have all the ingredients?

At least to me that recipe book sounds a bit easier to use than remembering all the combinations - when I played Notrium after a few years pause I was really baffled by all the combinations.

Anonymous1157 14 years ago

"ville" said:
I wonder how would it work? Do you drag the item on top of another to combine them? Or put them into a container and click a button? Or do you have a recipe book where you click on a recipe, and it checks that you have all the ingredients?

I like how it works in Two Worlds. You can drag and drop identical items on top of each other to stack them, which levels up the first one, and you can combine small herbs and minerals in an alchemy pot to create useful items and power-ups.

Venom31 14 years ago

A recipe book may be your way if you have fixed number of possible recipes, that are not always quite logical (as an example, Arcanum - not exactly recipe book, but just a list of schemes... pretty much the same thing).
Combining via alchemy tools (alembic, retort etc.) is more applicable when you can know what the outcome will be just by analysing ingredients' properties (as an example, Morrowind /and maybe other Elder Scrolls series which I didn't play / had herbs and minerals that had pre-set properties; those items that matched some properties, could be used to create potions that inherit those properties enhanced).

"Anonymous1157" said:
You can drag and drop identical items on top of each other to stack them, which levels up the first one, and you can combine small herbs and minerals in an alchemy pot to create useful items and power-ups.

How does this stacking level up the first one?

E_net4 14 years ago

"Venom31" said:
"Anonymous1157" said:
You can drag and drop identical items on top of each other to stack them, which levels up the first one, and you can combine small herbs and minerals in an alchemy pot to create useful items and power-ups.
How does this stacking level up the first one?

That looks reasonable, actually. IRL, you can put sugar in coffee to obtain... a non-sour coffee.

The recipe system could work, but would a recipe be unlocked forever or only when you hold the recipe scroll/book/notes/etc in your inventory? I also add the possibility for recipes to be memorized.

Venom31 14 years ago

"E_net4" said:
"Venom31" said:
How does this stacking level up the first one?
That looks reasonable, actually. IRL, you can put sugar in coffee to obtain... a non-sour coffee.

Yes, but sugar and coffee aren't "identical items", that's the drill.

"E_net4" said:
I also add the possibility for recipes to be memorized.

And I mean only this possibility.

Seriously, recipes system is just the way to let the player actually play, not memorize all the recipes in there. The recipe book is usually in the "mind" of player's alter ego - the player character. It may look like a real book, though he/she can't drop it (you can't drop your brain usually

).

E_net4 14 years ago

"Venom31" said:
Yes, but sugar and coffee aren't "identical items", that's the drill.

In an abstract point of view, there could be a way to join two objects of the same type. Plus, the meaning of "identical" may turn vague.

"Venom31" said:
And I mean only this possibility. Seriously, recipes system is just the way to let the player actually play, not memorize all the recipes in there. The recipe book is usually in the "mind" of player's alter ego - the player character. It may look like a real book, though he/she can't drop it (you can't drop your brain usually ).

Agreed. I must have confused you into forcing the actual player to memorize things... it's been done in the past, but only for level passwords.

Anonymous1157 14 years ago

Bah, I had a feeling that someone wasn't going to understand. Yet I felt that overly explaining myself right away would generate no discussion, because I looked like an arse or something.

The stacking system works like this: Say you have a class 3 Narpa's Sword. You go to a merchant and buy a class 2 Narpa's Sword. You go to your inventory and drag it on top of the first sword you already had, which is glowing green because it is a valid combination. You now have a level 5 Narpa's Sword.

... And just for kicks, here's how alchemy works in the game: Combining mostly organic materials gets you a potion, combining mostly non-organic materials gets you a power-up, combining temporary-effect materials gets you bombs and traps, and using any preexisting potion always results in another potion. So yes, there are rules, and you can indeed predict your outcome.

As for a recipe system, I would personally prefer one where you input the kind of object you want to get out of the alchemy and it decides if you can make such an item out of the things in your inventory. (But then someone is going to complain that people can cheat by picking up random things and hitting the "+1000% Raw Damage Bonus" button a gazillion times. Oh, never mind.)

MageKing17 14 years ago

"Anonymous1157" said:
The stacking system works like this: Say you have a class 3 Narpa's Sword. You go to a merchant and buy a class 2 Narpa's Sword. You go to your inventory and drag it on top of the first sword you already had, which is glowing green because it is a valid combination. You now have a level 5 Narpa's Sword.

In Dark Cloud 2, weapons had their own stats points, as well as gaining levels. You could boost stat points by turning items into "essences", which could combine with weapons to boost their stats. You could also turn a weapon into an essence, and depending on its level, it could provide portions of its own stats as boosts to another weapon. The real reason you cared about the stats of weapons was, however, not really for the sake of the effects of those raw stats... as weapons levelled up, you could evolve them along upgrade paths depending on how you grew their stats. I'm not saying Driftmoon should do something like that... but I do think that having the engine capable of handling such a thing would make for an interesting gameplay modification.

Narvius 14 years ago

ToME (an Angband variant, ie. a roguelike) has a few rare artifacts that can level, and they are called sentient weapons.

ville 14 years ago

For the moment I seem to favor the recipe book idea. It would be simple to mod, you would just add a recipe into the file and be done with it. Plus I never liked the way I had to remember the recipes in Notrium - on my later playthroughs I actually always looked them up from the forum!

A recipe book might not actually be a bad idea for the vanilla Driftmoon now that I think of it. There could be a ton of uses for it, maybe there could be several categories within it.

Anonymous1157 14 years ago

Meh. I'd honestly rather have the set of rules for combining things rather than an outright recipe book. Two Worlds has both, and I never store my recipes because I never build the same item the same way twice. (You see, some ingredients are a bit hard to come by...)

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