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| 22:35, 28 January 2007 (CET)
| | If you're interested enough to read the following ideas, please consider leaving some feedback. |
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| '''THE WORLD MAP'''
| | ==swimming & oceanwalking== |
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| ~''the best of both worlds'' ;)
| | Swimming does not work in the same manner as it does, on the real world. On the mana world, the only place where one can swim, is where the water meets air. Any level of swimming ability probably determines how fast you're able to move across this top layer of airy water. You can only swim on the surface of the water and can not simply sink, or dive downward to access the ocean floor; No Z-axis. |
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| ------------------------------
| | However, if you have gills or some other method of waterbreathing, you can walk safely on the ocean floor. As stated, this can not be accomplished by sinking or diving, since the layer of airy water can not be penetrated. The only common places to access the ocean floor, are beaches. Beaches serve as ramps to and from the ocean floor. There probably aren't very many access points to the ocean floor. |
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| [[Image:Centralcontinent-pauan-dabe.jpg]]
| | With this contrast between swimming and oceanwalking, we can allow people to swim without ever having to depict under-water swimming. (which would require more sprite frames) Swimming can be portrayed as simply as it is in other 2d games, like Zelda and Graal.. where the character's head is (partially) above water, with some simple splashing graphics and sounds to assist the illusion. |
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| Since multiple starting locations seem to be unnecessary, at least
| | Under-water travel on the other hand, could be done fairly exactly as it's done in the SNES title "Breath of Fire".. a method of which I am very fond. |
| until the game matures somewhat, Pauan and I devised a solution with
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| a central 'island' continent, where everyone would start.
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| To keep the starting area isolated, we let the backstory dictate our
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| actions. There is a reference to the gods being forced in to the
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| center of the world, the point at which energy gathers to be recycled.
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| When this happened, there was a tremendous explosion of energy, which
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| scarred the face of the world. This is the world that we should be
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| attempting to portray.
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| The map that we started making however, was not complete. As the idea
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| had been to focus on the central starting location, we still had the
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| rest of the surrounding continents to draw. It seems logical enough,
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| that we should merge the two map ideas, since one seems to compliment
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| the other so adequately. I feel that the central continent that Pauan
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| and I developed, fits nicely in the basic form of Modanung's idea.
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| It was to be the smallest of the main continents, almost an island by
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| comparison.
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| [[Image:Map_modanung-pauan-dabe.jpg]]
| | ==elements and materials== |
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| The central ''island continent'' is like a miniature ecosystem in itself,
| | I've been trying to come up with a material tree, based on three fundamentals: The fantasy-style elements that we've adopted, the real-life table of elements and of course, as the governing guideline, the rule of cool. Unfortunately, I was once again unable to come up with a complete idea on my own, but this is the gist of it. |
| having its own apparent poles with extreme variations in climate, over a
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| small amount of area. In-game, this ''island continent'' can act as a
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| natural barrier between the players and the rest of the world, until
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| we're ready to open spots for exploration. Gradually unveiling methods
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| of travel to the other continents will also be easier with this idea,
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| since you will need some special means of travel to leave.
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| I have something to submit for travel off of the central continent, should it be required.. and I hope it is.
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| This also helps to bolster the need for something like the
| | ===energy to matter=== |
| "Sea of Dissonace" - the central continent could lie in the middle of
| | Using the following forces, elemental energy can be converted in to various types of matter. |
| these deadly waters; another example of a natural defense that sometimes
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| acts as a double edged sword.
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| If all of this is agreeable, we can regrid the map so that the body
| | *fire = heat |
| of water on the central continent is the epicenter of the world.
| | *lightning = electricity |
| I also have an idea for the edge of the world, if we're still going
| | *air = gas? wind? |
| for a flat-world situation.
| | *ice = cold |
| | *water = moisture |
| | *plant = acid |
| | *earth = pressure |
| | *metal = magnetics? gauss? |
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| | These could be some of the basic forms of matter that we're able to create from elemental energy. ''Metal is the only complete set amongst these examples.'' |
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| | ;Earth:sulfer (heat), lithium (elec), silicon (pressure), carbon (magnet) |
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| | ;Metal:iron (heat), aluminum (elec), titanium (gas), cobalt (cold), tin (moisture), zinc (acid), lead (pressure), nickel (magnet) |
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| | ''Aside from the potential to be blended in to alloys, each type of metal could have various forms of modification applied to them.'' (hardened, tempered, galvanized, etc..) |
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| ------------------------------
| | ;Air:nitrogen (cold), hydrogen (moisture), xenon (acid) |
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| '''THE RACES, THE ELEMENTS and GAME MECHANICS'''
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| ~''a racial system or something more customizable?''
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| ------------------------------ | | ''obviously, it's a little easier to do with Metal than the others.'' I imagined this might somehow lead to a the development of a metal / alloy-tree, that would actually have some sort of function beyond sounding cool. Another purpose was to provide a foundation for at least some level of familiarity. For example, it's fairly common knowledge that steel is usually made from a mixture of iron and carbon; wouldn't it be cool if that mixture ''actually'' resulted in a steel product, when you tried it in-game? It would definitely take some discussion to make it usable, but I would love to see a material tree developed beyond a generic list of things like, "ore, wood, blah blah blah.." |
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| The reason I became dissatisfied with the racial system that I proposed,
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| is because I have a feeling that after a while, it will become boring.
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| It just feels too rigid. In order to be aligned to a certain element,
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| you have to choose a certain race. In order to have certain innate
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| abilities, you have to choose a certain race. All of this aside, there
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| were disagreements and problems with the races. The whole animal-feature
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| idea is great, but I think we should be more modular with our approach
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| to character creation.
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| Instead of having 8 races, with each attached to a distinct appearance,
| | Another piece of the idea was to reference historical alchemy. The above mentioned metals could be basic forms of the precious metals. Iron could be turned in to Gold, while titanium could be turned in to Silver. Aluminum (being relative to electricity which is between Silver and Gold) could be turned in to Electrum. If we did this, an imbalance in currency value could be avoided, by using fiat currency in all civilized areas. Precious metals might then be reduced to a value more relative to their usable qualities. |
| we could use a system of traits to add detail to characters; let the
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| player choose their appearance from a set of modular values
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| (head, skin-tone, etc) after they build their character. | |
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| That way, if they choose something like flippers, it can be a forced
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| overlay graphic on the character's feet. So even if they're allowed
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| to wear boots, their bare-feet will have flipper graphics on top of them.
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| What if you don't want to look like a fishperson, but want to be water-based?
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| Or maybe you '''do''' want to look like a fishperson, but don't want to be water-based?
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| That's my thought process on how we can probably do better.
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| Allowing people to choose traits to detail their characters will offer much
| | ==comments== |
| more flexibility to the creation process. Any racial feature that we had in
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| mind for the proposed racial system can be offered, but we can allow players
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| to put them to use in to a variety of different packages, which actually does
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| better suit the community appeal, as well as the evolutionary aspect of the
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| story.
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| We could still use the races, actually. Make them like templates or presets
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| when you're building your character. Custom can be a choice for those who wish
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| to build a character more to their exacting specifications.
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| Whatever the case with the system ends up being, the 8-element system was a
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| disagreeable idea. TIME, SPACE, LIGHT and DARK were all in some way difficult
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| to place in terms of magical categorization, animal and environmental features
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| (it was hard to apply animals to SPACE and LIGHT, and hard to apply environments to TIME and DARK, to put it simply)
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| Back when I was initially bothered by this, I came up with an outline for a system
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| that would apply four elements as attributes, alongside STRENGTH, AGILITY, etc..
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| It was inspired by the ''World of Darkness'' series and Fallout's "SPECIAL" system.
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| Instead of having one category of attributes like most games tend toward, we could
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| break them up in to three categories, like this:
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| - BODY: strength
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| dexterity
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| agility
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| endurance
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| - MIND: will
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| intuition
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| perception
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| luck
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| - SOUL: fire
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| air
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| water
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| earth
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| The character creation process is a perfect set of examples to explain how a system like this
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| might work. You start a new character and are asked to distribute points to the above mentioned attributes.
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| After doing that, you would be asked to choose from a list of traits. These traits are all made available
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| given you meet their prerequisites. Your attributes could still be used to formulate derived scores, such
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| as SPEED.
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| Traits can be anything from physical features to personality quirks. Many have small drawbacks to accept
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| for their benefits. It's a matter of flavor. Again with flippers as an example, maybe the flippers make
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| you walk a bit slower on land, but in exchange, you move with much more speed and grace in the water, than
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| a person without flippers would. Claws could be a good example, as well. Maybe you can't equip weapons,
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| but your claws grow with you. (not in size, but in damage.. ;)
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| There are many more examples that I have, as well as can be derived from the wiki, which many have already
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| contributed to. These published ideas for abilities and other character features, can be applied to a trait
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| system, ensuring that a good portion of those ideas will have some use.
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| Abilities would probably be best used with percentage scores.. getting them to function is easy enough, it'd
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| just be a matter of compiling an extensive enough list of abilities to implement. You could do some similar
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| categorization with the abilities if you wanted. Break them up in to skill, knowledge and talent.. or
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| something like that. It'd be a way to categorize abilities for things like a % bonus. Like if you for some
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| reason, gained more for spending points on knowledges than you did on talents. Something like that could
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| be applied to the attributes as well. In World of Darkness, they make you decide which is your primary,
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| secondary and tertiary of your attribute and ability categories.. This ranking determines how many points
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| you will have to distribute in each category. I don't think this is necessary, but it's an option to
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| consider with this overall idea. Regardless of any ranking of the categories, each should probably have its
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| own pool of points.
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| -------------------
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| I'm just trying to think of a way to tie all of these somewhat incompatible ideas together, in to something
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| that not only we can agree on, but that will actually function. This is a horrible, disorganized mess of
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| ideas, but there's just so much to tackle when you look at the big picture. I almost feel like I should
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| set the game mechanic outline aside as an eventual fork. Even if it's a good idea, changes seem to be hard
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| to bring about in terms of general game direction.
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| I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not sure how far this "world cleanup" is supposed to reach, but I would
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| imagine that game mechanics comes in to play somewhere, since it doesn't seem to be anything with much of a
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| foundation behind it at the moment. If by some magical process, everyone who matters agrees with these general
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| ideas, I might be able to get another system proposal put together, that we actually CAN use. All chocked full
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| of balanced progression math, diagrams, tables, flowcharts, etc..
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| I'm pretty sure no one is ready for these kind of changes though, so I'm going to put it all here on my
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| discussion page for rambling purposes. Please read and comment to your heart's desire. I have a general
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| idea for how I think the game mechanics should work for a game like this, but I know it's difficult to just
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| adopt someone else's entire perspective on how something should be. If anyone ever needed an idea for a fork
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| with different game mechanics, this might be good for a TMW variant. (something with a similar idea, but executed differently)
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| It could work with any battle system, that is.. real-time/action battle or point-and-click/engaged battle.
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| ==random notes== | |
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| I really think some of you that are concerned with developing a good game system, should check out Fallout, if you've never played it. The system they developed for that game was made to replace GURPS as a foundation. It takes in to account, many of the things that seem to be desired from what I can read on the wiki. They call the system SPECIAL.. which stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck.
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| Just something to think about, when you have nothing better to do.
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| I'm glad you've bothered to read this, no matter your opinion of what I've discussed here.. thanks! :D
| |
If you're interested enough to read the following ideas, please consider leaving some feedback.
swimming & oceanwalking
Swimming does not work in the same manner as it does, on the real world. On the mana world, the only place where one can swim, is where the water meets air. Any level of swimming ability probably determines how fast you're able to move across this top layer of airy water. You can only swim on the surface of the water and can not simply sink, or dive downward to access the ocean floor; No Z-axis.
However, if you have gills or some other method of waterbreathing, you can walk safely on the ocean floor. As stated, this can not be accomplished by sinking or diving, since the layer of airy water can not be penetrated. The only common places to access the ocean floor, are beaches. Beaches serve as ramps to and from the ocean floor. There probably aren't very many access points to the ocean floor.
With this contrast between swimming and oceanwalking, we can allow people to swim without ever having to depict under-water swimming. (which would require more sprite frames) Swimming can be portrayed as simply as it is in other 2d games, like Zelda and Graal.. where the character's head is (partially) above water, with some simple splashing graphics and sounds to assist the illusion.
Under-water travel on the other hand, could be done fairly exactly as it's done in the SNES title "Breath of Fire".. a method of which I am very fond.
elements and materials
I've been trying to come up with a material tree, based on three fundamentals: The fantasy-style elements that we've adopted, the real-life table of elements and of course, as the governing guideline, the rule of cool. Unfortunately, I was once again unable to come up with a complete idea on my own, but this is the gist of it.
energy to matter
Using the following forces, elemental energy can be converted in to various types of matter.
- fire = heat
- lightning = electricity
- air = gas? wind?
- ice = cold
- water = moisture
- plant = acid
- earth = pressure
- metal = magnetics? gauss?
These could be some of the basic forms of matter that we're able to create from elemental energy. Metal is the only complete set amongst these examples.
- Earth
- sulfer (heat), lithium (elec), silicon (pressure), carbon (magnet)
- Metal
- iron (heat), aluminum (elec), titanium (gas), cobalt (cold), tin (moisture), zinc (acid), lead (pressure), nickel (magnet)
Aside from the potential to be blended in to alloys, each type of metal could have various forms of modification applied to them. (hardened, tempered, galvanized, etc..)
- Air
- nitrogen (cold), hydrogen (moisture), xenon (acid)
obviously, it's a little easier to do with Metal than the others. I imagined this might somehow lead to a the development of a metal / alloy-tree, that would actually have some sort of function beyond sounding cool. Another purpose was to provide a foundation for at least some level of familiarity. For example, it's fairly common knowledge that steel is usually made from a mixture of iron and carbon; wouldn't it be cool if that mixture actually resulted in a steel product, when you tried it in-game? It would definitely take some discussion to make it usable, but I would love to see a material tree developed beyond a generic list of things like, "ore, wood, blah blah blah.."
Another piece of the idea was to reference historical alchemy. The above mentioned metals could be basic forms of the precious metals. Iron could be turned in to Gold, while titanium could be turned in to Silver. Aluminum (being relative to electricity which is between Silver and Gold) could be turned in to Electrum. If we did this, an imbalance in currency value could be avoided, by using fiat currency in all civilized areas. Precious metals might then be reduced to a value more relative to their usable qualities.
