[crossfire] Platform statement

Tue Dec 23 03:55:19 CST 2008

Re me "running" for content leader:

>> quoth Nicolas Weeger as of Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:39:42 +0100:
> Well, I may have missed that, then :) Could you describe what kind of
> game you want to make? So people know what to expect from you! ^_-

Well let me start by saying, I like crossfire.  I think it's a
fun game as it is, even though there's room for improvement.

So I'll organise my statement in 5 areas for better reading...

Gameplay
========

You mentioned:
> the overall gameplay style (fast combat? strategy? much loot?)

Fast combat is fun but IMO gets boring fast.  In my ideal game,
you'd still be able to mow through "extras" (to borrow Exalted
terminology... in this case I guess it means monsters less than
1/4 of your level) very fast because that's what they're for.
But I'd have less of them around and focus maps on monsters that
are actually a challenge, and on things other than monsters.  A
roomfull of extras should be an element in the story, an annoying
obstacle in either the first room of the dungeon or the last one
before the boss, and not in the whole dungeon.

For combat with enemies about your level, I think mwedel's
changes did the trick, at least for fighters (ie not
magic-users).  I like non-magic combat on trunk.  On top of that
I'd put a stronger focus on damage types, so you'd put more
work/thought into getting a weapon that can do the work and/or
armour that can keep you alive.  Add more items with damage
types, maybe add another damage type or three.  (But careful not
to turn the game into Pokemon.)

An important point that was raised in the list is that when you
meet something way above your level, it should hurt you badly but
not kill you instantly, so you can run away.  Of course if the
monster is TOO MUCH above your level (let's say 4x to keep
consistent with the definition of extra), then it's reasonable
that you die without ever knowing what hit you.

I'd like to make it a little more RPG-y.  Looking at online games
recently, I believe people are enjoying the option of doing
things other than H&S.  So I think we should keep the H&S fun if
that's what you're into, but it should be possible to make a life
as a trader or crafsperson, maybe even fisher, farmer, etc.

What I think the gameplay lacks most in 1.x is goals.  That's one
of the two things that make Pupland such a classic; there's
always a next quest, there's always something more to keep you
going.  By the time the whole thing is over, you're so high level
that you can think of things to do on your own.  So, either an
overall meta-quest or a general, social push are a must.
Otherwise you don't really have a reason to come back to the game
other than "it's fun".

Generally I tend to go with Nicolas' idea of making the world
truly dynamic and persistent.  But Pupland proper becomes
impossible with that; how many people can rescue one king?
Although considering the nature and end of the quest, it's still
possible, with a few tweaks.

Another important point: I want to make level progression a lot
slower.  Not the actual gaining of levels, but what that means;
how fast your SP pool, HP pool, etc increase, things like wc (or
whatever Nicolas replaces it with); and also, make permanent stat
increases a lot harder, so that you only reach "perfection"
typically at level 100 or so.

I don't know... strongly tempted to kill overall level entirely.
What is it really good for anyway?  I like the concept of item
power, but I'd replace it with something you get from quests.

Loot and money
--------------

I agree there is too much loot; in the beginning of the game you
never have enough money, and after a few levels you have too much
and not enough ways to spend it.

Here's how I see solving it, suggestions/comments welcome:

- Reduce treasure-type loot.  Less gold and expensive stuff in
  dungeons, less artifacts.  (I like the idea of finding a
  *component* of an artifact...)

- Equipment-type loot (eg orc swords) makes sense to me.  I'd
  make them even cheaper though.  Also selling flesh shouldn't
  give you that much money (I usually get my non-dragon
  characters started basically with selling livers).

- Change the money system.  I think calling coins "gold" and
  "silver" is a weird and contrived fantasy trope; historically,
  all nations either used currency with actual names, or
  item-for-item trading (salt was particularly popular).  A gold
  coin should be worth a lot and you shouldn't see one until
  level 20-something.  So, the server's internal money unit will
  become some worthless new coin, let's call it a "forkee".  If
  you care about that, let's say it's made of tin or nickel.  The
  lowest coin actually used is the bronze "aytbit".  Then next
  comes the thing people actually trade mostly in (for trivial
  stuff), let's call it a "cleekin" (heavy brass).  Then comes
  the copper "reggry" in which most people's salaries are paid.
  The silver "new imperial", gold "skuddie" and platinum "khelon"
  are the money of rich people, more similar to today's diamonds
  than jade/amberium.  (If that system isn't sufficient for the
  "rich" half, there could easily be different-sized silver and
  gold coins.)

  (Folk-etymology claims "ayt" is an old word for bronze.
  Historians however remember the aytbit is a relic from a few
  hundred years ago when a king tried to impose a coin system
  where every coin was 8x the next-lower one; the "wanbit" coin
  can still be found in antique collections.  "Reggry" on the
  other hand is more obvious, it comes from the coin being red
  and green; it used to be legally called a "full-crown".)

  Then of course all items would have their arch-value reviewed
  for "realism" and game balance.  That comes naturally as part
  of world redesign.

  Later on I'd like to make money regional.  You shouldn't be
  able to use Scorn money on eg Nurnberg.  There could be one
  person who buys it (think exchange service), if there isn't one
  where you're at, you can sell the coins for their metal value
  which is a little lower than the mint value, but that may be a
  crime in some nations.  But that's later.

  There's a question of the relative value of coins.  Let's put
  it to an informal vote.  (Remember, when I say most salaries
  are in reggry above, that salaries in pre-modern settings are
  usually weekly, not monthly).

  - Logical (SI) system: aytbit killed; 100 forkees = 1 cleekin,
    100 cleekins = 1 reggry, 100 new imperials = 1 skuddie, 100
    skuddies = 1 khelon.  The rate from reggries to new imperials
    doesn't need to be 100 though.  Approx. meaning compared to
    cost of living in the US: forkee = cent, cleekin = dollar,
    new imperial ~= 100k dollars, skuddie ~= 10M, khelon ~= 1B.
    If you're not in the US... a 2L bottle of coke should cost 1
    to 1.5 cleekin in the market near your house.

    This system has the problem that a gold coin being worth 10
    Million dollars is a little hard to believe, no matter how
    large :-P

  - "Realistic" but harder to remember system: basic forkee value
    is a little lower (say ~5x above); 40 forkees = 1 aytbit,
    8 aytbits = 1 cleekin, 30 cleekins = 1 reggry, 60 new
    imperials = 1 skuddie, 12 skuddies = 1 khelon.  Yonder bottle
    o'coke would cost circa 2 cleekins; the new imperial would be
    about 20k dollars.  This still makes silver, gold and plat
    worth a lot more than in our world, but I think that's
    reasonable.

  - Mixed: Logical for the poor, realistic for the rich.

Setting
=======

I want the world to have a distinct personality and a
clearly-defined history.  Common people (and beginning
characters) don't know the whole of this history of course, but
if you play every single quest, you should learn it to the extent
that an average cultured modern person knows ours.

The world *will* be rebooted from scratch.  If you want your
favourite map to be in it, adapt it to the new status quo and
submit it.

I'm also throwing out the current world history.  It feels
inconsistent and less than ideally interesting to me; the reason
I was behind keeping it before was that with Yann as content
leader, it was in safe hands ;-) as he is always able to come up
with interesting-sounding answers to anything.  If I'm the one
who has to do the hard work, then I prefer to go with a more
"traditional" fantasy setting, with a more mythological emphasis
and a history that is more present and visible.  (Meaning,
ancient cities, ruins, sacred places, etc.)

I want to draw more from literature than computer and tabletop
RPGs.  Think Conan, LOTR, a little bit of Darkover thrown in for
good measure.  Or even better... so that we have a clear and
well-defined yardstick to compare against: heroic-age Europe.
(Bear in mind the place never actually existed.  It was invented
by classic-age Greeks, roughly based on a mixture of what the
region was historically like more than 1000 years prior, with
their religious stories.)

Before someone gets me wrong and figures I'll be building a
Heroic Greece game: no.  It's still a wholly new setting, but the
in-setting "logic" will be comparable to Heroic Greece.

I'll (mostly) keep the existing pantheon, and elements that are
homage to past developers well either be kept or reworked; the
first city around which the reboot will groww will still be
called Scorn and founded by Skud.

I'll write something up the next few days.

Visual
======

I think we badly need new faces, but the whole redesign project
was based on the premise that Yann was going to, if not draw all
of them, at least enough to motivate other people.  I'm not a
graphics artist and I can't promise the same, so unless someone
steps up, I think this subproject will have to be shelved.

WRT how to do it, I like the "tallworld" idea: don't increase the
face size to 64, rather make the objects use more cells, which
would reduce the "klunky" feel of the gameplay.  I'd even go so
far as reducing the cells to 16 or 8 pixels.

So here's the plan:

- Facesets can have different pixel-per-cell sizes.  I think
  that's already the case, right?

- "Rebootworld" will start with current faces, but 4 pixels per
  cell and "tall faces".  So we can design better arches,
  especially buildings, without drawing anything.  That will kind
  of kill smoothing, I guess, but we'll see how it goes.  (I
  don't know if smoothing + tall faces has been though of yet...)

- Then a new "Enhanced" tileset will be started, using 12
  pixels per cell.  (Hey, no reason to keep to powers of 2.)
  This will grow as fast as it does.  Anyone who feels
  adventurous is free to start their own tileset.

- A benefit of keeping the "basic" tileset around is that it
  would probably look good on a small-screen client (mobile
  phone, NDS, PSP, netbook).

Technical
=========

See in "Gameplay" for comments on combat system and leveling up.

I'd like to request two huge features that I think would improve
the feel:

Re-hauled movement UI
---------------------

Moving around with arrows only is so last century!  I'd like PCs
to have basic pathfinding, so you can click where you want to go
and the character will get there.

Then of course, I found that people expect that clicking on a
monster will attack it.

Finally, I'd like to add a "follow this road" mode; basically you
set your character on a road and he will go on until (a) it ends,
(b) it forks, (c) it's too dark to see (or for or whatever), or
(d) the character is too tired/hungry to proceed.  (We don't have
"tired", but a time limit on using this feature would work.  Not
sure what happens then, it's up for discussion.)

Maybe "follow" is only available to transports... that would be
fine if that's how we think it should be.

True multi-scale
----------------

This is really two different features on the server side:

- All movement is slowed down proportional to the "scale"
  attribute of the map.  (If you think moving 10x slower on the
  city than indoors is annoying, bear in mind you'll probably
  move a little faster indoors, and outdoors you'll have
  transports, which I want to use more heavily.)

- Objects can have different faces depending on the "scale"
  attribute.  I suppose if there isn't a match a default could be
  used.  Those faces can have different (cell) sizes.

  That doesn't mean you'd look 10x smaller outdoors, but a little
  smaller.  Then I'd go for making the "enhanced" tiles 16 pixels
  rather than 12.

The rationale here is that we're trying to make both movement and
window size work for what are two almost entirely different
games; dungeon exploring is one thing and requires one UI,
walking around the city or road or forest is something else.

We could even go back to Smallworld ways and use 3 scales rather
than two, I'll put that up for discussion.

Alternatively, this could add a zoom UI to the client proper.
But in this case I'd change the rule to, if an object doesn't
have a face in the right scale, it isn't displayed; that would
mean, for example, you can't find the hidden cave on "traveling"
zoom, you must go to the right region then zoom in to "outdoors"
and search there.

Community
=========

Even in its current state, this game seriously rocks, especially
compared with a lot of online games I've been playing recently.
It amazes me that it doesn't have more players and that nobody
has heard of it.  We need more marketing, and I have a few ideas
in this direction, although I'll keep those for later, to avoid
drawing the discussion away from the points above.

best,
                                               Lalo Martins
-- 
      So many of our dreams at first seem impossible,
       then they seem improbable, and then, when we
       summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
                           -----
                  http://lalomartins.info/
GNU: never give up freedom              http://www.gnu.org/