Death and Looting

One thing I would like to see added to Wograld is the ability to put stuff in a safe place and then loot the characters body after they die. Wograld, currently based on the Crossfire engine, just has the ability to respawn after you die with experience loss. Once levels are removed from the game and skill as well as stat loss upon death is taken out, it makes sense to have some kind of penalty for death. In World of Warcraft, this was a gold cost for equipment repair and a temporary stat loss, in Ultima Online it was dropping items when you died, that was later turned into a gold cost so that people would not have to keep getting new items all the time.

Personally, I prefer to replace items rather than just have it cost gold. It keeps crafters in game and the in game economy thriving. Even when the shard is made up of mostly veteran players rather than newbies, the economy will continue to thrive when you have to replace your stuff after death. It will mean that monster loot and reasources will always mean something to players given that they will have to be replentished, not just when they wear out, but when you die.

Some people do not like the fact that you can lose a hard earned unique item in the game. They then do not use the item in case they lose it. In wograld, I would like to make it so that the greatest items are crafted by players rather than dropped as monster loot. I do not feel that the gods should craft an elite sword of uberness and give it to a player as a quest or tourney reward or whatever. In Ultima Online, player crafters left their mark on an item. I want to extend the customization of items further. I do not think magic items should drop at all. They should always be crafted by a player character and dropped from a player character when he or she dies.

It may take various skill levels and amounts of resources to make different items, but this should not be the province of the otherworldly beings known as GMs, Seers, Administrators or whatever. It needs to be put in game by the highly skilled player crafters themselves. First, there is the quest, the ability to find that hard to find resource, fight off whatever monsters, players, and terrain to get to it. Then there is the skill required by the crafter to use it. Meaning time that the player has spent training the skill up, gathering resources to train and then learning the skill. Lastly, some crafting would have a chance of failure, using the resources up without giving you the newly crafted item.
Some people feel this takes away from the getting items for quest mentality found in other games. No, you get the resources from the quests, you don't get elite items.

Perhaps it would be possible to find items, but they would need to be repaired and enhanced by a crafter before use. That dragons blade is awfully dull, not to mention it has a curse on it draining the wielder of life as he or she wields it. It would become a mighty and powerful weapon given the help of the right crafter. But you can't just take swords like that without the blacksmith to help you out.
The end result is there would be no unique hard to find items that everyone would need.

I know currently, Wograld does not have what have been refered to in other games as "corpse runs" technically, these do not make a whole lot of sense. You run back to where you died and try to get your stuff back. There has to be a better way to do it while still allowing you to get some of your items back, and allowing other players to either loot you and hold some of your stuff for you, and allow some looting in pvp.

Dropping items on the ground, an essential feature

Far too many so called MMORPGS, massive multiplayer online roleplaying games, for those who do not know the term, do not allow you to place items on the ground in the game world. One such game that is popular and lacking in this feature is World of Warcraft. When I first began playing World of Warcraft, I thought it would be more like Ultima Online, except with more races, a level based system, and better looking graphics. However, I realized within a few hours of playing the game, how many important features that I had come to enjoy in Ulitma Online, World of Warcraft lacked. In Ultima Online, just as in Crossfire, the engine Wograld is based on, you can put items on the ground. Evenutally these items decay on a set timer, either from the time they were last picked up, or from resetting an area as in Crossfire. Otherwise, memory and space in the game world would be eaten up with items. Ultima Online eventually found a way around the player tendancy to save every rusty dagger and empty box, a method called housing lockdowns. The way the lockdown system works, is you have a certain number of "places" for items to belong in your house. Each container holds a certain number of items, in UOs case, that number was 125, that would automatically not decay. Also, each piece of furnature would count towards the lockdown limit. In order to lock it down, your character would have to say "I wish to lock this down" but really that could have been changed to anything. Anyway, it would not allow you to make anymore than the number of lockdowns on the house into non decaying items.

Diablo2 also has items that can be dropped on the ground and a decay timer, so I was somewhat surprised that this was not implimented into World of Warcraft, given that even a classic 3d game such as Ultima 9 had this feature of being able to place items on the ground.

Anyway, I feel that, along with housing, dropping items on the ground should be an essential feature of rpgs. Putting items on the ground opens up numerous possiblities for roleplaying your characters that not putting them on the ground does not. For instance, you could make a circle out of an item, like say, flowers, and leave it up for an in game celebration of some event. Impassable obsticules like say, crates, can slow players down who are trying to get somewhere, given they would have to pick them up and move the crates to get through the area. After a long hard day of adventuring, it is nice to be able to put that mug of ale on the actual counter in the tavern, instead of just having to hold it in your inventory.

Housing, lockdowns and Siege Warfare

In most kinds of strategy games, there is a war going on. Eventually, one player or team dominates the map, banishing the other players to oblivion. This works great when that is the object of the game. It does not work so well, however, when the game is a peristant world based on world lore where the war lasts for years and years. One faction dominating the world ruins the persistant world for all the other players not in that faction, because they have no hope of beating the dominating empire. This has happened in both Ultima Online (on the standard shards in felucia not the siege ruleset shards) and also in Shadowbane.
Many times, this happens because game designers trying to design a pvp world think that it is better to be able to completey destroy towns and housing, allowing one faction to win destroying the map and the reason for playing to begin with.

Let us look at warfare and faction in the real world. Why does one empire not dominate our entire globe? There are several reasons for this. The first of these is that for thousands of years we did not have a fast system of communication with the other people around the world. It was hard for news to travel very far very fast. But this is far from the only reason that we do not have a gobal empire. There are several different cultures and terrain types thoughout the world. Certain cultures seem to thrive in certain terrain types, and wither away on others. For instance, Muslims thrive in the desert, and do poorly in temperate or humid climates. Furthmore, if one faction gets ahead technologically, others soon follow. Even if the faction that got ahead technologically tries to keep the technology to itself, somehow, it always gets out to the other enemy side of the fence. Finally, war is a costly thing for all sides, the wars are usually over resources, as soon as there are less people less resources are needed, so the fighting stops. For the most part, no one is trying to completely eliminate the other side. First of all, it is futile to try to eliminate a people that is as strong as your people are, secondly it just seems that people would rather trade for what they need rather than dominate the whole world.

Some pvp based mmorpgs try to have things in game like siege warfare and house destruction. The trouble is, once the winning guild takes the losing guilds houses, what are they going to do with it? In Ultima Online, you were limited to one house per account, a guideline that makes sense. There are only so many houses a person can occupy in real life as well. It makes little sense to have a lot of houses everywhere, and not even remember how many you have (like a certain presidential candidate who did not win the US election) Players characters can really only be in one location at a time, so the same guild does not really need ten different towns. One town is adaquite for the needs of most guilds (although perhaps they might have outposts for specifice purposes) really, there is only one place where a given group of people tend to hang out and meet up. It is easier to find your friends and guild mates where you already know they will be, rather than trying to be everywhere at once when you don't know where to go. Furthermore, consider travel times. That is why it makes sense to have a home base rather than scattering the empire all over the world.

Realistcally, a human does not want the orc stick huts built on the undesirable savannah or the orc forts built into the sides of the moutains. The orcs have no desire for the thick forests found in human and elven lands. While undead seem to be more comfortable in any terrain, they tend to perfer places that are more remote and out of the way, as well as places that have an erie or gloomy feel, such as swamps.

Logically, it makes no sense to raid and destroy towns filled with a bunch of monsters living a low level of of sophistication. Where are you going to put the hundreds of rusty swords that you loot from the losing guilds treasury? Thats right, you don't need that stuff. No one in your guild can use it, and they sure are not buying it at the shops. If they actually had something worth taking, however, it would make more sense. If they are guarding a mine with valuable minerals, or protecting an area with dragons that have solid scales for armor, well, then it makes sense to kill them and take the resources.

You could cite vengance as a reason for doing this, after all orcs killed your family, or whatever, but the fact of the matter is, as soon as you wipe them out in one area, they keep coming back, and if they don't then the world gets peaceful and boring. You spend the rest of the time picking flowers and decorating your over-priced home. Wait a moment, this was supposed to be a pvp game, so where are the other players to fight. Thats right, they all quit because you looted their last rusty sword and had no way to get back on their feet.

Thats why you should not be able to take houses from other players and loot all their stuff. If you think that is a good idea, then I have houses in Detroit Michiagan and Baltimore Maryland to sell you. After all, land is valuable wherever it is, even if no one wants to live there.

Why I hate dependancy hell

I posted a message on the wesnoth forums today advertising for a new lead programmer. They seemed to be really keen on all those libraries that, for the most part, make the game difficult to compile. Even when you do manage to compile and run it, it is not easy for the newbies.

The current lead programmer and I discussed this matter. Even though he is no longer contributing much to the project, he and I agree that games should not be harder to install than the dos emulator or wine. This is what gives unix and linux gaming such a poor reputation. I truely do not understand the rest of the impractical community. It is bad enough that microsoft windblows dominated the desktop for over a decade. It is much worse that they continue to push out proprietary software and limit what computers can do. In fact, Windows Vista was so bad that many popular computer manufacturers offered a downgrade to XP. We shouldn't give them the gaming advantage, particularly when dealing with games that rely primarly on gameplay, rather than graphics, since we don't have the proprietary video card driver excuse.

Furthermore, I do not feel that a language a programmer would like to learn should determine the game mechanics or the direction that the game should go. It is one thing if the progammer is actually a person who enjoys playing computer games and creates a game that he or she will enjoy playing. It is another to create something that is tedious and boring to play for everyone including the original creator.

Why I prefer 3rd person view

I was thinking about this last night before I went to bed. I almost wanted to type this blog up then, but I didn't want to wake anyone else up.

I have never liked playing from the first person perspective in games. First off, they are almost always 3d or psduo-3d. Games such as Ultima 1 in the dungeon levels fit this description as does the early might and magic series of games. Later games that had this perspective included Halflife, Marrowwind (although you could switch out of it in Marrowind if you wanted) and a number of other 3d online games have this, but I have always prefered the over the shoulder or rear end view to actually trying to navagate the world in the first person.

Some people seem to think that playing the game from the first person perspective makes the game more immersive. The idea is that you are the character navigating around the world playing the game. However, I have found it to be somewhat disorienting.

Several years ago, people tried fully imersive 3d type systems for playing games, such as looking through glasses so you would not see anything else except for the game world. There is a reason this did not become popular, and it is not about the cost of 3d glasses or other items need to play the game. Like most things, the more of them that would have been made, the more the cost would come down. The real problem is people would get sick trying to go around and navigate a fully immersive 3d world like that. Hence, people are stuck looking at a flat computer screen at a psudo 3d character. It feels like you are supposed to be the character, and yet you still have all that other stuff going on. You can see your real life computer, and the stuff that is happening around you, your real set of hands and the lines around the computer screen. When you have a third person perspective, it is easier to make it feel natural. It is more like you are just rearanging objects or characters on the screen instead of trying to pretend that you are somewhere you are obviously not.

In first person, it is hard to see what your character is wearing. I find it kind of neat to see how the character looks and the way they move. In first person, I do not get the same sense of joy seeing them all decked out.

The other thing I like about the 3rd person perspective is that feeling of being detached from what is happening to the character. Sometimes it is hard to turn away from the game and you get so stuck on what is happening to the character that the game becomes flustrating or upseting. Putting things in 3rd person makes it easier to put it all into perspective, because then you realize it is just a little figure that you are moving about the screen and not really you who is taking the beating.

Housing in single and multi-player rpgs

One of the topics that I think needs to be addressed in a lot of rpgs is this idea of housing. Usually in single player rpgs, you play this adventurer character, who completes quests and stays at various inns in the world, never really having a house of his or her own, or a place to call home. Often, early in the game of the single player rpg, the main character or characters gets sucked out of their own world, kicked out of the town or has their home town destroyed early on. This makes the characters into adventurers of some sort. Even if in the story, the characters have a home, they end up so far away from it trying to solve a problem that has somehow effected their homeland to the degree that they need to leave it to try to solve the problem.

One of the things you can do, however in some single player rpgs, notabley in the Ultima series, is establish a sort of home base if you will. This is a place where the character or party of characters can drop off extra items they have acquired, and they will not decay or be taken away from the characters. The characters can return there later to pick up items they find out they need. Perhaps you should not have picked up those twenty rusty swords in the goblin den, espeacialy considering you only have four party members who each have magic swords, but that little girls hair ribbon that you thought had no use, may be a key plot item you need in order to defeat the evil dragon king. The problem is those torn cushions back in the warlock tower next to the water fall that were used for summoning the demon, later do not have any plot value, but you picked them up anyway, thinking they might be important, but it turns out you don't need them. Therefore, it does turn out having a storage spot comes in handy, when you have so many quest items like that and you are not sure what you need anymore.

Multi player games tend to more often option to offer a sort of home-base, so the characters do not have to live our of their backpacks. But in multi-player games, this is not the only, or even the main reason for housing. A big part of housing in multi-player involves inviting your friends over to show them all the cool stuff you collected on your adventures. It also offers a place to train your characters, hold in game events, meet up before that big dungeon trip, or any number of other reasons players can think of for characters to socialize.

These are, of course, in addition to the home base sort of feeling that housing gives to the characters in single player mode. I still remember my time playing serpents isle. There was a house on serpents isle where I ended up leaving extra goblin loot. Their was a chest in the house, and in the basement a naga kept spawning. Even though it had been abandoned and no one was living there for quite some time, I found myself trying to decorate it and make a home for myself out of the place. Another place I espeacily liked, espeacialy in Ultima Nine was Lord Britishes castle. He really knew how to make the avatar feel at home there. In Ultima Nine, I ended up storing all my loot in that one room of the castle. Unfortunately, it got rather cluttered, but that did not prevent the Avatar from falling asleep on the bed and waking up refreshed in the morning, (or night, sometimes the avatar kept some really strange hours)

Crossfire, the original engine that Wograld is currently based on, does have player housing, a feature I feel is a must for a fully imersive rpg. However it needs some great improvements. Given the poor user interface for the game, it is still hard to figure out exactly what needs to be improved, but once that is fixed, features will need to be added, modified (and yes even removed) from the game.

Skill based rpgs vs Class based rpgs

I was discussing last night with our wograld project unix guru last night. She says that she prefers class based rpgs to skill based rpgs. She thinks it is preferable to have classes in games such as mage, cleric, warrior, rogue etc, I on the other hand, prefer skill set based games, where every character can chose different skill sets to make their own templates. The reason I prefer skill sets is that I hate in multi player waiting around to see that you have certain types of characters in order for your party to work such as healer, or tank, or worse yet, a mage or warlock to transport your characters from place to place. I believe that there are certain skills every character should have, rather than to speacilize to much. The skills I believe are essential are healing, and transportation in most games.

She mostly plays single player games such as never winter nights, where you have a party of adventurer to cover the skills you don't have or you simply play the game a certain way based on the class you have, rather than worrying about other players and what skills they have. This maybe biased her against skill based systems, but she believes that applies to real life as well, and that people should speacilize like in doing certain chores around the house. But then I point out, what if someone gets too sick to do the chores anymore. Then the other person doesn't know what to do and the whole places gets messy, the dishes don't get washed or the bills don't get paid. This is why I believe that there are certain things everyone must know regardless of their skills.

Filling in Game lore part1

I took a break from the WOGRALD project for a number of reasons, that are more embaresing to admit than not being able to program in C. (something I did learn)

First of all, I wanted a way to fill out the game lore for the project. I had something all written up, but it just did not seem compelling enough. I wanted to really draw people into the game, make them feel immersed in the world before I even began to work on the project. I came up with the idea several years ago of the nine stupidites, basically things people do that are considered to be stupid, not as in retarded stupid, but as in lacking in the common sense department, as in the dress sense of your average programmer. Programmers tend to wear clothing until it gets big gaping holes, then they even continue to wear them, oblivious to the fact that the pants are now indecent and the shirt looks like a rag. Even if it is pointed out to them, the self confident coder geek will tell you how wonderful that torn up shirt and pants are, and how they will never part with them. Its not really about the outfit though, I don't really know why people do that. I'm not trying to say this to get after programmers and make them suddenly dress like sleezy wall-street suits, but I did think that if I dressed up like a programmer, then I would learn to code. I don't know if this really works though. I don't think you have to wear the holy shirts to get top quality code done.

Then I spent some time studying the occult. I came to realize that all the major games that I really liked that did well, the authors had spent an awful lot of time pouring through grimores and religious mythology. They studied all the demon names, angel names, spirit names, ancient magic sigils, etc. They knew how to use a pentagram and what way it should be pointing to get the results one wants in a ritual. Draw the demon sigil out in blood, make a pact, etc etc.

At first that all sounds irrelavant, because why would you need to know all this real lore to make your imaginary world, but mythology is what builds a world, it is what makes it compelling. And that is why religious fundimentalists will never create the best video games.