Saturday, November 21, 2009

Crafting in multiplayer online rpgs

A lot of times, crafting in multiplayer online rpgs leaves much to be desired. Usually, monster loot drops are much better than anything a player can make out of component parts. I would like to reverse this trend. I would prefer to have player crafted items be better than anything you can find on monsters. I feel this would add much to the game. The other problem that I have seen in some multiplayer online rpgs is that you have to craft thousands of items to gain a few skill points. I think this is wasteful of a players time. I think how world of warcraft did it where it only took a few craftings of the item to raise skill at a certain level, and the time consuming part was gathering resources. I feel this is better since it means that players will do less sitting in one spot for hours trying to raise a crafting skill.

The negative side of player crafted items being too powerful, is that it can leave monster loot a little less exciting. But monster loot could still have random drops thosse could be taken apart with something similar to the world of warcraft disenchant skill, allowing the item properties to be separated from the items. Maybe they could be reused to make newer stronger items. The other idea I have for crafting is something similar to the diablo2 gem system. In diablo 2, you could collect gems. With a horadric cube, you would put 3 gems of any property, so long as it was all the same property and the same color gem at the same level into the cube. Thosse three gems could then be upgraded to the next higher level. So for instance, you could put 3 chipped rubies into the gem and get a flawed ruby. 3 flawed rubies would get you a ruby, 3 rubies will get you a flawless ruby, and 3 flawless a perfect ruby. The gems in diablo had different properties depending on what item they were put into. Later, in the expansion, diablo2 added jewels that had the same properties no matter what item you put them into, and runes that became a completely different type of rune when you put 3 of them into the cube. I would like to do something similar with the disenchanted components from monster items, or other stuff that you may be able to find or mine.

I think all items should be like socket items, except instead of being permanite like in diablo, you could break the item in order to remove the components that had the properties in them. People would end up making custom items depending on the kind of monsters/players they were fighting, or what kind of template and stats and skills they had. You could then break the item, so that there would always be a market for armor pieces since you would always need new ones to put the gems into.

I think it would take the flustration out of waiting for ever to find the random properties on an item you need, at the same time make looting monsters fun and intresting. I only wish I had the skill to add this new crafting idea into the user interface. It would make a great addition to our game, while keeping it fresh and exciting forever.

Shell Scripts part 2

I know in my last blog I said that I only needed the Makefile.am in the directories. Well, I found out I was wrong. Makefile.in is what is needed to make the configure create the Makefile without all the autotools. This is a better way to go in case someone has a different version of autotools. Old versions of autotools do not work with new versions of scripts, and you can not use different versions of autotools for the configure and then another for the make.
I'm still somewhat confused as to how all the autoscripts work. It is better than having to write an install program from scratch. I hate to think of what is involved in making binary packages for a distro, but since we do not have a release yet, I do not think we need to worry about it. I have found that binary distro packages are not that great anyway, because only the old version is packaged up, and not the latest version that you invariably need if you want to play a multi-player game with other people. Often, you all need the same version.

I am also still no expert on shell scripts although I have learned some things. In all honesty, I would rather be writing quests/dialog or creating artwork than trying to figure out all the arcane meanings of funny script terms. Once I know how it works, I do not mind creating scripts, it is the learning part I detest. In fact, that is a big part of what I spent November on rather than just working on the shell script. I have been writing a novel about a guy who starts a free software project.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Shell Scripts

The title of my post will be Shell Scripts, yet again. I am still learning the unix commands and how to put them together. It should be simple to write a script to systimatically go through all the wograld directories and delete the Makefile and Makefile.in that do not need to be there. I'm pretty sure now that it is only supposed to be Makefile.am in each directory. This is something I did not realize before. Also, I need to write a script that goes through every file and then replaces every instance of crossfire with wograld. I know that one is probably going to be a pain. How am I going to like it when every file asks me if it is okay to overwrite it. On the other hand, I do not see how else to do a true fork of the project, and I do not think doing every single line by hand would be less tedious, it would probably be more tedious. Even if I have to confirm every instance of mv, it would still be faster than replacing every instance of crossfire in every file with wograld by hand.
I would not be surprised though if I never figure it out or if it is 100 years before the shell script gets written. It just seems like something that is too complex for any mortal being to do. Ironically, neither of the other team members are capable of doing it even though both of them made a living in computers and programming. Shell scripters are probably pretty rare and value able.