{"id":2820,"date":"2013-04-28T15:43:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-28T05:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vectorstorm.org\/?p=2820"},"modified":"2013-04-29T08:14:30","modified_gmt":"2013-04-28T22:14:30","slug":"what-remains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/2013\/04\/28\/what-remains\/","title":{"rendered":"What remains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mostly for myself, here&#8217;s a list of what remains to be done with MMORPG Tycoon 2.<\/p>\n<h2>DESIGN:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Need to decide what to do RE: buildings.\u00a0 Should buildings just be procedurally generated (or artist-created?), or should I be building a system which allows players to create their own structures within the game itself?\u00a0 Need to make a call on this ASAP;\u00a0 I&#8217;ve been procrastinating about starting either approach of this for far, far too long.<\/li>\n<li>Related to the above, what precisely is the visual functionality of raising\/lowering the &#8220;level&#8221; of buildings\/roads?\u00a0 If they&#8217;re procedurally generated or artist-created, then this might just mean &#8220;make them taller&#8221; or &#8220;make them more ornate&#8221;, but if these structures are player-built, then I don&#8217;t really want to touch them, and maybe there should be no visible changes when a structure has &#8220;level-up&#8221; or &#8220;level-down&#8221; used on it.<\/li>\n<li>Also related to the above, how should the player be editing the world map?\u00a0 Should he be using the &#8220;paint on&#8221; system which I&#8217;ve been playing with so far?\u00a0 Or what about building oddly-sized &#8220;cells&#8221; inside each region, and changes to the map are made by assigning the changes to each &#8220;cell&#8221;?\u00a0 (This isn&#8217;t far off from what most Tycoon games do).\u00a0 This has the benefit of making things a little more regular and simple;\u00a0 no grabbing a single vertex and extending it up into a 500 meter tall spike, for example.\u00a0 On the other hand, the player couldn&#8217;t grab a single vertex and extend it up into a 500 meter tall spike if he wanted to.<\/li>\n<li>All three of these points are basically the same point:\u00a0 Is this game a game in which the player places pre-built structures and assembles pre-built ground, or is this a game in which the player constructs the structures and designs the ground?\u00a0 I very much want it to be the latter, but the UI for giving a player that sort of ability is not trivial at all.\u00a0\u00a0 Need to pick one option, and kill the other.\u00a0 Stop wasting time by kicking this decision down the road.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Core simulation systems:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Open passes which allow PCs to move from one region into another, through the impassable mountains.\u00a0 (These probably get implemented as &#8220;buildings&#8221;, which appear on both sides of the mountains.\u00a0 That is, treat them as tunnels through the mountains)<\/li>\n<li>Method for setting property values on a region.\u00a0 Most critically, level range.<\/li>\n<li>MMORPG tech tree.<\/li>\n<li>Inventory, for limited-use collectable build actions (awards).<\/li>\n<li>Add &#8220;point of interest&#8221; building type.\u00a0 No particular in-game function, but PCs &#8212; particularly exploration types &#8212; will occasionally travel to visit them.<\/li>\n<li>Consider spending some time tuning random generation of class\/monster powers.\u00a0 Right now, the randomly generated powers are the same, which means that a PC and a monster of equal level, both starting at full health, will each win a fight about 50% of the time.\u00a0 This doesn&#8217;t seem right, compared against real MMOs, where the player should win most of the time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>AI:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>PCs store memories about recent events.<\/li>\n<li>PCs group into parties to go adventuring.<\/li>\n<li>Once a PC has gained too many levels for its current region, try to find a path to a new, correct-level region.<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>CONSIDER<\/strong>:\u00a0 PCs form guilds.\u00a0 PCs form attachment to their guilds in a similar way to how they form attachment to the MMO now;\u00a0 having guild support in your MMO and a strong guild presence will tend to keep guild-affiliated subscribers even if they&#8217;re not in love with the MMO.\u00a0 Downside is that if you&#8217;re relying on guilds to keep subscribers present, then a guild collapse may result in many of its players leaving.\u00a0 I like this idea, but is it interesting for a game?\u00a0 Can players influence this in any meaningful way?\u00a0 To be considered.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>If a PC wants to do a quest, but doesn&#8217;t know of a quest giver with an available quest for their experience level, generate a bad memory and cheat to find a new quest giver of an appropriate level.\u00a0 (Imagine that the PC has access to something like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wowhead.com\/\">Wowhead<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>PCs, as a group, evolve popular attack strategies over time.\u00a0 (Imagine that they have access to something like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elitistjerks.com\/\">Elitist Jerks<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Metagame:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Scenarios:<\/strong> Series of pre-set game scenarios with objectives for the player to meet in order to progress.\u00a0 Ref: Roller Coaster Tycoon. \u00a0 These should be considered as &#8220;tutorials&#8221;, to teach the player how to play the game.\u00a0 Each of these scenarios are confined within a single region of a larger MMO (although many of them may exist within different regions of a single MMO), and each should probably be focused on a different facet of the game.\u00a0 (For example, Scenario 1 may be entirely based on terrain shaping, Scenario 2 be about building placement, etc)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Free Play:<\/strong> The player gets full control of an MMO.\u00a0 Probably want to give the player a set of starting MMOs to select from, here;\u00a0 a WoW-style one, a sci-fi one, etc.\u00a0 Which then can be modified to the player&#8217;s tastes.\u00a0 Player should also be given an option about how large they want their MMO to be.\u00a0 A full WoW-sized MMO takes up a LOT of memory\/CPU!\u00a0 Most players will be happier with a much smaller one, but I&#8217;d like to keep the option open for folks who want the whole thing.<\/li>\n<li>Add optional missions for the player, which give bonuses if completed.\u00a0 Lots of the development time is going to go into creating these missions, and the system for when they&#8217;re presented to the player.\u00a0 (See UI for the missions, see Core systems for the bonuses)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>UI:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Chat interface for PCs and system messages.<\/li>\n<li>Interface for presenting the player with their current missions, and available ones to accept (see &#8220;Metagame&#8221;, above)<\/li>\n<li>Inventory interface for MMO building awards (see &#8220;Core simulation systems&#8221;, above)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Graphics:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Pick whether PCs, NPCs, and monsters should be representational or iconic, and set up proper graphics for them, one way or the other.<\/li>\n<li>Implement several more terrain types.<\/li>\n<li>Make the ground clutter system work for more than one terrain type.<\/li>\n<li>Need to replace current &#8220;umbrella&#8221; trees with nicer (and less polygon-expensive!) trees.<\/li>\n<li>Spruce up paths\/roads.<\/li>\n<li>Nicer procedurally generated buildings.<\/li>\n<li>If rendering performance becomes a big issue, spend some time working on graphics batching some more;\u00a0 there should be some big savings to be made here!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mostly for myself, here&#8217;s a list of what remains to be done with MMORPG Tycoon 2. DESIGN: Need to decide what to do RE: buildings.\u00a0 Should buildings just be procedurally generated (or artist-created?), or should I be building a system which allows players to create their own structures within the game itself?\u00a0 Need to make&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[24,25],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/po9WK-Ju","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2820"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2825,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820\/revisions\/2825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vectorstorm.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}