Irrlicht Engine

there will be limitations to an extent I just did not feel like going into that much detail at the moment More will come as the feature gets added, first comes getting the game working .

What's obsolete is the leveling up and skill tree type combat system.

We have played with the leveling system most games use aswell. You spend exp either on a player level to get stat points that you can spend freely or on a skill level which will give you skill points to spend in a "groove". Groove's basically replace classes. You can join any groove aslong as you have its prerequisites like inorder to be an archmage you must first get through the mages groove. Other than that you are free to be anything, you can join healing and warrior grooves and mage and summoning all at the start and change whenever you want to. Though you won't be good at any of them at start by the end you can do whatever you want. The leveling system has no set limits so you can go to as high a level as you want to spend the time attaining.

What do you think of that kind of a system? It isn't a large jump off of the trail but allows everyone to go about the game play however they want to and makes players unique from anyone else.

spending xp on skills and levels at your own discretion... sounds familiar

Insomniacp wrote:What do you think of that kind of a system? It isn't a large jump off of the trail but allows everyone to go about the game play however they want to and makes players unique from anyone else.

In multiplayer RPGs (going all the way back to Dungeons and Dragons) the class system is there for, as far as I can tell, two different reasons.

The first is role playing. Rincewind the wizard wouldn't ever think of kicking down a door even if he was strong enough, he'd solve that problem in another way. Conan the Barbarian wouldn't bother reading any boring books to find the unlock spell, while the King of Thieves might pickpocket the key holder, find a window or tackle the lock itself. Character classes go some way to enforcing these stereotypes.

Secondly, if your character is a one man army who can kick down doors, cast spells and pick locks, then he doesn't really need any allies at all. No need for a party. No need for druids who suck at combat because they refuse to fight with sharp weapons, but are useful for their healing spells.

So, I personally think it would take a lot of the role playing away. A world of level-grinding man tanks devoid of any personality other than that of the human players.

It will take a lot of time to be even close to being everything, for generalization we will give an example say the level equation for actual levels is 1000*x^2 level 100 would cost you 10,000,000 and it takes about a month to get there. we will say that level 100 will allow you to go through the entire warrior groove set for a 1 handed swordsman focus. So after 100 levels you are now the strongest possible 1 handed swordsman, now you want to be able to heal yourself so you choose to start maxing heal. costing 100 more levels so level 200 would cost 40,000,000, 4 times more exp than getting one set done. So if you spend enough time you could be a maxed healing warrior, going for a third we will say mage, specifically fire. level 300 is 90,000,000, 2.25 times more than second mastery and 9 times more than first mastery. So basically you will need to max a character 9 times in order to master 3 grooves which will take a long time but will be possible. So time wise it will probably take 5 months (since you can now get exp faster than when you started). So using this example you can see that only a truly hardcore player will attain anything close to a one man army type of a character. The equation of course is more complex and it rises faster than just an x^2 equation which will increase the time it takes to master more and more grooves. Also to clarify there are two equations, one for level and one for skill levels so you will be able to choose if you want better skills or better stats.

My viewpoint is if you want to be conan the barbarian you can be conan the barbarian and train that for a long time and be a very good barbarian. you can be your wizard and train for a very long time to be a very good one. Or you can decide to try and tackle two things, be a wizard and a warrior but you won't be good at both till you spend a very very long time. Looking at things with the mindset that instead of keeping the traditional wizards are weak physically but strong at a distance you can make a wizard ok physically and ok at a distance. So you are slightly held to your groove, but the person can mix parts and take what they want from each and make a character that they want to see, not the usual characters where you are forced to one line. If the human controlling the player wants to be the master thief their character will reflect kind of person.

You are also forced to split how many stats you put on your character, you only get so many stats each level so you will be sacrificing health for mana if you want a better spell or strength for more spell damage and things of the like which limit how powerful one person can become using many different grooves.

I feel I kind of answered these backwards but hey, it got done. Lastly though, the system is slightly based off of gekkeiju's but you don't need to go somewhere to spend exp, you can turn exp into a level or skill level anywhere and at anytime and then spend it in a specific groove when you get to the trainer. it also is not a % based system like gekk. I really enjoyed having the choice to either get more stats or skills and having the freedom in that.

so someone having played for a (very) long time will not just be a really good barbarian AND wizard, they might practically have covered ALL the possible "class" skills too (thieves, etc)

sounds a little unfair for new-comers (just starting out) who'd be "nothing"

IMO you should design a solid system to keep things fair and balanced BEFORE worrying about how to level-up skills

well, you won't be able to kill new comers randomly. There is a pvp system that will prevent the mindless slaughter of newbies by higher level players. quick easy example you can kill players within X levels of your level. A more detailed example is you can kill players within % * You_Level. so say we go with 10%, .1*100=10, you are level 100 and can attack and be attacked by anyone between level 90 and 110. I do not remember what equation we decided on for this but it is along those lines. You will also be able to enable free PVP and be able to fight anyone else in free PVP mode regardless of level. That being said the system is not unfair to new-comers. Also having a full barbarian and wizard is not much of an advantage, sure you get a few hits off as the person runs in but once you are next to each other its barbarian vs barbarian either way.

Yes a person can get all possible class skills, but only being able to do one thing at a time, cast a spell or use a barbarian skill you are still quite limited. You basically just get a large selection of possible ways to fight someone. Also think about one person barbarian and wizard fighting two people on a barbarian and the other a wizard. the two will win with relative ease since both can use skills/spells and both are specialized and good at what they do. Someone with multiple classes can do a lot but isn't going to be extremely good at each possible class and even if they are they are limited by the time it takes to cast/execute a skill.

the fact alone that you've taken the time to think over the entire system (and consistently back your claims) is a good sign.

Just go for it and see what happens, and if all goes to plan, I'm sure it'll be a fun game to play, regardless of the specifics of levelling-up / skills-acquisition

good luck!

I agree

Also, if the game is made by brothers who live together, I'd say you're far more likely to succeed than any game made over the Internet.
If you'd picked something smaller than an online rpg, you'd actually stand a good chance of completing the project.

hehe, thanks, yeah, we decided to start this as our first project simply because we enjoy playing mmorpgs and wanted one with more features and things to do. We have also planned a few more games out for once we are done with this one. But those will come at a later time... don't want people stealing the ideas... Anyway thanks for the feedback and being understanding of how we plan on doing things. Hopefully we will have some screen shots again in the near future. Unfortunately I won't be sending out a demo since I made the client dependent on the server. I will also get a video out when it is more complete as well.

Well, movement is pretty much working now, sure there are a few bugs here and there but those will get worked out with time. Work has now started on the GUI of the game which should come a long a bit quicker than movement has. I plan on having the chat system working tonight if all goes well. Updated screen shot is posted below, also added it to the first post in the thread.

reminds me of baseball

hahaha, that is just a test map we made basically a square road with an x connecting the corners and some mountains in the middle. The local chat system is working now aswell. Work will soon begin on GUI windows like inventory and things of the like.

Time for another update. We made some changes to GUI as you can see by the picture posted below. The health bar, exp bar, and skill timer bar are all fully functional. The player name and level also are working. Buttons are functional aswell just need to tell them what to do like open the inventory window which will be done this weekend. Some changes to the Irrlicht source happened to make the drag and drop system more efficient. The map will not be functional until I remake the map editor. Making windows is a very easy thing to do with the GUI Class that was made so windows will be done very quickly once I get some images. Once the GUI is done I will be working on the battle system as well as adding our own player model and attaching weapons and armor to it.


As a side note we are looking for anyone that can make graphics for the game or can donate graphics that they already have. We will have the game working on 8 computers in our basement by the end of the year and once that is good we will begin work on getting the game online when we have enough content and the game is not bugged.