|
|||
| Views: 852,829 | 05-19-24, 08:07 am | ||
|
|||
| Views: 852,829 | 05-19-24, 08:07 am | ||
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-02-13, 05:50 pm in Placement of the demon portal and finding it again [problem]
|
|
Posts: 61/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
This is sort of one of the reason's I was pushing for a map based travel system. By giving each town or location of interest a geographical position, the player could gather simple clues that tell them generally where the portal is located on the continent, and then ask NPC's about locations that happen to be in that direction. E.g. You've learned that the portal is mostly likely to the southeast of your current location, then you ask an NPC for the locations of any towns or other places of importance to the southeast. They either know of some, or they don't and you have to find someone else to ask. Once you find a location, you then travel to that location and repeat the process until you lock down the location of the portal. Just to mix things up a bit, you could have different scenarios for discovering the next location. I.e. Early on, you're only interested in finding the direction that the portal is in, so it's mostly research at this point. Then later on, you need to find towns where someone knows how to find the portal, and as you get even closer to the portal, you start running into towns that have been cleaned out by the demons, and the only way to progress is to incapacitate a demon officer and then interrogate them. These are just some suggestions and not necessarily everything the player would encounter (I could keep coming up with scenarios all day), but hopefully I've given you some idea of why I'd like Noxico to use a system like this. As usual, let me know what you think. Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-02-13, 06:27 pm in Placement of the demon portal and finding it again [problem]
|
|
Posts: 62/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Well, what I was thinking for the map wasn't an entire overworld or anything (don't worry, I still remember why you wanted to make the change), but rather just a map board. Basically the board could just use a modified version of the cave generator or a scaled down version of the world generator. Each tile on the board would have it's own biome and could either be empty space or hold a town or some other location. Or would that still be too expensive, time wise? Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-02-13, 06:56 pm in Placement of the demon portal and finding it again [problem]
|
|
Posts: 63/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Well, for the running out of room thing, since we would have a finite world, we would need to have a finite number of towns, which would mean that we would generate their locations at the same time the world is generated. As for placement, I supposed the easiest way would be to do it randomly, though if you wanted something more realistic, you could try to create a 2D probability distribution on top of the map with areas nearer to water having a higher probably of spawning towns and areas like deserts having lower probability. Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-02-13, 07:10 pm in Placement of the demon portal and finding it again [problem] (revision 1)
|
|
Posts: 64/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Well, you are right about us getting off topic, but really, the whole point I was trying to make was why can't Noxico have a world map and why isn't this a valid solution to the problem?
Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-02-13, 07:57 pm in Placement of the demon portal and finding it again [problem] (revision 1)
|
|
Posts: 65/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
My only concern with the cartographer method is that it might get a bit stale after a while. Rougelikes thrive on non-repetitive tasks, which is why I suggested a mechanic to find the portal rather than just a single method. I suppose that offering other means to locate the portal would help to alleviate that to some extent, but I still think that a mechanic that allows the player to independently pursue the location would be a better option. Also, as to the map thing (yes I know you want to drop this, but this is something that I really want to talk about), I think you're misunderstanding what I intended the map to be. It isn't in any way a 1:1 representation of the towns or locations, but rather it is just a glorified menu where each town tile is essentially a button. Each tile on the map could be 100 m^2 or or 100 km^2, it doesn't matter. The map is just there to provide a relative location for each town to each other and to give the player a better sense of where each town is in the world. Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-02-13, 08:46 pm in Placement of the demon portal and finding it again [problem] (revision 1)
|
|
Posts: 66/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
The biggest difference between Nethack and Noxico is the amount of text that you see. Noxico is a far more text heavy game than Nethack, and seeing the same text over and over is where the majority of the staleness is going to come from. You are right in that creating a variety of different ways to find the portal could help to keep the game a bit more fresh, but that's only a tenable solution if we have enough people to write those other methods. Even then, eventually these other ways are going to get stale too and then the game just becomes uninteresting. That's why I'm pushing for a mechanic to progress rather than a quest, as that way we can make things much more variable with much less effort. Now, this mechanic doesn't need to be the one I suggested; it could very well be any number of other things. I only suggested that to provide something of a starting point and to illustrate a possible option. I'll try to come up with some solutions that work with what we have, but I still don't really understand why the quest system is preferable to using a mechanic. Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-02-13, 09:25 pm in Placement of the demon portal and finding it again [problem] (revision 2)
|
|
Posts: 67/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Haha. Yeah, semantic discussions are definitely something we should avoid. Also, sorry about the nitpicking. I have an unfortunate tendency to fixate on details to the exclusion of the intent behind the words, and I guess come across as a bit combative when I do that. It's something I'm still trying - and failing, I suppose - to work on. :P
<br/>
<br/>Anyway, I've got a couple of other ideas here:
<ol><li>An NPC is willing to divulge the location of the portal or someone who knows how to get to it, and wants something in return. Occasionally they try to screw the player out of the information and either attack them or try to run away.</li>
<li>An NPC offers to take the player to someone who knows were the portal is. Sometimes they tell the truth, other times they lead them into an trap.</li>
<li>Same as number one, but one of the gods send the player on a quest after communing at a shrine. Quest will be more difficult, but nearly 100% chance of the player being told what they want to know.</li>
<li>The player is told the location of an artifact that can locate the demon portal and then has to search for it.</li>
<li>Occasionally the player gets stupid lucky and finds a map in a chest that shows them the location of the portal. (Very low chance)</li>
</ol>
Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-04-13, 04:46 pm in Placement of the demon portal and finding it again [problem] (revision 1)
|
|
Posts: 68/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Damn, that thing is pretty beastly. :O
Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-06-13, 10:23 pm in Misc. bugs [resolved]
|
|
Posts: 69/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Rather than just testing my shit, I actually started playing the game again and I noticed a couple of bugs: The first and easiest to fix is inside of UILists. When UIList.Index is incremented, it wraps around properly when the index goes beyond bounds of the array, but it doesn't do this when it's decremented bellow 0 and throws an Out-of-bounds exception instead. This should be a pretty simple fix in Index's setter function. The next one is a generation issue in the dungeons. Sometimes the chest at then end of the dungeon is generated inside of a wall and becomes inaccessible. I assume that this is because the tile that contains the chest isn't having it's collision value changed when it's placed, but I can't get more specific than that. The last one is to do with warps and clutter generation in dungeons. This one might be a bit hard to track down as I've only had it happen a few times, but sometimes a warp's tile will be overwritten by clutter, or at least its appearance will be. The tile still behaves like a warp, it just no longer looks like a warp and in effect becomes hidden. I wish I could be more help on the last two, but the generator code is still a bit hard for me to decipher. :S Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-07-13, 06:53 pm in Loot Tables
|
|
Posts: 70/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Looks nice! Definitely going to have some fun playing around with this. :awsum:
Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-07-13, 11:04 pm in UIList Issue not quite resolved [it totes is] (revision 1)
|
|
Posts: 71/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Sorry to make another thread about this, but the other one was closed. Feel free to delete this one after it's been resolved. Your fix for the UIList Index doesn't seem to work, as trying to select a new character's race and pressing the "go left" button while on 'Human' still causes an Array-Out-of-Bounds exception. I tossed together a quick fix that seems to work. (Would have done this yesterday, but I was just being lazy :P ) Replace:
With:
I tested it out and it seems to behave nicely, so hopefully we can call this one truly and completely resolved. Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-08-13, 08:03 pm in Loot Tables
|
|
Posts: 72/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Yeah, that sounds like it should work just fine. I had always intended that multliple loot sets could be combined and given to an entity, so this looks like the start of a good system for that. I guess we just need a standard way to differentiate the different types of sets so that they end up in the right places.
Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-11-13, 07:02 pm in Loot Tables
|
|
Posts: 73/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Much shorter and much cleaner. I'm definitely liking how this is coming together. ;)
Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-13-13, 08:07 pm in PillowShout's Prose and Code Depositorium (revision 2)
|
|
Posts: 74/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
This one's a bit different as it's not a pure update so much as something of a prototype for the scheduler. (I know -_- ... I am trying to write, but I've been having trouble making anything I like well enough to use) https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_IgNCoukjzDbXptNmtKVkg4OUk/edit This isn't something I'm expecting you to use, at least not right away, but it is something that I have wanted to have in the game for a while now as I've been getting pretty bored of the rather mindless behaviour of the AI. AI and intellegent systems are actually something of a minor obsession for me and I like making things at least seem smarter than they are. The basic idea behind this system is that I wanted a scriptable and generic means of adding more intellegent behaviour to town people, and so, over the past few days, I created a rough, though hopefully easy to build on, means of doing that. The only things that the system actually does right now are get a schedule (stored as a token tree) for each BoardChar in a town, use their schedule to determine which activity they should be performing given the current time of day, and then run the scripts contained in each activity type (These are all defined in an xml file). Currently, I've only got token replacement working the way I intended it to, but because the script is being run by the entity itself, you could theoretically make the script do whatever the entity's script handler is capable of. Right now, with their current (and only) schedule, the villagers will fall asleep around midnight - wherever they happen to be standing at the time - and then wake up at about 630 and continue wandering around. I know it's not much, and that's why it's a prototype, but I think that this could be a good foundation for any future system we develope. Anyway, feel free to mess around with it, clean it up or make it better, and then add whatever kind of functionality you like. Have fun! :LOL: Edit: Forgot to add these to the Code file, but you also need to add these lines to BoardChar.RunScript if you want things to work:
Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-14-13, 03:49 pm in PillowShout's Prose and Code Depositorium (revision 1)
|
|
Posts: 75/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
* Sees NoxicanDate content I forgot to send * Crap. I knew I missed something! >_< Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-16-13, 05:23 am in PillowShout's Prose and Code Depositorium (revision 1)
|
|
Posts: 76/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Ok, I sort of have this up and running, but I'm having a few problems with the pathing. The BoardChars seem to be able to find their beds, but only if they're either inside their homes or if their doors are open. This leads me to believe that the pathing sees doors as impassable for some reason, but I'm not sure how to deal with this. There's one other thing I'd like to know: is there some way to tell if a path cannot be made to reach a target? For instance, does the djisktra map set any flags if it can't create a path to its intended location? Or is there some sure way of telling if a Boardchar is blocked from getting to its target? Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-16-13, 09:56 pm in Complete beginner wants to run game on Mac OSX [not a bug] (revision 1)
|
|
Posts: 77/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
To change directories you need to use the cd command. So to change to the directory where noxico is stored, you need to enter:
This should change your current directory to the one that contains the noxico files. To verify this, just enter "ls" and it should show you all the files in that directory, one of which should be Noxico.exe. Alternatively, and while I'm not sure if this works on macs like it does on linux, you should be able to find the file location using the file browser and then open a terminal directly from there. Then once you're there, try running:
Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-16-13, 11:49 pm in Complete beginner wants to run game on Mac OSX [not a bug]
|
|
Posts: 78/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
When you use 'ls' in the directory where the .exe is located, what files does it tell you are there?
Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-17-13, 05:06 am in Complete beginner wants to run game on Mac OSX [not a bug]
|
|
Posts: 79/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
Odd... It says that the file you're missing is in the directory. This seems like something to do with mono then, and never having used it, I don't think I'll be much help here. Sorry. :S Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
| PillowShout |
Posted on 03-17-13, 08:49 pm in PillowShout's Prose and Code Depositorium
|
|
Posts: 80/105 Since: 12-06-12 Last post: 4051 days Last view: 4033 days |
OK, here's the next version. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_IgNCoukjzDSjZHeG12TzNMRUE/edit This one adds the FindAndGoto task to the list, completes the functionality of the Wait and Wander tasks and cleans up a bit of logic in the scheduler. I also added a function to the Dijkstra mapper that checks if a location on the map is a local minimum, which I'm using as my check for characters not being able to navigate any further. Lead writer on Noxico (and sometimes programmer or designer) <br> |
