No name yet, text-base game with futuristic cowboys

[Anonymouse]

Haven't read through everything that's been posted, had a rough few days. Do have some thoughts though.

1) Do we definitely want mental/psychic abilities? I mean, in a sci-fi setting is it necessary? I know a lot of sci-fi does have psychic powers or Space Magic (TM), but I personally prefer my futuristic settings to be more sciencey and less fantasy. Just an opinion, and if it is something that people want then go ahead, it just seems like a lot of the google doc is only the way it is because that is how CoC is.

2) Multibattles plox. FoE has a good system where you get allies and can fight multiple enemies at once, and I think we should do something similar as it is far less limited than one on one battles, and makes far more sense - why would every monster on Earth be travelling solo?

3) Going back to how the gdoc seems based on CoC, isn't "F1-F5 - Quicksave to slot 1-5. Only works when Data is visible.; F6-F10 - Quickload from slots 1-5." directly ripped from CoC? Why limit the player to only saving at the camp, if you freely let them save as much as they want while they are there. I say you either let people save whenever they are out of battle and not making a decision, or preferably you only let them at certain locations or when they sleep. I mean in CoC, I would save before eating an item so if I didn't like what it did I could just quickload and undo it. I would save and reload multiple times until the item had the effect I want, which is pretty broken. Letting players save whenever they want takes any challenge out of the game.

[Aisy]

I think we should definitely keep this game more text-based, having a grid around at all times seems further away from the point. I wouldn't disagree to a map TES/Fallout style you can pull out and fast travel to, but that's about it.
Keeping monsters you like is a good idea, but we should reserve it for higher levels or one monster each or something. You'd run into a few issues where capturing everything seems endgame, new content gets swallowed up immediately, stuff like that.
The other stuff seems workable.

In regards to the document, I worked off of CoC's formula for some stuff that hasn't been resolved yet to form a base for what needs to be done. Limiting saving further is an ok concept, also multibattles. I'd like the option to throw in companions that can help you in battle, since there's no conceivable party system in CoC. As for psychic abilities, it's more of a preference thing. It's not really magic, and lets us add a method based around more unorthodox attacks like inflicting status effects and whatnot. The document's pretty jumbled, though, I'll admit.

[Duplicity]

In regards to the psychic abilities, the player is supposed to be a highly evolved human. A thousand years of human civilisation spent in space is going to be crackers with science. So they scienced psychic abilities into people. Or something. Maybe they watched too much Fringe.
Kinda up to Cthulhu, whenever they are back online.

Multiple enemies and recruitable NPC's would be cool. Even better if they join you in post battle rewards. FoE only includes the elf when you lose and even then it is limited to a sentence of the player noting the enemy having fun with the elf.

So the exploration system would be random exploring, but once you discovered a location. The location would be selectable for fast travel?
Like CoC then.... Where somehow your base is the centre of the world. While you can return to your base after an hour. I like CoC(the game), but the features are suited for a sci-fi setting.
Well I'm sure we can find a better solution. Maybe a one way transporter in the broken ship? Not even sure if there will be a ship, or how the player even really ends up on earth. I know they are a scout, but how did they arrive?

[Anonymouse]

Like CoC then.... Where somehow your base is the centre of the world. While you can return to your base after an hour. I like CoC(the game), but the features are suited for a sci-fi setting.
Well I'm sure we can find a better solution. Maybe a one way transporter in the broken ship? Not even sure if there will be a ship, or how the player even really ends up on earth. I know they are a scout, but how did they arrive?

CoC has a base and every other location is spread around it and treated separately. I would prefer a system where the world has locations joined together, so if you want to get from one city to another, you have to travel through a forest, and if you want to get to a certain city, it might be on the other side of the map requiring you to traverse through a series of locations to get there.

[Duplicity]

Whoops I forgot the 'not' in stating CoC travel system wasn't suited for this game.

Been playing some Flexible survival(finally found how not to be changed from human most of the time) and the travel system consists of random and fixed points. Still kind of like CoC's system but a little better.
You can press 'explore' to randomly find a fixed point like the City Zoo. Once there you can either explore inside or choose to navigate back to base, or explore the city again.
I find the navigation confusing. Often they fail to detail which cardinal direction goes to what area. Or since the directions include the usual cardinal directions along with the northwest and such, plus up and down. I often get lost or forget where is what.

So kinda like that swf I uploaded earlier but in text form. Kinda. Go to a set location and explore.

I like the idea of connected areas and having to pass through them to get to others.

[Aisy]

I like the idea of physically travelling to areas, where you treat the entire game as a giant dungeon. Have some buttons dedicated to NESW travel, with the other buttons showing things to interact with in your specific area.
If we based the land on a real country, we could even add landmarks and map out the whole thing fairly accurately.

[Terrantor!!!]

That is all possible. I'm currently working on a way to make a timeline similar to Facebook. Wouldn't it be cool to have all ur events backed up and browsable along a constantly expanding timeline? Would flash be capable of such an exploit? Gimme a yay or nay.

[Cthulhu]

woah woah woah, what the heck has been going on while I've been busy with finals.

I'm pages behind ya'll.

fuck, posting, I had a wall of shit down, and then I get kicked off...

[Terrantor!!!]

Welcome back, lots went down. I'm finally getting my web reconnected, I'll post the fla. We got about 5 ppl working out code, so far. I'm trying to make it easy for artists and writers to work with so u won't have to b the only one working.

[Duplicity]

Yahh Welcome back. We need your decisions on lots of stuff. From colour schemes, stats/stat values/stat interaction, navigation and more. Everything!!!

But take your time. School is important. Or College, whatever it is.

I like the idea of a timeline. It sounds plausible. Even if you had a notary class to take note of certain events in game time, how the player performed(could be simple win or loss info). Once again I think most of the menus could be located at the player base to make them in game machines or whatever. I like the idea of a UI with only the necessary info. Allows you a bigger text box as well.

[Aisy]

Cthulhu's back! Better catch up or you'll get left behind, ahaha. It'd be a relief to have someone lead the executive decisions around here, since we're mostly skipping stones at a pond at this point.
When do your finals end?

Also @Terrantor, a facebook-feed type thing in the gui sounds like an incredible idea, and I don't doubt flash would be capable of that. We should come up with a GUI design that implements some features that take advantage of modern flash media,
like proper visual effects added to stat increases/decreases, or atmospheric sound.

[Cthulhu]

It ended like on monday, I've just been passed out and dead these days. Trying to catch up on sleep from nights of studying and finishing projects

Anyways, I had a list for stats down, but then I was kicked off here before I could post. So inner rage, tears of saddness and insanity, blah blah blah. Moving on

For stats, I've been thinking of blalancing it to a structure that doesn't have the player overly powerful, but enough room with the choices of diversity or stronger ranges. Like two opposing attributes into one stat, allowing players to decide their spectrums in points. Maybe 5 or more, whatever works best in coding efficiently. Like say Brute-----Accuracy, If the player move more towards brute, they are given available skills like [german suplex 5] [atomic wedgie 3] [hit and run 1] and accuracy would offer like [bruce lee nut grabbing 5] [chuck norris round house kick 3] [sucker punch 1] but no longer privy to anything in brute 5-3. Or if they chose to place the spectrum in the middle, they get whatever is available as long it is suitable. I had a bigger paragraph to explain this better, but I don't have that much patience when internet acts like a dickwad.

Combat:
Brute/Accuracy (depending on the spectrum, whatever points you get gets you the skillset available)
Evasion/Endurance
Intelligence/empathy (buffs vs that other shit I forgot is called)
Speed/strength (probability of landing hits vs how strong your hits are)
Will/? (somethiiiiing)
Toxity/Immunity
Luck/? (chances of dropped items. Might gain in a special quest dunno)

Special: This falls either under sexual opportunities/dialogue/combat. Only available if completing special side quests supposedly.
Sanity/Biker cray cray (dialogue)
Pain/masochism (maybe combat....)
cumming loads/distance (I don't know anymore
Whatever sexual shit you guys think will be a hit

Dialogue:
Honesty/liar liar pants on fire
persuasive/threatening
Pride/Charm/ Fury

I have this idea where dialogue stats are designed to bring out/narrow down the player's preferred personality. Depending on the amount of choices within the 3 personalities/ pride/charm/fury. I think within an interactive realm, it allows players another layer to their character and can define favourable or least favourable outcomes. Say you are on the higher spectrum of charm, you can woo the pants of any easy target. Pride, you get some the harder npcs of nobility or some shit. 5% discount at some smancy clothing boutique. Fury... uh... the more aggros will submit to you? I'll put down more once I get some feedback and collect my thoughts better.

Was trying to put down all the info that my brain could remember, but I dunno if the idea go through in this post. Shit is everyyyywheeeeereeee

okay, also since I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna get replies for a while, I can continue whatever was in my head

I have a direction, timeline, yes that was happening. I was thinking of a month (30 days or more) would instigate a major quest by the dudes in space. Like "Yo man, we heard there was this shit happen here, can you go and check it it cuz we haven't heard of you in a while an bitch just do it." Nothing that'll take takes but it would be a milestone mark towards completing the game. Uh whatever was going on... so the base/hq would be the space ship. Cuz I was think as a spaceship it would function as a databank for accomplishments/stats/resting/something equivalent to the Serenity/map. Maybe on of the main quests would be to fix up the spaceship. Sounds plausible.

what other ideas do I have down..... I guess that's it for now...

[BlueLight]

I like the idea of physically travelling to areas, where you treat the entire game as a giant dungeon. Have some buttons dedicated to NESW travel, with the other buttons showing things to interact with in your specific area.
If we based the land on a real country, we could even add landmarks and map out the whole thing fairly accurately.

I personally find the use of dungeon as a hard thing to implement. CoC it was kinda alright in since it was mostly small; but really it's a chore to move through even those rooms. I believe the game is FoE, and that one uses dungeon rooms fairly exclusively from what i remember; it's annoying when your walking around blind and being so blatantly shove through a hallway. Flxible i remember being a more enjoyable system to use but half the time i'm still feeling lost but it doesn't feel as much as a hallway and more like a extremely odd pasture with fences all over the place.

I don't really want to have a wallway i'll be blind in.

I'd personally support the having a over world map like fallouts but tile less. I don't think i'd want location on the map like fallout but we could do that for entrances of dungeons i guess. I kinda like this idea where we travel is a spot where we can set camp up. So basically the player can move to different biomes with different events; then we could also make a location based biomes where we break the map in to chunks, and then we can say event A can happen in chunk 1,2,3 and 9,10,11. I think this would steamline the game in a positive direction.


Going back to combat, why must i be a brute or accurate? Why it's true if you use force or brute strength for a task, you accuracy is going to go down, but then again you can have brute strength and still be accurate if you want to be. Accuracy is more a skill then a stat; as seen in fencing.

[Cthulhu]

Going back to combat, why must i be a brute or accurate? Why it's true if you use force or brute strength for a task, you accuracy is going to go down, but then again you can have brute strength and still be accurate if you want to be. Accuracy is more a skill then a stat; as seen in fencing.

That's where I'm going, brute vs accuracy is more of skillsets/attack names available. Not in actual strength and accuracy, should accuracy be named different? That stat is like type of whether your fighting style would be more brutish like some aggro hercules then I dunno, something more accurate like fencing skill. Middle range would be both, but if you move in towards a certain range, you're given more skillsets and maybe some in the higher caliber or range it so that both you get skillsets up to 3 but with a variety of range . So far brute/accuracy(finess?) and intelligence/empathy (boons and buffs) are the only stats will optional skillsets. And Strength/speed are the stats to define the char's attack output probablility.

Am I making sense? Or is it not very convincing?

[Aisy]

@BlueLight
I like something like Nimin, where there are four cities with strict buttons and an explore option for random stuff, while travelling between the cities results in random fights and other things.
Being able to move your camp would be great, since CoC refused to have it due to poor foresight and amateur coding skills.

@Cthulhu
I like the idea of having stats involve duality, though it took a bit of reading to understand what you meant. It's a pretty unique take on things, and it helps refine the player's character in case they want to be strong but also swift at the same time. What if each stat had an experience bar that needed to be leveled up? Like gaining experience in a specific one allowed you to move the bar or keep it still, but keeping it still wouldn't hurt you. Instead, it'd be the 'lvl 2' version of that specific space in the bar.

A timeline sounds okay, there's a lot of writing that needs to be done first. Have you put thought into what weak enemies you want to appear? Like an imp/goblin equivalent people can grind/grind with?
Also, you don't have to worry about waiting for replies, there's been an influx of them and the thread updates every day.

[Cthulhu]

@Aisy
With the experience bar to level up the stats I think that totes work because I was just hoping someone would get at least the gist of what I'm suggesting about the dual stats so we can improve it and make it better. Cuz like, I was spitballing shit out as much as possible before the forum decides to automatically kick me out for taking to long. Not exactly the most coherent being when it comes to ideas lol. I wanna dump down as much ideas as possible so we can see what works and what doesn't.

For an imp/goblin equivalent, I was thinking of scavenging bots or giant bugs or stray bandits or mutated coyotes or mutated cactuses, within those ranges. Maybe some are put in different areas. But Scavenging bot and stray bandits do sound weak enough to be grinders. Does anyone even wanna implement the fuck option with enemies? Are cacti even bangable?

I'm really surprised how far this thread has come along due to its rough beginnings, just the number of people helping out or even just giving nice input has me really touched and motivated. Like, wow guys, 8 pages and counting and it wasn't that long ago. Plus its in the discussion forums, so I'm happy to see it still thriving.

[Aisy]

Definitely, we should throw out as much as we can while we can. Have you seen the googledoc/read through the other pages? It might be already outdated with this new info, but it's worth taking a look at.
I think giant bugs are the least fuckable things on that list, but we're allowed to use our imagination for the other things. As uncomfortable as fucking a cactus-person initially sounds, the best part about writing is being able to explain how it feels to bang something like that. For example, he wouldn't necessarily be sharp all over, and his dick definitely wouldn't have any barbs. Maybe it's bumpy instead? I like the idea of a sentient plant race.
Do you know where this'll be set? America, Australia, England, etc. As an Australian it'd be cool to see some local beast-aliens based on wildlife, like short koala-people or a giant crocodile-man. If we have an actual location, flora and fauna would be easy to figure out, especially since it's earth and not some other dimension.
Scavenging bots and stray bandits work, we should find a way to make them unique somehow. So they aren't boring to read if sex scenes appear.

I think it's gotten popular since the idea itself seems like a breath of fresh air - achievable, too. There's not much to it, but the possibilities are literally endless right now. We just gotta keep working!

[BlueLight]

I've noticed as the morning grows older, i grow less and less coherent... LET ME MAKE A NEW POST.

Quite frankly, the reason why i stuck around to boss all you peeps beside the fact cthulhu helped me with one of my projects; is because she didn't assume people would pick up her slack, but instead basically just asked what she needed to do; and what she needed to learn. It was basically a "what if i do this project, what will i need or should happen."

I feel like i'm missing some point with cthulhu idea, so can some one explain it to me a bit more.
As for where, why not Neo-Pangaea.... just an idea.... What if we got to decide? like we got different maps for different landing sites. Since the hard work is on cthulhu, i say this is her personal area to decide. Also,cthulhu, any chance i can get a list of common save formats you can use with your software? I don't care about the picture files but the files you save to for a unfinished project containing all your layers and the such. I want to know if i have something that can read them.

[Aisy]

I agree that the location decision is up to cthulhu. There's a few maps out there that show you what the world is like after a thousand or more years, what the world is like after the polar ice caps melt, etc etc. They're pretty interesting reads, and you can easily google them up in an instant. It would make a good basis, and if you can find one after a thousand years of pollution that'd be even better. Neo-Pangaea would need a longer timeframe to come together, but continents sliding together would take less time. Like Africa combining with Eurasia.
If we want to explore the different landing sites, we could look into making special encounters for each 'continent'? They'd be very small in the end, but large enough to give the illusion of space.

[Terrantor!!!]

Google Edgar Casey, the dreaming prophet,many disregard him as a nut ball. Apparently some of his stuff is confirmed. He had a vision of a pathetic America post apocalypse. Wasn't too bad, he caught a glimpse of New York City being rebuilt. Half of California sunk along San Andreas fault, a lot of other weird shit happened, looks more like the country dissolved, actually.