Like Hedgehow Hall of old, I've already implemented a system which allows objects to be 'installed'. An installed object cannot be lifted, dragged, pulled, pushed, picked up, or otherwise moved from where it is. It is for all intents and purposes bolted down.
However, unlike Hedgerow Hall, Newtopia will feature NPCs prominently. What this means to you as a player is that you no longer have to be present at your burrow or at your various shops, because you can simply have NPCs in your employ who will guard, keep shop, or otherwise.
This leads me to wonder: installation was introduced because players were not always available to protect their assets; if someone logged out, someone else could just waltz into their burrow and take everything, even the kitchen sink! If, however, NPCs are always available to protect a player's assets, this feature isn't so important -- those people who are rich enough to be burgled will need to hire protection against burglars, and those people who aren't rich enough to be burgled... well, they don't really need any protection.
I'm starting to tend towards keeping only the Newtopia Sanctuary stuff bolted down, with everything else being relegated to "open season".
Note well however that this doesn't mean it would be easy to rob a burrow: bulky objects are more common than any burglar would like. You can only carry one bulky object at a time and your paws must be free to do it, which means that a burglar would have to unload one bookshelf at a time from the burrow, all the while becoming exhausted from the exertion of carrying the shelf. Wise burglars would simply take things of value, like jewelry, foodstuffs, weapons, etc.
Nov 27 2006, 4:32 pm
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Elation
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Wise burglars would take the books, not the bookshelf. =P
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That too, although there's only so much you can stuff in a loot sack. =)
Besides, as an open container, if you lift the bookshelf, all the contents spill out. ;-) | |
=D Awesome.
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This is where I am always torn for games of this type.
I'm a horrible purist, I always aim to completely remove as many NPCs as possible. I see games where there are NPCs as taking away jobs from player characters. But then again they make sense - players can't be around all the time to guard their stuff, etc. I just feel sorry for the player character guard who can't get any slack because an NPC does his job without complaint 24/7 and doesn't talk back. My arguement is pretty stupid I guess, as long as them damn NPCs don't take too many of we PC's jobs! And perhaps that NPCs can only be hired at a certain level of skill so it's always possible to find a better, PC counterpart. Edit: Or perhaps you need to do more than just pay guards and such! You may have to assign them a bed and a small living space and provide them with food, etc. I guess this could be achieved by when you're setting up their contract you can highlight an area in your burrow that is that NPC's 'room', the room would need certain things in it to keep the NPC happy - things like a bed, a bowl (into which you place the food that keeps them fed), etc. The more decorations in the room you have the happier the NPC and the more plesant it is to be around, etc. Or not. =< | |
NPCs were intended from the very beginning to serve in menial positions only, with the exception of the occasional wandering adventurer who would be willing to accompany you but wouldn't ever want to serve you.
Though they have the same attributes (and thus the same health scores) as normal PCs, they will have the same skill levels as starting PCs would, and since they don't gain experience like PCs do, they quickly get all the bottom-feeding jobs. I'm sure more than a few players would love to play in the same menial tasks as NPCs are delegated for, but obviously it behooves me as a developer not to force menial tasks on anyone. =) Incidentally, guards can't work 24/7. Though no one in Newtopia is forced to sleep, if you've been awake for 24 game hours you have one half of your maximum Stamina and Focus. For PCs, this recovers if you get at least one game hour of sleep (I'm being generous here -- Haven was/would be/will be much less generous ;-)). The game's time scale is 1:12, so that means you'd have to sleep for 5 minutes to recuperate your losses. For NPCs, this recovers only if they get a full eight game hours of sleep. So to have at least one guard on duty all the time, you would have to have two guards on alternate shifts. Guards aren't too expensive, though, provided you give them room and board. If they have to obtain their own room and board (e.g., they travel back to the Sanctuary every day to sleep and then walk back to work), they ask for more payment. Payment, of course, would be in the form of bartering... NPCs will have a basic appraisal system to determine how valuable the items you're giving them are. | |
Jtgibson wrote:
NPCs were intended from the very beginning to serve in menial positions only, with the exception of the occasional wandering adventurer who would be willing to accompany you but wouldn't ever want to serve you. While you're around, is there any reason you've made newtopia a Peninsula? | |
This is so I can expand infinitely north, and all I need to do is widen the north end gradually. =)
I don't have a map in mind just yet, though; the only existing terrain is the Sanctuary map, and the very next map will be the docks to the northeast of the Sanctuary. I have officially adopted the staggered-grid as a map format, incidentally. | |
Jtgibson wrote:
This is so I can expand infinitely north, and all I need to do is widen the north end gradually. =) Will there be some horrible blockage to the south? Have you put any thought to the land the Peninsula is connected to? | |
The horrible blockage to the south would be known as "the ocean".
There won't be any land the peninsula is connected to, I figure; the whole game will be the peninsula. The players wouldn't be able to enter maps that don't exist yet, as a sort of invisible wall. Not the ideal solution, but Haven's world generation is a PITA and I'd like to steer somewhat clear. I do have a bit of a back story about why the peninsula has been abandoned and recolonised many, many times, but that's for me to know and for the players to never find out unless they poke around the game world too much. =) | |
Jtgibson wrote:
The horrible blockage to the south would be known as "the ocean". Oh I see, the 'hall' is at the very tip of it and it continues on forever to the north. Cool. Will there be a varied enviroment? HrH I felt did a lot with what few turfs it had, will there be swamps, mountains, plains, etc. or will it be like HrH and a sort of sparcly forested forever-land. | |
I was intending to include deserts, plains, forests, and mountains. Swamps might be interesting to think about, since those freshwater aquatics will need places to live too...
The Sanctuary is actually sort of on the west edge of the peninsula, a few kilometres (that's big to animals, mind you; each tile is 1 metre) north of the southwesternmost point. The inlet to the Sanctuary goes from the ocean on the west edge of the peninsula to the river a little farther inland. Ships travel east into the inlet and let passengers off a little farther upland than the Sanctuary, due to shallowness at the Sanctuary area. | |
One last question Mr. Gibson!
You mentioned previous colonization attempts - does this mean there will be ruins of civilisation out there? | |
Yup.
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Ok, honestly the last pesterment today:
You said in your update text file thing that you've made a system where you can learn someone's name by them saying it. Let's say there's a fellow who doesn't wish people to know his real name and so gives a fake name when asked, players will know he's lying as he won't be named automatically upon mentioning his false name. Is there any way around this? | |
Yep, by using an alternate identity using the appropriate skill to establish that identity. People will learn the name of his current identity and not of his true identity.
If he invents a pseudonym without having the identity in place, though, no, there's no way around it. Identity code is already in place and functioning perfectly, although impersonation and stuff hasn't been implemented yet. | |