Drawing ideas from other games..

[Tnx]

So I was wondering, have any of you guys played Dominions 3? It's a really really huge and in depth game with lots of background.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominions_3:_The_Awakening

LOTS of ideas can come about from that game, mainly monsters and spells and such.

[Sradac]

I was just thinking the same thing about another game actually. I've been playing dungeon crawl stone soup alot lately, never got into it before because its even harder and less forgiving than ADOM but having been through the draklor chain I dont know how many times I decided to tackle it. Im loving the game now actually, and ran into something really cool in it that would be neat to have something similar in it in JADE. I was making my way through the dungeon as a Sludge elf Transmuter, GREAT class btw sooo much fun I love the way its built and the way its magic dosent directly effect enemies but makes changes in yourself, them, and the environment. Anyways, ran into a human healer ghost of an old char of mine that fell in the orc mines and since most of my abilities revolved around poisoning and status ailments, I was doing next to no damage to the ghost while he whupped me so I retreated back to the dungeon. Went down another level, and encountered a unique Ogre Mage. I immediately super-heated a potion of confusion adn threw it at her leaving a noxious cloud behind leaving her helpless. I did the same to a potion of poison, left a lingering poison cloud. I then Took about 30 arrows and transformed them all to snakes (Sticks to Snakes it a fuuun spell!)

Eventually she killed off my snake army and the confusion ran its course. I inspected her, she was almost dead and still poisoned. I decided to save my energies and let the poison run its course to kill her. So I waited a round. With her dying breath, she used some ancient evocation, and banished me to the abyss!!! I quickly found myself in a panic, having never been there before and having no idea how to get out. I rested, I prepared myself, brought out a few snakes as decoys incase something scary came at me. While looking for a gate out of the abyss I was quickly surrounded by hellwings and all sorts of mean demons...I didnt stand a chance even after transforming myself into a huge arachnid of course my poison did nothing so I then polymorphed into an ice beast...I was no match for the demons though. Very cool concept to be banished to another plane/pocket dimension!!! Would be interesting for this in JADE. Maybe when you die you get ONE chance to resurrect if you can make your way out of hell/halls of the dead/heaven/whatever the stronger your character the deeper in you get placed. Just a thought.

BTW I havent had interned access lately since I recently moved, dont have it hooked up yet im on someone elses PC so im not sure when i will be able to get back on. Happy gaming!

[Grey]

I've heard a lot of complaints about that feature of SSDC actually - you can have a promising character pretty much insta-killed because you get sent to the Abyss without any hope of surviving. Kinda like pit viper traps can be for early chars in ADOM, but imagine them summoning balors instead. In ADOM you can prepare for everything - I hope JADE respects the same ideas and doesn't throw you into out of depth areas at the roll of a dice.

Still, the idea of dangerous extra planes and such is excellent - the ChAoS plane especailly.

[Nezur]

There must also be in-game hints about very dangerous monsters. In ADOM the hints are a bit too cryptic and scarce.

Ideally you should be able to escape almost any possibly fatal situation with the right use of tactics and the right equipment even with a seemingly weak character. ADoM has achieved that pretty well but there's always room for improvement. ;)

[electric_wizard]

I took a look at stonesoup but it's just a bit much to get in to. I remember when I first started playing ADOM it took ages to learn even the relative basics (before that I'd only ever played Rogue so there's a pretty big jump between the two!).

Seems like stonesoup has some great ideas and some cool sounding classes and races but I honestly couldn't find time in my life to get the hang of it.

[LFk]

Something i particularly enjoyed about Nethack was bones levels:

When an PC would die, there is a chance that that level in it's current state is saved as a bones level. When a new PC would come through the place, there is a small% chance that the level would be generated as it was (the monster that killed you still lurking around), with a corpse of your former PC and all his gear (now cursed), as well as a named ghost.

In nethack, bones files were only single use, meaning it was deleted after it appears in another one of your games. There was a coded program called Hearse made by the community that allowed you to exchange random bones files with other Nethack players, so it was pretty awesome to see corpses of other people's PCs. (and their loot).

Also, all artifacts revert to their base item types in the corpse.



Now this idea has some things I don't like about it. Particularly powerful PCs dying kind of makes the game easy from that point on if it's later found in a bones pile. In one game, i found a corpse with 2 wands of wishing and all my exceptional equipment (nethack doesn't use many artifacts, all the exceptional equip is stuff like dragon scale mail) intact. The game was a breeze from there. Granted, you have to LOSE a powerful hero to find a powerful corpse, and there's a good chance that no bones file is generated from the death at all, but nevertheless can make some "challenging" race/classes have a disappointingly easy time getting through.

I think the implementation of a balanced version of this feature would add a lot of flavor, though. It can be coded so that all the high quality items can have a very high chance to be excluded from the bones spawn (base it on danger level), which would reduce the number of useful items found.

[Nezur]

I think the implementation of a balanced version of this feature would add a lot of flavor, though. It can be coded so that all the high quality items can have a very high chance excluded from the bones spawn (base it on danger level), which would reduce the number of useful items found.

Passers-by might strip the corpse of highly valuable and powerful items. Perhaps some of those beings will still be around when you find the corpse so you'll still have to fight for the powerful items. The beings will be harder to defeat because they will be wearing the high quality equipment.

[electric_wizard]

Alternatively, you could just make the level of the ghost that haunts the loot relate to the power of the items therein.

The ghost could be non-hostile so it could be generated at any point in the game without creating an out of depth opponent. Naturally, if you want the kit your gonna have to take out the ghost - a bit like the water dragon's lair.

[Laukku]

Alternatively, you could just make the level of the ghost that haunts the loot relate to the power of the items therein.

The ghost could be non-hostile so it could be generated at any point in the game without creating an out of depth opponent. Naturally, if you want the kit your gonna have to take out the ghost - a bit like the water dragon's lair.

I had thought about the Bones feature in JADE ages ago, but then forgot it. This is pretty close to my version, which went ike this:

A gravestone will be generated on the spot where the "bone PC" (BPC) died, with a text like "Here lies [name], the [race\class] that was killed by [reason]. May he/she rest in peace." The PC may decide to ignore the grave or rob it. If he/she digs it open, a ghost of the BPC will jump out. This is similiar to "Great Treasures" graves, except that the treasures are in the the ghost's inventory. (And maybe a special monster type should be developed for this purpose, as normal undead monsters could be unbalanced with their special powers and weaknesses. I will call this monster "Memory" from now on.) Artifacts convert into similiar non-artifact items. The Memory also gets the same attributes, spell and skill list etc. as BPC. In other words, the Memory would be as similiar as possible when it was alive.

That way high-level Memories would have good equipment, but also be very deadly. And weak PCs can just ignore the grave if they don't want to risk their lives. And because the Memory carries all it's items, it MUST be killed in order to gain them.

I hope I didn't write this in a confusing way :|

[Grey]

That's quite a nice idea of how to do it, especially since JADE has the philosophy of "monsters are people too" (ie all the stats are the same). I'd say many items should randomly go missing though, just to make it less predictable. The graveyards where these appear should themselves be in the late game.

[Nezur]

A gravestone will be generated on the spot where the "bone PC" (BPC) died, with a text like "Here lies [name], the [race\class] that was killed by [reason]. May he rest in peace."

Then who would have cared enough to bury the adventurer deep in the dungeon? :)


The PC may decide to ignore the grave or rob it. If he digs it open, a ghost of the BPC will jump out. This is similiar to "Great Treasures" graves, except that the treasures are in the the ghost's inventory. (And maybe a special monster type should be developed for this purpose, as normal undead monsters could be unbalanced with their special powers and weaknesses. I will call this monster "Memory" from now on.) Artifacts convert into similiar non-artifact items. The Memory also gets the same attributes, spell and skill list etc. as BPC. In other words, the Memory would be as similiar as possible when it was alive.

Hmm, well... if the undead wears the equipment it cannot be a ghost because they are too ethereal to wear any physical clothes so some kind of a zombie could be more fitting.

Otherwise good idea but I don't think the beings of the dungeon would be bothered to bury all unfortunate adventurers. :)

[Laukku]

NetHack had gravestones in bones files, too. :p Maybe a lawful NPC that happened to pass by buried them. Wait - at the moment of writing this, I realised that this is a logical explanation :) As lawul NPCs encountering the dead PC before other monsters are uncommon, bones levels should be uncommon, too. :)

@Grey: "Graveyards"? What graveyards?

[ivoryknight]

I'd like to see JADE add some storylines that allow you to choose from several factions which you can give your support to. The outcome of the rest of the game would change depending on what you did. This type of story is used heavily in the Spiderweb Software games, like Geneforge or Avernum.

[Laukku]

One very useful feature (present in Rogue itself) I'd like to see, is the ability to name unIDed item types. When you use a wand/potion/scroll/other item and the effect does not reveal what the item was, the game asks you to name the item. For example, after you zap an oak wand at a monster and it gives the message "-foo- seems to blur for a moment", you can call all oak wands someting like "blurring monster". This feature can also be used at any point of the game, by using a special command. The command in JADE could be the same as 'n'aming monsters, with the game asking "Name a [m]onster or an type of [i]tems?"

[Chaine]

I like the idea of being banished to other planes, though only by high level enemies. The planes you are banished to should work more like side-quests than insta-deaths though. Like getting banished to Dis and having to deal with demons to get out, rather than spawning into a giant field of really strongs monsters.


Passers-by might strip the corpse of highly valuable and powerful items. Perhaps some of those beings will still be around when you find the corpse so you'll still have to fight for the powerful items. The beings will be harder to defeat because they will be wearing the high quality equipment.
I like the ideas of finding dead players. I think items should disappear randomly: a representation that travellers and monsters have looted the body which still prevents the cheating of dying right where the player starts off.

Being able to name unIDed items or monsters also sounds really good.

[Sradac]

the Wizardry series had two names for all monsters, a generic name like if you come across some bats you can clearly see they're bats, then after a bit once you recognize them you realize they're Dusk Bats, or Vampire Bats. Went with all creatures in that game, and i thought it was really cool. What you thought was a simple zombie you miggt soon realize is a fearful Revenant that might just mean your doom.