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(A blog focusing on the development and design of Norwegian Wood, a privately run Ultima Online-shard - with focus on design-theories, discussing pros and cons of individual features, status-reports from the development process and other tidbits that people might find interesting.)
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Presenting Character Names
It's a given fact that characters in MMORPGs are mainly identified by their names. Other means of identification, such as for instance the character appearances and what they are wearing, aren't reliable enough to be used as the main method for recognizing other players. True, it's possible to build a game with very intricate and detailed faces, body sizes etc - but there's only a limited amount of resources available for designing features like these, and usually actual gameplay features take precedence. In our own case we can't even consider this, as we're restricted by what the UO client can/cannot do (it can't do very intricate and detailed faces, varied body sizes etc).
So we've got to use character names for identification. The question though, is how to present these character names to the players.
The standard way to do this in most UO shards (including the official ones) is to simply display the true name of any given character above that character's head whenever someone uses the AllNames macro, single-clicks the character or "comes into range" (if that feature is enabled in their client). And in the character's paperdoll, of course. We've already
decided to forgo the "names floating above the head"-approach, and will disable such presenting of names for both AllNames and Single-clicking on characters, but we still have to find out what to do about names in paperdolls (and elsewhere - such as in trade windows, not to mention guilds).
So why do it differently from standard UO? Well, for one there's the idea of characters having to "introduce" themselves to each other instead of knowing by default the names of everyone they meet. It is a bit strange that Bob the Newbie knows the names of every single character he encounters in the world, and stranger still if he starts talking to them and adresses them by their names - which he technically shouldn't know until he has been introduced to said character. This breaks immersion and annoys some people, while others still don't have a problem with it. One way of doing this is to keep a log for each character which lists all characters he/she has met(read: been introduced to), which the server can then check up against to see whether or not one knows the name of a specific character. Unless the list contains the character's ID/Name, his name would come up as something generic such as "a human" or perhaps simply "Unknown".
A more advanced method (with a higher number of potential problems attached) is to let each character have "localized" names for all characters he/she meets. I.e. They, or the characters who they're introduced to, get to choose which name will be saved in their "known names"-list. This would allow a character to go under one name in one part of the world, and a different name in another part of the world. In the "underworld" a character could, for instance, be known as "Rascal" while being known as "Jack Smith" to everyone else. On the negative side(or is it?) it would also mean that a character could be known to someone as "Blargh" or "AnnoyingD00d" or "idiot", or simply a different name to everyone. This can create a good deal of confusion if two characters who know the same character under different names start talking about said character. And there's other problems - like what's the use of reporting a criminal to the guards if you're the only character in the world who knows said criminal under the name "Charlie", or if the criminal is known to no-one at all - an anonymous character so to speak?
We're making up our own thoughts about all of this, of course - but we're also interested in hearing if any of you have anything to contribute with. Any ideas, thoughts, comments on the above mentioned issues/solutions? Post your feedback here!
So we've got to use character names for identification. The question though, is how to present these character names to the players.
The standard way to do this in most UO shards (including the official ones) is to simply display the true name of any given character above that character's head whenever someone uses the AllNames macro, single-clicks the character or "comes into range" (if that feature is enabled in their client). And in the character's paperdoll, of course. We've already decided to forgo the "names floating above the head"-approach, and will disable such presenting of names for both AllNames and Single-clicking on characters, but we still have to find out what to do about names in paperdolls (and elsewhere - such as in trade windows, not to mention guilds).
So why do it differently from standard UO? Well, for one there's the idea of characters having to "introduce" themselves to each other instead of knowing by default the names of everyone they meet. It is a bit strange that Bob the Newbie knows the names of every single character he encounters in the world, and stranger still if he starts talking to them and adresses them by their names - which he technically shouldn't know until he has been introduced to said character. This breaks immersion and annoys some people, while others still don't have a problem with it. One way of doing this is to keep a log for each character which lists all characters he/she has met(read: been introduced to), which the server can then check up against to see whether or not one knows the name of a specific character. Unless the list contains the character's ID/Name, his name would come up as something generic such as "a human" or perhaps simply "Unknown".
A more advanced method (with a higher number of potential problems attached) is to let each character have "localized" names for all characters he/she meets. I.e. They, or the characters who they're introduced to, get to choose which name will be saved in their "known names"-list. This would allow a character to go under one name in one part of the world, and a different name in another part of the world. In the "underworld" a character could, for instance, be known as "Rascal" while being known as "Jack Smith" to everyone else. On the negative side(or is it?) it would also mean that a character could be known to someone as "Blargh" or "AnnoyingD00d" or "idiot", or simply a different name to everyone. This can create a good deal of confusion if two characters who know the same character under different names start talking about said character. And there's other problems - like what's the use of reporting a criminal to the guards if you're the only character in the world who knows said criminal under the name "Charlie", or if the criminal is known to no-one at all - an anonymous character so to speak?
We're making up our own thoughts about all of this, of course - but we're also interested in hearing if any of you have anything to contribute with. Any ideas, thoughts, comments on the above mentioned issues/solutions? Post your feedback here!
Sunday, January 04, 2004
Crafting Skills
As an area of Norwegian Wood that will have a large effect on the general ecconomy, as well as decide whether or not the players will eventually be able to take control of everything at first NPC controlled - the crafting skills need to be carefully considered before fully implemented.
I'm not happy with the way normal UO handles crafting - nor the way most other MMORPGs do - which usually follows the same path; The need to create lots upon lots of items to advance in your crafting skill, and in general this is implemented in a way that ultimately bores the crafter to death. UO's carpal tunnel syndrom (or macroing), DAoC's crafting timers which the player sits watching passively, etc. So in this Journal Entry I'll try to talk a little about how we COULD do things differently, and try to provide you all with some idea of WHY I think it'd be better to do it differently. Nothing is currently set in stone, so I'm just discussing potential solutions here - hopefully some of you will comment with feedback, new thoughts/ideas, let us know if we're on the right track or if we should do something differently. Either use the basic comment-feature under this journal entry, or partake in the discussion on the thread at our forums dedicated to this.
Things we should avoid:
Players having to make X daggers to gain enough skill to make X short swords to gain skill to make X chain boots to make...etc and so forth...so that in the end they can finally make the items which are actually useful.
Players falling asleep while passively watching a "crafting" timer alá DAoC.
Less failing? Failing = "grinding". If the player fails at making the item 10 times in a row, it's boring. He should either not be able to make the item in the first place or fail less, perhaps make lower quality items (though again that's likely to continue in the same steps....bad quality? Melt item down to ingots with some resource loss, try again.) Give them a chance to learn something more about the specific item they're making if they fail to make it? Like discovering that folding the metal twice makes it sturdier, etc?
Things we should include:
Ways of ensuring that everyone and their grandmother won't become a crafter. Self-sufficiency = bad in the environment we want to make, since we want players to interact with eachother, depend on eachother, trade with eachother.
Ways of letting crafters seperate themselves from other crafters of equal "skill" by other means than dressing differently.
If not less failing, we need at least to reward failing more than it currently is. Learn skill only by failing? Heh. Perhaps not, but some form of reward for failing which doesn't make it such a pain to bear.
Ways of doing all of the above without ruining the ecconomy and/or fun.
We could make the crafting processes more "interactive" - i.e. taking longer time because they require the player to do a specific (or optionable?) set of actions throughout the crafting process to complete the item. We could give the players various ways of crafting each item - so two players with equal amount of bowyery wouldn't necessarily make bows with the exact same qualities. Bottom line for this though - longer crafting time per item, higher skill gain per item crafted, less failures, less repeating.
Or we could go the "Recipes" way. For a smith to create a longsword, he first has to know the "Recipe" to create a longsword. These could be saved on the character itself, or in a "Book of Recipes" where he keeps all his recipes - which he could then trade/teach others for gold/other recipes at free will. Though to keep someone from getting rich simply by hoarding recipes and selling them, or low-level characters being given full sets of recipes/gold to buy them from higher level characters (who might even be on the same account :P) we could require that the recipe is taught to the other player, and have a cap of "You can max teach any given recipe to X other people." This way they could for instance "Pass on" recipes to apprentices etc - while not really giving away the recipes to every stranger they meet on the road.
We could also have a "Recipe-Tree" of sort - where you can say, know X amount of recipes at any given time. Lets say you know the recipes for making various types of swords. You could then get hold of "sub-recipes" to make better swords of a given type (or for all swords for that matter), to make them sharper, stronger, etc. And combine these properties further down the Recipe-Tree. This way two Grandmaster smiths may not have the same capabilities, and you might eventually see two GM smiths cooperating in a store or guild - where one is damn good at making armors and the other is damn good at making weapons - but neither really knows the other's craft :)
Also - the recipes further down the "Recipe-Tree" shouldn't necessarily make the first recipes obsolete. Perhaps make the newer recipes complement the older ones instead - or have the quality of the old recipes increase depending on the amount of skill/other recipes the smith has/knows.
Or determine quality based on how "well" the player executes the crafting process itself...like does he heat the metal enough, too much, too little? How long does he polish the wooden crate he just made (ok bad example, can't think of anything else).
How would you get these recipes? Hm. Could start by becoming an apprentice for an NPC smith, who will teach you basic recipes while you work for him. Then perhaps as you're upgraded from apprentice you get to choose a "sub-set" of the craft that you wish to go further in - or just a "general" category where you may craft the basic items from every category. Ancient recipes found in dungeons/old dusty libraries? Given by ancient grandmasters who will teach to anyone reaching the right skill-level in exchange for something? Discovered by experimenting somehow? I dunno - unsure about this part :) We need a good way to handle this though, so it's not just a matter of who has the most gold to buy new recipes, or the the best "main" character.
Also, recipes wouldn't necessarily mean that two smiths with same recipes create the same items...we could allow for some ustomization by for instance giving the different crafting materials different "properties", which when combined would make the items stronger/sturdier/better in some ways, worse in others. For instance: Using 3 ingots of iron and 1 ingot of silver when making a sword could give it properties such as.... a little more damage to undead(silver), low durability and heavy weight (iron). And so on.
Question is though - can this Recipe-Tree-system be used in all the crafting skills, or just for specific ones?
What about the functionality of lower-level crafters versus higher level crafters? How would the lower level ones be able to compete versus the higher-level ones for ANYTHING? That is, if they should be allowed to compete at all? Higher level ones usually have better sources of resources, can offer items at lower prices, etc and so on.
The actual crafting processes for each skill? It should certainly involve more than f.instance just using hammer on metal near anvil, selecting item, banging hammer once on anvil - DONE. But HOW, exactly?
What's the best way of handling the actual skill (which would affect what recipes could be learned, the "quality" of the created items, etc) gain? Give X amount of skill for each recipe learned? Give X amount of skill for each item successfully created, and X amount for each failure? Normal skillgain from 0 to 9.9 in each "level" of the 0.0->100.0 process, but require theory/studies/being taught by someone more skilled to reach each real new level of skill (10.0, 20.0, 30.0 etc)?
Any thoughts?
As an area of Norwegian Wood that will have a large effect on the general ecconomy, as well as decide whether or not the players will eventually be able to take control of everything at first NPC controlled - the crafting skills need to be carefully considered before fully implemented.
I'm not happy with the way normal UO handles crafting - nor the way most other MMORPGs do - which usually follows the same path; The need to create lots upon lots of items to advance in your crafting skill, and in general this is implemented in a way that ultimately bores the crafter to death. UO's carpal tunnel syndrom (or macroing), DAoC's crafting timers which the player sits watching passively, etc. So in this Journal Entry I'll try to talk a little about how we COULD do things differently, and try to provide you all with some idea of WHY I think it'd be better to do it differently. Nothing is currently set in stone, so I'm just discussing potential solutions here - hopefully some of you will comment with feedback, new thoughts/ideas, let us know if we're on the right track or if we should do something differently. Either use the basic comment-feature under this journal entry, or partake in the discussion on the thread at our forums dedicated to this.
Things we should avoid:
Things we should include:
We could make the crafting processes more "interactive" - i.e. taking longer time because they require the player to do a specific (or optionable?) set of actions throughout the crafting process to complete the item. We could give the players various ways of crafting each item - so two players with equal amount of bowyery wouldn't necessarily make bows with the exact same qualities. Bottom line for this though - longer crafting time per item, higher skill gain per item crafted, less failures, less repeating.
Or we could go the "Recipes" way. For a smith to create a longsword, he first has to know the "Recipe" to create a longsword. These could be saved on the character itself, or in a "Book of Recipes" where he keeps all his recipes - which he could then trade/teach others for gold/other recipes at free will. Though to keep someone from getting rich simply by hoarding recipes and selling them, or low-level characters being given full sets of recipes/gold to buy them from higher level characters (who might even be on the same account :P) we could require that the recipe is taught to the other player, and have a cap of "You can max teach any given recipe to X other people." This way they could for instance "Pass on" recipes to apprentices etc - while not really giving away the recipes to every stranger they meet on the road.
We could also have a "Recipe-Tree" of sort - where you can say, know X amount of recipes at any given time. Lets say you know the recipes for making various types of swords. You could then get hold of "sub-recipes" to make better swords of a given type (or for all swords for that matter), to make them sharper, stronger, etc. And combine these properties further down the Recipe-Tree. This way two Grandmaster smiths may not have the same capabilities, and you might eventually see two GM smiths cooperating in a store or guild - where one is damn good at making armors and the other is damn good at making weapons - but neither really knows the other's craft :)
Also - the recipes further down the "Recipe-Tree" shouldn't necessarily make the first recipes obsolete. Perhaps make the newer recipes complement the older ones instead - or have the quality of the old recipes increase depending on the amount of skill/other recipes the smith has/knows.
Or determine quality based on how "well" the player executes the crafting process itself...like does he heat the metal enough, too much, too little? How long does he polish the wooden crate he just made (ok bad example, can't think of anything else).
How would you get these recipes? Hm. Could start by becoming an apprentice for an NPC smith, who will teach you basic recipes while you work for him. Then perhaps as you're upgraded from apprentice you get to choose a "sub-set" of the craft that you wish to go further in - or just a "general" category where you may craft the basic items from every category. Ancient recipes found in dungeons/old dusty libraries? Given by ancient grandmasters who will teach to anyone reaching the right skill-level in exchange for something? Discovered by experimenting somehow? I dunno - unsure about this part :) We need a good way to handle this though, so it's not just a matter of who has the most gold to buy new recipes, or the the best "main" character.
Also, recipes wouldn't necessarily mean that two smiths with same recipes create the same items...we could allow for some ustomization by for instance giving the different crafting materials different "properties", which when combined would make the items stronger/sturdier/better in some ways, worse in others. For instance: Using 3 ingots of iron and 1 ingot of silver when making a sword could give it properties such as.... a little more damage to undead(silver), low durability and heavy weight (iron). And so on.
Question is though - can this Recipe-Tree-system be used in all the crafting skills, or just for specific ones?
What about the functionality of lower-level crafters versus higher level crafters? How would the lower level ones be able to compete versus the higher-level ones for ANYTHING? That is, if they should be allowed to compete at all? Higher level ones usually have better sources of resources, can offer items at lower prices, etc and so on.
The actual crafting processes for each skill? It should certainly involve more than f.instance just using hammer on metal near anvil, selecting item, banging hammer once on anvil - DONE. But HOW, exactly?
What's the best way of handling the actual skill (which would affect what recipes could be learned, the "quality" of the created items, etc) gain? Give X amount of skill for each recipe learned? Give X amount of skill for each item successfully created, and X amount for each failure? Normal skillgain from 0 to 9.9 in each "level" of the 0.0->100.0 process, but require theory/studies/being taught by someone more skilled to reach each real new level of skill (10.0, 20.0, 30.0 etc)?
Any thoughts?
Sunday, December 21, 2003
We Still Create Worlds
Some, nay - a LOT of you, have probably given up on NW by now. I don't blame you. I can only praise the patience some of you have shown over the years - we've spent a lot of time working on this shard, far more than most others, and to think that we'd keep everyone's interest for that long would be foolish.
While it does seem quiet around Norwegian Wood right now, that not much is going on, we are in fact still working on it :) We're still making scripts, for instance the spellcasting scripts Eolirin spoke of in the previous update in this journal, and we're still working on the world itself. It has long since grown out of the small green-acres it once occupied, and though it may not be as huge as certain other custom maps, it's going to be large enough. I still hold to the idea that a smaller, more detailed map is better for a dedicated roleplaying shard such as NW. It's a given fact that the playerbase will be smaller than your average "PvP" shard - and most certainly smaller than any official UO shard - so giving the players the chance to actually meet other players while playing is a Good Thing.
It's Christmas-time these days, and so naturally development will be a bit slowed - but we're still doing some work. Here follows some screenshots of what I'm working on right now:
Picture number 1 shows the tools I'm currently using; The UO Client of course, WorldForge 6.4, and a preview version of my own WorldBuilder-tool (for UOX3) which helps me with coastlines. In picture number 2 I'm adding some details to an area that the players will rarely, if ever see. Detail Is Everything. The last picture shows some old stairs up to a natural plateau. Transitions between mountain and grass hasn't been added yet, mind.
Oh, and here are two screenshots from Norwegian Wood taken in the Ultima Iris client, a true 3D client for UO that's under construction...who knows - perhaps it'll be done in time to be used as the main client version supported by our shard? :D
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone!
Some, nay - a LOT of you, have probably given up on NW by now. I don't blame you. I can only praise the patience some of you have shown over the years - we've spent a lot of time working on this shard, far more than most others, and to think that we'd keep everyone's interest for that long would be foolish.
While it does seem quiet around Norwegian Wood right now, that not much is going on, we are in fact still working on it :) We're still making scripts, for instance the spellcasting scripts Eolirin spoke of in the previous update in this journal, and we're still working on the world itself. It has long since grown out of the small green-acres it once occupied, and though it may not be as huge as certain other custom maps, it's going to be large enough. I still hold to the idea that a smaller, more detailed map is better for a dedicated roleplaying shard such as NW. It's a given fact that the playerbase will be smaller than your average "PvP" shard - and most certainly smaller than any official UO shard - so giving the players the chance to actually meet other players while playing is a Good Thing.
It's Christmas-time these days, and so naturally development will be a bit slowed - but we're still doing some work. Here follows some screenshots of what I'm working on right now:
Picture number 1 shows the tools I'm currently using; The UO Client of course, WorldForge 6.4, and a preview version of my own WorldBuilder-tool (for UOX3) which helps me with coastlines. In picture number 2 I'm adding some details to an area that the players will rarely, if ever see. Detail Is Everything. The last picture shows some old stairs up to a natural plateau. Transitions between mountain and grass hasn't been added yet, mind.
Oh, and here are two screenshots from Norwegian Wood taken in the Ultima Iris client, a true 3D client for UO that's under construction...who knows - perhaps it'll be done in time to be used as the main client version supported by our shard? :D
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone!
Saturday, November 01, 2003
Spellcasting and You
This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of gameplay feature posts. We'll be taking a look at the Magery system this time around, more specifically the Magery system used by the "good" mages. Necromancy, Racial and Drudic spellcasting isn't covered here.
To become a Mage there is a very distinct order of progression. First your character must be selected to become a student at the Spirit Tower. By taking classes and learning Mage lore you will accumulate Lore Points. These are used to "purchase" new spells. As you attain more and more spells your rank within the Spirit Tower will advance, eventually allowing you to become a full fledged Mage or even a teacher.
There are two divisions among mages there, Wizards (Males), and Witches (Females). While there are some common spells between both groups for the most part they have a completely different set of spells. There are however many spells which provide the same sort of end result among both groups. Witches in general tend to be more subtle in their spell use, while Wizards are more flashy. A Witch for instance would cast a curse on someone which made them hurt themselves where a Wizard would hit them with a fireball.
Spells are arranged into a tree with some spells being pre-requsites for others. There are 9 major areas of focus in the spell system, 3 for the Wizards, 3 for the Witches, and 3 common ones that can be learned by both.
For the Wizards the areas of focus are Etheric, Divination, and Summoning. Etheric spells are your general sort of offensive and defensive spells, fireballs, energy shields and the like. Divination spells are used for finding out information about items and people, spying on locations, and negating some of the spells that a witch can cast. Summoning spells are fairly self explanitory, these deal with the summoning and control of otherworldly beasts.
For the Witches the areas of focus are Fate, Natural, and Negative. Fate spells include things like curses and coincidental effects like droping your weapon in the middle of battle. Natural spells deal with healing, growth and weather. Negative spells are mostly designed to hide things or counter the effects of other spells.
The common groups are Enchantment, Lore, and Transformation. Enchantment spells temporarily increase the abilities of characters, the stats of items, and add special effects, like fire damage, to items. They also include trap like spells. Lore spells revolve around deciphering ancient texts or traps, detecting what type of magic was used in an area, and mimicing the spells that others can cast. Transformation spells deal with changing things, this includes spells like polymorph, but also spells which make items weaker or stronger or even turn them into different items altogether.
Casting spells is easy, you click on a focus item, which is different for each area of focus listed above, and a menu will appear allowing you to select your spell. Most spells will bring up a targeting cursor, but some may not, and there are a few spells which require that you do certain things, like cast other spells or use certain items, in a certain order.
Well, I think that's about it. I hope this was informative.
To become a Mage there is a very distinct order of progression. First your character must be selected to become a student at the Spirit Tower. By taking classes and learning Mage lore you will accumulate Lore Points. These are used to "purchase" new spells. As you attain more and more spells your rank within the Spirit Tower will advance, eventually allowing you to become a full fledged Mage or even a teacher.
There are two divisions among mages there, Wizards (Males), and Witches (Females). While there are some common spells between both groups for the most part they have a completely different set of spells. There are however many spells which provide the same sort of end result among both groups. Witches in general tend to be more subtle in their spell use, while Wizards are more flashy. A Witch for instance would cast a curse on someone which made them hurt themselves where a Wizard would hit them with a fireball.
Spells are arranged into a tree with some spells being pre-requsites for others. There are 9 major areas of focus in the spell system, 3 for the Wizards, 3 for the Witches, and 3 common ones that can be learned by both.
For the Wizards the areas of focus are Etheric, Divination, and Summoning. Etheric spells are your general sort of offensive and defensive spells, fireballs, energy shields and the like. Divination spells are used for finding out information about items and people, spying on locations, and negating some of the spells that a witch can cast. Summoning spells are fairly self explanitory, these deal with the summoning and control of otherworldly beasts.
For the Witches the areas of focus are Fate, Natural, and Negative. Fate spells include things like curses and coincidental effects like droping your weapon in the middle of battle. Natural spells deal with healing, growth and weather. Negative spells are mostly designed to hide things or counter the effects of other spells.
The common groups are Enchantment, Lore, and Transformation. Enchantment spells temporarily increase the abilities of characters, the stats of items, and add special effects, like fire damage, to items. They also include trap like spells. Lore spells revolve around deciphering ancient texts or traps, detecting what type of magic was used in an area, and mimicing the spells that others can cast. Transformation spells deal with changing things, this includes spells like polymorph, but also spells which make items weaker or stronger or even turn them into different items altogether.
Casting spells is easy, you click on a focus item, which is different for each area of focus listed above, and a menu will appear allowing you to select your spell. Most spells will bring up a targeting cursor, but some may not, and there are a few spells which require that you do certain things, like cast other spells or use certain items, in a certain order.
Well, I think that's about it. I hope this was informative.
What? Halloween? Where?
Hey everyone! Yep, still alive here.
As usual, Halloween came and went without me taking much notice. I'm not really in habit of doing anything Halloween-related stuff, so no big surprise really. What's more important to me right now is that today marks the start of the National Novel Writing Month! It's a project where each participant writes a 50.000 words long novel in the month of November, or dies trying. There's no grand prize for reaching the finishing line, there's just your own feeling of accomplishment as reward. And I love it! So, since there are 50 000 words to be written, I have to average about 1600 words per day or more. My first day of writing went pretty smoothly, thank [insert favourite deity]...but no doubt I'll run into a few walls along the way before reaching the end (IF I reach it)...so wish me luck.
Yes, I know - the above isn't related to Norwegian Wood at all. And yes, I'm aware that more than a month has passed since the last entry in this development journal. We'll try to work on that. I'll be working on a little entry concerning worldbuilding and whatnot, and there will probably also be an article on the magery system coming your way soon :) So - have patience.
Hey everyone! Yep, still alive here.
As usual, Halloween came and went without me taking much notice. I'm not really in habit of doing anything Halloween-related stuff, so no big surprise really. What's more important to me right now is that today marks the start of the National Novel Writing Month! It's a project where each participant writes a 50.000 words long novel in the month of November, or dies trying. There's no grand prize for reaching the finishing line, there's just your own feeling of accomplishment as reward. And I love it! So, since there are 50 000 words to be written, I have to average about 1600 words per day or more. My first day of writing went pretty smoothly, thank [insert favourite deity]...but no doubt I'll run into a few walls along the way before reaching the end (IF I reach it)...so wish me luck.
Yes, I know - the above isn't related to Norwegian Wood at all. And yes, I'm aware that more than a month has passed since the last entry in this development journal. We'll try to work on that. I'll be working on a little entry concerning worldbuilding and whatnot, and there will probably also be an article on the magery system coming your way soon :) So - have patience.
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Ever wanted to be a commentator?
Now's your chance, as I've added the option for you all to comment on the blog-entries made. Ok, so I'm using a free third-party host for the comments, but - it works! Unless anyone think I should get a different one? Comments? ;)
Oh, and we're getting another updater for this blog - giving us a total of TWO(woah) blog-members with ability to post. The individual in question is Eolirin Xianve, one of the Designers/GMs for NW =) He will, amongst other things, offer you details concerning how our different "systems" (magery, combat, etc) will be setup. But he's not limited to those "systems", so I'm sure you'll all see some other interesting updates from him in the future as well =)
Now's your chance, as I've added the option for you all to comment on the blog-entries made. Ok, so I'm using a free third-party host for the comments, but - it works! Unless anyone think I should get a different one? Comments? ;)
Oh, and we're getting another updater for this blog - giving us a total of TWO(woah) blog-members with ability to post. The individual in question is Eolirin Xianve, one of the Designers/GMs for NW =) He will, amongst other things, offer you details concerning how our different "systems" (magery, combat, etc) will be setup. But he's not limited to those "systems", so I'm sure you'll all see some other interesting updates from him in the future as well =)
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Cosutm NPC AIs
Waht I hpoe to mkae one of NW's sortnesgt fatereus wlil be our viraed NPC AIs. Not nsciseelry NPC AIs dsgeiend to kcik yuor ass in cbomat, tsohe are denamd hrad and the palerys ayawls win in the end awynay - but geanrel AI to mkae the voraius NCPs taht paoplute the wlrod seem mroe "rael". Not to say we wno't try to do atihnyng aobut cbmoat as well (we wllil, tsrut me), but it's not the pramriy iusse we'll hvae wehn ipelnemintng our AIs.
(Wonder what's up with this paragraph? Read up on this. Apparently we're able to read and understand stuff like this as long as the first and last letters of each word are in their correct place, since we read whole words at a time instead of letter-by-letter. Of course it gets harder the longer the words are, but in general it seems to be true. :)
Examples include:
-Healers who heal wounded players with bandages, as long as they're not hostile/engaged in combat with someone else/criminals of any kind.
-NPC beggars who follow you until you give them something (Annoying? Yes. We'll try not to have too many of 'em, unless there's reason for it - like generally bad times in a town etc :)
-NPCs that seek out players for help themselves without waiting for the players to approach them first
-NPC reactions to various stuff like player behaviour/reputation, climate, time of day, etc.
-NPC schedules - giving the NPCs their own daily agendas.
This is just a short, basic list - and even though we have to keep the server's system resources in mind when creating our AIs, the final (hopefully it'll never be final, but continue growing as the server grows in age) list of NPC AIs should be multiple times as long. Thus far only the first AI in the example list has been implemented, but that's mainly because we only recently started scripting NPC AIs (we're scripting other stuff too, you know).
Well, time to depart for home! (Yeah, I write this stuff while I'm at work - got to do something to pass time *grins*)
*clicks the blog-publish-button and leaves the computer*
Waht I hpoe to mkae one of NW's sortnesgt fatereus wlil be our viraed NPC AIs. Not nsciseelry NPC AIs dsgeiend to kcik yuor ass in cbomat, tsohe are denamd hrad and the palerys ayawls win in the end awynay - but geanrel AI to mkae the voraius NCPs taht paoplute the wlrod seem mroe "rael". Not to say we wno't try to do atihnyng aobut cbmoat as well (we wllil, tsrut me), but it's not the pramriy iusse we'll hvae wehn ipelnemintng our AIs.
(Wonder what's up with this paragraph? Read up on this. Apparently we're able to read and understand stuff like this as long as the first and last letters of each word are in their correct place, since we read whole words at a time instead of letter-by-letter. Of course it gets harder the longer the words are, but in general it seems to be true. :)
Examples include:
-Healers who heal wounded players with bandages, as long as they're not hostile/engaged in combat with someone else/criminals of any kind.
-NPC beggars who follow you until you give them something (Annoying? Yes. We'll try not to have too many of 'em, unless there's reason for it - like generally bad times in a town etc :)
-NPCs that seek out players for help themselves without waiting for the players to approach them first
-NPC reactions to various stuff like player behaviour/reputation, climate, time of day, etc.
-NPC schedules - giving the NPCs their own daily agendas.
This is just a short, basic list - and even though we have to keep the server's system resources in mind when creating our AIs, the final (hopefully it'll never be final, but continue growing as the server grows in age) list of NPC AIs should be multiple times as long. Thus far only the first AI in the example list has been implemented, but that's mainly because we only recently started scripting NPC AIs (we're scripting other stuff too, you know).
Well, time to depart for home! (Yeah, I write this stuff while I'm at work - got to do something to pass time *grins*)
*clicks the blog-publish-button and leaves the computer*
Sunday, September 14, 2003
So what about the NW Newsletter?
Now that this blog is in place, what happens to the NW Newsletter? Well, the idea behind the newsletter is still sound - it's ability to reach out to a huge amount of people at the same time(that would currently be 1397 people =) is a godsend for when you want to get vital information out to the masses. Information like "Server down for X time!", or "new map-downloads!" or "server ip has changed!". Ok those examples aren't valid right now seeing as the server isn't even up, but you get the point, I hope :)
I might also setup a little something which will send a "digest" from this development blog to the newsletter every now and then - so every time a newsletter arrives it'd contain X amount of entries from the blog (opposed to sending one newsletter mail for each blog update, which seems like overkill).
Oh yeah, almost forgot - You can sign up for the NW Newsletter by sending an e-mail to nwnewsletter-request@freelists.org with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
Now that this blog is in place, what happens to the NW Newsletter? Well, the idea behind the newsletter is still sound - it's ability to reach out to a huge amount of people at the same time(that would currently be 1397 people =) is a godsend for when you want to get vital information out to the masses. Information like "Server down for X time!", or "new map-downloads!" or "server ip has changed!". Ok those examples aren't valid right now seeing as the server isn't even up, but you get the point, I hope :)
I might also setup a little something which will send a "digest" from this development blog to the newsletter every now and then - so every time a newsletter arrives it'd contain X amount of entries from the blog (opposed to sending one newsletter mail for each blog update, which seems like overkill).
Oh yeah, almost forgot - You can sign up for the NW Newsletter by sending an e-mail to nwnewsletter-request@freelists.org with the word "subscribe" in the subject line.
Saturday, September 13, 2003
Wooo. Free. AoS-Client. Download
For those of you with either broadband connections or a lot of patience - a FREE, and LEGAL download of the very latest Ultima Online client(Age of Shadows). Even includes a 15-day long trial-run on the official UO servers. :)
And best of all - it can be used for playing on NW too!! ;)
For those of you with either broadband connections or a lot of patience - a FREE, and LEGAL download of the very latest Ultima Online client(Age of Shadows). Even includes a 15-day long trial-run on the official UO servers. :)
And best of all - it can be used for playing on NW too!! ;)
Friday, September 12, 2003
Admin's Log, Day Two
It's a bit early in this blog to start on the heavy theory/design stuff (Fear not, there will be enough of that later), so I think I'll rather start by describing my Vision™ for Norwegian Wood - what I hope it will turn out to be when done, and why I hope players might choose this particular shard from the myriad of shards available out there.
One of the largest problems a wanna-be UO player faces when he's tired of the official UO servers and instead wants to try his luck with a player-run shard, is the huge amount of shards that exist(Here's a short list: UOGateway ShardList). True, because of that there's something for everyone out there - but it also makes it a lot harder to find a decent shard to play on, because to be frank: The majority of player-run shards are low-quality, quick-hack shards which are launched with minimal community support (Attend: Forums, ingame player-support, a decent webpage, etc) and which attract new players with revelations such as "FREE HOUSE FOR 10 FIRST PLAYERS WHO JOIN!"; Often giving away at character creation everything that the players would normally have to make a small effort for to gain from normal gameplay.
Even so, there are shards out there run by dedicated, creative and insightful admins (and their GMs/Staff members) who strive to achieve/maintain certain levels of quality and standards which come close to (or even surpass, in certain fields) the official UO servers. Will NW be one of those? Time will tell, but that has been the overall goal of NW development since I started working on it near the end of 1998. Yes, that was in the previous millenium - sorry that it's taking so long =)
Ok - that's all well and good, but why shouldn't you choose one of the other shards over NW, you ask? What makes NW more worthwhile to play on? We've already established that there are hundreds, if not thousands of player-run shards on the loose, and that only a fragment of those are of decent quality - but what I hope will help tip the scales our way is the Red Thread™ which will go through every part of NW; We'll try to keep every feature, every location, every quest/plot and every background story connected to eachother, creating a world where everything makes sense in connection to everything else. Having 100 unique features on a shard is nice, but unless they're built on the same principles and "fit" together according to the setting/theme of the shard - it's just a big playground with different activities.
We're not trying to simulate a medieval world with fantasy elements, we're still making a game - but we want everything in our world to make sense in context of the setting we're using. By mixing logic, reason, gameplay and pure & simple FUN we want to make a vibrant, sensible world which the players won't have a hard time figuring out how works, but which will still offer a multitude of different paths to take, options to choose between and features to play with. This, in broad terms, is what NW is/will be.
Btw, excuse me for using a (nearly) default blog-template for layout, but hopefully that will change over time as I customize it for my needs & wants.
It's a bit early in this blog to start on the heavy theory/design stuff (Fear not, there will be enough of that later), so I think I'll rather start by describing my Vision™ for Norwegian Wood - what I hope it will turn out to be when done, and why I hope players might choose this particular shard from the myriad of shards available out there.
One of the largest problems a wanna-be UO player faces when he's tired of the official UO servers and instead wants to try his luck with a player-run shard, is the huge amount of shards that exist(Here's a short list: UOGateway ShardList). True, because of that there's something for everyone out there - but it also makes it a lot harder to find a decent shard to play on, because to be frank: The majority of player-run shards are low-quality, quick-hack shards which are launched with minimal community support (Attend: Forums, ingame player-support, a decent webpage, etc) and which attract new players with revelations such as "FREE HOUSE FOR 10 FIRST PLAYERS WHO JOIN!"; Often giving away at character creation everything that the players would normally have to make a small effort for to gain from normal gameplay.
Even so, there are shards out there run by dedicated, creative and insightful admins (and their GMs/Staff members) who strive to achieve/maintain certain levels of quality and standards which come close to (or even surpass, in certain fields) the official UO servers. Will NW be one of those? Time will tell, but that has been the overall goal of NW development since I started working on it near the end of 1998. Yes, that was in the previous millenium - sorry that it's taking so long =)
Ok - that's all well and good, but why shouldn't you choose one of the other shards over NW, you ask? What makes NW more worthwhile to play on? We've already established that there are hundreds, if not thousands of player-run shards on the loose, and that only a fragment of those are of decent quality - but what I hope will help tip the scales our way is the Red Thread™ which will go through every part of NW; We'll try to keep every feature, every location, every quest/plot and every background story connected to eachother, creating a world where everything makes sense in connection to everything else. Having 100 unique features on a shard is nice, but unless they're built on the same principles and "fit" together according to the setting/theme of the shard - it's just a big playground with different activities.
We're not trying to simulate a medieval world with fantasy elements, we're still making a game - but we want everything in our world to make sense in context of the setting we're using. By mixing logic, reason, gameplay and pure & simple FUN we want to make a vibrant, sensible world which the players won't have a hard time figuring out how works, but which will still offer a multitude of different paths to take, options to choose between and features to play with. This, in broad terms, is what NW is/will be.
Btw, excuse me for using a (nearly) default blog-template for layout, but hopefully that will change over time as I customize it for my needs & wants.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
The Norwegian Wood Development Journal
So where to begin? Hm. For years I've contemplated making my own online journal - or blog if you must - of some sort, and for approxomately the same amount of time I've also neglected...
oops timeout. be back later......
*returns*
Where was I? Ah, yes: ...to keep the news page for my Ultima Online shard up-to-date, something the people who follow the development of the shard haven't been overly pleased about. So with this blog I'm hoping to take care of both issues at the same time, giving me a place both to post what's going on shard-wise, and a "diary/journal" of sorts for other tidbits I think people might find interesting. Note: I'm still considering using the idea someone posted on my forums about having a page where we list what we're working on at any given time, what remains to be done, and what is already done - but with this blog I'll try to cover our work more in-depth.
In Other News:
Why the hell is Shadowbane only for people from US/Canada? I didn't know, and downloaded a 608MB-big Trial version (10 days free gameplay) which I can use for naught. Fun? No. If someone has a valid credit card from US/Canada they don't want any longer, feel free to forward it to me. Bleh.
So where to begin? Hm. For years I've contemplated making my own online journal - or blog if you must - of some sort, and for approxomately the same amount of time I've also neglected...
oops timeout. be back later......
*returns*
Where was I? Ah, yes: ...to keep the news page for my Ultima Online shard up-to-date, something the people who follow the development of the shard haven't been overly pleased about. So with this blog I'm hoping to take care of both issues at the same time, giving me a place both to post what's going on shard-wise, and a "diary/journal" of sorts for other tidbits I think people might find interesting. Note: I'm still considering using the idea someone posted on my forums about having a page where we list what we're working on at any given time, what remains to be done, and what is already done - but with this blog I'll try to cover our work more in-depth.
In Other News:
Why the hell is Shadowbane only for people from US/Canada? I didn't know, and downloaded a 608MB-big Trial version (10 days free gameplay) which I can use for naught. Fun? No. If someone has a valid credit card from US/Canada they don't want any longer, feel free to forward it to me. Bleh.
