59 replies to this topic

[nitrogenfingers]

Darklands: Tales from Transylvania

Features:

- An overworld, dungeons and towns to explore
- An awesome world set in 1430's Transylvania, filled with monsterous denizens and insane characters to kill and talk to respectively
- Inventory screen- check your equipment and swap out for better loot
- Varied weapon varieties- from rotten wooden staves, to sharp iron daggers, weapons with dynamic attributes and enchantments
- Interactive NPC's- enter one-word phrases like "work", "name" or "job" to idly gossip with NPC's, ask for employment or buy and sell equipment from merchants and smiths
- A dynamic quest system, ranging from interacting with NPC's, exploring the darkest recesses of dungeons, killing a particularly bothersome monster, and much more
- A great demo, with 5 quests, 3 dungeons (each with their own secrets) and an interesting dialogue to go with it
- Over 3500 lines and 180kb of lovingly hand-crafted adventure!

Planned:
- Implementation of D&D 4.0 like ruleset, inspired by Neverwinter Nights and other D&D conversions, to make better use of die rolls in NPC interactions, combat encounters and abilities
- A much vaster, in-depth world to explore with a dark story of magic, evil and deception behind it
- More weapons, baddies, towns and locations
- More interactions- pickpocket NPC's as well as chat with them, and use special abilities in towns as well as in the caves
- More interesting dungeons- levers, trapdoors, portals, monster spawners, and whatever other crazy things I can think up!
- Colour- as requested, this will somehow make an appearance. I expect it will still mostly be monochrome, however.
- Lunamagus and Solumagus, magic take from the sun and the moon to project awesome powers to make you more powerful

The latest demo, and a video of an earlier version of the game being played:
Directly from mediafire: http://www.mediafire...vkoea1298t7tpvk
GravityScore's nifty installer (requires HTTP): http://pastebin.com/F3AifzEu



A few hints in case you're stuck with the demo:

Spoiler

- The class you choose doesn't have a big effect on your character, just on your starting equipment. I usually find the Journeyman to be the easiest character to start as.
- When talking to villagers, ask them short questions, like "name", "job", "quest" etc. If an NPC drops a word that seems important in conversation (like "darkness", or "report", two you SHOULD be using) then try asking them those words, or even other NPC's. Some quests will require you to ask around.
- You heal whenever you return to town- if a dungeon is too hard, get out of there and high-tail it back to town to heal.
- You can find a dungeon map and a compass to help you navigate in some dungeons, and in other dungeons quest providers will give them to you.
- Watch your compass- X's that appear on it indicate an enemy in that direction
- You can sell equipment to merchants, and buy from smiths. In Nebun, that's Matheus and Fane. Remember to upgrade your equipment when you're ready
- Some gear is higher quality than other gear- a flanged iron mace will be slightly better than just a normal iron mace. These objects are priced accordingly as well- don't sniff at a rotten quarterstaff, it might be a bit weaker but it's a lot cheaper!

Controls: Arrows for movement, turning and attacking (in the direction you point)
Page Up/Down for climbing ladders
I to access your inventory
J to read your journal and any quests you have
Space for most actions- opening chests, talking to NPC's or skipping a turn
Enter will quit the game

Note: The demo is quite difficult (I've only finished it the once). It may seem like a point where the game has come to an end but there's one last little secret to find before it's truly over.

I hope you enjoy it

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[Zalerinian]

Well that looks very amazing. good job, and keep up the nice work. I'd be interested in getting this, if you're going to release it />

[Zalerinian]

So i look at the post, see some nice things and get interested, then i see your name />. You've made some really nice scripts. Going to try to use them on a server later />

[nitrogenfingers]

I've added a code download and display for the overworld- towns are next, then we tie the whole thing together (somehow) and start thinking about combat and inventory.

[nitrogenfingers]

It's been 2 months... how time flies. A free weekend saw me pick this up again and get quite a bit done on it- in fact it's pretty close to Alpha now, which I'm happy with.

Much larger scale than I had expected such a simple game to be, but there's much more beneath the hood than I initially planned, predicable in hindsight. In any event, though buggy, I've successfully patched together overworlds, towns and dungeons into one cohesive game, included dialogue, quest assignment and completion, combat and leveling. It's all still extremely rudimentary and rather dull right now but it's making strides.

I've planned a few things for the next update, though I can't say when that'll be:


- Inventory
- Store interface for "merchant", "smith" and "wizard"
- Skill sheet
- Speed in combat and delays on enemy movement
- Greater control over random generation of enemies (type, level etc)
- Variable tracking in quests

Once that's all done, I'll start on this:


- Magic
- Quick-equip interface
- Weapon abilities
- Dynamic dungeons- levers, secret doors and more
- More graphical elements in dungeons
- Serialization of some sort
- Music

I'm still having trouble with the artwork- my rather unimpressive wraith as the final boss at the bottom of the Mausoleum should testify to that, so if you're hoping to help, please PM!

[tommyroyall]

Hey, I would love to assist you in the art aspect of this project, and also code if you require help />.

[nitrogenfingers]

I hate to bump this topic, but I'm hoping casual readers will be able to give me a hand. In addition to artists (which I'm still looking for), I'm now hoping to talk to someone with a bit of experience playing pen-and-paper RPG's. D&D and Shadowrun players I'm hoping you can help me!

With combat working it's now time to think about how level increments are going to affect that, and how weapons stats and abilities come into it. Totally ignoring magic for the moment, I'm looking at the following stats:

Strength- affects weapon damage- this will be I think a minor multiplier
Endurance- a dampener on all damage taken- this feels more like a constant with a multiplier that is removed from damage taken
Agility- Compared with enemy's agility to determine chance to dodge (affects AC I expect) as well as absolute chance to cause criticals
Speed- As combat is turn based this is compared with your foes and the higher score has the chance to "skip" their opponents turn.

All skills have a base of 10 and a max of... oh I don't know, 30. On top of this:

Base Damage- Found in all physical weapons, this value varies by 0.4 * (strength / 10), or 1.0 * (strength / 10) or something similar
AC- Found on most armour, this increases the chance to dodge. At present I have no idea how the maths behind this works.

In fact I have no idea how a lot of the math works, or how to make it fun- as though the player's choices are actually making some sort of a difference to their play style. I'm really hoping a few people from the community with a bit more experience with RPG's, especially pen and paper ones or rather more eclectic ones with different means of combat could pitch in and offer some suggestions.

So yeah... help!

[6evergreen]

i wannna help but i need a downloud

[masaki84]

You sir are awesome. and I'm sitting here looking at my screen pointing saying "Wow, thats amazing" cant really get over that fact, inspiring me to get off my butt and learn to code again. I've a small backround in java and c++. but I have let my skills rust />

[mrSLIMEguy]

how do you make the dialogs?
bacause displayconfirmmessage says it returns nil

[nitrogenfingers]

Lets see... I don't remember that far back (dialogue has changed RADICALLY since that version) but from my recollection you pass through a message to confirm dialogue, which then handles drawing the dialogue on the screen, and the user just types a key to continue. So if there's a point where you want a message to be displayed, you just call the method and it should display the dialogue.

I think in that version conversations are just displaying confirm dialogues, so you can't interact with NPC's (they just talk to you), so in the instance you want them to say more than one thing you just call it more than once.

I think. It's been awhile /> Later versions implement conversational dialogue- you can ask a range of topics to which NPC's can provided responses, this includes asking for quests etc, and those methods return the player's or NPC's answer.

[Zanamas]

the thing is when i type my name, it says "attempt to index ? (a nil value)" any help?

[britefire]

While I doubt you still need any help with the stats/combat, I have some experience with D&D 3.5e combat and could help if you still needed it.

[nitrogenfingers]

britefire, on 11 November 2012 - 07:49 PM, said:

While I doubt you still need any help with the stats/combat, I have some experience with D&D 3.5e combat and could help if you still needed it.

That'd be great- send me an email sometimes and we'll see what we can figure out.

[rhyleymaster]

My god. I just had a nerdgasm. YOU ARE AMAZING!

[iamsparta1234]

How do you install this? (Sorry, i'm new to ComputerCraft />)

iamsparta1234, on 19 November 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

How do you install this? (Sorry, i'm new to ComputerCraft />)

I forgot to mention, i use a mac.

[Mr_0DD]

i Know this might be a bit crazy but what if you could connect multiple computers via modems and have do a multiplayer...just a suggestion

[Left4Cake]

Mr_0DD, on 30 December 2012 - 07:29 AM, said:

i Know this might be a bit crazy but what if you could connect multiple computers via modems and have do a multiplayer...just a suggestion

In concept that would be nice, but they may require a new engine.

[nitrogenfingers]

I have been working on this recently, retooling the quest system and combat. New demo soon.
This will never be multiplayer. Its based on a turn based engine not a real time one and the experience I'm trying to create is squarely aimed at a single player. Perhaps later efforts will incorporate other players but I don't find it likely.

[Left4Cake]

In my mind what would be better then just taking on multiplayer into the main game would be to make may be 1 dungeon that acts as a 2-player co-op or pvp dungeon. Not saying it should have multiplayer at all, but if it did that what would work in my mind.