Interactive towns

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I had an idea that may help to make the towns in this game feel more alive and also give players something to spend their useless money on. The concept makes use of inns like those in deralia and helena.

I imagine the concept like this: the more time a server is running a map, say deralia, the more likely it becomes for any of a list of hypothetical events to be triggered. One example of a very simple event is having a new NPC spawn in a certain part of the town, either indefinitely or for a certain amount of time. He could merely have dialogue that advanced the MSC story or he could perhaps send you on a quest or sell items.

Nobody, however, wants to sit in deralia for hours waiting on an event that may or may not occur. I think a rather fun way to get around this obvious flaw is to allow people to go to 'sleep' in the inn by paying money. This would advance the time in the game and further increase the likelyhood of an event occurring. Because money in this game is practically useless, I think it would be nice to charge 100 gold per hour with the option of up to 24 hours at a time. Also, it may be possible to allow the prices of items to change over time based on how much money the townsfolk were making them/time, allowing an impermanent 'economy' to be added to the game. That last part though may be way out of reach.

A way to make this even more interactive is to make some events trigger not only after a long period of time, but also only under certain conditions. Perhaps a mysterious wandering traveler could only show up when it rains. Or maybe you could sell a thunder axe or lightning tomahawk to an npc in Deralia and then go to sleep in the inn and a dwarven merchant from gate city could come to purchase it. He could then send you on a quest in ms caves or gate city, or he could sell some items or maybe just say something interesting.

I completely believe this idea is at least partly possible (despite the fact that I know nothing about coding) because of all of the events that can already occur in Helena. I think most people would agree that the bandit raids and random orcish invasions are fun and make helena a map worth visiting. I certainly have found that Helena is played far more frequently than Deralia and possibly even more than Edana.

Ultimately, if this idea were implemented I feel that it would add a unique and very fun dimension to master sword. It gives players a much needed reason to spend their money and it would give more meaning to the unfortunately neglected town maps in this game. It would also add a traditional and charming aspect of many RPGs to Master Sword by allowing you to sleep at an inn. And, most importantly, it would make MSC more fun.

 

[Sabre]

The only issue with this is is that in order for this to work, the ability to change the time of day would have to be sacked.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

Maybe, and maybe not. Maybe sleeping in the inn can trigger two things independently of each other. It could trigger the normal change the time of day feature in concert with increasing chances for events to occur. This would allow players to use the normal change time feature without activating any event triggers.

 

[ceriux]

regardless it would help with the economy , whats wrong with having to sleep at the in to change time? if anything that system would be better... (player "Nuggets" would like to call a vote to rest at the inn. vote: yet/no) good idea and it also contributes with more content and side quests! im all for an idea like this.

 

[PBarnum]

What if one person wanted to sleep and another didn't? Would the person who didn't want to sleep go through the same time transition?

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

What if one person wanted to sleep and another didn't? Would the person who didn't want to sleep go through the same time transition?

I'm sure there is a way around this. The simplest and most obvious is to require an advance time vote and if it passes everything mentioned above takes place. Another way could be to advance the time, but only make the person at the inn go to 'sleep'. Sleeping would probably be a few seconds of fading to a black screen accompanied by a very short, sleepy sounding melodic tune.

Given the non intrusive nature of changing the time of day, i cant see very many instances with somebody not wanting to do this. Especially if it made it more likely for something interesting to happen.

 

[Borya]

As it stands with how the day/dusk/night cycle works currently, I'd like to keep my ability to hit my key binds to control the time of the day, thank you very much.

 

[ceriux]

lol the quickest way is better i guess... people must be too lazy. lets sacrifice extra content for key binds xD

 

[FER]

If there will be a day/night/weather system that cant be changed with binds, I hope this changes:

-Dusk not being darker than night
-better rain that doesnt slightly lower the FPS

* edit by Thothie: *SOB* I pulled a Dridje... Tell someone at PHP Forum dev department to please put Quote and Edit further apart! ><

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

lol the quickest way is better i guess... people must be too lazy. lets sacrifice extra content for key binds xD

Let em' have their key binds. You can still change the time of day via key bind without it affecting the trigger chances of an any events. I don't see how there is a problem if you do it that way.

 

[Thothie]

If there will be a day/night/weather system that cant be changed with binds, I hope this changes:

-Dusk not being darker than night
-better rain that doesnt slightly lower the FPS

I don't think dusk is darker than night even under the JUN2008 release... It certainly isn't in the alpha. :\

I've a streaming cluster of raindrops model around here... Somewhere... That I was going to test out and see if I could rebuild the rain FX with. I figure six or so of those dropping just around the local client would be a lot easier on the FPS than thousands of sprites raining all over the whole damned map.

Another solution - and I've tried this before, and thus am not entirely sure why it does not work - is to make all ToD/Weather effects unique to the client. So he can change the ToD or remove the weather, but it would only affect his client visually - without actually changing the time or the visual effects on other clients.

Unless we can figure some way to make that work, however, I think we need to retain the ability to clear weather and ToD effects, as some people are just blinded by them, making the game unplayable. Between the difference in graphic cards and monitors, there's no sure-fire way to make sure weather and ToD fx don't blind at least some folks - however much we've improved it from the days of solar powered torches.

 

[Borya]

I think we need to retain the ability to clear weather and ToD effects, as some people are just blinded by them, making the game unplayable

^--- That's why I lurve my keybinds.

Edit: Arrow should be this way: ---^

 

[FER]

Dusk gives me the feeling things get harder to see

 

[Thothie]

Dusk gives me the feeling things get harder to see

Even in the youtube video? (Granted, all that does is ensure we're rendering the same - it doesn't take into account differences in our monitors or gamma settings - or eyes for that matter. Plus the Youtube encoding made it a lot darker than the original looked on my screen.)

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I was thinking about this idea again and I thought it would be really cool to use in the town of Ara. After the orcs are repelled it would be neat to see the people of Ara return either gradually or all at once after a certain period of time. Of course, the sky would have to change somehow to make the town look more peaceful and the music would need a change too. I've got the music part covered but the sky might be impossible to change so perhaps the only way to do something like this is to remake the map as an ara_peaceful kind of thing, which would completely defeat my interactive towns idea. Regardless, I would definitely like to see Ara expanded upon some day.

 

[Thothie]

I was thinking about this idea again and I thought it would be really cool to use in the town of Ara. After the orcs are repelled it would be neat to see the people of Ara return either gradually or all at once after a certain period of time. Of course, the sky would have to change somehow to make the town look more peaceful and the music would need a change too. I've got the music part covered but the sky might be impossible to change so perhaps the only way to do something like this is to remake the map as an ara_peaceful kind of thing, which would completely defeat my interactive towns idea. Regardless, I would definitely like to see Ara expanded upon some day.

No plans for Ara, but was intending to make a helena_ruins that'd swap out Helena based on the success/failure of the last run on Old Helena - contianing an orc camp, burned out buildings, and some more caves. Temporal paradoxes might make it harder for newbies to sell and buy stuff without going to Edana though.

I think the game master script is handling all map changes now, so it should be possible to re-direct a transition based on a server flag. (Maybe an FN flag, if MiB ever comes through.)