Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Re: the sandbox


The Shield Lands server will go back online this Sunday, the 12th. Some notes:
Scheduling: Previously, we’d been playing at 1pm EST, which was quite early. We’d been playing this early because Jason was playing from internet cafes in Madrid. Since both him and Ryan are going to play from Ryan’s apartment could we bump the time an hour or two to accommodate people in the westerly time zones?
Voice-over-i.p.: I’ve decided to use it. Earlier, I was against it because I’m pretty sure it’ll cut down on role-play. But the whole point of these sessions is to hang-out, so why wouldn’t we use v.o.i.p., especially since it’s going to be a handful of people. It might take a while to work out, but roleplay might be enhanced, say, if we use our speaking voices for third-person references and in-game text voices for first-person speech.
Experience calibration: I’ve decided to set the XP scale to 24 (normal NWN is 10), as well as bump the XP penalty up 5%, from 15% to 20%. Everyone agrees that tread-milling isn’t any fun. The slow gaining of levels, only to incur a penalty and have a few hours of work erased, is frustrating. But considering that my treasure system is pretty generous, and my monsters loot fallen PCs: Characters fortunes will wax and wane much more wildly, which I think will take us beyond the doldrums of tread-milling. Adventuring is only fun if the character is putting something on the line, and not just punching the clock.
That said, first level is really boring as-is. I’m going to tie starting-packages for new characters to their social class. So children of Counts and Barons will start with 0xp and 200 gold, freemen and the children of merchants will start with 500xp and 100 gold, and vagabonds and peasants will start at second level, with a club and a biscuit.
P.S. Jason, I did some research about getting rid of the familiar penalty to experience and it can’t be done without disabling Bioware’s experience system and writing our own from the ground up. We’ll talk about this later.
P.P.S. I’ve been thinking of re-building the summoning tables (maybe not this week, though). I’ve looked into it and it isn’t terribly hard. This little gremlin inspired me. Also, monodrones... MONODRONES!!!

Please comment to indicate interest in this. Your questions will be answered, your design ideas will be considered, wrongs shall be righted, etc.

18 comments:

Robert Martin said...

do u guys use SKYPE when u play?

Pete said...

It's my understanding that Teamspeak or Ventrilo use less bandwidth and CPU resources, and are therefore more suited to gaming.
Both have Mac clients.

Pete said...

Y'know we can try both out, see which one works better.

Robert Martin said...

people use vent on WoW. but i cant use it with them cuz they are on the PC client.
so if we use vent i think u all need to be set for the mac client.

Pete said...

We've only used Teamspeak thus far. Usually having no problem with it.

Don J. said...

I hope that you have studiously figured out the details of port forwarding for your router. I wonder if it would also be helpful if the game server and voice server were on different computers.
I now have and internet connection at home and few scheduling conflicts. Set the time for whenever is best to play in the morning on the West Coast.

Pete said...

Yes!!! As we've discovered, getting all of the connections working before hand will help prevent big headaches.
Best case scenario: I am able to get my parents' computer to be a dedicated server. This would help greatly because the module runs a TONS of lines of code.
If I get that worked out, running a Teamspeak server on my machine wouldn't eat into resource too badly then. I am concerned about a bottle-neck on my DSL line though.

J, is your new connection dial-up or broad-band?

Ryan said...

Well, there is also a possiblity that i can get a hub from Alice[TM]so Jason can come over to my place and play off of his laptop. We have a DSL flatrate here and its fast. So i will look into that. I'm up for playing at any hour on the weekends. (Sunday being the traditional day of Geekdom in this group, aber Samstag ist auch gut für mich.)

Ryan said...

also...

I played a demo of shield lands on Jason's laptop and liked it and have a couple of constructive criticisms.

I kept getting killed by the same 3 sling-packing goblins at 1st level, so i tried to use a bit more strategy, but they rush me all at once and i have to camp in order to get back 1/4 or 1/3 health back. But once I ran out food I was screwed.

I tried to play as my character would and decided that this area was a bit to dangerous to trek in, but then i would just go hunting a lot. Until i was killed by a bear. hmmm...

(i really liked the hunting stages too, is there anyway to make hunting a skill and have it possible for characters to increase this skill to make it easier to find or increase the amount of food dropped from a successful hunt? or is it not possible to code that ino the game?)

Maybe, animals AND monsters could drop food or a potion of Cure Light Wounds once in a while. I mean goblins have to eat too right? so they would have to hunt for their food as well.

also i really liked the realism in the town especially that you have to order the armor in advance and you hold onto a voucher until it is ready for your character to pick up. That was neat. I was wondering if that idea could be expanded and the town could be filled out a bit more. I realize that takes time too, but it might also add character to the town and enhance roleplaying.

the townspeople could have different jobs and different social classes and would treat your character differently
according to what class, race, guild or social caste you belonged to.

That would be a lot of fun.

All and all i was very excited about playing shield lands and am anxious to see where it will go.

Pete said...

When Jason was in Carlisle, he and my friend Scott laughed for a very long time about how I started the Chicago kids on the Temple at Elemental Evil at 0 level, and that Chad's character was an illusionist with a huge Constitution penalty. So I have a history of calibrating things a bit too hard. The very first version of the Shield Lands was impossibly hard, we play tested it for a few months and mellowed it out a lot. The version you have (from early May), is kind of frustrating for a single player, certainly.
I'll list what's different about the new version real quick:
1. Treasure Types- monsters have HD appropriate treasure, with small chances of having magic items. Chests spawn in well protected areas, and hold quest items and stolen goods.
2. Monster looting- Monsters, if left untreatened with a dead PC, will loot them. Looted items can be later retrieved from the chests of the matching population.
3. Quest Items- An official in town will able to list for the PCs any outstanding quest items. When the PCs retrieve quest items for him, he will give the PCs XP, as well as a Standard of the Shield Lander army, which can be used to move the army into wilderness areas accessible to travel signs, (not dungeons). More quest items retrieved grows the force associated with your standard.
4. Hirelings have improved greatly, and will be invaluable to the neophyte adventurer going it alone.
5. As I mentioned, characters will get a choice at the beginning between 200gp and second level.
6. Townspeople do react differently to characters based on race. Be warned, half-orcs won't be able to use any of the townspeople's services. Social class, not so much, because that will vary and isn't very relevant on the frontier.
7. I've shrunk the distances between areas from 10-15 miles to about 3-6 miles.
8. All new areas!

Pete said...

Also, I'll post the hakpak to the NWVault on Friday or Saturday and will include a link here for you guys to download it.
Be warned it's about 50 meg. It contains roughly ten-thousand-three-hundred files.

Mr. Alex said...

Sounds great Pete! I probably won't be able to make it this week, but I'll shoot for next Sunday for sure.

Chad said...

Keep me posted Pete. I'll see what i can do about getting my computer updated earlier than that morning.

Pete said...

I looked into and a lot of sites claim that there is a maximum of four users on a Skype conference call. And that, while Ventrillo had better voice quaility in many instances, Teamspeak is the,"best choice for larger, geographically-dispersed groups of players with varying levels of Internet connectivity."
That's us!

Pete said...

UPDATE: We ran a test last night, and we got a dedicated server running and accessible to the outside. It doesn't list, but you will be able to "DirectConnect" in, when I give you the I.P. in an instant messenger or something.
I'm going to post the hakpak early next morning on the NWVault, I'll post a link here for that, as well as instructions for Teamspeak and what not.

Pete said...

Oh, right. And if it is cool with everybody, let's play at 2pm EST/ 1pm CST/ 11am PST and 8pm in Berlin.
I'll be on MSMessenger to give you guys the i.p.s and passwords you'll need.

Pete said...

*looks around sheepishly*
Okay!
NWVault has a 25meg file limit. And the archive of my hakpak is 64meg... sooo...
Players! I'll be on Messenger all morning, the same address as my hotmail address... we'll use their file transfer client to do this!
Also, we can run some VOIP and connectivity tests before game time.

Chad said...

I uploaded the files to my site so no one has to install anything or log in as pete.

http://www.madladstudios.com/SHLDLNDS.part01.exe
http://www.madladstudios.com/SHLDLNDS.part02.rar
http://www.madladstudios.com/SHLDLNDS.part03.rar
http://www.madladstudios.com/SHLDLNDS.part04.rar
http://www.madladstudios.com/SHLDLNDS.part05.rar
http://www.madladstudios.com/SHLDLNDS.part06.rar
http://www.madladstudios.com/SHLDLNDS.part07.rar
http://www.madladstudios.com/SHLDLNDS.part08.rar