Some more ideas

[Moo]

• 1. If it's a game with gems, and someone wins with more gems than is needed, show this in the lobby after the game.
• 2. A running total in the lobby of how many games each player has won.
• 3. "Guarded exit" variants that are guarded by zombies rather than bats.
• 4. "No lockpicks" option. You'd need to find the right key to open any locked metal doors.
• 5. A timer, probably modified by the zombie-activity setting, that means a zombie won't be resurrected for a time after it is killed.

4 might cause problems if the keys are generated behind the doors they unlock, but I don't think checking for that can be too hard to code..  8)

[Stephen]

Thanks for the ideas. I can't promise anything but I might look at some of the simpler ones at least.

One problem is that we are running out of space on the quest selection screen :) I suppose having multiple tabs might be the answer (quest objectives, dungeon settings, etc...)


Regarding 4, and checking whether keys are generated behind locked doors: In fact this is a problem even if there are lockpicks, because you could have a dungeon where all keys and lockpicks are generated behind locked doors.

Checking for this is more difficult than you might think. There are quite a few possibilities. For example if key 1 is behind locked door 1 then this is a "bad" case. But if key 1 is behind locked door 2 then this is a "good" case (assuming either key 2 or the lockpicks are available somewhere in the dungeon). If key 2 is behind locked door 1, and key 1 is behind locked door 2, then it's "bad" again. And so on. When you add switch-controlled doors to the mix then things get even more complicated.

At the moment, during dungeon generation, I do some basic checks for these kinds of situations, but I cannot trap every possibility. So a "bad" dungeon might still be generated (although it should be fairly rare). To solve this, if the knights haven't found the lockpicks within a few minutes I start randomly dropping extra lockpicks into the dungeon. (The original Knights did this as well.) This should (eventually) allow the knights to get through any locked doors.

Anyway most of this would be exactly the same if you had a "no lockpicks" option. I suppose the only change would be to randomly drop extra keys, instead of extra lockpicks, after a time.

[Moo]

One problem is that we are running out of space on the quest selection screen :) I suppose having multiple tabs might be the answer (quest objectives, dungeon settings, etc...)

The text size could be decreased quite a lot, without it becoming too small.. Also "premappped", "pretrapped chests" and "no lockpicks" could be tickboxes instead of yes/no comboboxes, then you could have two side by side.

As for checking for the keys.. How about.. Generate a dungeon.. Starting from each used entry point, "fill" each square. Add any keys found to a list of found keys. Add any found locked (metal) doors to a list of locked doors. At the end, check if any found doors can be unlocked, if so, repeat again with the door unlocked. If all keys have been found, dungeon is good. If it hasn't found all keys by the end, dungeon is bad. With today's CPU speeds, this shouldn't take long.

[Stephen]

Your suggestion for checking the keys is basically what I am doing at the moment. The only complication is when there are doors that are opened by pressing a switch. At the moment I just assume that the knights will always be able to reach the switch (without checking). This theoretically means we might miss some more complicated cases (for example: suppose you had to press a switch to be able to reach key number 1, but that switch was itself behind a door that needed key number 1 to open.) I don't know how likely that sort of situation would be in practice though... (presumably not very!).

I suppose we could check for switches in the same way (i.e. make a list of all the switches we have reached during the 'fill') but it gets a bit complicated (especially with some of the gnome book rooms where switches have complex effects) so I haven't bothered so far.

[Moo]

Ah, cool.. So how about just putting the no-lockpicks-or-spawning-keys option, and see if anyone ever gets an impossible dungeon.
As far as I know, the doors between the dungeon segments are always wooden. So if you can get into a segment with switches, you would always be able to get any keys there.. I don't remember any segments that had both locked-metal-doors and switch-controlled-metal-doors!

[Stephen]

You are probably right, I am probably just worrying about nothing here.

I think I will follow your suggestion of just trying it out and seeing if an impossible dungeon ever happens. If it does, we can work out what to do then :)

[K9]

You guys are Awesome and ingenious programmers!  I am glad you're sharing your ideas in the public forum.
Seriously, I love reading this type of thing - sharpens the wits (even though I'm not programming the game, I get ideas that enlighten my non-exciting work programming).   ;D

I'm sad to say I haven't been around here during the past 'year' (<gulp>).. but if I can get some gaming action going soon I will definitely be around more often.  My hiatus is relate to insane amount of traveling and 'insufficient resources' (ie frequently weak internet/old laptop).

Your posts, even from a year ago are inspiring and I hope there is still a good following out there so I can 'play' again!

[Stephen]

Thank you for the compliment :)

As regards following, well it's not huge, but games do get played on the server. In fact, checking the logs I see that 43 games were started on the server since Sep 17 (I don't know how many of those were completed though). I keep meaning to put a list of "recent games played" on the home page, to make this a bit more visible, but so far haven't got round to it.

[Romanio(Rus)]

Hello all.
I'm not sure that I write in the correct topic, but still want to put their ideas to the discussion concerning the new wands (I hope, as long as they are not very much to get lost in them):
1) Wand of bats (It is similar to wand of undead, but it turns the player into a bat, bats are afraid to do the media wand, etc.)
2) Wand of poison (When you hit this wand closed doors or the trunk is imposed on them from the venom of a trap)
3) Wand of mechanical knowledge (at this stroke of wand trigger all the shooting stationary traps (Well, or you can make these traps worked well for them when the strike of the wand))
4) Wand of Stun (When you hit a player, he is immobilized for 1-2 seconds)

Maybe some of these ideas crazy or hard to do for technical reasons, but I would like to see the players decide whether they should wands a little bit more in the game, or four currently existing is enough?

PS sorry for Google translate and my grammatical errors :)

[Romanio(Rus)]

And more, I have drawn sprites wands ...
What do you think about whether to use them in the game?
Wand of securing:

Wand of open ways:

Wand of undeath:

Wand of destruction:

Wand of bats:

Wand of poison:

Wand of mechanical knowledge:

Wand of stun:

I understand that differences are not large, but it will be easier to distinguish wand from each other.
Link to an archive with all the wands:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18750030/Wand.zip

[K9]

Your ideas sound like fun, nice graphics too. 

[Romanio(Rus)]

Thanks, I tried :)
May be you have suggestions / corrections / additions about the effects wands, or any wand as you think shouldn't be added into the game?

[K9]

All the new wands you suggest and each drawing are unique.  Each new has cool feature that will be fun when Stephen has time to implement the full Multi-wand effect in single game (reference the other chain of topic with ImpassIve_rus). 

Anything that can be added to the game as optional is worth the fun and variety for gameplay.   Thank you for sharing the plans and I hope we can play with these features.  I don't recall much discussion around wands, just a few things long time ago.

I will try to think of some too while playing next time.

I love reading your ideas and for now just have laughs imagining until reality.

[Romanio(Rus)]

Well, I'll continue to try to please you with their ideas, maybe some of them will come into force in the game :)

[K9]

I hope it will not be too difficult to see these wands as 'user sprite option'.
You and others have drawn some interesting things that would be fun.

I imagine it is cool to have a radio-button on the main screen, maybe next to each player that would indicate 'user sprite patterns' from only that player.

Then at run time the server will load the client side custom graphics to share during game.  That will work for existing wands and objects and as Stephen mentioned in other section there is lua enhancement 'i think almost able to adapt new features', such as additional wands.

I hope you can make it back to regular games, they will be earlier maybe help fit your schedule easier.