It has been awhile since I visited Disapproving Rabbits, so I went there to get my fix of bunny cuteness. That was when I spotted this chuckle-worthy video clip.
Enjoy!
Friday, September 12, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Game Design: Kenshu's Revised Skill System
After reading my prior posting at RLMMO, I wasn't all that happy with the system I thought up. So I have revised it somewhat.
Because of my poor ability with colors, I've never installed anything on my computer to work up a graphic. As such, I'll have to try my best to describe what I thinking. I am also going to assume that if you are reading this blog you are somewhat familiar with MMO Gaming. If not, feel free to ask questions about any terms in the comments.
The Skill Trees
Imagine you are creating a character for the game. First you pick out your race, then you are given some points you can spend to adjust you attributes (strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc). After this process you reach a point where you are given the ability to choose 4 skills. At this point the screen takes you to a place where you can choose from 5 different skill trees.
The first tree: Attacking Skills
The second tree: Defensive Skills
The third tree: Support Skills
The fourth tree: Non-combative Skills
The fifth tree: Attribute Skills
The trees themselves expand upward, occaisionally branching out into new skill lines. Sometimes the skill lines will end, when you have mastered that particular line, but the tree itself never comes to a point. Instead it always grows upwards or spreads out.
From here, following this metaphor, you can choose which skills to take; however you can't go straight to the fruit of the tree (the master skills). You first have to start with the trunk (basic skills), then build up from there and choose the branches (intermediate skills) until you get to the leaves (advanced skills). After that, the fruit is available.
Basicly, the skills in each tree will require a certain condition before you can choose them. This includes the most basic of skills. Let's say you want to take the tumbling skill from the defensive tree. Well, if you decided to leave you character with a low dexterity to improve another stat you might not be able to get tumbling. Want to pick up some basic first aid? Drat, maybe you should have put some points into intelligence instead of focusing on strength.
Every skill will have a requirement. It might be just a certain base attribute point, it might be that you need to have another skill first, it might be both. Does this mean that you will forever be limited from picking up that first aid skill because you started with a low intelligence? Not at all.
Attribute raising skills
Since most MMOs will have gear to improve you attributes above the base; but since gear can be removed easily and replaced those will not count for skill requisites. However, in the Attribute tree there will be skill lines that you can get to improve your attributes. Studying 101 for intelligence, Aerobics for Endurance, Video Gaming (heh) for Dexterity, Meditation for wisdom; whatever you want to call them. What these do is to improve you BASE attribute.
So now you can increase your base attributes and start picking up all the skills, right? Wrong!
Experience Points (XP)
In order to progress along a skill tree, you need to use your skills. This is like practicing. This means you need to use your attack skills to earn attacking XP, defensive skills for defensive XP, etc. Initially, I was thinking that only 4 different types of XP; but I now believe you might need more specific XP for certain branches. Setting up a conversion system is possible.
Let's say you have been using you rifle while in combat, earning you lots of Rifle XP. You want to pick up either the Combat Tactics skills which requires Attacking XP or you want to get Advanced Field Medic skill which requires Healing XP. You can take the Rifle XP that you have accumulated and convert that into it's base type which is Attacking XP. However, you can't convert that into Healing XP. So you can either choose to convert the right amount of XP to pick up the Combat Tactics skill or you need to start working on your Healing XP to get that Advanced Field Medic skill.
So how does this work with the attribute increasing skills? Do I need to make my character sit down a read books for hours on end in order to increase his intelligence? Oh, goodness no!
Attribute Training
I can't think of anything worse than making players press a single button a thousand times to make their characters do enough jumping jacks to gain the Aerobics skill. That is just sick and wrong. It would be better to just instantly give those skills out, but I am against that as well.
Instead the Attribute tree will need a different system. For this one, I favor a time based system.
As an example, you want your character to gain the Beginner Aerobic skill, the bottom most skill in order to increase your Endurance (a.k.a. Constitution). You go to your skill screen and click on the box. You are then notified that it will take 1 real hour for your character to learn that skill. So you accept that condition and start the countdown. While this is counting down, you are now free to take your character and play around some more. You don't have to just wait for the countdown, feel free to enjoy the game. The only thing is you can only train in one skill at a time.
Let's say you want your character to learn the Billy Blanks Tae Bo skill, a much more advanced skill. That skill might take a full 24 hours for character to learn. Of course, this includes time spent while you are logged off, so that isn't as bad as it might seem.
Ok! Now you are all set to have your character improve his/her attributes and are well on the way to learning all the skills in the game! Wait a minute. Not so fast.
Each character will be given a pool of Skill points; the same amount for every character. Each time you learn a skill you will lose a skill point. This includes using a skill point for each of the Attribute raising skills. If you want to learn all the skills in the Attacking tree, you might as well kiss every other tree goodbye as you will likely have no skill points left. This means that you will need to think a bit on how you want your character to develop.
Well, this is my new and (hopefully) improved skill system. Let me know what you think of it!
Because of my poor ability with colors, I've never installed anything on my computer to work up a graphic. As such, I'll have to try my best to describe what I thinking. I am also going to assume that if you are reading this blog you are somewhat familiar with MMO Gaming. If not, feel free to ask questions about any terms in the comments.
The Skill Trees
Imagine you are creating a character for the game. First you pick out your race, then you are given some points you can spend to adjust you attributes (strength, dexterity, intelligence, etc). After this process you reach a point where you are given the ability to choose 4 skills. At this point the screen takes you to a place where you can choose from 5 different skill trees.
The first tree: Attacking Skills
The second tree: Defensive Skills
The third tree: Support Skills
The fourth tree: Non-combative Skills
The fifth tree: Attribute Skills
The trees themselves expand upward, occaisionally branching out into new skill lines. Sometimes the skill lines will end, when you have mastered that particular line, but the tree itself never comes to a point. Instead it always grows upwards or spreads out.
From here, following this metaphor, you can choose which skills to take; however you can't go straight to the fruit of the tree (the master skills). You first have to start with the trunk (basic skills), then build up from there and choose the branches (intermediate skills) until you get to the leaves (advanced skills). After that, the fruit is available.
Basicly, the skills in each tree will require a certain condition before you can choose them. This includes the most basic of skills. Let's say you want to take the tumbling skill from the defensive tree. Well, if you decided to leave you character with a low dexterity to improve another stat you might not be able to get tumbling. Want to pick up some basic first aid? Drat, maybe you should have put some points into intelligence instead of focusing on strength.
Every skill will have a requirement. It might be just a certain base attribute point, it might be that you need to have another skill first, it might be both. Does this mean that you will forever be limited from picking up that first aid skill because you started with a low intelligence? Not at all.
Attribute raising skills
Since most MMOs will have gear to improve you attributes above the base; but since gear can be removed easily and replaced those will not count for skill requisites. However, in the Attribute tree there will be skill lines that you can get to improve your attributes. Studying 101 for intelligence, Aerobics for Endurance, Video Gaming (heh) for Dexterity, Meditation for wisdom; whatever you want to call them. What these do is to improve you BASE attribute.
So now you can increase your base attributes and start picking up all the skills, right? Wrong!
Experience Points (XP)
In order to progress along a skill tree, you need to use your skills. This is like practicing. This means you need to use your attack skills to earn attacking XP, defensive skills for defensive XP, etc. Initially, I was thinking that only 4 different types of XP; but I now believe you might need more specific XP for certain branches. Setting up a conversion system is possible.
Let's say you have been using you rifle while in combat, earning you lots of Rifle XP. You want to pick up either the Combat Tactics skills which requires Attacking XP or you want to get Advanced Field Medic skill which requires Healing XP. You can take the Rifle XP that you have accumulated and convert that into it's base type which is Attacking XP. However, you can't convert that into Healing XP. So you can either choose to convert the right amount of XP to pick up the Combat Tactics skill or you need to start working on your Healing XP to get that Advanced Field Medic skill.
So how does this work with the attribute increasing skills? Do I need to make my character sit down a read books for hours on end in order to increase his intelligence? Oh, goodness no!
Attribute Training
I can't think of anything worse than making players press a single button a thousand times to make their characters do enough jumping jacks to gain the Aerobics skill. That is just sick and wrong. It would be better to just instantly give those skills out, but I am against that as well.
Instead the Attribute tree will need a different system. For this one, I favor a time based system.
As an example, you want your character to gain the Beginner Aerobic skill, the bottom most skill in order to increase your Endurance (a.k.a. Constitution). You go to your skill screen and click on the box. You are then notified that it will take 1 real hour for your character to learn that skill. So you accept that condition and start the countdown. While this is counting down, you are now free to take your character and play around some more. You don't have to just wait for the countdown, feel free to enjoy the game. The only thing is you can only train in one skill at a time.
Let's say you want your character to learn the Billy Blanks Tae Bo skill, a much more advanced skill. That skill might take a full 24 hours for character to learn. Of course, this includes time spent while you are logged off, so that isn't as bad as it might seem.
It might even be possible for the other skills to be "studied" like that as well. Going back to the Advanced Field Medic example. Let's say you choose to use this skill for your character's study time. As a more advanced skill it might take a few real days for your character learn it. However you can speed this up by also gaining healing XP at the same time.
Ok! Now you are all set to have your character improve his/her attributes and are well on the way to learning all the skills in the game! Wait a minute. Not so fast.
Each character will be given a pool of Skill points; the same amount for every character. Each time you learn a skill you will lose a skill point. This includes using a skill point for each of the Attribute raising skills. If you want to learn all the skills in the Attacking tree, you might as well kiss every other tree goodbye as you will likely have no skill points left. This means that you will need to think a bit on how you want your character to develop.
Well, this is my new and (hopefully) improved skill system. Let me know what you think of it!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
My MMO design links
Well, I know I had blogged my ideas before, but apparently it was on my MySpace blog (which I have abandoned). Thankfully, I also posted them on RLMMO, so I will link to those here. Comment on this post at your own risk. I am tempted to just repost my ideas here completely and if I do I'll delete this one.
So now you have done everything, why continue paying?
How to get players immersed into your game
Concept for a skill based system
Planetary Control Edition
Interdependence and Communities
So now you have done everything, why continue paying?
How to get players immersed into your game
Concept for a skill based system
Planetary Control Edition
Interdependence and Communities
Bah!
Well, darn it all! I just visited the blog of one of my favorite Star Wars Galaxies correspondents, fellow Master Ranger Owen-Lars.
So why did I use "Bah!" as the title to this post? Because he just had to go and ask a question that got my creativity juices stirring again. Now I'm going to have to dig up the old ideas I had and see if I can flesh them out again. Of course, I'm too damn busy to waste time on non-paying endeavors, which means I'll likely be getting less sleep.
Oh well, if I really didn't want to do it, I wouldn't.
Now, where the heck did I put my notes on my crafting system I was working on last year?
So why did I use "Bah!" as the title to this post? Because he just had to go and ask a question that got my creativity juices stirring again. Now I'm going to have to dig up the old ideas I had and see if I can flesh them out again. Of course, I'm too damn busy to waste time on non-paying endeavors, which means I'll likely be getting less sleep.
Oh well, if I really didn't want to do it, I wouldn't.
Now, where the heck did I put my notes on my crafting system I was working on last year?
Monday, August 11, 2008
Still in the mood
Since I'm still in a Beyond Good & Evil mood, I thought I'd post some of the YouTube clippings of the music heard in the game.
My favorite one is heard in a place called the Akuda Bar.
Then there is the Mammago Garage song.
And the minigame songs
My favorite one is heard in a place called the Akuda Bar.
Then there is the Mammago Garage song.
And the minigame songs
Going through my games
It has been awhile since I played any of my console games, so today I looked through my library of games and picked out an old favorite of mine.
Beyond Good and Evil.
I think that when I just want to sit down and have a good time, this is the game that tops the list. It has your standard action platform game, it has hovercraft racing, hovercraft obstacle courses, a fun air hockey like game, and an unlockable ball game. Plus the voice acting is one of the bests I've heard and the graphics aren't bad considering the age of the game.
So, I popped the game in and spent the next 4 hours having the time of my life. Then the melancholy hit. This is a great game with a cliffhanger ending, but because of the lack of marketing it didn't sell as well as the publishers wanted. Because of that, the sequel was never made.
I decided to go online and moan about about the need for a sequel. And that is when I found it! The Beyond Good and Evil 2 trailer. Not much is shown here, but one thing is certain. No matter what console this game goes to, it will be enough to get me to buy it. Even if it is Xbox.
Beyond Good and Evil.
I think that when I just want to sit down and have a good time, this is the game that tops the list. It has your standard action platform game, it has hovercraft racing, hovercraft obstacle courses, a fun air hockey like game, and an unlockable ball game. Plus the voice acting is one of the bests I've heard and the graphics aren't bad considering the age of the game.
So, I popped the game in and spent the next 4 hours having the time of my life. Then the melancholy hit. This is a great game with a cliffhanger ending, but because of the lack of marketing it didn't sell as well as the publishers wanted. Because of that, the sequel was never made.
I decided to go online and moan about about the need for a sequel. And that is when I found it! The Beyond Good and Evil 2 trailer. Not much is shown here, but one thing is certain. No matter what console this game goes to, it will be enough to get me to buy it. Even if it is Xbox.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Shiny and new
I just found this excellent webtv show called The Guild. Here is their official website. The series is about a guild of MMO players and about their real and online lives.
And as a special treat, here is the first episode.
And as a special treat, here is the first episode.
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