Magic Mod
 

I will shortly begin work on a new mod. It will focus on Wizards and Magic. "Systems" shall represent an entire planet. "Planets" shall be various sized cities. There population levels range from 1 to 15 million. You do not colonize planets. Instead, you send a "Subjugation Force" to take control of the already populated city. This is done using "Colony Modules". New "colonies" are filled with population by default. Very few weapons will be able to target cities. The only ones so far are going to be Plagues and such, which will be extremely expensive to research and build. The "Stars" will become Mana Nodes. Some planets will be inherently more Mana Rich than others. The way to get Mana will be to build Solar Resource generators that make Rads. I am not sure what I'll call them yet.

The mod will be designed to play on very small maps, like 10-20 systems.

The planet types are changed to:
Rock = Surface Cities
Ice = Subterranean Cities
Gas Giant = Ariel Cities

I am not sure yet what Atmospheres will be.

Resources are as follows:
Minerals = Basic Building Materials: stone, lumber, metal, etc. They will mostly be used for facilities and physical weapons.
Organics = Food: will be used to build facilities, and almost all units.
Radioactives = Mana (magical energy): used for casting spells, summoning monsters, etc.

The vehicle types are (of course) drastically altered:
Ships = Wizards. The only way to travel to other planets is by using teleportation spells at specific locations (warp points). Ship weapons will be very weak, forcing the usage of Spells (drones) and Monsters (fighters). They will have 1 engine, called a Spell of Mobility or something.
Fighters = Monsters, Illusions, Shadows, etc. Fighters become Summoned Creatures. I want to make these the main fighting forces. They will cost Mana and Food to summon.
Drones = Spells. Wizards will fight primarily by casting spells (launching drones). They will cost Mana exclusively. There will be 5 levels of spells. Higher level magics will be larger, requiring a larger drone (higher level spell).
Satellites = Traps, Wards, etc. They will be placed by Wizards and Cities as immobile defenses.
Weapon Platforms = Not quite sure yet.
Bases = Not quite sure yet.
Troops = Soldiers. Basic human (or other races) ground troops used to protect cities and invade enemy cities.

I have set this post up as a poll to see what kind of interest there is in this type of mod.

Re: Magic Mod
 

ooh, i was thinking about something like this today, here's what i came up with regarding cities and colonizing:
First from a gameplay point of view,
Colonizing would work in 2 stages, first the construction stage, and then the settling stage.
The construction stage would be done by units like engineers, they are able to builf certain size cities, ranging from tiny to huge, after the cities are built, colonist unit go and settle the cities with the first population, and get thing running. After that other people can be brought there by using conventional transports.

Now from a modding point of view:
Every system map would contain lots of asteroid fields, an asteroid field would represent a location suitable for citybuilding.
Then there would be some kind of engineer "component" with the stellar manip ability to create planets.
Suns could represent dangerous points on a planet, a volcano for example, then the "star destroyer" would be used on a component to trigger the volcano, and destroy the system.

Regarding bases, use them as fortresses, makes sense too, you can build 'm everywhere, it can store/house fighters/soldiers and resupply them.
Weapon platforms, guard towers perhaps?

Ships would have no weapons then, right?

Re: Magic Mod
 

oh, and where do i sign up to help with this mod? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Magic Mod
 

Those are some good ideas.

Ships would not at first have weapons. I think that they will be able to be outfitted with Magic Staffs and such, which would be rather large, taking up room that could be used for spell casting comps.

You can sign up here! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Magic Mod
 

I definately LIKE this idea. I'm thinking Racial tech's could be set for Class, like Druid (nature type magic and weapons), sorcerer (inherent type magic), wizard (scrolls and potions), Paladin (religion is on his side), etc.
Let me know how I can help.

PS - I am not graphically inclined but can do some minor work in that area.

Re: Magic Mod
 

I think if pictures can be found elsewhere and copied into the mod, that would be easiest. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Post any ideas you have here. Have much experience playing RPGs and such?

Re: Magic Mod
 

lordy, some people certainly like to iceskate uphill. these are all clever ideas that have been joked about in the past, but you guys could just buy a copy of Warlords or one of the hundreds of other fantasy strategy games out there.

well, more power to you, i suppose.

Re: Magic Mod
 

Nuts to you Puke! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

This won't be too hard to do. More like iceskating on a very slight uphill slope.

Re: Magic Mod
 

Puke - I DO buy as many of the fantasy and RPG games my budget can afford. I still think modding this game into that world would be cool!

Imperator Fyron - My first RPG was Might and Magic (the first one) and it is that game that turned me into the person I am today (PC/Network Tech with a vivid love of gaming). I believe that was 1987 and I have played mostly RPG and RTS since that time.

Re: Magic Mod
 

Ok. That is a lot of RPG history. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Gandalph and Lemmy:
What would you guys want to work on? Any particular areas of interest?

Re: Magic Mod
 

I don't know much about the 'Runesword' game (yeah, one of the 'other forums' http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) but could you use the pic files from there?? (maybe some of their authors would like to contribute).

I would but I am currently pouring all my fantasy efforts into NWN. (NeverWinterNights that is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )

I do have one idea to contribute, just that the Rate of Fire would be great for weapon speration (ie a Two Handed sword/Lance would do lots of damage but swing slower that a short sword/javelin). You could even impliment massive attacks such as breath weapons (dragons etc) as ROF 15,20 or 30 attacks.

[ July 16, 2002, 00:53: Message edited by: Deathstalker ]

Re: Magic Mod
 

True.

Do you mean you are making a NWN mod, or just spending all your time playing it?

Re: Magic Mod
 

I like this idea! I actually had a couple of ideas for making a D&D based mod, using schools of magic for racial technologies, like enchantment, alteration, conjuration, etc... but I like this idea better! I've played AD&D in some form (tabletop and computer games) since the mid '80's... so if you'd like some D&D infusion in your mod, I'd love to help out!

Quikngruvn

Re: Magic Mod
 

"Do you mean you are making a NWN mod, or just spending all your time playing it?"

Right now just playing the standard game (plus the dozens and dozens of user made modules). Once I have a better grasp of the 'C script' (wich may be never) I fully intend on making my own module. My current Character is a Monk/Cleric that is just tanking about everything (including dragons), about the only thing that gave her pause were those damn dark dwarves and the fire giants.

Re: Magic Mod
 

I can work with any of the data files and testing. I hate doing AI data files, but am quite capable of that as well. Getting the general order set would be the first thing, then mod in all comps, facs, etc. I will take a deeper look tonight and post more thoughts tommorrow.

Re: Magic Mod
 

Quikngruvn:
I was already planning on infusing D&D into it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Deathstalker:
Ever play multi-player?

Gandalph:
I ment more along the lines of "is there something you would prefer to do?" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Magic Mod
 

Cool! (I didn't want to assume anything. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

With schools of magic as racial techs, you could keep races from selecting opposing schools, such as taking both illusion and necromancy. Some magic could be generally available, like protection, divination, and other basics. Also, clerical spells could be generally available (every culture has holy men), though like Gandalph suggested, you'd pay for druidic spells. I need to pull out the books again to see what spells could be translated to SEIV....

Another thought I had was having a metallurgy tech, in which higher levels would allow working with better metals (bronze, iron, mithril, adamantite, for example). You could then have armorsmithing and weaponsmithing techs to work the metals, and have different qualities of each type of worked metal (basic, good, fine, and master). You'd start with basic bronze armor and weapons. Add a level of armorsmithing, and you could make good bronze armor. Another level of armorsmithing would give fine bronze armor and (with another metallurgy level) basic iron armor. And so on-- before even getting into enchanted items....

One more random thought: Minor Globe of Invulnerability could be a normal shield, an Anti-Magic Shell a phased shield, and a Dispel Magic spell a shield depleter....

Quikngruvn

Re: Magic Mod
 

my experience in RPG's?
uhm...very little in the fantasy genre, i've played fallout 1 and 2, i got Morrowind, but never got around to actually playing it yet.
I've played baldur's gate, found it too much combat orientated, so i stopped playing about 1/4 in the game.
Edit:
the only fantasy game i really liked was Kohan: Immortal Soevereigns, a very good strategy game, it's RTS, but has certain TBS aspects, like citybuilding, and composing your squads.
What i want to work on?
No particular interest, i've never really modded before, i did look in the data files a lot to see what's possible, and to write some programs.
I could help with ideas, and creating the data files, i have very little knowledge of the AI however...

[ July 16, 2002, 11:09: Message edited by: Lemmy ]

Re: Magic Mod
 

Once I wantet to creat somthing like this but more like the AD&D Spelljammer setting.
The Ideas I have was:

- Fighter are Magicuser that can travel the Dimensions
- Ships are Spelljammers
- A Planet is some kind of Dimension
- Alle Planets within one System are diverent dimensions of the same realm
- Drones are Summoned Creatures
- The void betwean the Planets is the Astralspace

Re: Magic Mod
 

Since planets are already inhabited but independent cities, atmosphere type should correspond to the race of natives.
For example, oxygen - humans, CO2 - elves, etc.
If you want to "migrate" city, you should either burn it and rebuild (planet destroyer) or exterminate natives - atmosphere modification plants. Oh, yes, you can ship some orks to hobbit city but how many could you squueze in ? - thats why mixed cities are domed.

Overall, it should look like MoM, each player is a Wizard and can choose what is his native race (home planet type).

Re: Magic Mod
 

Have you guys seen the lates news at MM site? Dungeon Odyssey looks something like what you're talking about....

http://www.malfador.com/do.html

Re: Magic Mod
 

Good idea, i have thought about this one myself rather a lot too so i would be willing to participate.

What would i do?
Well, i can do varied stuff. I can draw(3d, 2d) - out of boredom i once drew a nice staff in 3d and thats only boredom.
I have endless stream of ideas.
I can mod too though never created a mod of my own.

If interested in my help, e-mail me because i frequently forget to read this forum.

Re: Magic Mod
 

Perhaps atmosphere types could equate to the terrain of the city...

Oxygen = grassland
CO2 = jungle
Methane = swamp
Hydrogen = desert
None = mountainous

Or possibly stand for the prevailing weather of the city (hot or cold, dry or wet, tropical, arctic, etc.).

Not sure how that would apply to cities in the clouds, though.

Quikngruvn

Re: Magic Mod
 

NWM Multi-Play? Havn't tried it yet, and for that matter I rarely have the time. PBW is good enough for me for my Online gaming these days.

One more thing. Different races could be implimented by the 'Cultures' files. (ie, Elves could have +5% intelligence, Drow +5% Combat Bonus, Dwarves +15% Construction etc).

Re: Magic Mod
 

Puke ,
I loved warlords, (probably where I picked up the affinity for Gryphins). I have lost my copy. Is it still available? Is it still turn based?
Thanks

Re: Magic Mod
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I believe that Warlords Battlecry 2 is the latest incarnation, and should be for sale. unfortuneatly its a real time game. i could be wrong, and they may have just co-opted the title. in that case, the latest Version is probably warlords 3: reign of hero's.

the amusing bit is that warlords 2 had a mod that turned it into a battletech game, and another that turned it into a space game.

have any of you guys looked at TWE, the war engine, published by shrapnel? basically a reincarnation of the old Wargame Construction Set. you could always do something with that.

Re: Magic Mod
 

Anybody heard of Master of Magic? Made by the folks who brought you Master of Orion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Magic Mod
 

yep. good game. also lords of magic, from the makers of lords of the realm.

Re: Magic Mod
 

rdouglass:
DO looks disturbing...

Taera:
Any and all art and idea suggestions would be greatly appreciated. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Implementing the ideas is the easy part. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Quikngruvn:
Hmm... possibly. Those also wouldn't apply to "underground" cities. Perhaps something else could be done with the 3 planet compositions?

Deathstalker:
Multi-player is so much better. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Esp. if you are a Wizard. Send your warrior friends in as the grunts, and bLast the heck out of everything in sight. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Puke:
TWE probably costs money...
Lords of Magic is such a crappy game. Found it in a Bargain Bin, played it for a bit, and got sick of it immediately.

Ed Kolis:
MoM is an awesome game. If only they'd stop ruining Civ and try to make a MoM 2...

Re: Magic Mod
 

still thinking about how to handle planet composition and atmosphere, but i have a question first.
When creating a planet from an asteroid field, is there a fixed composition, your home type for example, or is it randomly determined?
Same question for atmosphere.

Re: Magic Mod
 

random

Re: Magic Mod
 

I have begun to compose ideas for this new mod and will post them shortly. I am about 80% done with my own mod I have been working on for a couple of months now. I will not be able to get started on this one until I finish my own, which should be soon. Feel free to email or PM me about this project. I am looking forward to getting under way.

Re: Magic Mod
 

I do not understand why people take polls about whether they should make a mod.

If you like an idea enough to put in the effort to make a mod for your own games, do it.

Other people wanting to play your mod too is just icing on the cake, IMO.

Re: Magic Mod
 

its easy. sometimes people dont want to do all the work just for themselves. sometimes they are looking to solicit other ideas to improve the mod, or to solicit help in making it. other times its a mod they want to play multiplayer and it will only be worth making if other people want to play it.

I used to maintain a couple single player mods that i thought were fun, but id never even consider working on a mod aimed at the single player experience now that 99.5% of my games are PBW.

Re: Magic Mod
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm... since cities will be subjugated, not colonized, perhaps make each atmosphere correlate to a certain deity that the indigenous populations and the players' empires worship. An indigenous population would tolerate many more player-empire citizens that share their same belief system than those who don't.... (You could make the same case with alignment as well.)

Quikngruvn

Re: Magic Mod
 

re: "Skating uphill" - I strongly disagree, for several reasons.

For one thing, I already know how to play SEIV and like it. If I went out and bought some other fantasy game I'd have to start at the bottom of the learning curve with a whole new community of players, who probably wouldn't be anywhere as nice as you lot=-)

More importantly, we've all known from the beginning that a complete graphical mod (ie "un-spacing") of SEIV was possible, but so far no-one has had the stones to actually implement it. If this mod is successfully released it will demonstrate just how incredibly moddable SEIV is, and maybe bring it to the attention of other gamers/ communities.

Also, if this mod proves popular, it will start to take the game in new directions - for example, magic players might have reasons to suggest features and patches that space players would never have thought of, but could benefit from hugely.

Basically, I think it sounds cool=-)

Re: Magic Mod
 

Well right. Thats a good thought.

As for the mod itself, we should get the thing going now before we lost the will to do it.
For now i need you to tell the basic stuff needed for the mod and i'll start drawing it.

I can give you ideas but what about? What do we need?

Re: Magic Mod
 

yep, Teara is right, don't let this thread drop to the 2nd page http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

In the meantime, i'm going on vacation tommorow morning, or night for the Americans, so i won't be able to post here at all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif .

Now about cities, will they still be subjugated, or created like i proposed in the 2nd post?
I personally would like to build my own cities, but then there should be an incentive not to build everywhere, i don't what sort of incentive would work in se4 though.

Re: Magic Mod
 

I think that this will have to be Human-Only, unless we abandon the spells (drones).

The way I see it, we have 4 options on what to do with planets and asteroids:

1) No cities are there naturally. You have to build them from asteroids, and then colonize them.

2) You can build smaller cities (tiny, small and maybe medium planets) from the asteroids, but the larger cities can't be built (it would take to long to do so). There would be some cities of all sizes out on the map already.

3) All cities there from the beginning. The asteroids would be farm sites and mines, and the cities are very unproductive in organics and minerals production. They would be where you build the mana nodes (better name needed) to get mana from .

4) All cities there from the beginning. They are more abstract (for less micro-management), so they can produce all resources well. Asteroids can be a supplement.

--------------------------------------------------

I created the poll because I had the feeling that this mod would have to be MP only. So, I didn't want to spend time making it if noone would like it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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Art needs to be made (or copied) for different types of wizards, spells, monsters, soldiers, etc.

Here I have posted 2 (very rough) preliminary data files:
VehicleSize.txt
PlanetSize.txt

[ July 19, 2002, 07:47: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Magic Mod
 

i have not been reading the entire thread, but here is an idea for you guys.

there is no reason that you have to have a sun in every system, except for stelar manip. there is also no reason to only have one, or to have it in the center. perhaps a sun could be a source of mana, and you could make extensive use of solar resource generaton (crystal tech) to harvest mana from the mana-wells. that way you would get more of it depending on how many there are, and you could tie it in to ships/wizards supply pool as well, if they have solar pannel type abilities to regenerate mana from available local sources.

Re: Magic Mod
 

Well, if you are going to allow the creation of "cities" from whatever you are calling asteroids, you will have to have a star, or an equivalent. There is a hard code restriction that will not allow planets to be made if there is no sun in the system. But I guess that falls under stellar manipulation, so technically you are correct.

Geoschmo

[ July 18, 2002, 21:37: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Magic Mod
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Temples ... ? Shrines ... ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I rather like this option, myself. Means resource-gathering will be a very different matter.

If you can go with a difference between in-system and out-system movement (in SF-genre terms), you can allow units that can only move about on their native world ... not move to other Planes, which would be the domain of Wizards / Acolytes / Adepts / etc.

Re: Magic Mod
 

I do like the Number 3 option yet the #1 sounds good too. Still #3 would make much different economy management.

As for art, sorry but my weak spot is the characters so i wont be able to draw wizards and those would have to be used from other sources.

Re: Magic Mod
 

Puke:
That is already a part of it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Pax:
ie: Fighters.

That option would certainly screw the AI over. But, since we are going to ignore the AI, that isn't too much of a problem. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Taera:
Ok, no problem. The original plan was to steal everything needed from other sources.

Another idea:
Not all systems will be Planets. Some will be other types of planes, like the 4 Elemental planes. There will be special "planets" in them that will make very poor colonies, with 1 mil pop and 1 facility. The system will have a lot of stars in it, so that one Mana Shrine (or whatever) makes a huge amount of mana (the Elemental Planes are raw magical energy, after all). Colonizing the planet(s) will yeild special technology (spells) that is related to the plane. Like the Plane of Fire could give Improved Fire Balls, or something.

Technologies are going to represent both actual technologies and spells.

No "Normal Planets" will have ruins. There may be special planets called Wizard Towers or something that have ruins on them that give a tech. But they will have 1 facility slot, and 1 mil population.

I think that 1 M population might be better viewed as 1,000 instead of 1,000,000. Then, it could represent the labor force that is loyal to your empire, or something.

Re: Magic Mod
 

So, is there anything going on?

I'd like to say that i like the system where the stars are "mana nodes", and actually that makes sense to me.

Re: Magic Mod
 

What do you mean "is there anything going on"? This is in the planning stage right now. I can code the stuff in no time at all once it gets planned out. I was hoping for more suggestions than I have received so far. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Oh and btw... come to the #se4 channel on the gamesnet.net IRC server. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I can be found there often.

[ July 19, 2002, 21:23: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Magic Mod
 

I threw this together to see if anyone might be interested in changing the mod to this point. This is a rough only, just so you get the idea.
Screenshot

Re: Magic Mod
 

ill make some graphics see how you like them.Dogscoff the first TC was my PI mod witch is going public this weekend in a nuetered beta-demo Version

Re: Magic Mod
 

I've laid some groundwork tech areas and revised a bit of the vehicle sizes. Here are the modded files thus far:

Components.txt
TechArea.txt
VehicleSize.txt

Re: Magic Mod
 

Heh lol maybe put in a sort of Seductress female wizard thing that specializes in converting enemy units.Beuty taming the beast sort of thing