Ooh, never even thought of doing this as a DO mod... heck, I never even *bought* DO
Would make it easier than coding from scratch, but then having never bought DO, I wouldn't know how moddable it really is...
What really got me going was the magic paths and how you have the spell level in each element (fire, astral, death, etc.) but then there are the seven or so schools of magic on the other axis, which form sort of a "tech grid" (for those of you familiar with SE4 modding
)... and then there are of course zero or more spells in each combination of element and school, so the magic would work something like cthAngband's Hermetic magic... oh, and of course there would be magic gems you could use to cast spells or empower yourself
As for the licensing issue, yes, I did want to release this if not under the GPL at least under some sort of freeware license; if anyone at Shrapnel or Illwinter thinks I'm stealing their ideas, I'll try writing a roguelike based on something else, but you do know that Zangband's magic system is just as heavily based on Master of Magic, don't you?
Religion? Hmm, to be honest, I wasn't even worrying about that at the moment, strangely enough for a game based on Dominions!
That would definitely be something to take into account...
Programming language wise, I personally prefer to work in C#, and I've already started some stuff using C# 2.0 (the new beta from Microsoft), just because it has console color attributes and generic classes and all kinds of handy stuff like that
yah laugh at me for using C# to write a roguelike, well if I had to use C or something it would *never* get done at all that's for sure!
As for "kind of system", I hadn't really planned that out yet, but my basic idea was to have 4 combat stats, determined from basic 6 D&D stats & the character's equipment. Combat stats are Attack, Defense, Damage, and Protection. Attack improves your chance to hit the enemy, Defense decreases the chance for the enemy to hit you, Damage is the damage you do, and Protection is the amount that hits are reduced in hitpoints. I kinda borrowed this idea off ADOM, as that's the only roguelike I've seen with an equivalent to SE4's "emissive armor" or Dom2's "protection" stat... but in my system, Attack, Defense, Damage, and Protection will all be rolled up as dice, not just Protection, so if your armor has a Protection rating of 2d4 and your shield is 1d3, and you get hit with a 3d5 broadsword, say, you could take no damage at all or you could take as much as 3*5-2*1-1*1 = 15-2-1 = 13 damage. (This helps prevent uber-armor which is impossible to penetrate, sort of like Dom2's open-ended damage rolls, as well as randomizing combat a bit more
)
Oh, and I do *hope* to have monsters wielding items, as both "monster" and "player" are subclasses of "creature", which contains equipment slots
But all I have right now is a simple stats display and a grid of green dots representing the ground...
Finally, I plan on having the game's interface quite... inspired... by Angband. But I do not plan on using any Angband code; I wouldn't want to spoil the game for myself by peeking at the code, and besides, it's all C anyway and I don't like C very much!