Gauging interest in a Dominions Roguelike...

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Gandalf Parker said:
Any consideration toward doing something marketable?

Thanks for reminding me. I'll probably NOT help if the license is not GPL or similar. Specifically, I do not usually contribute to "BSD"-licensed projects. Which should not deter you at all, of course, as I'll probably be more interested in helping Planetscape in any case

[Ed Kolis]

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!

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Ed Kolis said:
Ooh, never even thought of doing this as a DO mod... heck, I never even *bought* DO

[...]

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!

Well then, I'm not going to help. I don't do freeware, and I certainly don't do Java or any of it's clones.

Java or C# --- they're like C++ without the cool features and limited libraries. What's the point? In any case I'm not laughing... If I was going to write something like this from scratch I would have chosen Perl, Ruby or maybe Python.Why mess around with lowlevel stuff for a game that's not even graphics-intensive?

And writing a game from scratch when there's already plenty of suitable engines and similar games is just a waste of time --- IMO.

Good luck --- and I don't let me cynism deter you

[magnate]

I'm a huge fan of roguelikes and will gladly help. I can't code for toffee, but I can do ideas, docs, tables and balancing. Let me know when you get started.

CC
(P.S. I never finish any projects either, such as rewriting the random artifact code for Angband, so I know exactly how you feel.)

[Ed Kolis]

Cool! Yeah, I'll definitely need idead, docs, tables, and balancing!

I'd post what I have so far but it really doesn't DO anything other than display a grid and some player stats/inventory, and who wants to download a 25MB .NET runtime for THAT? (Yes, I did say runtime - the SDK I had to download was 10 times that size! Price you pay for ease of programming, I guess...)

[Kristoffer O]

You should take a look at Dungeon Crawl. It is a very good game.
Magic is fun. You have several schools and when you use skills you use up experience points and get increases and eventually learn better magic.
Armor has a random value. Prot 15 protects 1-15. You have an evasion value etc.

[quantum_mechani]

My 2 cents:

-As much as possible of the Dominions battle system should be used.

-Try to only use Dominions units as monsters (not too hard considering all the myth Dominions draws on)

-A random god generator, preferably based on the current god title system. Each game a set of gods would be rolled, and each title would add a diferent blessing/curse they could give (so, one with the title 'god of courage' could bless you to resist fear effects, or bestow a curse that any creature is able to scare you).

One thing that would be a bit difficult to transfer is blood magic.

[Ed Kolis]

Blood magic? Well, assuming I don't manage to get some sort of pets/companions system in (which would be perfect for blood slaves ), I can always have blood magic drain the caster's HP or Constitution...

[rylen]

Further thoughts -- everything follows from the story. Let me sketch some increasingly big ideas.

V1: To kill a god. A Dom2 prequel. You, an asperant, climb through a series of challenges to petition the great god. A nice, linear dungeon crawl.

V2: For the greater glory. You are an assassin / army leader. At game start you pick a faction and a chasis. You pick or are assigned an opponent faction. You enter their land, avoid or defeat patrols, find the fortress, move through it, kill their Pretender, and go home.

V3: Dom2 from the ground up. Again you are an assassin / army leader. At setup you spend points on yourself, and paths and scales for your pretender. The compter does the same for other factions. Then you go to neighboring lands, find several flags, and claim the place for your faction. You may poke around heavily and find magic sites which give your pretender gems and bonuses. As you wander around, your pretender does research, recruits units to guard the places you've grabbed, and summons increasingly powerful critters. Eventually, you find a different factions land. Capture or skirt their provinces and find their keep. Enter, kill their pretender, taking the magic item that allows him to seek godhood and bring it home for your guy. Rinse and repeat.

While your doing that, your pretender is securing some lands and buying some troops. The other factions also have their Rogue-Heros and armies trying to grab and regrab lands and kill the other guys.

----

What I really like about this idea:
1 -- it replaces depth based difficulty with time based difficulty. The nearby provinces are a challenge for a starting character. The first faction you fight has some basic troops and commanders. Much later you'll face experienced elite troops, equiped commanders, and strong summons. You'll also have the option of using your own nations troops.
2 -- it recreates the story from a different perspective
3 -- it has a Dom2 choice b/w short and long term power. Having a high path, good scale boss means great assistants and items, plus secure provinces in the long term but a weak chasis and equipment. Or vice versa.

----
Yeah, way too complex for the start. But I think the narrative is the big thing.

Rylen

[Endoperez]

I don't believe that one should be creating a pretender/god in the RL. That closes of the possibility to become one! Well, you could also be *playing* one, but we have Dominions for that, don't we? The view of commander/soldier/assasin for your god does give a whole new view to the game.

I also like the idea of a story. To blind the opposing Cyclops that was harassing your homeland with his fiery armies, to destroy the spirit that guided Pythiumian forces past defending armies to destroy your home... Really, that sounds great! And you can have *16* main targets!

About races and character classes, what about the already-suggested Abysian, Caelumian, Pythiumian etc. with Gladiator, Legionaire, Theurg, Hydra Trainer... for Pythium. Each nation would have some classes unique to them. Crawl-like classes that show what the character has learned in the past but that don't affect what he can (or will) learn might not suite Dominions very well, but adding some of it would not hurt...


About magical sites: many roguelikes have Vaults, known by different names in different games. They are huge rooms filled with many/stronger than usual monsters, often guarding great treasures. "You discover a way to get past the fiery wall, and find a way leading to the Tar Pits. There are two experienced Fire Drakes and a huge Fire Elemental guarding it."

Sorry if these ideas distract you, I don't except you to be far enough to implement any of these yet. I just am quite excited about the idea...