[Long Term RPG Project] "Rosemarble"

[Jervan]

Hey guys! I'm making a Medieval Fantasy RPG server :)

It focuses on day to day life and survival more than excessive combat or material grinding. Town "Happenings", World exploration, NPC interaction and character development / survival will play a much bigger part if all goes according to plan.

I'd ask people that are easily hyped  to control their hype about this because I can see it taking a long time before even reaching v0.3 and my track record is terrible (I've not done something like this since 2009 though and like to think I've got a head on my shoulders now).

I plan to have three main components to the RPG:
The first component is your personal experience - your characters development and storyline. It's an RPG and your character is the main character, it should feel that way. You start aged 8 years old and will grow up as you gain experience. Death will also not feel like death so much as ctrl-k does right now, that will only be if you delete your character.

Second component is the upkeep of the town of Rosemarble - keeping NPCs happy and healthy else they should throw a tantrum that has a negative effect on the whole town (in one instance, the farmer is unhappy so he gets drunk and disorderly which hinders food production). There's currently 10 "Main" NPCs of this complexity planned at the moment, the rest will just serve you based on the weight of your Coin Bag.

Notes: There is a ghosting issue with bots so due to their (planned) complexity I will need to create a system which saves the bot location on the host client and then only spawns them when a player gets close enough to the bots last known location. I also need to get rid of the spawning noise somehow.

The third and final component are what I call "Happenings". Wildcards that happen in and amongst these two systems ranging from a weekend party hosted at the Inn to a full on Plague or Enemy Invasion. Maybe you have to get food into the town to stop the famine but there's a seige? Maybe you've been sent out on Patrol as a Knight during the fiercest plague ever seen. The three systems are designed to compliment each other and keep it somewhat procedural with fresh experiences every time.

It might sound a bit hectic with these three things all going at once. How do you prioritise? Won't it be too confusing? The answer to these is (thankfully) no. I've created a Journal item that, when equipped, displays 4 lines of text saying what you should do given from the perspective of your character. You can ignore this and say, decide to heal the Orphan Carer whilst you yourself suffer from a broken leg. It's up to you, but the Journal is there to help you prioritise. It will be a nightmare to fully implement but I'm up to the challenge, it basically only acts as a prioritised first-person character log.

That's the fundamentals out of the way, now here's how I've gone about starting it.

Code: [Select]

Roadmap to version 0.3 & beyond

#1 Character creation / deletion (1 Character per ID. Perma death to restart) [COMPLETE]
#2 Profile loading & saving [COMPLETE]
#3 Framework - enable / disable Gamemode [COMPLETE]
#4 Localised Chat [COMPLETE]
#5 Delayed Global Mail System (pigeons) [COMPLETE]
#6 Character Hunger
#7 Character Sleep
#8 Character Sickness
#9 Character Injury
#10 Update profile loading & saving
#11 Initial character inventory and items (4 classes)
#12 Update profile loading & saving
#13 Zone "Happening" - Famine (food shortage - collection of food introduced)
#14 Server-wide "Happening" - Plague (creation of remedies introduced - wizard: potions, ranger: herbs, guard: bandages, assassin: ointment)
#15 NPC Spawning
#16 NPC Eat
#17 NPC Sleep
#18 NPC Injured
#19 NPC Happiness Levels
#20 NPC Tantrums
#21 Character aging with levelling (current start 8, current cap 16)
#22 Update profile loading & saving
#23 NPC Help Quests
#24 Class "Happening" - Initial Wizard Lessons
#25 Class "Happening" - Initial Knight Duties
#26 Class "Happening" - Initial Assassin Missions
#27 Class "Happening" - Initial Ranger Quests
#28 Zone "Happening" - Inn Party
#29 Day / Night changes + Weather changes
#30 Zone "Happening" - Warlock Visit (Undead Rise from Graveyard)

V0.3 COMPLETE = Base game at early level (ages 8 - 16) completely playable after the 30 objectives

V0.6 COMPLETE = Extended game playable (up to ages 25). Areas added for each class as they go on more advanced missions.

V0.9 COMPLETE = Game complete aside from "Happenings" content and a Crafting systemI won't stick to the Roadmap like it's gospel because some things are more fun to do if I'm inspired about them but in general that's the logical progression I'm going to take with development. The main area (read: version 0.3s full map) has been 90% built.

I'm pretty sure people will ask about the dragon in this thread so I'll nip it in the bud and say it's still in development, I want it to be a truly amazing RPG moment in-game.

As for things I've done already, most is just half done which is what led me to actually get my head on straight and make the prioritised list of development goals. I'm building, modelling, scripting and animating all of this myself hence why it will take so long. But if it's fun it will be worth it, it's about the journey not the destination :)

Regardless, here's some Pics and Videos of some random stuff so far:
Crab

Shield

Messenger Pigeon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyqQYfvSxak&feature=youtu.be

That's all for now guys. There's a million problems to be found between here and the end, I'm very excited! The next development post will be in 1-2 weeks. Feel free to suggest things that you'd like to see, I'll take a note of everything if I've not already!

Special Thanks:
Mr. Nobody (for his Models)

[Ad Bot]

[lordician]

I like the idea of keeping up your town and their people.
I am not sure what your idea is of how people start but maybe make it a bit more like Terraria did.
By this i mean where if you meet specific requirements you can find or just plain out get one of the NPC's to join your town.
This way the player would start with a small village and first get the satisfaction out of growing his village into a proper town.
I don't want to say you should do it exactly like Terraria did, but i think the idea of growing your village into a proper town could add to the experience, of course only to the first part of the game.
Maybe something to look into when you got the basics of the whole town upkeep thing working like you want it. :)

This sounds very challenging (to make) but very interesting and therefor i wish you the best of luck.
Hope it gets somewhere in at least a bit workable state, of course, a full on finished product would be just the best to see, but it will take a lot of time, patience and effort.
Who knows what might or might not happen.

[Jervan]

Thanks :)
I've not thought much about players influencing the town growth / population - right now all that's planned is NPCs to already be there when you start your character. The happiness thing is basically a "Happening"s trigger. If the Wizards having a tantrum, he can make a storm / If the King is elated he can start a Festival. It just seems like a good way to have an overarching reward & penalty system if you run a lot of errands or neglect NPCs, respectively.

About players starting, they start as either a Squire, Student, Farmhand or Orphan depending on the class they picked. They start as an 8 year old boy / girl (gender is choice) and grow as they help the town and survive.

The only similarity I can think of (and it's a stretch) is that I plan to have visits (characters good and bad) to the town. So there could be a couple different people that visit and then a murder mystery. Or a dwarf market convoy arrives and beats the town prices. Temporary stuff like that would be easy examples of the "Happenings" system I'm going to make.

[Mr.Noßody]

I look forward to seeing what comes from those models.
Keep us up to date.

[Checko2100]

blacksmith is black
lol

[Jervan]

My brain now feels a bit mushy but #1, #2 and #3 are complete. Progress made will be saved and the starting character creation choices work (except for appearances but I've got to decide what I'm doing with that - might leave it open for players to change rather than have a RPG wardrobe). I also made a little addition so now if you activate your light while the RPG is active you pull out a lit torch with your left hand.

[Jervan]

Pic. Might make the player a mist form instead of a naked midget but at least it works!

[Jervan]

Did #4 and #5 on the list today. Gets a bit more fun from here on out I'm glad to say! I also made a cool "Visitor" feature, for people who don't want to jump right into character creation. Basically you start as a "Ghostly Spirit" while making your character and there's a way out of the room - where new players spawn - for people who just want to check out the server. It's pretty simple but I had to add in loads of fail-safes to avoid annoyances. Hat mod, local chat mod, my own codes and tools all had to be unavailable to ghosts, as well as a custom player datablock.

It's only a little nifty server thing but it's done right! I've been working on the classes (Knight, Wizard, Ranger and Assassin) and their equipment too. Hunger next! This is just a short post, not the in-depth look that I've promised within the next week :)

[Johnny Blockhead]

Seems lovey. I hope you go along with it!

[Jervan]

Told you it gets more fun :D

[lordician]

Told you it gets more fun :D

Ooooh firespray! :D

[Jervan]

I'm actually really proud of how magic is coming along. With the staff equipped, you right click to change element (currently just fire and water). Water will create a sphere around you and fire does a spray (which looks way cooler now). The water shield obviously kills the fire (this was easier to think of than find out how to code haha.. but I refrained from using the coding help section). On top of this, it remembers what element you were last in so if you unequip the staff while you're attuned to water you'll equip it with water when you take it out again.

I'm going to keep it to these two beginner elements with the attunement concept for now and add other magical items (a book and maybe a powerful one use item you will get each day). For the book I'm thinking I'll make the fire defensive (fire ring) and the water offensive (ice shards? or maybe a way to immobilise the foe. Post suggestions please! :D) The model is by Mr Nobody

I made a little video of it in action with a bonus thing at the end :)

LINK

[Mr.Noßody]

Wow, that's really cool.
My only issue are the sfx. They don't loop well into each other. The fire almost sounds like a machine gun.

[Jervan]

There's actually two sounds going on for the fire spray - the jet of flame and the crackle of the explosion / fire dying out. The explosion has to overlap for damage and visual purposes which means there's got to be some overlap in the sound but I can make it quieter if you think that would help? I like that the fire crackles out bit by bit when you stop, it's more magical than it simply fading away

[Mr.Noßody]

It might be a bit of audio overkill having two projectile sounds going off that close to each other.