Orcfor v.3

[Srgnt Rehab]

Hey, its me again.

I'm working on re-doing orcfor to make it much more prettier.

Pics speak louder than words, so here is a before/after tease.

Before(Top)/After(Bottom)

Before
http://img249.imageshack.us/f/orcforbefor.jpg/
After
http://img818.imageshack.us/f/orcforaftor.jpg/


I will update this as I progress. Thank you all for your support.

 

[Thothie]

Remaking the map before it's released... Epic.

Making those level-scaling/l4d scripts is on the list of to-do's... If not for those, we'd already be putting the map out this patch.

 

[Srgnt Rehab]

I try my hardest to give players the ultimate playing experience... I was getting a lot of complaints that the map was too hard, so I am remaking it... :roll:

The administration would like to apologize for Thothie editing your post, instead of quoting it, yet again. ><

 

[Thothie]

I try my hardest to give players the ultimate playing experience... I was getting a lot of complaints that the map was too hard, so I am remaking it... :roll:

Wait... What... You have a POPULATED version of this map, and you've been holding out on us!? ><

Could really use another map in this patch - I've been so desperate for another map that I don't have to write new scripts for that I've been trying to get Dridje and Supersoup to populate RUN.

 

[Srgnt Rehab]

Actually, my post was entirly sarcastic... I just don't want my first map release to look utterly terribad.

Also, thanks for editing my post >.>
I was feeling pretty guilty about saying it too.

 

[Thothie]

I thought it looked pretty good TBH - hence my thinking it'd be worth the extra scripting effort. Granted, I know you've learned a lot more tricks since then, and would like to employ them.

I suppose, since we've still not done your self-adjusting/l4d style goblins and orcs yet, it won't slow anything if you want to tinker with it some more. :/

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

How exactly are these self adjusting monsters going to work? I heard many eons ago level scaling was implemented but it was a total disaster. If these scripts work out, do you have plans to make every map self adjusting at least to some degree? I absolutely hope that is being considered. Perhaps the biggest flaw in msc is that it's a grind fest with a grand total of two maps per level range in the higher levels. It would be fantastic if maps like bloodrose, daragoth, aluhandra, etc. were constantly threatening to players, as well as being constantly rewarding (generally all the good looking/lore maps).

Hell... if nearly every map was rewarding in some way maybe someday we could remove map voting all together? It wouldn't be necessary, really, if decent xp was never too far away.

*continues to dream unrealistic dreams*

 

[FER]

Well we could have monster that deal percentage damage based on the players max hp, so every player would recieve around the same damage.

 

[Keldorn]

Ick, please do not start again with the map voting thing, just start hosting your own servers with voting turned off.

It's hard enough getting people to go anywhere with it enabled, I don't want to revert back to old days where the chance of lounging about doing nothing approached one as more and more players joined a server.

Next you'll want to prevent people from joining maps that they are not on/adjacent to, because newbies could still just join players on high level maps instead of walking.

And all for what? Walking to transitions?

It's not as if it gets any more immersive after you walk to a place the first time. (Might be different if you wanted to say, block voting for someone who hasn't walked to X map yet in a similar fashion to how fast-travel works in Oblivion or Fallout 3/NV, but really, this'd just a huge pain in the ass for people who already know where every place is.)

/rant



Anyway, looks good Srgnt. Don't know why you're being so self-conscious, from screenshots the map seems to look better than a lot of the maps currently ingame.

EDIT:

@FER: That would only make sense if the monster did a base amount of damage in addition to % damage, otherwise, having higher HP would be completely worse than having low HP, since it's easier to fully heal low HP players.

Players with 5 hp, for instance, would be immortal tanks if higher players supplemented them with a healing circle.

 

[Srgnt Rehab]

I'd rather not have everything adjust levels because... Many games that do that seem to lose my attention. I never get the feeling of growing stronger.

 

[Srgnt Rehab]

I thought it looked pretty good TBH - hence my thinking it'd be worth the extra scripting effort. Granted, I know you've learned a lot more tricks since then, and would like to employ them.

I suppose, since we've still not done your self-adjusting/l4d style goblins and orcs yet, it won't slow anything if you want to tinker with it some more. :/

Actually, you are the 4th person to say that to me... But I feel that I poorly constructed it and it has some near fatal issues... Also, ever since my old computer exploded, I don't have all the same textures so I can't work on v.2

Perhaps I should dig it up... or just start a new project? Maybe even, I could look at some of those half done maps from a few years ago.

 

[Age]

Could always be a scaling scaling system. You'll take a decent amount of damage at low HP since you're a wee little nublet (Still one-hitting people under say, 100HP), but you'll still take around 300 per milisecond at higher levels. The scaling would kick in around 200 HP where you might survive a few hits, would scale the damage a little higher at 300, but the amount of damage added is less per level, so you're not still getting three shot at 500 HP. (HP Values not to scale.)

Either way, map looks great, but if you can make it better, go for it.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I've been thinking about this, and I've decided I like the second picture better. The only thing I like about the first one is that the cave is made of a darker rock. I think your remake might appeal to me more, personally, if you made the cave darker. But honestly, everything you do is high quality, and it's pretty much among the highest quality msc can hope for. In my opinion, you'd be doing us a bigger service if you worked on another map instead of remaking your current one. You are talented and prolific as a mapper, and I think you could single handedly carry this mod through multiple patches (mapping wise at least) if you made multiple good maps instead of one perfect map.

That said, I admire perfection, so either way we win. I just think we'd win ten times over if you made multiple maps.

Well we could have monster that deal percentage damage based on the players max hp, so every player would recieve around the same damage.

I don't think this would be the best way of going about this. Enemies would need a boost all around. That would mean low levels would get raped at Heras if they joined a map started by high levels. But thats fine with me. It gives the high levels 10x more to do, and the low levels can go to their own server.

It's hard enough getting people to go anywhere with it enabled, I don't want to revert back to old days where the chance of lounging about doing nothing approached one as more and more players joined a server.

Valid point I hadn't considered. However, I'd like the game to save your last map location so if you have to leave a server for whatever reason, you can always vote to the last map you were on. This system might be even more lenient in some ways. If you had to leave a raid mid loda-4 you could vote straight to loda-4 because it was the last map you had visited.

Next you'll want to prevent people from joining maps that they are not on/adjacent to, because newbies could still just join players on high level maps instead of walking.

No, never. If we didn't have to host servers like an FPS game then yeah, but it would render msc completely unplayable if people couldn't even join a server.

And all for what? Walking to transitions?

To create a sense of adventure that does not exist in our current game, but used to exist when I played the original game years ago. Most everyone I know glorifies the free roam map type, and for good reason. They are the most fun and the most re-playable. I'd like to see MSC as a free roam game. Not an amalgamation of random, disconnected loot dungeons that have no history or proximity to Daragoth.
But also, because I think it would allow for the game to be rebalanced from the ground up in ways that aren't possible right now. Items, for example, have had a history of being stupidly rare because all you have to do is vote to the map that drops it and farm it over and over again. I don't think an item like Bearclaws would be so horribly boring to obtain if we actually had to adventure to Eswen Sylen, tread through the Hunderswamp and finally climb our way to the wall. For one, they would drop more frequently because the work required to obtain them is more intensive. It's also less repetitive.

It's not as if it gets any more immersive after you walk to a place the first time.

I disagree with this because generally, the first time you walk to a map (say thornlands) you can't just explore everything in one go, as you'll get killed. Not only is grinding less repetitive this way, but it compels the player to level because of the interesting surrounding regions.

 

[FER]

I don't think this would be the best way of going about this. Enemies would need a boost all around. That would mean low levels would get raped at Heras if they joined a map started by high levels.

i think you got it wrong, I didnt mean mosnters dealing % damage based on the total hp of all the players on the server, I just meant monsters dealing % damage based on ones max hp (I say max hp because if attacks would only drain a percentage based on players remaining hp, monster attacks would get weaker as the player has lower hp)

This way a monster with an specific attack of 50% would kill a lvl20 in around the same amount of hits as a lvl5 player

 

[Age]

This way a monster with an specific attack of 50% would kill a lvl20 in around the same amount of hits as a lvl5 player

Should take less hits to kill the level 5 imo.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

This way a monster with an specific attack of 50% would kill a lvl20 in around the same amount of hits as a lvl5 player

I feel like there is something artificial about this, but if it were implemented I might like it. Who knows? But I'm just not sure I like the idea of low levels being able to survive for as long as high levels in maps like lodagond or the wall. It doesn't make sense that the same creature at the same time can deal 500 damage to a high level and 50 to a low level.

 

[Keldorn]

To create a sense of adventure that does not exist in our current game, but used to exist when I played the original game years ago. Most everyone I know glorifies the free roam map type, and for good reason. They are the most fun and the most re-playable. I'd like to see MSC as a free roam game. Not an amalgamation of random, disconnected loot dungeons that have no history or proximity to Daragoth.
But also, because I think it would allow for the game to be rebalanced from the ground up in ways that aren't possible right now. Items, for example, have had a history of being stupidly rare because all you have to do is vote to the map that drops it and farm it over and over again. I don't think an item like Bearclaws would be so horribly boring to obtain if we actually had to adventure to Eswen Sylen, tread through the Hunderswamp and finally climb our way to the wall. For one, they would drop more frequently because the work required to obtain them is more intensive. It's also less repetitive.

I disagree with this because generally, the first time you walk to a map (say thornlands) you can't just explore everything in one go, as you'll get killed. Not only is grinding less repetitive this way, but it compels the player to level because of the interesting surrounding regions.

What you are talking about would be a completely different game, and would likely require a character wipe. (Which, for the last time, is not going to happen )

Would entail monsters taking a lot more time to kill, while giving a lot more exp, as it is completely impossible to level high enough to use all weapons without a lot of grinding, even in "ideal" exp maps.

Otherwise, you won't get the "compel players to level" effect, since there aren't nearly enough maps to do that.

(I think that MS:S is going in this direction, from what I have heard, though.)

i think you got it wrong, I didnt mean mosnters dealing % damage based on the total hp of all the players on the server, I just meant monsters dealing % damage based on ones max hp (I say max hp because if attacks would only drain a percentage based on players remaining hp, monster attacks would get weaker as the player has lower hp)

This way a monster with an specific attack of 50% would kill a lvl20 in around the same amount of hits as a lvl5 player

Once again, this makes no sense.

The level 5 would tank better than a level 20, and would likely be immortal if supplemented by a healing circle simply because of how healing scales.

 

[Srgnt Rehab]

Alrighty, should I start on my village map idea?
Ideas introduced:
-Quests
-sleeping at the inn to start a gauntlet series (I still need to know what enemies to use... orcs... bandits... or some other type of raider)
-Gambling (Hopefully)
-Just another village to this large continent (Seems to be logical)

Edit: Erm... Having a problem deciding where this village should be, anyone have suggestions?

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Well we could have monster that deal percentage damage based on the players max hp, so every player would recieve around the same damage.

This is a pretty bad idea if you ask me.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion works this way. The entire game scales with you, making every aspect of the game about exactly as easy. You can enter Oblivion with a low-level character and with a high-level character and the challenge will be exactly the same. It really gives no feeling of progression at all.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, on the other hand (which I consider to be the best game of all time) doesn't have this bull****. There's tons of areas you shouldn't even think of getting close to if your character is low-level because you'll get destroyed like it's nobody's business. It actually takes a long time for you to get a character strong enough to be able to beat the hardest parts in the game (Dagoth Ur and surroundings).

So that's why I'm pretty much against monster scaling in any form. It will just 'generalize' every challenge to the same difficulty.

But back to the thread:
Looks good, Rehab. It seems like you understood all the things in that long-ass PM properly =D

 

[Thothie]

Well we could have monster that deal percentage damage based on the players max hp, so every player would recieve around the same damage.

The problem with that sort of approach, is if you take that to it's ultimate extension, then there's no longer any point in leveling.

No, the tier system we had in mind was going to be a set of monsters who could adjust and rename themselves for four very specific tiers of power (probably, able to tangle with players of roughly, 250, 500, 750, and 1000+ hp), then have the end-game chests update themselves accordingly (probably with more anti-twink flags on them than usual - plus a counter to keep track how long the server had been at each tier). They'd really be separate monsters, in some cases with separate powers, but nonetheless similar, and under the same script. They'd adjust for the total HP present, rather than the average, so the map would be different depending on how many friends you brought with you, and how big they were.

The other part of that plan was to instill some sort of "team-work required" type monsters. Meaning, l4d style beasties that can neutralize a single player, but remain entirely vulnerable while doing so. One idea was a special goblin shaman with a lightning whip, that worked kinda like a Smoker. CL effect is going to be fun to code up though. ><

If these scripts work out, do you have plans to make every map self adjusting at least to some degree?

Again, having it rigged so every map scales kinda kills the point of leveling, to a degree - as you never get that "domination" level of power, plus it has proven neigh impossible to globally balance monsters and treasure in such a fashion. However, this is what Nightmare maps are for. Just seems we never get around to making those, for some reason. >_> I suppose, in the case of nightmare_sfor, in addition to some bitterness, rigging up the Undamael script as planned for it is a bit of a painful challenge, and I fully intend to do Orc For's scripts, before I go back to that. Still, we've sources for other maps that are ready to be "nightmared" that shouldn't require any new scripts at all - just aesthetic mapper work (such as Dridje's remake of Heras).

 

[The Man In Black]

Yeah, I pretty much hate that about Oblivion. I think monsters should scale to a certain extent, but certainly not to the point where they stay they exact same power as you.

 

[Thothie]

Well, in Oblivion's defense, it did at least create different nastier monsters to deal with you from time to time (at lower levels it'd toss the elder-scrolls equivalent of goblins and raptors out from the oblivion gates at you, but at higher levels, you'd get greater demons and elementals and such), and some monsters were capped at a certain level (even so, those rats got pretty mean). Granted, one of the bugger-ups with that was, if you leveled too quickly, or finished the game too quickly, you'd miss, literally, dozens of monster types (indeed, whole genres of monsters, in some cases).

The way they setup their quests, in their game world, had you traveling across it in entirely unpredictable ways, so they kinda dug themselves into a hole there and didn't have much other choice. Plus they let you finish the main line quest without doing even 10% of the other world quests, so the level range you'd have at the end of the game was entirely unpredictable. Morrowind ("the best game of all time") was much better at making sure you leveled to a certain degree before entering another area, and *MUCH* better at ensuring that you had seen a certain amount of action before you could do the final quest (although even it scaled, just not to the same insane degree).

I really get the impression they were concentrating more on the engine and aesthetics than the game with Oblivion, where with Morrowind, the engine and models were slopped together, and the game was all.

 

[zeus9860]

Alrighty, should I start on my village map idea?
Ideas introduced:
-Quests
-sleeping at the inn to start a gauntlet series (I still need to know what enemies to use... orcs... bandits... or some other type of raider)
-Gambling (Hopefully)
-Just another village to this large continent (Seems to be logical)

Edit: Erm... Having a problem deciding where this village should be, anyone have suggestions?

Elven town or a dwarf town, kinda bored of seeing human towns everywhere

Personally i would go for an Elven town, there is none so far and it would probably progress this game a little more if there was one to come out and was connected with the lore. It would also had more variety to this game. (See kray eldorad for example.)
Then you also got the choice of making a dwarven town... Which in my opinion wouldn't be bad either since gatecity is mostly useless right now.

Though the final choice is up to you, my thoughts on this is how people can't seem to take ideas of lanethan's lore to make maps, personally all that lore he wrote, makes me want to see most of them areas someday, which i really hope to.

 

[Thothie]

Well, there's really only one elven settlement ATM, and that'd be Kray Eldorad. However, if you wanna work on that, be my guest. Just leave a huge area to stick a dragon in, and aim at really obnoxiously fancy architecture. You'll also want a building for Galat's home branch.

Kray Eldorad is surrounded by the Eswen Sylen forest, however, and somewhere in said forest, I was thinking there maybe a small Eshu settlement of refugees, exiled or in hiding, from the main stream elves. Probably Ewok style villages (tree platforms, huts, rope bridges, etc.).

The Melanion ruins run beneath all of that, and are friggen huge. They may contain some pockets of Torkie Elves, but they are much less likely to be hospitable, given how the fervently the main stream elves hunt them, as well as the bounty hunters they encourage.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

Edit: Erm... Having a problem deciding where this village should be, anyone have suggestions?

Slightly South of the plains of Daragoth and Deralia. It would make sense for a town to form there because of the protection the castle would provide from orcish raiders.
I say, make it North of Edana, but South of Deralia and Helena, but make it so that you can't get to Helena or Edana because your path is blocked by the Heras mountain ranges.

If you made an effort to place this map by the abandoned mines near Deralia, you could come up with a good concept for a 'slum' type map. You could say a province of Deralia prospered here, exploiting the mines, but eventually the mines were exhausted. This caused the towns economy to collapse, leaving it in the desolate state you'd see in game.
Because the place is so run down, the Bandits could have an outpost here/near here. Also, this gives me an idea for your 'sleep at the inn' quest. If you sleep at the inn there is a random chance you could be ambushed in your sleep by a thief. This thief would scale with your level and it would be a one on one boss fight, alone in your inn room. Ideally, you'd make more than one 'thief monster' and it would be randomized so you never know which boss is going to ambush you. If that were the case, some thieves could be 'Wanted Criminals' and if you kill them, you can take their head to the Lord of the Land in Deralia for a reward?

That is my idea. Also, I think you should connect a tavern to this inn and fill it with (hopefully randomized) information about minor quests (Think the 'lost book quest' in the Edana tavern). Going into the pub and listening to rumors would give you random tidbits of information each time the map was loaded, pointing you in the direction of one quest or another. This would be a good place to add a springboard for quests in orc_for.

Yeah, I pretty much hate that about Oblivion. I think monsters should scale to a certain extent, but certainly not to the point where they stay they exact same power as you.

I agree with this. I do think monsters should scale, but at a slightly slower rate than the players. That way, at level 20 Heras would be easier than at level 5, but still challenging. At level 40 it would be a cake walk (at least for a level 40 player. A level 20 in that server would still get owned because the monsters still scaled).
Also, (most) monsters should only be able to scale to a certain extent. Obviously there should be no level 30 boars.

Well, there's really only one elven settlement ATM, and that'd be Kray Eldorad. However, if you wanna work on that, be my guest. Just leave a huge area to stick a dragon in, and aim at really obnoxiously fancy architecture. You'll also want a building for Galat's home branch.

Kray Eldorad is surrounded by the Eswen Sylen forest, however, and somewhere in said forest, I was thinking there maybe a small Eshu settlement of refugees, exiled or in hiding, from the main stream elves. Probably Ewok style villages (tree platforms, huts, rope bridges, etc.).

Does this mean that even small settlements don't exist? It makes sense that the elves should have only one city, but I'd personally like to see extremely small, backwater villages in the woods surrounding Kray Eldorad.
As for the Eshu settlement, perhaps you could place them high up on the mountains that surround Eswen Sylen? Maybe on the mountains in between Eswen Sylen and the Bleak (Or shender?), on the side facing Kray Eldorad?