The Dark Unknown: Searching Bodies, Loot, and Combat
Adam Burr has posted a couple of updates about his Ultima-inspired tile-based RPG, The Dark Unknown, to the Ultima Dragons Facebook page.
In the first update, he talks about the addition of a “search body” feature and loot drops to the game:
Ok, now I can write a proper update for Dark Unknown. There is now a Search command, loot drops when things die, and you can search the corpse and pick up the loot. Not too shabby. Need to make the loot tables more robust (right now I can’t yet say “15% chance of one of these items”, plan to add that tonight), and add dropping loot in chests (which are (U)sed rather than (S)earched), but still. Loot drops. 🙂
Also, in a move that I am curious what people think of- I’ve added a flag “show searched” to some items- corpses, it’ll be in bookshelves and other searchable furniture. What it does is, when you (S)earch something, if you later look at it, you’ll get “You see a bookshelf [Searched].” It’ll go away when you leave the map- if you search a town, leave, and come back, all of those flags will reset. But if you’re searching through someone’s house, or just searching all the corpses on a battlefield, this’ll help you keep track of which ones you’ve already checked. What do you think? Useful, or handholding, or clutter?
In a second, more recent update, he also talks about combat and asks for input from interested members of the community:
Combat always takes in on a “zoomed in” map. If you’re already in one (like a dungeon), it just takes place as you walk around. But if you’re in one of the “not to scale” maps (the world map and island map), it does the U3-5 thing of zooming you in to a combat map.
The question is: how should I handle leaving the combat map?
Basically, I see three main options: you’re allowed to walk off the field any time (U4 style, but with no karma mechanism for punishing you for choosing this); you can try to escape but there will be an opposed check against the foes that remain on the field (U5 style, I think- did 4 have you sometimes fail when you tried to leave a battlefield? I don’t remember for sure now); and you can never leave a battlefield if there are living opponents (U3 style). Loot is going to drop like in U5, so you won’t automatically return to the main map when you’ve killed everyone- need to let you pick up the spoils. At that point I might allow ESC to get you out like in U5, but that’s a side issue.
I’m leaning towards the “you can try to run but you might not succeed” method- neither trapping you in an unwinnable fight, nor making overland combat completely non-threatening. The specific mechanics of it, I’m not sure yet. I’m thinking it should take into account your level and Dex, and be opposed by something that factors in the level and dex of either the strongest or closest foe, with a bonus for each additional living foe. (It is worth noting that, as usual for an Ultima, death is mostly a slap on the wrist- resurrection at the castle. So trapping you in an unwinnable battle is not the end of the world, but still frustrating. It may happen in a dungeon, but that’s dungeons for you. Level up and come back.)
If anyone has an opinion or suggestion, I’ll be happy to hear ’em!
Also: a combat screenshot!
Fight!
I don’t know how often the good Mr. Burr checks out Aiera, so if you leave your thoughts here for him I’ll make a point of pointing them out to him on Facebook. If you’re on Facebook, however, I’d encourage you to just leave your thoughts for him there.
At any rate: it sounds like good progress is being made on The Dark Unknown, and at a good pace.
I like the Ultima 5 way of doing it. Loot in the combat map and a test to see if you can leave sounds good to me. I don’t remember a test in U5 though, I might be wrong but I didn’t see it in my tests (so it’s not in backtoroots) for example.
Jc
How about requiring that each player manually walk off the battlefield to escape while enemies are still alive. Once they’ve all left, the view is returned to normal but the enemy is still on the larger/dungeon map but one tile away. Any enemies that were not killed in battle will still be there should the player re-engage the enemy group. I think this would be a more realistic interpretation of battle using mostly existing game mechanics, and would extend the excitement and fear of trying to escape by not allowing the enemies to just disappear.
That is do-able, there used to be a game where if you did flee, you would move two squares away from the monster tile, giving you the chance to flee because the monsters would follow you relatively well. I think the relatively was done on purpose to allow you to flee if wanted to.
You have to be careful though because if the monsters are really too tough, you want to have a means to flee that works relatively well.
Jc
You’re right, two tiles away sounds better. Since certain terrain types can slow movement it would give the party a better chance of permanent escape.
Each enemy group type could have a set of distance properties that determines the minimum distance at which the group type engages, minds its own business or runs away from the party. Types could consist of any arbitrary combination of enemies as defined in code or a config file.
You could make groups of deer which only engaged if standing on the same tile (distance = 0), ran away if their distance was less than four tiles (radially, but linear works too), and minded their own business if their distance was more than >= four tiles (eating roots, shoots and neighbor’s flowers much to their dismay!).
The worst of the enemy groups could just have one or two individuals hiding in the shadows, waiting for a certain minimum distance before following you to rob or kill you. Yet others could behave like the deer groups, but their graphic and attack strength could be modified to match that of dragons. They’d leave you alone until you got too close, then kill you almost instantly and fly away.
Just throwing ideas around. I’m bored after a long night of bug fixing.