Anphillia Forums

[sniqow]

At the risk of sounding like I'd turn Anph into a hack n slash if i had my way, I always liked the Diablo model for spawning monsters, mini bosses, and loot.

[Yamsandjams]

That is a fairly standard model, but it would take some time to set up properly. There's also less of a range we can work with as levels go from 1-20 here, but 1-99 in D2. I think we've also usually done it so that certain areas will drop certain items, but in D2 it's more of an across the board sort of thing. I think they more or less have something of that form currently implemented anyways.

Now if you're also talking about having monstes drop loot when they die, I dunno if that would work. Would be more easy to ninja loot, and you could potentially kill a few enemies in a dungeon and get something good, rather than actaully clear the place. I guess it works in D2 because ninja looting is the standard looting etiquette... man, those were the days.
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[benyc]

theres the script in place which tells you when someone picks up objects on anph though, so you wouldnt get away with ninjaing

[Yamsandjams]

People might not notice if it's in the middle of fight though, unless they review the chat logs, which isn't something you want people concerned about during a battle. It's also possible to forget to loot a corpse because you forget it's lying there, meaning you could lose some loot completely. I mean, it would probably still work out ok with individual mob drops, but I'm just trying to highlight certain issues. It'd also be annoying if things do drop beacuse you would potentially have to stop and roll at every set of corpses. You could always just keep track of the loot, but that can be pretty annoying and tedius. Not to mention someone might disappear with some of the loot if they d/c and can't get back in for whatever reason. I'm not sure if it would be any more complicated script-wise... there'd definately have to be some rewriting, so yeah. I don't really see any highly significant advantage to having the mobs drop things, but would be interesting to try out just for a change.

As for the monster spawns, those would be interesting to implement and could probably be done to some degree. The game engine's limitations would be the main factor. If you did have a rare spawn setup though, it'd be difficult in Anph. Once you knew where it spawns, you could possibly just hang around that area and keep running around for awhile until it spawns. I guess that would get you a smack from a DM though, so might not be an issue after all. Could also have very long times between spawns, but then it might be like one of those annoying MMO rare spawns that you'll never get to fight because everyone else just kills it.
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[Jesse_the_Thief]

Respawn time of ONE BILLION seconds. NOW WHAT SMART GUY

[Yamsandjams]

I think you mean ONE HUNDRED BILLION SECONDS...!,

Hmmm... but, yeah. I guess I'll have to applaud you. Didn't know you could count that high. Congrats.
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[CloakedGlory]

Realistically, the one thing that anph needed and every other nwn module, is the one thing that is insanely complex to develop... which is a random event generator. The one thing that made anphillia great, was the roleplay. And what made it even better was the roleplay events created by the DMs... in the periods when our DM's would go AWOL, it was the point in time when most people tended to become complacent.

I mean dont get me wrong, get a bunch of placers put them round a camp fire with enough benches to sit 4 of them while the rest sit around on the grass and talk about what a wonderful day it is to do nothing lol. Sure, you get a bit of roleplay out of that. But without some kind of activities to give people reason to do stuff. Otherwise its just raiding the goblin caves again and again and struggling to make an excuse for it apart from avoiding death due to boredom.

Thats what would improve anphy... but its not necessarily what would draw the players to it.

[Jesse_the_Thief]

Well, there's no replacement for DMs running stuff. There's no script alive for that.

Also, Idea #3 seems to be running into issues... when I tried it on a live server it doesn't work right. NPCs on patrol tend to stay only in one area... I don't know why it worked before and not now. Going long distances just may not work for the AI I'm afraid. I'm gonna fiddle with it a bit, but I'm guessing it's not going to quite work. You could still do patrols which spawn and patrol an area, but the idea of going across the island seems unlikely.

[CloakedGlory]

No there arnt scripts for it but there could be. I'd like to say npc's to be the trigger for the events, but thats a little too dependant on players not being afk at the time... which given that chat is monitored, it isnt impossible to do... But I suppose something like a messageboard that randomly generates events would be more appropriate. A bandit camp sighting at (random location) wouldnt be entirely hard to construct. Even a treasure map, that picks a spot from a random list and creates a puzzle of directions to getting there. Then on the map, picks a random location on the map to spawn an X or something, so players cant just go to the same spot every time knowing where it is. There are plenty more things like that, where while they dont have the same sort of interaction as dm events, are great foundations for getting in some good roleplay. It is doable, but its something on such a large scale that would take someone rather dedicated to make it and bug test it.

[Yamsandjams]

All of this might actually be more easily obtained with a new game engine. NWN1 is like 8 years old now, and I think it's already exceed what people expected of it. Something fresh and more robust would be most welcome... don't think they'll make a NWN3 though, but you never know. Said the same thing about D3.
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[CloakedGlory]

I completely agree about the engine. I remember I actually went to work on some coding on the module side back towards the end. One of the things I really wanted to implement was behavioral npcs... Like, Dawn breaks, npc's wake up, go out, some might farm in the fields, others would open up stalls. maybe even go to the tavern at night and have a few drinks before going back to bed again. Was the idea that every npc was a person. Putting this into practice though came with the biggest hurdle that nwns has... heartbeat. The only way to have a timed event, is to trigger it by heartbeat and assess if its the right time. those scripts run every few seconds. In every area even if there arnt people there. Causes massive lag server wide. the nwn engine was never really designed for persistence.

On a side note though lol, if anyone has the graphics skills and stuff to create models and worlds lol, I've been tempted by the idea of recreating an engine to rebuild something like Anphy ^.~ although... the complicated part involved is, do people still roleplay.. and can a game dependent on that survive these days.

[Yamsandjams]

[CloakedGlory]

Usually its portfolio work which I would love to have a bit of lol. Something you can show off to potential employers and go wow arnt I cool ^.~ lol. Its what all potential employers live to hear in a job interview.

[Jesse_the_Thief]

Messing with scrolls gave me another idea... "scroll familiarity".

Basically the idea would be that any one who can cast spells would be able to use scrolls that would normally be exclusive to other, related classes. In other words, Rangers would be able to use the scroll of any spell usable by a Druid, Paladins would be able to use Cleric scrolls, and Bards would be able to use Wiz/Sorc scrolls. (Which in default NWN they mostly can already)

You could extend the concept a little for funsies too by allowing more classes to use cantrip scrolls. Maybe let any class use any level 0 scroll since the spells are so simple in nature. It wouldn't have any real impact on game mechanics since such scrolls are so weak.

The concept is more questionable than some others since it would slightly increase the utility of some classes, but scrolls are weak enough it wouldn't be exactly earth-shattering.

[Jesse_the_Thief]

Haven't read much about it yet, but it appears CEP has some sort of alternative spawn system included. Might be a more practical way to add random(ish) spawns in. I just found it while reading some of the CEP documentation with CEP 2.3.

EDIT: After reading into it a bit, this new spawn script looks quite promising. Not only can it spawn a randomized selection of mobs at a randomly selected waypoint, but it can also despawn the critters once all players leave the area to save server resources. It can add traps in the same way, which is a nice new option that doesn't exist in the default system.

The latest CEP stuff is, as usual, amazing. Highlights I've noticed so far is the addition of modified maps to base maps, (meaning you no longer have to rebuild your entire maps to use new CEP tilesets) DINOSAUR MONSTERS OMG, and some awesome new skins on the city set for new appearance choices.

EDIT EDIT: It seems clear whoever wrote the instructions for this thing has English as his or her second language. -_-