Ambrosia Software Web Board: SOMETHING NEW - Ambrosia Software Web Board

Cythera need something new. Some kind of new point of view to play from or plugins(been said before I know) to spice up the game. it take like a week or two to beat and after that its boring and its over. NET PLAY that would be nice playing against others on the net would be absolutely awesome. Being a brigand or a hero. and what would be especially cool would be a bounty hunter for the different houses. like you go to your special hut or whatever and there is a message saying "house Comana has decided that you have proved yourself worthy and would like to comission you to slay Vodalian the leader of the cutthroats. There would be clan battles and everything it would just be sweet. Like a really fast running ultima online kinda thing.
POST YOUR OPINIONS

Matrix

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Uhh....Is this one of those trick Questions?

AOL/IM: Will346
Gameranger: [DÅRK] Viper

Yeah, it would be great if it could be network multiplayer, but somehow, I kinda doubt Ambrosia has the resources Origin has. And before that, the editor would either have to back up working, or another addition of Cythera released.
Face it, I kind of doubt that Cythera is large enough to hold a multiplayer world as it is now.

Oh yeah, Matrix, do you own Ultima Online? Do you have a PC? Just wondering, I won a free copy of Ultima Online, but sadly its for PC only.

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Talk, talk, talk to myself!

I own a mac but I play ultima at a friends house now and then. But I still think that they should make another addon version of cythera where you can buy a boat and go to different lands where it is a whole other story. Because my guy is unedited and kicks a$$ but i have nothing to use him on anymore.

Matrix

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Uhh....Is this one of those trick Questions?

AOL/IM: Will346
Gameranger: [DÅRK] Viper

A boat would be great! Extra islands! A Skidbladnir! I know that's kinda norse not greek, but hey, a folding boat that can fit in your pocket would be really neat!

How about a random mission creater?

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Talk, talk, talk to myself!

I've actually thought about add-ons and the like, though one of the biggest problems is that you'd have to start your game over to play with the new add-on (since your saved game contains pretty much the entire state of the world, so adding something new that introduces new state would be overriden by what you've saved, preventing you from getting to it).

I've also thought that a "rogue-like" game with the Delver engine might be fun, where it randomly generates an entire game each time (mixing and matching various plots, etc..., though at some point, it is just "more of the same"). Perhaps a stand-alone world generator that made a new random scenario. There is still, however, issues about game balance and the like (if you get to keep old characters, they'd be too powerful for new scenarios, and starting over each time might be too much of a pain). Of course, the "generator" could try to balance it for the character...

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Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know...

What if when progressing in the game, it became possible to lose levels or stats? Or to go to new scenarios would require losing levels?

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Talk, talk, talk to myself!

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Actually, that wouldn't be very hard. All you have to do is have it so it adjusts the monsters "levels" and AI according to what the character has achieved. Also, certain "hard" scenarios would only be available at a certain level.

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<font color="gold">Bronze: the other gold metal.</font>

Just make the guys get tougher the later the add on is like it takes more thatn one hit to kill him.


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Uhh....Is this one of those trick Questions?

AOL/IM: Will346
Gameranger: [DÅRK] Viper

Actually about the having to start a new character with each new version, I found that I could use my 1.0.2 character in the 1.0.4 version and vica versa.

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Talk, talk, talk to myself!

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That's because from 1.0 to 1.0.4 there really wasn't any new items/buildings/etc added - there were bug fixes in code, but the underlying dataset was still the same. If there were an add-on that actually added new "stuff", you'd have to start the game over or you wouldn't be able to get to any of it.

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Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know...

surely you could just load the saved game with the old format the first time, and then save it in the new format. you'd be able to get all the previous characters important data and then save it. this conversion would only be necessary in the very beginning of the scenario...after that you could just load it with the new format too.

No, it isn't a matter of the format of the data, it is the contents of the data. Your saved game contains all the items in the world - if new items are added to the scenario, they won't be in your saved game (and thus you won't see them), unless you start over or somehow get rid of state associated with your saved game (which has tons of problems, such as items disappearing and the like). It's not an easy problem to solve universally.

Consider adding some special passage that is locked, and the key is put in a chest (that already exists). What if the player has already investigated the chest, found it useless, and then destroys it. Where does the key go? It can't go in the chest, since it doesn't exist. Penalizing the player for destroying the chest (by preventing them from getting the key) is unfair, since when they destroyed it, they weren't doing anything wrong. There are all sorts of little examples like this that can ruin a players game, if not handled correctly.

The best you can do is add thing on at "choke points" that can't really be altered, and you can safely just add to the existing player game at that point (it works better if you explicitly design this in from the beginning - like a locked door or something that you can't go through initially).

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Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know...

Here's an idea thats been running around in my head. Would it be possible to have a version of cythera with access to a special room that would be sort of a nexus to other scenarios? So instead of changing any data, a completely fresh world could be added on, even a duplicate of the original? I understand that this would mean the game would be very bloated. Just a thought.
Couldn't it be possible to replace the cythera data file or whatever with a completly different scenario but only keep what the play has on hand (just whats in their inventory) and drop all the parts relevant to the original scenario? I assume hat this would mean if you want to go back to an old scenario, you would have to start from scratch, but it would still offer more choices. Would there be a problem with that?

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Talk, talk, talk to myself!

like croax was saying just have the room with the triangle be unchangeable and put the potions somewhere like alaric's study room and have all the braziers and lights be those glowing crystals. If you do that and make the room unchangeable it should be able to be accessed by other scenarios from what you have been saying. And all that has to happen is that every scenario that is made will lhave a type of "landking hall" so the room will always be in the same location

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Uhh....Is this one of those trick Questions?

AOL/IM: Will346
Gameranger: [DÅRK] Viper

Just wondering, but what was the point of the Path of the Lightning Bolt hidden in the braziers in that room? Was it planned to do something and was unfinished?

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Talk, talk, talk to myself!