Corrowland

This is my rouge like game. Player starts in an overworld. As they explore they can build structures, fight enemies and acquire items. There is no leveling, the skill is inherent to the player and their items. The game is pseudo real time. The world moves at 1 fps. The focus is on strategy rather than APS.

Development

In Progress

• Player can create a world with grass, trees and caves and walk around
  • Generate a map with trees
  • Make map segments
  • Save map segments
  • Add cave entrance
  • Generate caves
• Player Accounts
  • User creates account
  • User has active world
  • User can re-load active world
  • User can create new world
  • When new world is created, old resources are destroyed

Basic Plans

The first version will simply be a field where you can move around and fight enemies. Enemies will spawn in a range of 3x3 screens, excluding the screen you are on. The screen is 40x30 tiles with each tile being 20x20.

Architecture

Most 'events' actually happen on the server, command line like. The gui acts to make the game convenient. I want to extend this out to include chains of actions. For instance, to make a hammer you would need to make a hammer-head and a short handle then combine them. And the tools required to make these would depend on the material. But rather than force all of that on the user, they can select "Make Hammer" and choose the material and the gui will take care of the specific commands.

Maps

Maps come in several varieties. The primary is over-world which is a torus. All maps will be limited in scope (even if very large). The first two I will implement are over-world and cave. Maps are saved as map chunks, pieces of the world that have been generated.

I have two conflicting goals here. The world should be able to grow to accommodate new players, but that growth should be centrally controlled so that players cannot simply walk for hours in one direction and cause the server to balloon out of control.

Notes

I want a focus on a massive tech tree. Building of tools to make tools to acquire items to make more tools. This is very minecraft inspired. Unlike minecraft, I want the over world separate from dungeons and fortresses. As you go deeper (or higher) into these structures the difficulty of the enemies will increase as will the rareity of the drops.

Inventory

You can only carry two items at a time (or one two-handed item). You can equip items. This includes a toolbelt and backpack. Items have a volume and weight. The size of the backpack determines how much volume it can hold and the material determines the weight. Weight will also slow you down (only relevant in battle). You can put down the pack, but that takes a turn. Equipping anything from the pack takes a turn, but anything from the toolbelt is instant. Early on, I want to be able to build wagons and push/pull them around so that you can move loads of equipment

Real-Time and Minions

Taken from Reamde, the game will happen in real time and you can never leave. So you can give your character tasks to do and even if you're logged out, they will continue to do them. This will be very Dwarf Fortress style. Also from Reamde, you can build hierarchical relationships between characters and any task given to a character can be carried out by minions. The game will have perma-death, sort of. A character can die and they will drop everything on them, all commands given to them will be forgotten and the relationships will lost. But because characters have no level, it's not a huge loss.

MMO

Some features are necessary to make the game "mmo"ish.

Locks

Locks on chests and doors are account based. So if a character locks a door and dies, you still have access to your stuff. You can also create groups and assign access to a whole group.

Cement

A cement block can be placed and mined like a normal block, but over time it starts taking longer to destroy until it reaches a maximum. The idea is that you can build a fortress or castle (with a locked door) and it will be very difficult for other character to destroy.

Trades

Characters can trade. Possibly create contracts? Outstanding offers? Stores? This also requires currency.

Goals

I don't want leveling. The player levels, not the character, and they do it by learning about the game. The max level is determined by the complexity of the game.

Players should be able to have a real effect. This is the tough part - I want a structure where players can work together and build social hierarchies and the players who are most invested can have massive impact. Towns are not placed by the server, players build them.

Vehicles

I've wanted to be able to do vehicles in game (and I still want to) but looking at Minecraft, it would be possible to do some "Moving Castles" if moving a block didn't break the Redstone or the torches.