1.1 Basic - Baumgaer/Game GitHub Wiki

1.1.1 Game start

The player starts in a city which is implemented in the world and has a certain amount of players to hold to not to overflow the start area. In the time in which the player "binds" himself to the city, he builds up a basic existence with learning ground mechanics of the game, amass basic ownership and discover the map whereby he (hopefully) finds some partners to play with.

1.1.2 The goal

The goal is basically to consolidate his position in a player-driven world. Be it economic or warlike. The player doesn't belong to a fraction, but acts on himself. Whether he recognizes other players as enemies or not is totally his own decision. To consolidate his position in the world the player builds a dungeon, kills special monsters in "Raids", creates customs revenue or trades homemade goods. It should also be possible to destroy the heart of the dungeon whereupon the dungeon collapses and the player must rebuild his existence in some parts. The rest of the dungeon will be a ruin and can be populated again.

1.1.3 Interactions

As mentioned at the beginning the player commands a "hero monster" from a bird's eye view. To do this the player selects the monster and gives commands like collect flower XYZ, attack or help monster ABC. This can be realized as with SIMS (see figure 1).

Figure1: possible menu to command monsters

That should work not only with "hero monsters", but also with citizens (in following monsters) of the dungeon but the focus should be on the hero monster. The possibilities to command monsters will be increased with growing contact to other monsters. The contact to other monsters is created by autonomous behavior (artificial intelligence). Possible interactions could be the following:

• learn from ...
• attack ...
• help ...
• talk to ...
• and so on

Depending on the amount of interactions, a relationship builds up which could be positive but also negative. Accordingly, the selection points change. So it can happen that two monsters of the same dungeon fight each other but also it can be happen that two monsters of different dungeons become best friends which creates new options for example spy an enemy dungeon, propaganda or similar options.

Furthermore every selected monster should have a skill bar as known from other MMORPGs and resources like hitpoints, mana points and stamina points (see figure 2). This skill bar will be used to teach attack patterns to a monster or a group of monsters or to control them directly like in real time strategy games like Command and Conquer.

Figure 2: Typical skill bar and resources like hitpoints (red), mana points (blue) and experience points (green)

The differences between normal monsters and the hero monster are that the hero monster has special skills which are given by the player and the normal monsters have static skills which are learned by training. Everything which is done or learned by a monster will give him experience points and faith. The player (as a "god") himself will not get experience points. His strength will be calculated by the sum of faith of all monsters and generates an experience level which can also be decreased when the faith of his monsters decrease.

The player as a "god" can also interact with the environment or commanded monsters directly like mentioned above. It is possible to give his monsters attack commands, carry them to other places which are neutral or his own area or the player punches his monsters to drive them to work faster or to punish them in case of they made something wrong (has something to do with artificial intelligence which comes later). The player also can carry up items and drop them at other places and trade in this way with other players (This will be discussed later).

The player himself doesn't have skills but he can borrow the from hist monsters and activate them in the world with out a specific target if possible. The possibility to activate a skill is given, when the area is neutral or under the players control and the monster who's skill is borrowed has the necessary resources like mana, stamina, hitpoints and so on.

Any direct interaction of the player with the environment or its monsters will affect the monsters' faith in the player. These effects can be both positive and negative.

1.1.4 The faith

The player himself enjoys more or less good faith of his or other monsters. the higher the faith the more is possible. For example the build radius can be increased or decreased, his monsters will become stronger or weaker or the player get bonus points on borrowed skills that they become stronger or weaker. In addition the faith is something like a currency which allows various other actions.

The difference to a normal currency is that the faith can not be consumed. It's more like a barrier. The faith should be especially be used as the hitpoints of the heart of the dungeon. The more faith the player accumulated the more damage the heart stand in case of an attack.