The Trouble with Randomised Loot Drops

[Wilbefast]

Perhaps just apply the randomization to the style/appearance of the weapon and not to the weapon's stats. For instance, say there are 12 different staves implemented varying in cosmetic differences only. The first four are common, the second four uncommon, the last four could be split in varying levels of 'rare'.

I guess the "common" enemies in each level could be randomly armed - it would have the added advantage of you not knowing that bad guy A has weapon B ever single time...

This is for armement though - weapons you can see and the enemy can make use of: it just doesn't make sense that they not use something they were carrying - that goes for any one-use items too - another reason I don't like the idea so much (they're not carrying that stuff around just so you can steal it)

[hansondr]

Perhaps just apply the randomization to the style/appearance of the weapon and not to the weapon's stats. For instance, say there are 12 different staves implemented varying in cosmetic differences only. The first four are common, the second four uncommon, the last four could be split in varying levels of 'rare'.

I guess the "common" enemies in each level could be randomly armed - it would have the added advantage of you not knowing that bad guy A has weapon B ever single time...

This is for armement though - weapons you can see and the enemy can make use of: it just doesn't make sense that they not use something they were carrying - that goes for any one-use items too - another reason I don't like the idea so much (they're not carrying that stuff around just so you can steal it)

I agree, enemies shouldn't just magically have items on their defeated person they didn't obviously have while you were fighting. But doesn't change my previous thought (not sure if you were directly responding still or not) but I was just talking about the skins for the weapons themselves. Say some low class Wolf grunt randomly gets staves or knives then another roll is done to determine which skin is used for the previously picked weapon. This enemy would utilize this weapon in combat against you should it's AI determine it applicable vs fists/claws.

[Xerxes713]

I am in favor of keeping items across levels. However, I don't want to be limited to just two or three- if there are multiple boss characters, I want to take their instruments of death as souvenirs! But it would be gamebreaking to be able to carry everything at once. So, like someone did in the inventory thread, I propose the Mount and Blade "bag" system- there is a bag you leave at the player spawn point of the mission with all your extra stuff in it.

And, yeah, no randomized "invisible" phat lewtz. Ah wantz teh kno wut mah phat lewtz iz, brah. OH GOD CANNOT STOP TALKING LIKE THAT OH GOD

[Zantalos]

Nice picture o_o

I don't think that powerful weapons should be in random drops. All randomized stuff should be common items at least. That way in order to get the really good stuff you have to do something amazing not do the same thing 5 million times until you get something good.

I agree with squirrel, because you need to have random weapon and item drops, unless you want to force the level designer to equip and stylize every single enemy in the game, you have to have random drops happen.

Your problem was that people might spend hours grinding a mountain pass trying to get a magic sword. Well then the answer is simple, and Ozymandias said it, there is no magic sword in that mountain pass. In fact, there is no magic sword in any mountain pass or random loot drop, these items must be acquired at unique events and places.

Healing herbs don't have to be totally magical. They could just happen to have the properties of an anti-bacterial and will help Turner heal quicker over the course of a long period of time. Like in Mount and Blade, there's a first-aid, and wounds treatment skill but that doesn't mean you'll be calling for a medic and he'll patch you up right then and there in the middle of combat and you'll gain health, he'll only stitch you up after the battle because this will allow you to heal quicker and with less scarring in the long run, but it wouldn't be useful in combat.

I don't know what kind of economies David will be planning, but I wouldn't mind having currency. It could be like burn and turn cash. In the movie The Boondock Saints, the characters acquired money off of some dead guys to buy a bunch of guns and equipment like pistols, and some rope, then they quickly used them to kill a bunch of guys and found out the dead guys had a big suit case with money so they stole it and bought more stuff. This money wasn't what kept them going and caused them to kill people, they could kill people without the money and they weren't trying to blatantly rob people for it it just happened to be there so they took it. They didn't have unlimited money and they weren't saving up for some huge mansion or an awesome gatling gun or car, but they had enough money to be able to buy what they needed. This didn't make them invincible and care free.

I think this would be a cool concept for Overgrowth. Money shouldn't be a problem because any weapon you need can be taken from an enemy. This is just something that Turner doesn't worry about. Enemies will have money on them and you can take it, so if you go to a bar or an inn there should be no question if you can afford it or not, you will have enough or you won't and you'll sleep outside because you chose to. If you want to buy a spear, you just trade in your sword and a reasonable amount of money you should have acquired and buy it. It shouldn't have to cost a ridicules amount and force you to sell a hundred swords at 10% their value to buy a weapon, because you could easily take one from an enemy, and for the weapons trader, a sword and some incentive cash for a spear is a good trade. I want the enemies to have a reasonable amount of cash on them to make currency not a problem for Turner for him to buy whatever basic equipment he needs, because realistically speaking, killing people is going to give you everything they own and that's going to be a lot for you to be able to do this and live like the Boondock Saints and not care about money because it's not important for someone who doesn't care about buying a fancy house and providing for a family.

Like the mentality for ammunition in Call of Duty 4, instead of hiding ammo from you, they just gave enemies whatever they would have in real life, like 6 clips of ammo so you would never run out, but ammo was still a factor you had to worry about, it just wasn't the whole point of the game like it was in say, Return to Castle Wolfenstein where only certain enemies would drop their ammo and it would only be like 6 bullets. Though they themselves would have infinite ammo.

[Wilbefast]

Just a disclaimer - I agree with most of what Zantalos said but I'm only replying to the stuff I disagree with because I'm a glass half empty sort of guy

Healing herbs don't have to be totally magical. They could just happen to have the properties of an anti-bacterial and will help Turner heal quicker over the course of a long period of time. Like in Mount and Blade, there's a first-aid, and wounds treatment skill but that doesn't mean you'll be calling for a medic and he'll patch you up right then and there in the middle of combat and you'll gain health, he'll only stitch you up after the battle because this will allow you to heal quicker and with less scarring in the long run, but it wouldn't be useful in combat.

Yeah, I don't think the player should be encouraged to run away and heal or wait for their shields to regenerate (in Lugaru you can wait for the world to come back into focus but that's all you're getting, no matter how long you wait).
Trouble with the "healing faster between battles" lark is that unless you start each level with full health you could potentially end up gimped because you made it through the last battle by the skin of your teeth, and so have to restart that level even though you won it just so you could have enough health to beat the next level.
Basically, you have to make the assumption that some players will end up with 1 hit point and no healing herbs - do you want a game that tells such players that yeah, they made it, but no, they can't keep playing because they didn't make it well enough.

Money money money *da dum* must be funny *da dum* in a rich man's world

got class - will edit in later

[Zhukov]

Zantalos:

If money is not going to be a problem or challenge, why have it at all?

[Wilbefast]

Might as well just post a new message now that it comes to it...

I think this would be a cool concept for Overgrowth. Money shouldn't be a problem because any weapon you need can be taken from an enemy. This is just something that Turner doesn't worry about. Enemies will have money on them and you can take it, so if you go to a bar or an inn there should be no question if you can afford it or not, you will have enough or you won't and you'll sleep outside because you chose to. If you want to buy a spear, you just trade in your sword and a reasonable amount of money you should have acquired and buy it. It shouldn't have to cost a ridicules amount and force you to sell a hundred swords at 10% their value to buy a weapon, because you could easily take one from an enemy, and for the weapons trader, a sword and some incentive cash for a spear is a good trade. I want the enemies to have a reasonable amount of cash on them to make currency not a problem for Turner for him to buy whatever basic equipment he needs, because realistically speaking, killing people is going to give you everything they own and that's going to be a lot for you to be able to do this and live like the Boondock Saints and not care about money because it's not important for someone who doesn't care about buying a fancy house and providing for a family.

Haven't seen the movie, so I don't see exactly what you mean. If the things that money can aquire can be aquired without money just as easily (weapons) or are unnessecary (inns) then why include it at all? What's more I'd rather Overgrowth were about the fighting and not about the shopping or negociating the cost of accomodation .
The only place I can see money being useful is for buying new armour, which isn't the sort of thing that can be pinched off the enemy in the thick of things and which kindof needs to be custom made to work well. Then again you have to think about the players who reach the point where there's good armour to offer and don't have the cash - unless they can grind they are gimped because they didn't mug every creature they encountered thus far, and so need to restart the game.

In essence my opinion is as follows: "Overgrowth should not be and RPG".

[tokage]

... Something, shortened for readability

Haven't seen the movie, so I don't see exactly what you mean. If the things that money can aquire can be aquired without money just as easily (weapons) or are unnessecary (inns) then why include it at all? What's more I'd rather Overgrowth were about the fighting and not about the shopping or negociating the cost of accomodation .
The only place I can see money being useful is for buying new armour, which isn't the sort of thing that can be pinched off the enemy in the thick of things and which kindof needs to be custom made to work well. Then again you have to think about the players who reach the point where there's good armour to offer and don't have the cash - unless they can grind they are gimped because they didn't mug every creature they encountered thus far, and so need to restart the game.

In essence my opinion is as follows: "Overgrowth should not be and RPG".

I saw the movie, if I am not mistaken. I would recommend it. It is about two brothers fighting against russian mafia and corruption. What starts relatively harmless at a bar fight and in self defense evolves into a crusade. At the same time they pick up the money they find at each stage to buy bigger better equipement for their next fights. Actually the mechanism is like in an RPG were you improve yourself with every fight. They start small and become notorius.

That said, it is a cool idea to stick closer to this "you buy or get just what you need for the next stage". But I think the balancing of that will be more complicated than in a movie, obviously because not everything can be planned out that easily. The usage of the rope mentioned above would be a good example for that.
And then do you really need money for that? You could just as well let Turner pick up the weapons and armor parts(modular as it was mentioned) along the way from fallen enemies or get something special at certain occasions. No need for money at all.

Hmm. basically as Wilbefast said. Overgrowth should not be an RPG.

[Wilbefast]

I'll see if I can't get hold of that film...

Sort of like "Sword and Sandals", "Learn to Fly" or "Cyber Dogs"?

Man I loved Cyber Dogs - totally going to try and download that again (probably won't work on XP though). Anyway, the idea was that each level you bought new gear and weapons and you needed that stuff for the next level: it was sort of like leveling up by made a bit more sense...

I guess that could work quite nicely - the trouble of course is how easy it is to disarm and to be disarmed - that weapon you saved up for is just as much a danger to you as to the enemy...

[Endoperez]

Man I loved Cyber Dogs - totally going to try and download that again (probably won't work on XP though). Anyway, the idea was that each level you bought new gear and weapons and you needed that stuff for the next level: it was sort of like leveling up by made a bit more sense...

This Cyberdogs (actually sequel/remake, I forgot which)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-Dogs

If you're having trouble getting it to work on XP, you can try remakes on GP2X, Sony PSP, Dreamcast, Nintendo DS, Amiga OS or Motorola RIZR Z8. Don't ask me.

[Wilbefast]

Dang... I got the thing to ran thanks to the nift "turn off the sound" trick that often works with DOS games, but you instantly die whenever you spawn

Mabye it's just nostalgia but I find that there are all these old games I can't really play anymore, and their modern equivalents just don't cut it - I mean Final Liberation or Chaos Gate vs Dawn of War? For a start new games tend to rape your computer and/or look like vomit because you have to turn all the settings off...

[Endoperez]

Dang... I got the thing to ran thanks to the nift "turn off the sound" trick that often works with DOS games, but you instantly die whenever you spawn

Mabye it's just nostalgia but I find that there are all these old games I can't really play anymore, and their modern equivalents just don't cut it - I mean Final Liberation or Chaos Gate vs Dawn of War? For a start new games tend to rape your computer and/or look like vomit because you have to turn all the settings off...

DosBOX is good.
VDMSound is much more lightweight, but not supported anymore (it was incorporated into DosBOX) and doesn't work for nearly as many games.
Going to Preferences and setting various memoty types to AUTO (EMS, XMS, protected on/off) may work, depending on game. If you still get "not enough memory" error after that, you can free some memory with little trick. First, go to \windows\system32, find "config.nt", and copy it somewhere else like the game's folder. Edit it in notepad, and add line EMM = RAM to the copy, somewhere after the lines that start REM. On a dos program, you can go to Preferences, Program, [the button next to change icon], and then enter the path for the copy of the config.nt .

Editing the original config.nt can mess your computer up, so if you're not sure about what you're doing, it's worth doing the extra work.

Sometimes you have to run install or setup program first, and setup sound (SoundBlaster + defaults works often). All games won't work, but many do.

I'd have PMd you, but those are disabled. Perhaps a new thread on Randomess would be more appopriate?

[Wilbefast]

Thanks Endoperez - got CyberDogs (better than the sequel IMO) working for the first time in like 10 years! So awesome - I owe you one.

[Endoperez]

Thanks Endoperez - got CyberDogs (better than the sequel IMO) working for the first time in like 10 years! So awesome - I owe you one.

No problem, I know how frustrating it is not to get games working properly.

[namuol]

I am entirely against anything that translates to "Grinding"...

Looting is cool, but only if it's not completely random. The paydirt should usually be in plain-view... items that are concealable should be relatively non-valuable compared to things like visible armor or weapons.

I haven't read the rest of the posts yet though, so I'll probably wind up editing my post after I get home and go through them.