Mod idea: stats and levels in the Arena

[Endoperez]

I've had a fantastic discussion with Sehiro about his ideas for possible RPG system in Overgrowth. I think the idea has promise, and that it'd be a fun way to test the modding capabilities of Overgrowth.

He can explain the details better than I, but he's thought about the numbers, advancement system, the math behind it. He thought about having it for the whole game, but it might be easier to implement it for only a single game-mode first - and Arena already adjusts the stats of spawned enemies, so it seems like an easy match.

Would anyone be interested to see this?

Would there be a coder among those interested? (it's a trap! you were lured to do volunteer work! ) I could probably do the stat-changing on my own, but I haven't looked into making popup windows, UI, sliders, buttons or any of that stuff yet. And as I don't have a working PC at the moment, it'd be better to have someone else do all the coding. There might be a few things that OG can't do yet (dunno if you can write to files through code yet) but it should be possible to get something showing pretty quickly.

[AmorphousGamer]

That definitely sounds awesome. Do it if at all possible. :P

[Constance]

Interesting to hear Endoface talk about actually implementing RPG elements in Overgrowth.
I keep looking to see if it's someone who just stole his avatar!

[Thomason1005]

Dang such a good trap, i have to go in it. Writing and reading text files is possible (in the arena script). I know how the versus ui works (basically rendering images), but idk about buttons sliders etc, last has them in his blood mod so there should be a way.
but i think wolfire is planning similar stuff, they talked about a market outside the arena where you can buy things and stuff, and with some kind of enemies challenging you and fucking rabbits and epic boss battles and arcade machines and exploding demons... Oh sry thats shadow warrior

[Endoperez]

Interesting to hear Endoface talk about actually implementing RPG elements in Overgrowth.
I keep looking to see if it's someone who just stole his avatar!

As I said, an amazing discussion. Basically, I'm against RPG elements in the campaign, because they change the level design, make it harder to balance the levels, etc. What is one of the options is weaker, or not specializing is weaker, and someone does that for the campaign character? Not good.

Sehiro pointed out that it could still work outside the campaign... and I couldn't find any fault in his reasoning. For the "optional" modes, that doesn't matter so much. The arena especially is a good fit.

Dang such a good trap, i have to go in it. Writing and reading text files is possible (in the arena script). I know how the versus ui works (basically rendering images), but idk about buttons sliders etc, last has them in his blood mod so there should be a way.
but i think wolfire is planning similar stuff, they talked about a market outside the arena where you can buy things and stuff, and with some kind of enemies challenging you and fucking rabbits and epic boss battles and arcade machines and exploding demons... Oh sry thats shadow warrior

Even if Wolfire devs are going to do it on their own, we can do it first, and if we have some really good ideas they might end up using them. And what would be cooler?

I think buttons etc are probably defined in HTML-type files.

So, are you in for now? First thing we'd have to decide would be if we're going for a single character, at first, or if we can have several different characters that each have to be leveled on their own. Sehiro wants several characters for the full system. Perhaps only one to start with, but saved as character1.stat1, instead of just stat1?

[Thomason1005]

So, are you in for now?

Yeah

First thing we'd have to decide would be if we're going for a single character, at first, or if we can have several different characters that each have to be leveled on their own. Sehiro wants several characters for the full system. Perhaps only one to start with, but saved as character1.stat1, instead of just stat1?

id say we start with one, does he wants sth like a character selection screen or the enemies to level?
and what rpg elements? id think it would be interesting to level the different attacks (strength & speed) when using them often in the arena or some kind of training for them. maybe buying weapons and armor with money for the death fights, or food and bandages to restore health in a break.
Edit: we could use the character properties too, p.e. becoming skinny when running around all the time, strong when doing a lot of attacks, big ears when youre blocking a lot and such

[Endoperez]

He can explain it better when he comes back online. Basically, you get points for achieving certain killcounts, and those points can increase stats. Making the characters buffer and bigger when they are strong sounds great.

He didn't mention increasing specific attacks.


Can we write to custom file? If we can, we might be able to do persistent stats across alphas.

[Thomason1005]

Can we write to custom file? If we can, we might be able to do persistent stats across alphas.

hm doesnt look like, you can only write in the savefile.sav, where its then grouped in Levels. but in the alpha 170 changelog theres sth about executing arbitrary code...
and if we dont want to update constant stats (level points, weapon prices etc) every alpha, we can write them in a seperate script and then include them in the level script.

[Endoperez]

Something like the level the player has reached, or how points ate assigned, would be nice. Might be impossible then?

I think writing custom data is important for mods, we can write these sorts of things down and then point them to David.

[Thomason1005]

Something like the level the player has reached, or how points ate assigned, would be nice. Might be impossible then?

that should be possible with the savefile.sav, just like its done with the level in the arena

[Endoperez]

Something like the level the player has reached, or how points ate assigned, would be nice. Might be impossible then?

that should be possible with the savefile.sav, just like its done with the level in the arena

If you play without the mod, will the modded info be overwritten by a normal savefile? Do we need to make a new map for the mod?

I started working on my laptop, maybe I can get it running again and check up a few things on my own.

[Thomason1005]

nah it should be fine

[Sehiro]

Intro

Whoa, what an audience xD

First of all I need to thank Endoperez for three things: he believed in my idea, he helped me to polish it and he lent me his charisma starting this thread, giving my idea an actual possibility to become reality.

Secondly I'll say something about myself: I don't own the game. I am here just because I asked for a special permission to talk with you about my ideas, therefore please don't get mad if you notice that I don't have some basic knowledge about OG.
I have absolutely no skill in programming, designing, scripting and any computer stuff. I will show you how I would like to work when I'll show you the modification from the original version of the "RPG system" to the "Arena RPG system". Sadly I don't want to start to learn now, because I just started university in another language and far away from home. I study medicine and surgery if someone was wondering, so I don't have time or energy to learn something I don't know anything about from the start. I am sorry. Anyway let's go on.

"RPG system"

Now I think we can start. It'll be a bit long so grab a drink and sit comfortably

First I'll talk about the whole original idea.
"RPG system" in OG. What do I mean for "RPG system"? I mean customizable character's stats, basically.
Let's see how. Assuming that OG and Lugaru works the same way, we have some sort of "stats" which define our character. What I wish to do is to create something to let you decide in which order and power to raise these stats.

Stats and racial bonuses

We have Strength (STR), Speed (SPE), Resistance (RES) and Sneak (SNE). I repeat, assuming OG works the same way as Lugaru, the basic stats for everyone is 1.0 in everything, exception made for sneak which is definitely more tricky, having more variables than the other stats (actually I don't know exactly how it works).
We have 5 playable races: Rabbits (whose speed is re-known), Dogs (the most ferocious race, cousins of the wolves), Cats (Luckiest race, they can fall from heights on their feet and have 9 lives), Rats (The most sneaky race, lurking in the shadows) and Wolves (do we really need to say something about them?).
Every race except wolves has a starting bonus in one attribute (stat=attribute), and, given the previous descprition, they works this way: rabbits (+0.1 to SPE), Dogs (+0.1 to STR), Cats (+0.1 to RES), Rats (+0.1 to SNE).
Every level you get 8 attribute points. Every attribute point assigned to an attribute grants +0.01 in that attribute. The maximum for every attribute is 1.5, therefore I can put into every attribute 50 attribute points.
For example a maxed out rabbit will have 150-STR, 160-SPE (50 from the Attribute points and 10 from race's bonus), 150-RES, 150-SNE (the actual values in the code are 1.5, 1.6, 1.5, 1.5). The max level is 25: 25 multiplied by 8 means 200, which is exactly the number required to max out every attribute. Something about RES: we have two different resistances, the blunt and the cut ones. For every point spent in RES we have a +0.1 in BLURES (Blunt resistance), but we have an increase of +0.01 in CUTRES (cut resistance) only after spending 2 attributes points in RES. So after having maxed out RES we'll have 1.5 in BLURES and 1.25 in CUTRES.

How to level up and gameplay hours

Now, how to level up? Instead of using experience, we will use a kill-counter.
Actually we can decide how to use this kill counter depending on how many hours of gameplay we want to max out a character.
The idea of the kill counter works this way:
Start at lvl 0. To get to lvl 1 you need to kill one wolf and 10 other enemies (rabbits, cats, dogs and rats).
To get to lvl 2 you need to kill 2 wolves and 20 other enemies and so on. If you are at level one kill one wolf and x>20 other enemies, you will be still at level one until you kill the second wolf.
If we assume that we score one kill per minute, we need more or less 60 hours of gameplay.
If we want to reach "perfection" with a character in less time we need only to do this: to get to lvl1 kill 1 wolf and 5 other enemies. To get to lvl 2 kill 2 wolves and 10 rabbits.
This way the hours of gameplay are 34, keeping in mind 1 minute = 1 kill.
This is really to be tested after the setting up of the system.
I wanted 5 slots to have all the races maxed out at the same time and to improve the "coop RPG system", but this means that to max out everyone the hours of gameplay become respectively 300 and 204. Keeping in mind that 1min=1kill, which seems a bit too much, so we are working on excess, but it's still some time.

General features of the system

The "RPG system" in OG must have a switch to turn it on and off, not to let down all the people who wants to play OG just in its original flavour.
There is campaign, challenges, arena, versus, local offline coop (arena and challenges), and (hopefully later after the release) online coop.
Turning on the "RPG mode", you choose and customize a character and use it in challenges, arena, local offline coop and online coop, giving the players the possibility to storage 5 different characters (one per race). In the offline coop the second character may have the same points as the first to be determined at the start of the offline coop game-play, or may be one of the other "storaged" customizable characters. In the online coop the players who have "RPG mode" on should play just with other players who have it on too, so to have some balance. Turning the mode off should allow you to use your customized character anyway for every game type except for campaign (in which I assume you play as Turner), but all the stats increases should be not considered as well as the leveling system. This in order to keep your costume and appearance.

Character growth

Now the growth of the characters. This subject, just as the gameplay hours, has been discussed by me and Endoperez and we sorted out that a growth of +0.8 in any attribute (which is the max points you earn with a single lvl spent all in one attribute) is not enough to feel like a "God-like improvement" (which I feared), but still it's slightly noticeable. I started with a definitely slower growth, but thanks to Endo, it is more reasonable now.
Given the fact that neither I nor him could test, we have a question about the SPE: If we increase the SPE to 1.5 or 1.6 will the character be too fast? In lugaru after 1.25 it became definitely too fast, so we may want to have a lower increase in speed (every 2 attribute points spent in SPE you get +0.01, just like CUTRES).
Well, I guess this is more or less everything that should be said, even if I have the sensation to have forgotten something xD

"Arena RPG system" adaptations

Anyway let's go on. I intend to work this way, solving some practical problem but mantaining the "RPG system" with its features. What about the "Arena RPG system"? First of all I don't think there are wolves in the Arena, thus for the first draft of the mod, we need to have a simple kill counter, but no differentation between "normal" enemies and wolves.
Secondly, I would avoid the costume and appearance customization, at least at the start. To simplify the whole thing I would suggest to do this:
Enter the arena from the menu (just like in OG) -> new menu with the character slot (identified simply by the name, at least at the start) (this menu shall be added in our mod) -> new menu displaying name of the selected character, attributes, kills, and gameplay time (this menu shall be added by our mod) and THEN entering the arena. This means that to lvl up we need to get out of the gameplay and restart the arena.
The character appearance should be fixed for the first version of the mod, so we don't have to deal with it right now. The important things are the kill counter and the character saved slot.
Another thing: Endo pointed out that there is no sneak involved in the arena and given the fact it is really tricky to modify, we'll not use it at the start, therefore we have 3 attributes: STR, SPE and RES and less point every level. We get 6 attribute points every level because 6 multiplied by 25 is equal to 150 which is what we need to max out the 3 stats.

The goal is to create a springboard to be shown to the devs and to convince them this idea HAS TRUE potential. Or at least, this is my opinion, but if you wish to create something better, I would just be much more happy
Btw thank you for actually being reading all of this and thank you for considering the creation of this mod.

Dreams for the future

What I dream about the future of this mode is this: imagine the normal menu of OG, you click on arena, or coop, or challenges and a new menu with 5 slots appears. Four of them are empty, written in the inside "New Character" and one shows a character who will go in "fighting stance" if you point him with the mouse. We click an empty slot and we get to a new menu where we can choose the race and the name of our new character. We see him aside of the menu, the camera is fixed to his baricenter, allowing us to move him, to make him crouch and jump, just to see him form every angolation, while his baricenter is blocked in the space. After having chosen the colour, the costume, the race and the name, we click "next" on the right below corner and we get to the menu we will access next time we click on the occupied character slot. This menu show the portrait on the left upper part, under it there are the attributes' bars showing how much we have completed them, while on the right we have the number of kills, the deaths, the time of gameplay. Under these things there the "Achievements". Now: of what am I talking about? Achievements?

Achievement system

Yes, my fellow friends, once we put up the kill-counter system we have access to another feature which will complete the "RPG system": the Achievements. There is a thread in which I talk about them, but to give you an idea of them I write them here. Btw again thanks to Endoperez for having helped me to find the right numbers.

- Not today (kill 1 wolf)
- I am no prey (kill 10 wolves)
- Who hunts who? (kill 100 wolves)
- Foodchain Reverser (kill 500 wolves)

- That wasn't the floor... (1 jump-kill)
- They're good trampolines (20 jump-kills)
- The floor is Lava! (50 jump-kills)

- Lucky throw (1 kill with a thrown weapon)
- Nice aim (20 kills with a thrown weapon)
- Weapon Launcher (50 kills with a thrown weapon)

- Jump, sit, die! (kill 500 dogs)
- Didn't they have 9 lives? (kill 500 cats)
- Ratcatcher (kill 500 rats)
- Long way to make T. an only child (kill 500 rabbits)

- Shadow's Adept (1 silent kill) [By "silent" I mean neck-grabbed]
- Shadow's Warrior/Friend (20 silent kills)
- Shadow Himself (50 silent kills)

Got what I mean?
And once we (read you ) put up the system, if you kill x>20 other enemies at level 1, but only one wolf you don't get to level 2 until you kill the second wolf, but the kills are counted for the calculations of the achievements. E.g. if you kill 1 wolf and 500 dogs, you are at lvl 1 but you get the "Jump, sit, die!" achievement.

Concluding

To conlcude, thank you very much for your time and for your attention, let me know what you think about it (doable, undoable, crap, cool, etc)
I wish you the best



P.s. Once we move from the "Arena RPG system" to the "RPG system", what I would like to see is that the saved characters has the same stats in every mode: challenges, arena etc...

[Sehiro]

Uh, btw guys, I wrote a LOT of stuff and edited the post many times, so some things may be unclear and bad-explained. Don't mind to ask for another explanation and sorry for the mess

[Endoperez]

That's a lot to take in at once. Maybe add a few subtitles in there, so it's easier to take in one part at a time? Like, after the intro, I think those could be divided into 'the stat system', 'level up', 'character system' or 'rpg system' for the 5 slots, game modes etc... then 'arena system', 'vision', 'achievements'.