idonotexist42

This fills my heart with so much joy.

I gotta start making tiles for the engine, even just a few basic filler ones so my programmer can see whats happening in order to tweak it and get it right and finish building it. so far is mostly conceptual work but he's got the basis of an isometric engine and I have like class system and character building and all kinds of that nuts and bolts [censored] already planned out although the internal details and math of those still needs to be worked out I have the structure envisioned and we just have to code it.

I'm in the beginning stages of working on making an RPG with a friend that's heavily influenced by spiderweb games and its the sort of isometric story focused with turn based combat and such, but with what I think are improvements and elaborations on Jeff's formula, since why make your own game at all if you aren't trying to build upon what's been done and innovate or otherwise improve and enhance it to make something new and cool that isn't quite just a clone. Geneforge like branched story with factions that have distinct paths, flavor wise is heavily influenced by Robert E. Howard's original Conan the Barbarian short stories (brilliant writing those are) and GRR Martin's Game of Thrones books, and also the old testament of the bible. Is actually set in a quasi biblical setting that's a heavily fictionalized version of our own World, Earth, not a new self contained fantasy world. It's set in a time before our written history but that roughly lines up with the early parts of the book of Genesis. Its set in the time before the flood. Supposed to be a trilogy and the flood happens in the third one because it's brought about by man to destroy the Nephlim. another influence in this setting and story is the novel The Many Colored Land, and the rest of the books in that series. Was a scifi book that played with similar themes, but mine is more bloodshed and constant intense gory conflict like an 80s action flick like the original conan the barbarian movie with Arnold that is the atmosphere this is gonna have kinda. but not quite so derivative. will include some lovecraftian chtullu mythos elements, I think those are in the public domain and can be adapted freely right? Another big influence on this setting

huh, well it's probably OP for the baton if you get it as early as Mera but a guardian wielding my buffed burning blade seemed ok in the early storm plains and stayed competitive later on because of how my damage scaled with stat boosts from my other gear and my skill points. I think it did do about 100 damage a turn even in the early storm plains when I first had it, but because I had to wade into packs of enemies and still didn't have super high armor or resistances there was a very real risk of me dying even if I could two-shot most average foes. Having a ranged attack that does that much that early is definitely op. I remember that how effective the energy dot was is highly dependent on the kind of creations you're fighting. the magic creations all have really high energy resistance and in storm plains there's a lot of Glaakhs and they are tough melee tank-ish on top of that. they barely took anything from it. Then the battle creations that you're fighting all have higher health so they can soak up more damage before croaking even though it hurts them more. Things like Cryoas and Roamers and other kinda mid-tier creations without high energy resistances or super high health were the only foes that it really wrecked. I like making the different special weapons all have situational uses where they confer a distinct advantage, are modestly effective against most average foes, and then are severely ineffective in others, gives the player more reason to keep them all around instead of selling them.

huh, that is odd. I'll have to double check if the numbers I'm remembering are accurate but I've not seen the energy dot spike quite that high. If I remember correctly acid and poison did less damage than the energy dot but more than you're saying and the energy dot didn't qo quite that high, more like 60ish per turn tops.

And that's why I heavily buffed Alwan and Greta in the G3 scripts. They were pretty pathetic to start with. They're still a little meh in the later parts of the game because I didn't want to make them too OP in the beginning of the game

In my personal mods, I gave the original flaming Sword that energy DOT and it doesn't seem OP, the damage is more in line with your average acid or poison. I also made it do fire damage instead of physical, so it's less useful against enemies who resist fire, such as all those Drakons towards the end. Its energy DOT becomes less useful later in the game as well, at least if you shape, because once you have Kyshakks they can spread that lightning effect around more effectively than the sword and they don't stack as far as I know. I changed lightning aura and essence lances so they hit multiple targets. Lightning aura hits 3, essence lances hits 5. I also changed Kyshakks so they use the weaker Lightning aura instead of the more powerful essence lances, to balance out it's ability to spray multiple enemies with lightning to spread that DOT around. Gives it a more specialized role with more utility so it's not just a gimped Wingbolt. The upgraded Kyshak, the charged one I gave the more powerful essence lances spell to differentiate it from the basic Kyshakk more. I also made reapers apply the energy dot effect because it seemed weird that the most powerful kind of Thorn didn't apply any status effects. if anyone is interested I can send them my modded GF5 scripts. they're not quite done yet I need to tune the numbers for balance a little better, currently my character seems a little OP, though that's partly because I power-gamed like hell. I think I'm going to buff the health of later game enemies to compensate so the player can still feel good seeing those big numbers when they hit but they're not face-rolling their way through the endgame slaughtering everything with zero effort or risk.

the coding aspect isn't my specialty; I can do minor mods like tweaking items and monsters pretty comfortably but reinventing zones is far out of my league at present. Let me know once you've got the technical framework rolling and then I'll help with the "front-end" writing, dialogue, descriptions, all that kind of storytelling content stuff that the player sees and reads. That sort of writing is one of my strengths, I like to think I've got a pretty good command of the english language and composing prose and such. I can post some drafts of a couple short-stories I've been working on writing.

Sounds like a worthy project. I'm happy to help with the writing of the dialogue and descriptions and stuff.

Killing Litalia resulting in you being locked out of Ghaldring's faction doesn't make ANY sense. For one thing, one of the quests FROM HIS FACTION is specifically to Kill Litalia, the Drakon Researcher in the lab gives you that quest. Sure, Litalia cofounded the Rebellion and perhaps to some of the rebel humans and serviles she's still a war hero, but to Ghaldring, she's a Traitor and a dangerous Enemy. She turned on him, and is now directly working against him, so both his pride and strategic prudence dictate that he wants her dead. I'm surprised he doesn't give you the kill-quest personally. I can't imagine him overlooking that kind of betrayal, he probably wants her severed head on a silver platter as much or more than any of the Shapers, a traitor is usually viewed worse than someone who was a foe all along, and the closer and dearer that person was before they turned traitor, the deeper that betrayal wounds and the more hatred and vengeful rage it inspires. The point of this post isn't that ideologically I am pro or anti Litalia/Ghaldring, or to cast judgement on her decision to leave the rebellion to lead the Trakovites, but to point out the dynamic that the relationship between Litalia and Ghaldring likely would have taken on given what she did and his seeming general attitude. Greta might feel bad about Litalia getting killed, but Ghaldring almost certainly WANTS her dead. beyond that personal vendetta on Ghaldring's part for her betrayal, there's also the fact that even though the Trakovites count as a "Rebel-Ish" faction, they are not only separate from but opposed to the main Rebellion. The Trakovites think that the Rebels are just as bad as the Shapers if not worse, and the Rebels seem as viciously opposed to the Trakovites as the shapers are. Slaughtering the Trakovites and killing their Leader ought to help put you in the Rebels' good graces, not lock you out of joining the Rebellion.

See Rawal doesn't worry me much because even though he hordes power, he doesn't seem inclined to lash out with it or actually use it much at all, he just kind of stockpiles it for "eventually" using it, his ambition isn't tempered by morals or compassion or anything particularly benevolent, but his ambition does seem to be tempered by caution to the point of being almost paralyzed by it. Astoria and I think some other characters talk about how all of the councilors have "broken" somehow, and the way Rawal has broken is to collapse inward and ignore the world and wait the war out and hope all the stuff he stockpiled will help him come out on top then, but he doesn't move to change the fate of the war himself. He has a very vague agenda and while he clearly seems to want to end up in charge of the shapers, he isn't an ideologue who would be willing to see the world burn just to advance his philosophy. he just sits and waits for a chance he tells himself will come. He's checked out of the plot almost, hiding in his mountains. And in the endings, when that chance does come and he does wind up in power, he turns out to be a decent and pragmatic leader. he's actually a fairly moderate shaper to begin with too, he's no liberal like Astoria, but he's no Alwan or Taygen. don't get me wrong, I really despise Rawal just the same. Largely because of how he treats the PC; I don't care what his redeeming features are when he sticks a control tool in my chest and lords it over me like that treating me like a slave. nah. he made it personal for me. I wanted to kill Rawal so badly that I almost joined Ghaldring on my first play through even though I sympathized most with Astoria and didn't particularly like Ghaldring. Now that Im doing a Rebel play through, I am eagerly looking forward to striking that pompous a-hole down for trying to use me as his puppet. I'm just waiting till I kill Platano and get that last reward. but if I hadn't encountered him in that context and I'd just run into him without my whole dynamic of that relationship shaped from the beginning of the game the way it does, I think I'd just find him mildly contemptible and not have such a visceral loathing of him. What I do wish is that there was a way to get into all of the Foundry Repository Vaults regardless of which faction you join. Make them really difficult to get if you're not aligned to the right faction, but don't have those rewards locked out completely. Maybe each councilor could drop their respective keys, or there could be some special boss (or bosses) somewhere else, or have it tied into other quest lines somehow. It might make sense to have it connected to Rawal since he oversees the repository, he could have some secret master key that he's not supposed to have stashed away somewhere. Also there ought to be a way for Rebel Characters to get those third points in Gazer and Drakon so they can make Ur-Drakons and Eyebeasts, since currently as far as I know the canisters you'd need are only in Inner-Ghazaki-Uss where you have the final battle to kill Ghaldring. Even for Shaper Characters it'd make sense to have a way to get those creations somewhere else a little earlier because they're almost useless at that point, you're already in the middle of the final battle at that point, At best you only get to use them in one fight, and since you may well be locked in combat for the rest of the game at that point you might not get to make them at all. I feel like you should get them towards the end of the game still but earlier enough that if you go through the effort to get them you still have time to flex your newfound powers and revel in the glorious slaughter your Eyebeasts and Ur-Drakons are capable of, and already have them with you when you knock on Ghaldring's door, come prepared.

Just to clarify about my thoughts on Harmony Isle: My issue isn't that Lankan is an unreliable character who makes bad decisions, it's that the way the story pans out, or rather fails to pan out as you go along that feels broken; the situation doesn't get fully resolved... even though your actions should have resolved it. I'm ok with unsatisfying resolutions and sad endings but traipsing off to the next island and leaving them all camping out in the swamp cowering from monsters that are no longer there to threaten them while the governor grouches in his capitol doesn't feel right. it's not just a "pick from two imperfect choices" scenario where we don't get an out from having to make that moral choice, it's that logically there should be an out (Because we killed all the monsters that caused the problem in the first place) and we don't get it. You can have a full resolution if you go pro-shaper and then slaughter the rebels and that takes care of the loose ends but if you take the rebel path or decide to be a merciful shaper it's all left up in the air. It's not like the global scale conflicts that are beyond your power to singlehandedly resolve (even though your character always does in the end, btw) it's a small contained situation that was well within our power to resolve. Hell, I'd have been happy with a scenario where you kill all the monsters, go tell Lankan and his rebels "Hey, the monsters are gone, you can all go back to your lives and homes" and some leave but Lankan stays out in the swamp because he's afraid of facing Shaper Justice, and he could say something as simple as "thank you for saving our home, but I can't go back because they'll kill me" and it'd be satisfied. I had an idea where maybe Lankan actually surrenders and submits to justice on the condition that all the other gatherers who joined his rebellion will be spared and you watch him get executed in the town square. there's grumbling and people aren't totally happy but they understand that they got the best case scenario thanks to your intervention so there's no more torches and pitchforks. Characters and endings can be unlikable or unsatisfying as long as they do it in a way that is compelling and doesn't feel inconstant or contrived and break immersion. I suppose I could go into the dialogue scripts and fix it myself? conversations are easy enough to edit but idk about quests, I've never tried that.

Well in Avernum we managed four characters inventories for 6 games plus 2 remakes and a third on the way. It's just maddening to me to have like half characters who look like they should function more or less the same way your character does but instead they're just treated like regular creations. The inventory management as far as equipment wouldn't be anything I'd be bothered by or unused to, though I would certainly want an Avadon style Junk Bag. I had the idea of keeping the existing skill point/ability system that's the same for all classes but adding class specific talent trees to differentiate them more and add depth. For companions like Alwan and Greta I think it'd probably work fine to give them an inventory and the appropriate talent tree but not give them the full skill spreadsheet like your PC does. Letting your human/servile companions have their own inventory and quick item slots would let you make more efficient use of consumables like Pods/Spores, Crystals, Wands, and they'd be able to scale better because they can actually take advantage of the same kind of gear progression your main character does. I think charms should have their own inventory tab, like a charm bracelet or something that they're attached to so you can hold on to as many as you find without using up bag space. As for Lankan and Harmony Isle, I don't like the idea of making huge dramatic changes to the premise, the situation that was set up by events before you arrived isn't the problem; you've got a well meaning but strained shaper whose at least slightly conflicted between moral decency and strictly upholding shaper law and rule, he's sympathetic but having to lay down the law anyways. Lankan is a frustrated civilian with completely understandable concerns even if he's a stubborn fool who doesn't really grasp the depth of the situation; he's got more idealism than sense; it's an ok dichotomy where neither side is totally unrelatable. The problem was how the game didn't allow you to properly resolve the conflict; I know one of the themes of Geneforge is gray and grey morality where you're forced to pick between choices that are imperfect at best, but in this instance it came off as maddeningly contrived. It's not just that the resolution is unsatisfying, it's that there's no real resolution at all unless you slaughter the rebels. Otherwise they just sit there in their little fort even though the island is clean still waving their pitchforks even though the rogues are gone. Even if you give the rebels the Canister it has no immediately visible results. Making the island seem more strategically valuable to make it important enough to justify the resources and effort that the rebellion went through on the island would be a good thing though. They went through an awful lot of trouble to terrorize a seemingly irrelevant little swamp island as it stands now. I think the G3 rebellion could use at least a few more sympathetic characters because they seem wholly villainous and crazy in G3 despite their rhetoric about freedom and equality and the supposed tyranny of the shapers. In G4 they're presented in a much more sympathetic light and even in G5 you've got moderates to balance ghaldring. In G3 they're straight up terrorists and the shapers are just trying to stop the rising tide of monsters terrorizing innocent civilians. It's not even just that the G3 rebellion is violent radicals overall but the fact that there's pretty much no one on their side that seems to have any redeeming qualities that make them seem morally justified.

I agree with most of what you said, I'll give a more detailed reply later because that's gonna be a lot of typing and I don't have time right now. I especially agree about Harmony Isle being rather botched. If Lankan is revolting because he doesn't think the shapers are doing enough to stop the monsters, then really the underlying reason is just the presence of the monsters and Lankan and the Shapers actually want the same thing. So while idk if adding a diplomatic solution prior to the player cleansing the island is appropriate but you'd think that Lankan would also give you a quest to find and destroy the source of the rogues, instead of just asking for his stupid canister. He wouldn't need the canister if you could just kill all the monsters for him yourself. If nothing else there ought to be a dialogue option for After the player has destroyed the source of the rogues where you can be like "Hey, Lankan, you know those monsters you thought the Shapers weren't doing enough to fight? well I singlehandedly slaughtered ALL of them across the entire island so you guys can all go home like you said you wanted to instead of staying holed up in this ramshackle fort" It makes no sense to me that Lankan's little band of rebels doesn't react at all to you saving their asses. The way it is now makes NO sense. Sure, maybe lankan is a stubborn buffoon who can't be negotiated with, but he at least ought to give you some credit for solving the underlying problem that drove them to revolt in the first place. Also I feel like companion characters like Greta and Alwan ought to have their own full inventories so you can equip them with gear just like you can for your main character. Give greta the option to switch between spells just like you can. And for that matter, you ought to have creations with more than two abilities and be able to switch between those, plenty of enemies seem to have three or more abilities that the AI can use at their discretion, why can't we????

I went and edited my post to be more appropriately worded.