Developers Corner

 I'm just going to post this in peices. It's nothing I really plan to develop just how I amuse myself. I'll start with the art.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=134243

about a couple of these characters:

1) The Memory of Princess M. :

An android with a female Noe mask face and human hair, NPC character.

10,000 years ago a princess was infected with a deadly plague during the great catyclism; her unborn child was saved before it could be infected. The heir apparant was placed in cryogenic stasis and stored in an andvanced battle android. This was done in secret; to explain the importance of the heavily gaurded android she was made to be a memorial to the princess and thus wears the princess's hair and her portrait around her neck in a display screen that also carries various video clips of the princess's last will and testament.

2.)Necrodroid:

A skeleton cyborg, high level unlockable character

As you played you would find recovered memory fragments that reveal (non-sequentially) the back story of the game. He was a cyborg who over years of warfare gradually became completely robotic. He had a highly illegal affair with the princess (mentioned above) and thus his human former self is the father of the heir apparant. This could however just be a pack of clever lies ment to control him kind of like the false memories in Frank Miller and Geof Darrow's Hard Boiled comic (major inspiration to me). He has a little tuning fork thing that pops out of his forhead when he wants to commune with his ghost, and tiny retractable eyebrow silica so that he can feel the wind.

3)Symbimechs:

mobs/NPCs

These creatures are descendents of the nanotech plague that devastated the world. They combine multiple  organisms and machinery into single larger entities (think steampunk Cthulu mech with coral and crabs living on it). They exist in several strains in the wild which can be roughly described as clans. They have an indeterminate life-span as they are constantly renewing themselves through the absorption of new creatures. I have toyed with the idea of having the stricken princess and other key members of the fallen court still existing in a form as these creatures.

The Cities:

The setting would be a technilogically advanced world that has been devastated, robots and high tech exist but swords and clubs are more common. Civilization is confined to walled up cities all else is combat prone wilderness.

The cities are not safe-zones, they are pvp enabled, however all weapons must be registered and checked at the gates. Only players and NPCs who are members of the city guard are authorized to carry weapons, but other players can have smuggled concealed weapons. There would be many laws in the city and several competeing criminal organizations. Contraband items could include any weapons, drugs, and people who have been exiled (one possible punishment for breaking the law). Illegal behaviors include fighting (outside of designated areas), nudity, dancing, bribery (though some will except it), theft, sale of contraband, smuggling, association with known criminals. Necrodroids are never welcome.  Penalties could include fines, checked weapon confiscation, exile, and bounties. Gaurds can be corrupt accepting bribes, killing unprovoked, taking missions from criminals, they must in turn evade internal affairs. The whole set-up should be npc and quest supported but ultimately player based as to how corrupt or lawful each city ends up.

Cities would have one AH available from only in that city for all legal items (weapons sold here are all considered registered and could be picked up at gate). There would be a separate trading post for all illegal/contraband items. The cities would also be the place to pick up any bounty permits or smuggling contracts. None of these things should be available in the wilderness.

Weather:

should be big and cover multiple zones. I would like seasons as well. Weather should affect traction making knock-backs and knock-downs easier in wet conditions and climbing more difficult. If in extreme cold conditions one should take cold damage if you don't have proper gear for it. Prevalent winds in areas, both audio and evidenced in visuals and physics would be really really cool. I liked Elder Scrolls IV a lot. In an MMO weather could make one day different from the next and give the world a much deeper sense of immersion.

That is Amazing Art!

I have no Drawing skills.

 Thanks! 

Conceptart.com tends to make me feel sub-par for the industry but I try to keep up.

Just the topic thread brought a song on..

Whats in your head,in your head

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lyp5we2ySDo

:)

 Heh, Cranbarries are cool.

Okay, the Necrodroid sequence as I envision it starts, with a first person perspective in a dark bunker, a few little LEDs are blinking on a control panel which can only be seen as a silhoette of black on blacker. You get a whole bunch of terminator-esque messages in your UI about logic errors and memory corruption. Options come up to switch your visual mode around to a few different frequencies, or do heat signitures something like that. looking around you can see that you are quite mangled and there are pieces of you lieing around all over the place. You then get to assemble yourself out of various pieces allowing for some but not total customization. During this time you can find the memory file with a numerical title in which you see video recordings of the princess fleeing into a bunker as symbimechs attack and cyborgs and androids defend against them. This should probably be B&W or at least severly faded with little missing bits and static. Finding an additional memory file of the princess in a delivery room while shells and gunfire are going off nearby could be found by people who search carefully in the computers in the room. The doctor in this clip may turn out to be a recurring character in said clips. After assembling yourself you can leave this little bunker, which I picture much like the hatches from Lost only without the 70's theme, and enter either a jungle or mountainy area.

The next bit is lifted from an old black and white Samurai movie, which I loved but can't remember the name of, Mifune had a walk on part in it, if anyone knows please tell me...anyway. You come upon an old man praying at a roadside shrine for the gods to end his life because he is in pain and a burden to his poor daughter. The mist sweeps aside and your there skeleton cyborg samuraii-looking bad-ass with your sword, and the old guy throws up his hands and begs you not to kill him. Guess he changed his mind, anyway you have your choices, and you might even be able to meet his daughter at some point.

 Wilderness areas:

This is all open PvP without much in the way of restrictions. I haven't played Eve but I think I might like a system like I've heard about from them. There should be a lot of destroyed metropolis areas with lots of flooding and swamp and jungles growing in around them. There could be underground train tunnels and sewers for dungeons. There are all sorts of old technology left to rust, some of which can be salvaged and some of which will try to kill you. Perhaps getting a working train line or just a working power/communication line between two walled cities could be a server-wide player goal that allows quick travel and stuff but must always be defended from mob attacks. There would be large areas of just forest and mountains and plains, maybe a few meager tribal villages trying to eek out a medevil agrarian style existence, they could find all technology beyond a crossbow offensive, evil, and frightening- possibly refering to it as witchery and robots as devils or demons.

 Seasons, realistic animal behaviors, and taming:

Seasons should be 1.5 months each for a 6 mo. cycle. Besides simple flora and ground texture cycles, weather will change, lakes and creeks will freeze or have different levels sometimes drying up altogether (on a smaller scale I would like tides as well), traction will be affected, and animal mob behaviors will be affected.

Almost all animals will normaly try to evade you. Stealth must be used to approach them (usually) and travelling up-wind will help as they would normally smell you before you see them. Large animals such as a bear, moose, or dire wolf might not flee. Some animals like ravens and rats are carrion eaters and will try to eat dead players or mobs. The animals also will follow seasonal behavior patterns, so rutting dear in the spring will keep fighting each other instead of fleeing and then attack you much more readily, in the winter pack animals-dogs, wolves, dire wolves-will actively hunt lone players (but generally flee large groups). In the late spring/early summer animals will have whelps in their dens, if you can track an animal to its' den, this should require a skill or a lot of luck, you can steal its pup in order to tame it. Taming will require both a seperate animal skill and a high base charisma stat, some animals are also far easier to tame. Tamed animals can be spooked and flee if the player uses guns or engined vehicles, this is also a variable of taming stats and charisma.

Easy taming:

cats, rats, rabbits, frogs - little use, mostly vanity, perhaps some "magic" benefit, or bait or scent masking

horses, mules - mounts and pack animals

mid-level:

dogs, wolves - tracking and attacking

owls, hawks, ravens  - messengers(?), attacking, magic based scouting

High level:

large cats, bears, dire wolves - powerful attacks, some tracking

Large animals are prohibited in most cities and must be registered and placed in kennels upon entering. Exotic animals like monkeys and parrots are available for purchase in limited number from select Npcs but are very expensive. They can help you steal and activate hard to reach switches in dungeon areas.

Symbamech animals are only tamed/absorbed by symbamechs which cannot tame animals in the normal manner. Robotic mechs cannot be used in conjunction with animals. Number of tameable animals you can have at once is dependent on your animal skill and charisma if you try for too many they will turn on each other and/or flee.

Another idea I had was player controlled hunting grounds connected to cities or at least some type of housing. These areas would not be considered wilderness as they would have owners, but they would be open to mob attacks which if successful would cause the player owner to lose control of the territory. Players would issue hunting licenses with limits. They would also need to police other players poaching on their land. Perhaps NPC as well as player rangers could be hired much like the gaurds in the cities to try to kill poachers. If a persons personal hunting ground is over hunted spawn times for animals hunted would eventually get longer and longer. Also there could be predetors and prey among animals, so if you only hunted herbivores, your predators might wipe out the remaining population, and if you only hunted predators, your herbivores might overpopulate and wipe out there own food source (medicinal plants). This might be the same type of mechanic that could be used for medicinal herbs, mines, and other types of resources. Kind of a PvP mini RTS simulator mechanic of sorts.

I like the low fantasy/sci-fi element to your ideas, kindof along some of the same stuff I've been thinking of.