Some ideas, some stuff

[Lanover]

OK, I posted some of this long ago on the mailing-list, but I would like to repeat it here, before it is all forgotten.

First, I would like to ask if it is possible, to give the overland-maps a kind of "fog-of-battle"-effect, showing only those areas, that the players already visited. Better yet would be, if only certain areas of the map could be greyed out. I imagine an area-map, that (in the case of my adventure-background) shows everything east of the river grey. as long as the players have not visited those areas. This would really be a very useful feature.

Second, I once asked, if it was possible to a simple, secondary combat system, comparable to the one used in Buck Rogers for the spaceships. This system would effectively only allow options like "Close In", "Gain Distance", "Fire Weapons", "Escape" and "Board". This system should be as easy as possible and should allow combat between ships, land-vehicles, spaceships and so on.
Well, this is just a nice idea I would love to see one fine day in distant future...

OK, so much for the requests... One thing I would love to see however, would be some more material on the GPDL-Language. I am somewhat of an idiot when it comes to scripting. (Hey, I do graphics - that should be enough for one mind...)

OK, now for the good stuff:

I recently created a lot of stuff for 640 x 480 resolution, which is the only sensible resolution for internet-distribution of final designs. I would love to try 800 x 600, but I haven't found any material for this resolution and doing everything myself is a bit much for me at this time (can't find the motivation to do that...).
I tried a new idea to create a look and feel for the 3D-Areas, that let's the game look more alive. I rendered several poser-characters and added them es walls into the game. Looks quite nice to be walking through a crowd instead of walking through an empty town...
I also did some new monsters (mostly large-sized skeletons and such stuff) and will be doing some pictures soon. (These however will be a bit candid, because I am building a somewhat naughty adventure at the moment, based on the storyline written by my girlfriend.)...

I guess I will post some of this stuff next week or so...

Have fun,
Joerg

[Tarlanon]

I really like the idea of being able to explore an overland map, and not see everything right away. I think it would add a great dimension and added depth to an already great gaming system. <------ Shameless DC plug.

[manikus]

fog-of-battle would definately be a cool feature. maybe not just for overlands, either.

for this secondary combat system, would it involve graphics or just be text based? (i'm not too familiar with the buck rogers game) you could simulate a battle with text events...

as for gpdl, i think we all would love to see some more on that. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[img]graemlins/1druid.gif[/img]

-manikus

[Lanover]

The original Buck-Rogers combat-system presented only a large picture of the enemy vessel. Quite easy to use, quite primitive and quite effective. Messages in the normal message-frame stated hits, damage-results and so on. That's all there was.

And being at it: It would also be nice, If I could chosse a different group-icon for different maps. This way, I could have the group represented as a group in one setting and as a spaceship in another setting. Perfect would be a scriptable setting for this, allowing different ships and symbols according to what the crew chose or found...

But that's just some dreams for the far future...

At the moment it would be enough, if monsters would cast spells in combat (or if spells could be added to magic-capable monsters at all. My skeleton-mages are so boring without their spells...

[SilentThief]

I was toying with a similar idea to this to bring up:

(to quote Lanover...),
"If I could chosse a different group-icon for different maps. This way, I could have the group represented as a group in one setting and as a spaceship in another setting. Perfect would be a scriptable setting for this, allowing different ships and symbols according to what the crew chose or found..."

I had the idea of using different icons for armies instead of characters. (Battlesystem rules, anyone???) I recently re-read the FR (Same FR in FRUA) novels, The Horselords trilogy. I was wondering how difficult it would be to (maybe use logic block) change your character icons to "army icons" and have the database have "army" weapons that instead of taking away hit points it took away soldiers (just to throw out an example: an army of cavalry attacks an army of infantry and does 1d8 casualties to said army).

This would open up some strategy warfare gaming, hopefully without having to change the program much...

SilentThief