Scribes! (Saving Feature for Doragon Koden)
 

Below is an excerpt from my RP text that I'm working on...the update of my text will be released tomorrow for those that care.

Scribes (Saving Feature)

Scribes will be how players save their character during online play. Scribes record all variables, flags, and strings the player has. When players resume playing after disconnecting from the server will start out at the last scribe they recorded at. Scribes also double as documenters of a player’s adventures and/or major events. These things can then be published into a book that other players may read; it can also be published at anytime and even updated! Since that probably a good majority of these stories will be adventure novels, the way they open will be determined by how the player began playing in the actual game. Some will travel from a far away land, others will have simply grown up in this world and start from there. As well as adventure novels, we plan on adding in other types of player-made books such as Informative books which may explain how to do something like farming. Players may also add in special comments to their stories such as tips on beating a certain type of monster and what not. Depending upon what a player does will determine how the story will come out…for those that have played a Mad-Lib-type game before that is how the stories will be “saved” so to speak…of course, we’ll edit them so they at least flow well. And yes, even those who are hell-bent on behaving in the fashion of a PlayerKiller will have stories that reflect their actions…although not desirable it may be implemented. I’m am even juggling the idea of “love” stories for those that want to venture into that realm as far as marriage and even rescuing a lost loved-one.

I haven't seen this been done yet...not even in other RPG-like games. While this probably will be a very daunting task, it isn't impossible to do ;)

Please post feedback, I'm eager for suggestions :D

Re: Scribes! (Saving Feature for Doragon Koden)
 

That would rather be annoying

I mean if you get booted off or crash or something you'd have start over.
Or do I have this all wrong?

Re: Re: Scribes! (Saving Feature for Doragon Koden)
 

No no...you have to visit a scribe anytime you want to save your progress...I plan on circumventing the GServer's "save anywhere" ability...this will hopefully hinder PKing to some extent. Just like in console RPGs, you should save often ;)

If you get booted, sorry :( Think of it as if the game froze or locked up for what ever reason :p Yes, that sucks, but life goes on. Basically, all the NPC will do is just drop a string in your account that tells the control-NPC when you log on to make sure you are warped to the correct save spot...the only bad thing is if the NPC Server goes down...well, you'll figure it out ;)

Personally, I like the idea because you control how the story goes from beginning to end. Getting the NPC to actually write the story will be tricky...savelog comes to mind in doing that, but I'm not sure that will work well :(

Errr... it has been done in an online game, Ultima Online. You can buy books and write stories in them, then give them to people.

I don't like this feature.

who accually plays that server any more, i played it for 10 minutes and i said naa............

I like it, its better then being bored on all the other servers and it gives you something to do other then pking.

Good Job G-Yoshi.

You just had to tell them didn't ya? XD j\k.. Well as far as i know i cant wait to see what other tricks Yoshi has up his sleeve. And i know he had many. One think i would like to see happen is more people coming to DK.

Yoshi am i still going to be staff when this new plan comes out?
~Kain

I can see this causing some problems. My opinion is that you shouldn't do it. But this is your call.

If you do this you should make it so it doesnt work on Trial accounts or Stefan will probably become very annoyed since you're going exactly what he's trying to estabilsh about stuff not saving for them.

When a trial account re-logs on, all his attributes are reset, including flags. So it wouldnt really matter because they wouldnt have any flags to be able to save progress.

Think about what you're saying. When they log off all attributes are reset. You come to a script that saves all your flags before you log off. Then when you log on you go back to the NPC and get all of your flags back.

Yes I'm aware of that, that information would obviously be stored in your flag list. You restart and you now do not have a set of flags to activate because they were deleted.

I dont know that much about scripting so I'm going to assume you're right and if that is indeed the case then there's no real problem in it.

hey! maybe DK will have more than 1 player! NPC server! you should hand it over g_yoshi, all staff there i have talked to agree.

I hope you're not telling G-Yoshi to give up DK and if you are, be quite. He's doing a good job with it from what it originally started off as and its only getting better.

I find this idea good, but others don't seem to have much interest in it, maybe just make it as an option that you don't have to record you're stuff all the time and just be something fun for people who want to do it.....

Its default for saving...unless you want to publish your adventures, you never have to.

And to the bastard telling me to throw away my own project that I started...please die :)

Trial accounts don't allow saving...even if I circumvent the GServer, trial account users will always start over from the onlinestartlocal level. Basically, a string will be dumped into a player's account that the control-NPC will look for...everything else from there will probably be associated with the unique string. Again, since trial accounts cannot save data, that string will get deleted after logging off.

What problems, exactly?

The only things I can think of that are a downside are just the minscule annoyances.

I've never played UO before...besides, you won't have to buy anything to publish your story. The books will be put in libraries where people can freely read them :)

Tons of ways to exploit the millions of unseen bugs you will indefinitly have in it. Saving your game online isn't a good idea.

It already does :p It's all saved to your account...saving it offline would be worse since people could hack it :p

If I understand correctly you won't be saving you're game but more like saving you're story. I image it will work something like if you go into an rp event and you win blah blah blah then you can record it in you're book...

I THINK thats what its going to be....


[edit] meh g-yoshi answered before me :p I wasn't completly wrong.

I like the idea.

A problem might be that whenever someone dies, they just exit Graal without saving, and come back, without that death.

People might become 'immortal'. :(

I could live with being Immortal....

To an extent, you can do that already :p

If someone had played for a long time, got a bunch of new stuff, got killed, and did not save, they'd have to start over from their last save point.

Well, sorta...you can save at anytime...certain events will trigger new lines and what not that will get added to your story...such as increasing your level 10 times between saves would result in something like "<name>'s strength grew after x battles" or something like that...mostly, only significant events will be recorded. Publishing it means the NPC will probably save it all into a log file that we staff people have to go through and proofread to make sure its logical and makes any sense...

I like that, only thing that could be a pain is having to walk or find the save point. But that could be fixed with a warp ring or something or once you have the book you can just record it right away....

There will be lots of places to save...and only scribes can let you save....you won't carry any kind of book ;)

We will see how you do, I just don't think It would be a good idea. Call it intuition.

heh, I understand...too bad Kaimetsu would probably not be interested :(

who knows he might be interested,

Grim Squeaker:

The problem with these systems is that there's a limit to the amount of information which can be stored in one string, not to mention that you'd eventually have to store insane amounts of information, assuming that DK will be big enough.

It'd probably be better to just make it store the last scribe you visited as log in point. (I.E. actionplayeronline, setlevel2 #I(clientr.lastscribe,0),etc.;)

Re: Re: Re: Scribes! (Saving Feature for Doragon Koden)
 

Savelog won't work. Just use normal strings. And if parts of the story are to be written automatically, a la Baldur's Gate or Morrowind, then use control codes to represent passages so they only need to be stored in their entirety in one place.

Heh, that is the plan ;) One string which is set/changed when you save at a scribe. The saving part is not really the hard thing...the story stuff will probably be a little more daunting, however :(

i like the publishing idea, but not the saving idea

maybe you could just use scribes to publish your life??

:)

Nope, sorry :p This is one of many methods I plan on implementing to dissuade people from PKing. Although I can't necessarily prevent it, I can do my best to deter that kind of action ;)

i see one huge problem in this, what if one of your staff members get extremelly pissed off and deletes the saved strings and such of whatever npc keeps track of this information?

x.x
 

kinda obviouss what would happen he'd be pissed and so would the players, but i like your idea G_Yoshi :), but one thing i hate is the black bars on the screen x.x they annoy me lol, gj thought i like DK.
- Chicken AKA Howard

OMG
G_Yoshi....this is an Awesome idea...
make it so you cant juss pk pk pk pk pk pk...u have to have strategy...much better.....the pk pk pk pk pk is getting old and this seems like an awesome idea. I think you are doing an awesome job with the server...keep up the good work.

P.S.

BTW...if you need any Level Builders (i have been on and it seems u do, sry) I would be happy to help...