National Revolution
 

Okay. I'm talking to Terazel, he's got a fair idea for nation battles. So I guess I'm back to nursemaid this idea to completion.

The core of it's simple. Three nations (like superguilds), and every playerhouse (at least the ones that aren't vital to quests) is a mini fort. In general a nation's headquarters will be comprised completely of houses owned by that nation - perhaps there will be a final fortification for use as some sorta spawn point or national HQ or something, that's not important in phase one. The point is, if one nation controls a territory they have loads of houses in which to hide and heal - if a defending knight hides in a house to heal and the invading knight knocks down the door, he can butcher the inhabitant and himself heal in the newly captured territory.

Anyway. My time and skills are limited, as is my access - who is with me, and who stands in opposition?

If this is Nations as you were developing it before, then I personally don't think it really sits well with the view of what Classic is meant to be.

I encourage you to talk with me though. ^^

Huh?!

What is classic meant to be?

Uh, Tyhm, I don't think that idea would really work, and would be a real pain in the ass to implement... I was actually planning on integrating the little access we have to the global guild DB into a local DB system instead, and reusing the Nations NPCs in that system with certain requirements to attaining them.

Gold. I want to see that come about!

*shrugs* Implementation's open. It can be developed parallel to the LAT's current work, as all that'd need to change for the way I see it is a few quick edits to the join door; class, (then maybe a few edits to the join questdoor; class, ie making a questdoor class and joining all the important doors to that). I've noticed a lot of changes to the storage of server strings since I left - a single array could hypothetically hold every door on the server, but I'm open to suggestions on what would be the most efficient way of handling it (if each door invents its own serverstring - setstring door#L#v(x)#v(y),#g(0) (or however that translates in GS2)). Only needs to read on created (assuming that still/finally covers level updates) and changed. 20 hearts should be a good health number for the doors, nothing too crazy in either direction. Ultimately I'd like to implement an NPC guard system for when everyone in a nation's asleep or at school - strong defense, lousy offence, you don't have to worry about a counterattack but it's easier to attack them when they're actually online to control themselves (and the NPC guards are switched off)...

Current problem - guildtags can be turned off. 's why I'd like Nation tags.

Masterstorm and Massokre, I'm pretty sure you guys have my contact info. I'd contact you guys, but you tend to have some pretty weird handles (whereas I'm always the one on the contact list named Tyhm...)

uhhh.... you wouldn't want to store all of that in a server string.

*shrugs* Would the overhead be less to have a large number of server strings? Or is there a robust (surviving level-update and purgings) variable format that could handle it? Or would it be safe to just have the door remember itself? I suppose the rest of the server doesn't Need to know everything about every door on the server...

Yeah Tyhm, Classic stands for stagnation now, anything new would be disastrous to the server.

Maximus, shut it. The original Nations idea may have bombed but dialogue on a differant version isn't knocking the idea out of the water completely. For once let them talk without turning this into a slam session please. Progress is born of ideas, even if those ideas aren't easily recognizeable in the end.

Doors are database NPCs. All database NPCs variables survive on update. However, it would be a defining concept of the server if this were to be added, and I doubt it would have much interest to the players.

I don't remember even using a wierd handle? Oh well, I'll hit you up on AIM sometime.

You're Polo and Stormy, he's Mass and Eclipse. It's all a bit of a headache, given that I'm Tyhm and Tyhm.

If the players don't care that the doors change colors every so often as the nations fight over the cities, then all that's happened is I've wasted my time. If they do care, then hurray, we've given them something to do while we wait on the next quest. Or baddies. Whatever.

I'm interested, since guilds may not ever be as large as 150+ anymore this will help get major fights going on classic again, besides, lots have changed already, and you'll never know if you like something or not unless you try it.

Polo is my account, I don't it as a nickname, and none of my AIM/MSN/Email refer to it...

Mine is Mafukie. Everyone has their own vision on what classic should be. I eat tacos with a fork.

Yeah, but not everyone cares what everyone else wants. I rather want to be left alone to eat tacos and dream of the future in peace, but sometimes it just ain't in the cards. Not a month goes by without someone bugging me to nuke the extant leadership of Classic and "just bring back all the fun clientside stuff", as if G2K0 wasn't a lesson in the futility of that theory - if only it had been the right version! And if only the staff had uploaded the RIGHT improvements!

But I digress. Territory would be a way of keeping score, and a way of keeping score gives something to do, and something to do is necessary, as Classic was once a game based on "do all the quests" and right now it's got all of two quests. One of which relies on single-tile offset block puzzles, which I've never found particularly clever. So it needs Something to do. Exploration requires levels and hidden points of interest, PKing requires a playercount, Sparring requires someone to care about Sparring, Minigames requires a deep knowledge of the scripting language - even bringing back Bowling would require more hours of development at this point than it'd provide hours of gameplay. But defending territory, that's easy to script and self-motivating - as long as there's a single player with the Pirate hat on going through Avalon taking over the houses, there's work to be done when you log back on.

I liked the bowling, bring it back!

I want to defend territory! But what about the AP system? Wouldn't that screw everything up?

Yea, Tyhm... let's see what I can get done with guilds before we look into other measures.

Ultimately, yes: AP, Newbie Saint, and Respawn would all be issues, nice complicated ones that require a lot of System Editing and the direct intervention of Mass.

I don't suppose there's any particular rush - a lot of these doors don't actually link to playerhouses anyway.

The nice thing about having a custom system is that it's ridiculously easy to modify... It's decision making and priorities that are the difficult part of modifying the system. The biggest problem we face with the system is rewriting what's still on Master Storm's systems into my systems (projectiles, item dropping, staff systems, weather system, warp system).

Bed Healing and Lava Hurting are easy. I just don't feel like adding it.
Respawn locations would be easy but we'd have to determine where a player respawns, etc. Newbie Saint would be ridiculously easy. AP is the same as the default system right now, save the -5 for hurting someone when you're a saint.

I had it all worked out once. Respawn I mean. If you died inside, you warp to the position recorded the first instant after you left the overworld map, unless you were an Alien (because they're so slow-moving), or unless it was a special "outside level" level. If you touched a Midpoint/savepoint/warpgem (they were the big S spheres), all that does is change the flag to set that as your new respawn location. If you activated the old warp ring and had a respawn location saved, you warped to the respawn location.

Come to think of it, it WAS really complicated - if you warp from outside, you warp to the Outside Respawn Location, if you die outside you don't warp...or do you...? Man, now I'm confused.

Yea, the other thing about respawn points is that we'd want it to not affect PKing too much.

This is rapidly slanting off-topic, but I consider an evolving discussion to be a Good Thing.

Most PKing occurs outdoors. Currently you warp back to where you entered the overworld map when PKed. So that should probably stay.
Fort roofs are also outdoors. A special exception should be made for fort roofs - you warp back to the Bottom of a fort when PKed. When they enter the door at the bottom, a leash-String is put on them - when they die, they're warped back - when they leave by the same door, the leash-String is removed. It's like putting on the Laser Tag vest - while you're in the Fort Arena, your respawn rules are changed. (You might have a more clever way of handling it, something with all the interior fort levels setting the string and also a polygonnal invisible NPC on the roof - I dunno, it doesn't front me.)

If the house theory is used, anyone PKed indoors should be shunted to where they left the overworld map - outdoors. A difference of one step from the usual - if you can reenter the building, do so.

If a quest needs a different Respawn Rule, then that works. I'd certainly support interior respawn locations for dungeons (those silly little prismatic spirals I was so fond of...)

Thus, outdoor respawn only changes for forts, and (if houses are used as capturable territory) indoor respawn is only changed by one step - and it's got a Fred Flintstone charm, getting kicked out the window by the sabretoothed cat and having to bolt for the door. That'd be the general rule anyway, the specific rules for dungeons should be maleable.