Welcome one and all to yet another Development Update; #17!
Now
Prospecting
Prospecting is the process of searching, finding and discoverying minerals.
The higher your prospecting skill is, the better chance you have of finding minerals whilst searching - or not searching - for them!
There are two types of prospecting. Active and Passive.
Active:
If there is a source of gold in a mountain, a stream flushing down from it may have gold nuggets in it. When sieving in said stream, your prospecting will affect the chance of you finding these nuggets.
Passive:
A passive prospecting find is spotting a vein of Mineral in a rocky outcropping. The chance of the vein showing on the outcropping is affected by your prospecting skill. Noticing this vein will lead you to believe there is a vein of that mineral below or nearby the outcropping.
Player Recipes
Player Recipes are when players create their own meals from ingredients.
Players can throw together any ingredients they want. Each ingredient has a set of statistics;
- Texture (Solid, Emulsion, Liquid)
- Miscibility
- Bitterness
- Saltiness
- Sourness
- Sweetness
- Umami
- Coolness
- Spiciness
- Aftertaste
- Smelliness
The texture and Miscibility are filters. This is so that players don't mix red sauce and mint sauce together - or custard and water. Eugh!
Bitterness is how bitter the food is. For example, Tea Spice.
Saltiness is how salty the food is. For example, Anchovies.
Sourness is how sour the food is. For example, Lemons.
Sweetness is how sweet the food is. For example, Chocolate.
Umami is how Savoury the food is. For example, Ripe tomatoes.
Coolness is how Refreshing the food is. For example, Spearmint.
Spiciness is how spicy the food is. For example, Chillis.
The Aftertaste is how the ingredient tastes after it is swallowed - which is basically a second of the above seven tastes.
The Smelliness is how strong the food smells. For example, cheese.
At first, the player will have no knowledge on how the above foods will tastes, smell and so forth. Every time the player eats a new food, the statistics of the ingredient is added to his memory - which he can recall (Read in the User Interface, heh) at a later time.
Players will only discover ingredient's statistics if he eats it raw and as itself - that is, not cooked or in a pie, for example.
Players must then, as a burgeoning chef, select foods that benefit one another's tastes. There is no limit to how many he uses. However, there are three stages that ingredients are grouped to;
- Pre
- Cooking
- Post
Pre are raw foods that are put into a single dish for cooking.
Cooking foods are things that must be cooked with a tool - which may include the foodstuff made by the "pre" step, as well as any additionals added to the previous foodstuff, such as glazing.
Post are foods that are not cooked, and are added as a finishing touch - such as spices.
Some foods are multi-grouped between the three, depending on the realism of it (ie, not stuffing a raw orange into the middle of a cooked pie).
Update on Combat
I've updated the combat a little, so that armours can be damaged without deflecting damage.
The Toga, for example. This has no defence bonuses at all and is incapable of "Deflecting" damage. It will, however, take some of the damage from the attack and affect it's HP.
Let's choose two balanced test subjects... a great big barbarian, and, a frail old librarian in a Toga.
Now, for our first test, the barbarian is using a sword - a "Slash"ing weapon.
Togas are more vulnerable to destruction from Slashing weapons than another other - they actually take twice as much damage.
If the Barbarian was about to cause 25 damage, the toga would take 20% of this (5) and this would harm the Toga's HP. Meanwhile, a hammer or arrow would only take 10% of the damage (2.5 > 3).
This % does not reduce the damage to the player. The 25 damage about to be caused, would still be caused. If an armour were to take 100% of the damage to itself, the 25 damage would still go through.
So now, rather than the old system of "Soak" and "Deflect", we now have "Break" and "Deflect".
- Break takes a % of the damage to itself, but does not reduce the overall damage.
- Deflect grabs a % of the damage and diminishes it into nothing, from the overall damage.
Praying & Rituals
Praying and Rituals now have a use! They increase your "Faith".
Praying can be done at any time. This will increase your Faith by a little every few seconds.
Rituals are ceremonious events. These can simply be a prayer and a food offering at a humble altar, or the large ceremony of slitting a bull's throat, and can be quite expensive - which, of course, gives a large boost to your Faith.
By either means, your piety increases with this.
Now, what is Faith? Faith are basically "Points" that can be spent to call for aid from a Deity.
These are not spells.
Spells would be chanting and creating fire or lightning from ones fingers. No.
In Project Terra, we are superimposing the views of the religious. That is, chance is taken as a sign of god.
For example, if you were to spend your faith points on crying for a god to strike down an enemy with lightning, it would happen. However, this can be boiled down to the fact it could have been by chance. One in a Billion, maybe, but the chance is still there.
The romans were very religious people, and would change their entire day's plan if for one omen - the passing of a crow, or tripping on one's doorstep.
So it was that if they saw lightning strike an enemy soon after they asked for it, they would believe it was the act of a god or goddess. If the same lightning strike, after being asked for, were to strike an Ally, or a family member, they would believe the gods angry and would repent heavily.
When you, the player, meddle with the gods... do not take it lightly. You may cause a disaster of your own by simple uttering a wrong word in a ceremony or acting without respect towards those deserving.
Piety I am still not sure this fits into the equation. It could be that a higher Piety allows you for higher tiered "Rites" (Levels of "Spells"), or it could somehow affect the chance or power of an Act of God.
Cosmetics & Laundry
Cosmetics namely applies to the female players - or the otherwise orientated males. Laundry is, well, read on.
The application of makeup does not withstand the test of time. Hell, it doesn't stand the test of the pillow, from what I hear.
And such is the case that, if one wishes to wear makeup, it should be reapplied each morning.
Why? Well, makeup can increase ones social skills - people (NPCs) may tend to want to stick around and listen to a beautiful woman in makeup, as opposed to morning's mess. Otherwise, the player may just want to have their character's appearance changed to their liking.
Now makeup, or, cosmetics, opens up a whole new door for a trading market, which is what we want in Project Terra - the more applicable and consumable goods that players can use, exhaust and stockpile - the better!
Now, as for Laundry... In Sims 3, they attempted this. Sims would go to bed, and a pile of clothes would appear on the floor (sometimes?). However, this became quite a chore because players didn't have a selectable wardrobe of clothing, so to speak.
In Project Terra, you do. Clothes will have a "Cleansliness" stat. If you wear a "Very clean" tunic, your hygiene will decrease slower and you will gain a boost to social events. If you wear a "Very Smelly" tunic, your hygiene will decrease quicker and you will gain a handicap to social events.
So, the player must wash his clothes.
However, the point of this - and many other little "Chores" that players will need to do, is to encourage the buying of slaves.
Romans loved their slave-keeping ability - in fact, there were more slaves than Romans in the Roman Empire.
If any of you have seen Rome (series), you'll see that a relatively poor family even had slaves, or moreso, Slave. Meanwhile, the rich families had a dozen or more.
I want to encourage this in Project Terra, to make it that much more "Roman". Slaves will wash your clothes, care for your crops, clean your house, and so forth.
Portraits
As opposed to checking on your mood meter every few minutes, why not just look up at your character's face?
If your character is in depressed, his face will be sad.
If your character is ecstatic, his face will be laughing.
If your character has been standing around or doing something too much, he will look bored.
If your character is pretty beat up, his face will be bruised and bloody.
And so forth.
The character's portrait will basically be a quick way of "checking out" how your character is feeling.
Here are a few faces, on an early, basic faceset:
NPCs will also have portraits available to look at when you are talking to them, so you can see how they're feeling or reacting to what they or you have said!
Programming Update
Regrettably to real life problems right now, said programmer of last week will be unable to dedicate for a little while.
Hope all goes better for you soon, bro.
Project Insider
More bads news is, that the web developer who was working on the site will be unable to continue due to University overload.
Good news is, I'll just make it myself. Heh. It won't be great, but it'll be better than the current horrible template we have.
I will also be making the forum alongside it.
Addendum (+11 hours later);
I've just finished the website and forum - check it out! As I said, it's not great, but it works at the least!
Project-terra.net
(I am still filling in the Scenarios & Features)
This Week's Q&A
Azkanan says: Why are you so good looking?
Azkanan replied: I'm gods gift to women!
lol gods gift to woman :P
wait if this game will have some form of combat will ti be a case of the sprites disappearing when killed or will there be blood etc?
It depends how the fps handles the corpses. I'd like them to stick around for a while, and decay over time. However, somebody grinding the local deer on a warpath may cause some heavy fps penalties.
As for when they are struck down, I imagine I could whip up a death animation or two ;)
cool, im sure the fps would not be that high on a 2d game, uless it turns into rome total war
1) Can players, who spotted an iron vein, dig it out or construct even a mine?
2) Can players get loans from some sort of bank?
3) Can players get a loan, buy slaves, get the slaves some gear and start mining (the earlier mentioned iron vein)?
4) Can players be slaves?
1. Yes, players are able to mine. However, they will have to dig a minehole into the surface or a cliffside to enter the next level below.
2. Yes, players are able to get loans. If they're not paid back, loansharks will come to collect (if you get the loan through the black market), otherwise if you get the loan at a Bank and do not pay, you may get into trouble with the law.
3. Yes, players can buy slaves and have them do tasks.
4. Players cannot be slaves (That's no fun!). They *might* be able to be captured by NPCs as a slave, but always have the option to flee or rebel. (We'll see about that last one!)