Offline Training

I’ll start with Offline Training. In order to try to reduce the disparity between “hardcore” gamers and “casual” gamers, we’re going to use a system of offline training so that you can put together set training sets for your character to perform while you’re not logged into the game. Any character can do this and, while it won’t raise your skills as quickly as you actually being in the game and performing the actions yourself, it’ll be a huge benefit to people who can’t be inside the game all the time. You won’t have to feel quite so behind. There will be limitations, though. We don’t want the system to be abused.

1. You will only be able to perform one training set at a time while offline. This means that you’ll only be able to increase skills that the training set touches.
2. Your training will not be performed indefinitely. After a certain period of inactivity (think days, not hours), your character will eventually “go to sleep” and stop training.
3. The speed in which you learn things will be directly inverse to how much time you spend in the game + how many total skill points you already have.

More Uses for the Spirit Realm

The Spirit Realm is a huge part of Journey of Souls. We want to make as much use of it as possible and not in just a “you died, now make your way back to the physical realm” sort of way. We want it to be just as alive as the physical realm and make it useful for solving certain challenges. Those of you who are familiar with the “spectral realm” from Soul Reaver will experience the same types of puzzles and challenges, but probably on a much smaller scale. Not every character or race will be spiritually in tune enough to be able to take advantage of those types of activities, so we don’t want to alienate these races.

Another thing we want to do with the spirit realm is allow people who are spiritually in tune (and even those who aren’t) to occasionally see things in the spirit realm even when they’re in the physical realm. An example Dutch used was a room that may have a chair, a lamp, and a rocking chair that could only be seen by people who could see objects in the spirit realm. The neat thing here is that people who are right on that edge of having their spiritual awareness cross that threshold of being able to see things more often will oftentimes see things in the spirit realm and then look again to see that they’re not there.

One more thing we discussed was an area’s “spiritual power” being able to fluctuate based on things that happen in that area. For example, a death releases the soul from the physical body into the spirit realm. That release of spiritual power will raise the rating of the room so that actions in the spirit realm will bleed through to the physical realm more often. The big item here is death. One of the “cool” things we’d like to do is have the spirit realm of an area retain the finishing blow of a battle. Those with the spiritual awareness to see this from the physical realm, or those who just happened to be in the spirit realm at this location, will occassionally see the deaths of others replayed before them for a set amount of time. Truly spiritually aware players entering the site of a large conflict may get a sensory overload from all of the death that occurred there and “freak out” which will require outside assistance to get them back to a safe location.

In-Game Consequences

Lastly, we want to put a very firm focus on in-game consequences for actions. We want to encourage or discourage appropriate behavior strictly by using the mechanics of the game. We want this to be a living, breathing world of its own. One with few “external” rules, but plenty of consequence for each action. Some of the examples we used this evening were characters taking advantage of offline players’ training locations in order to attack them or somehow harm them while they’re offline. Rather than come up with a way to just say this can’t happen, we eventually settled on another use for the spiritual creatures that can cross back and forth between the spirit and physical realms along with guards for the training grounds.

We do want to make it perfectly clear that dangerous lands will be dangerous. Venturing into these sorts of areas will mean that there is no protection, and it will be possible for you to be killed. That’s perfectly reasonable and we won’t do anything to prevent that. We’re hoping that we can leave it to the players to enact justice where it is needed through the appropriate in-game systems. In the absence of that, we’ll probably do so ourselves through careful working of NPCs.

I’ll post more updates as we have more discussions about game mechanics and make more progress with the development of the game.

As some of you may or may not know, I’ve been off and on working on a MUD called Journey of Souls. I wanted to take a moment to go over what my plans are for the game for the benefit of those of you who don’t read what I write on Anfiniti. Dutch and I’ve been more inspired to work on the game lately, and we’ve even decided to book club a selection of chapters from a game development book which closely relate to what we’ll be doing. The plan is for this book club to actually start this weekend, so we’ll see how that goes.

At the moment, I’m right on the edge of finally choosing the language we will be developing the MUD in. We originally started in PHP, but there are some things that it can’t do (without some highly unsupported extensions) that some languages (say, Python) can do by default. And then there’s that whole we plan to run this on a server for months at a time thing. I originally started with PHP for two reasons, one of which was to prove it could be done in PHP (and done well). So, we’re still surveying that landscape to figure out what we’ll finally be settling on. I’d like to make a decision by the weekend, because I’d like for us to do any examples from our book club in the language we’ll actually be writing the code for the game in. Anyway, onto my goals for the game …

My goals are a bit lofty. It’ll be a long time before the game is available to the public, but I’ve been slowly gathering together ideas over the years for different things to incorporate into the game and different ways to get it out to the masses, once it’s ready. I want to try to summarize my goal for JoS into this post and give you guys all an idea of the type of game I’m going for. If I could just get the cat to stop sticking hair to my monitor.

First of all, it’s going to be a medieval-fantasy setting. For races, there will be your typical humans, elves, dwarves, etc. We also have a few races we want to add that aren’t necessarily unique, but aren’t commonly found in this setting. Things like “Avions” or winged-races, Bonewalkers (skeletal-races), and a few other things. As well as branching races to allow a sort of “metamorphosis” between two similar races. For example, any race can become a “Bonewalker” and keep a portion of the original race’s strengths/weaknesses while adopting the Bonewalker’s strengths/weaknesses.

We want the game to be extremely player-oriented. With most things eventually becoming entirely player-run. We will be providing NPCs in the short-term to fill the gaps in the player base, but we want the world to be significantly impacted by player actions. The goal is for it to be possible to have entire cities rise and fall around players and the decisions that they make.

Rather than be “just another” medieval-fantasy game, we’re looking at ways to put a unique spin on different aspects of the gameplay. Our plans for the combat system, for example, are extremely detailed and will offer what we hope to be the most realistic experience possible, without sacrificing any “fun” value for the sake of realism. Bones will break, limbs will detach, blood will spill. Everything matters, from the type and weight of the equipment you wear, to your fatigue, your stats and skills, as well as how hungry and thirsty you are.

While on the subject of stats and skills, the game will be completely class-less and level-less. Everything will be “learn by doing” and your stats will be completely based on what you do. Physical activities will increase your strength like mental activities will increase your intelligence, and so forth. Your character is yours to mold and evolve and we don’t want to restrict you to any one play style. Decide you don’t like the route you’re taking? You’re free to change it up at any time.

The NPCs will be more intelligent and more realistic than your average RPG. Nothing “materializes” out of thin air. If there are no guards around when someone shouts for them, none will come running. Shopkeepers keep hours of business. They enjoy their off-hours. You’ll find them in taverns, in their homes, visiting with friends and family. NPCs will gossip with one another just like real players. Each NPC will remember you and actions you take that they either see or hear about from other NPCs for extended periods of time. They’ll like you or dislike you based on their own traits, moods, and the things that they know about you and what you do.

Economics and trade will have a huge impact on the game. As I said before, nothing materializes out of thin air. Game state will be forever and there is no “reset” button. Food must be grown, harvested, hunted. Materials for crafts must be acquired through conventional means. NPCs will mine, hunt, fish, farm, and all of the other actions required to keep materials flowing in and out of cities. Equipment must be crafted before it can be sold. No shopkeeper will ever just “have” inventory. Caravans will bring materials to and from cities. Losing those caravans for whatever reason (Bandits, Natural Disasters, etc.) will cause shortages of whatever material that caravan was carrying. Shortages will lead to prices increasing due to demand with a lower supply. Just like a surplus would lead to lower prices.

Death is not the end. The Journey of your Soul will take you to the spirit realm whenever your physical body is no longer able to carry your soul. At which point you will need to make your way to one of many points of resurrection in order to get back to the physical realm. The penalty for dying alone is small. The spirit realm is not safe, though. Mystical creatures that you’ll run into on your way to the resurrection points will hunt you and be capable of draining the essence of your soul, thus reducing your abilities, both stats and skills. But there will be ways to avoid them, and even ways to use the spirit realm to your advantage.

There are so many aspects to this game that I just can’t cover in a single post. This is already become one heck of a wall of text, as it is. I really do want to create a world that will truly be alive. Something that people can join and be apart of something special. It’s not going to happen overnight, but I will bring it to light someday, and we’re already starting to make progress. Any ideas and help you guys can offer will be greatly appreciated, and hopefully you will all enjoy playing the game at some point in the future.