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Nuntar
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Here's something I've been thinking about recently.

The monsters in Tendry's Tale, and therefore the default ones available in the RPG editor, with very few exceptions have exactly the same stats as the ones in Tower of the Sorcerer. This works out very well for Tendry's Tale, but not so well for user-made holds. So many of the holds I've seen -- including my own -- have a problem with the player ending up with way too much money. Why is this a problem? Because shortage of money is one good way to create interesting choices for the player -- should you spend money to get this key now or will that leave you short later? -- and so on. When the player has money practically rolling out of their eyeballs, you may as well not bother using greckle gates at all, because it will be automatic for the player to open them, knowing that he can get away with it.

So, what are some possible solutions to this problem?

(0) One possibility is of course to shrug and just build a hold where money is never an interesting decision. Doesn't stop there being lots of other interesting choices to make in a hold.

(1) Use altars/Machines like the ones in TotS in your hold. Of course, you will need to do some scripting, but you do at least have considerable freedom to set the parameters as you like. Jeff_Ray's The Test of Mind does this quite well, with altars whose cost doubles each time, thus using up a lot of money and letting the player use them far less often than the ones in TotS -- which in turn gives him more freedom to include ATK and DEF gems and all the optimisation choices they bring.

(2) Give the player a really big purchase that they need to save up for. This is of course the route taken by the first half of Tendry's Tale, and is also seen in TotS (the Super Magic Mattock) and Fetch the Pie (the Serpentskin Shield). The problem with this is, firstly, unless you warn the player a long way in advance it's quite likely they will think it's a hold where greckles simply don't matter and spend them too freely and have to restore; secondly, once the player does know about the purchase, they know exactly what they need to do to get it. (Though there can still be interesting decisions about where exactly to save the necessary money. I'm not saying this is a bad route; it can be done well. I'm just pointing out the potential problems with it.)

(3) Give the player lots of moderately large purchases spaced through the hold, so that they definitely can't afford to get all of them as soon as they become available, and they have to decide which ones are more urgent to get and when to get them. This is what I'm trying to do with Nobard's Hold, although I'm finding it increasingly difficult as the hold grows more complex :)

(4) Change the amount of money monsters give. Simple as that. To do this, put a character in the first room with this script:
  Set var "_MonsterGRMult" = 50
  Set var "_MonsterREPMult" = 50

The value 50 makes monsters give 50% (that is, half) of the money they normally would. You can change 50 to any other value if you like. And if you already have a "setup" character in the opening room, for instance setting the player role and starting stats, you can add these lines to the existing script rather than putting them in a separate character.

And that's all I wanted to say. Really, the main reason I made this post was that I wanted to give other architects something to think about before beginning a new project. Solution (4) in particular would be a drastic thing to do to an already half-finished hold, but if you did it right at the start of the building process it would seem perfectly natural. I don't want to sound like I'm prescribing anything, but I hope at least some future holds will do this.

Does anyone have any other ideas for possible solutions?

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01-02-2009 at 10:45 PM
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mxvladi wrote:There's also an another solution. Place really strong enemies in the hold, and a lot of greckle gates and HP poitons behind those greckle gates. So, to beat the really strong enemies, player will have to collect a lot of HP poitons, and eventually, he'll be out of greckles. :devil
Perhaps. I think it would be really good that, if you wanted to use this solution, you would pair up this solution with another solution. For example, kill the Really Strong Creature and find out that there are a bunch of merchant people behind him.

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01-02-2009 at 11:11 PM
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Gordius
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I'm not great at coding, so I apologize if this is an obvious question. Is this a scripting approach that can be used multiple times throughout a hold (or level)? So, for example, could you set it to 0 at the beginning, then up to 100 after entering a particular room or killing a particular monster? Or is it only a single universal variable?

Similarly, are there analogous variables that could be set for the other multipliers? If I could set the standard level multiplier manually for different sections of the same level within a hold I'm working on, that would solve a major structural problem I'm facing.
01-03-2009 at 03:56 AM
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Nuntar
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Yes to both questions. Any variable can be altered at any point in a hold. I'll give some examples, but as you get more confident in scripting you'll find it's easy to work out what will suit your own needs.

To set the money multiplier to 0 at the beginning and 100 after killing a particular monster, include this line in your setup character's script:
Set var "_MonsterGRMult" = 0

and this in the script of a character in the same room as the monster:
Wait while entity is Monster at (8,8)
Score checkpoint "Generic Monster defeated!"
Set var "_MonsterGRMult" = 100

(Obviously, change the coordinates and monster's name as appropriate. Note also that if your monster is a custom monster, you must use "Wait while entity is NPC".)

To set the money multiplier for a particular section of a level, include a character with this script on every room of that section that can be reached from a room outside the section:
Imperative Restart script on entrance
Set var "_MonsterGRMult" = 50

and this script on every room outside the section that can be reached from a room inside:
Imperative Restart script on entrance
Set var "_MonsterGRMult" = 100

(Nobard's Hold does exactly this with the speeded rattlesnake on Level 2: 5W. It's the only way to make a snake with custom stats, other than the very complex procedure of scripting a character for every square of the snake, but if you do that, you can't use or modify the existing snake graphics.) Of course, the values 50 and 100 can be changed to whatever you want -- they can even depend on other variables.

All these examples can be done with the other multipliers -- there are separate multipliers for monsters' HP, ATK, DEF, GR and REP, and separate multipliers for potions, ATK gems, DEF gems and greckle gates. "_ItemMult" is the standard level multiplier and the only one that affects the value displayed next to the player's equipment.

Two words of caution. "_ItemMult" multiplies, not replaces, the value set in the box in "Level Settings". If a level has multiplier x2, setting "_ItemMult" to 300 will change it to x6, not x3. Other multipliers affect the components of "_ItemMult" separately. If you set "_ItemMult" to 200 and "_ItemHPMult" to 200, all potions will have four times their normal value, or twice the value the player would expect from looking at the value now displayed on the screen. (Right-clicking will of course still tell the player exactly how much HP each potion is worth.)

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[Last edited by Nuntar at 01-03-2009 02:56 PM]
01-03-2009 at 11:46 AM
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Gordius
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Excellent. Thanks a lot, Nuntar.
01-03-2009 at 02:26 PM
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Blondbeard
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Anther thing I've noticed is the diference between DEF and ATK. ATK and DEF is of aproximate equal importance in the main hold, since the alter gives you twice as much DEF as ATK, which alows you to reach zero damage in two ways. Most newmade holds, however is not built with this in mind. ATK is almost always the thing worth getting if you have a choise, making it a non-choise.

I liked to see DEF gates in your contest entry, Nuntar :)

[Last edited by Blondbeard at 01-03-2009 06:16 PM]
01-03-2009 at 06:15 PM
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