Explore game overlay thoughts

[XXon 31]

I think a lot about some type of an overlay which could be made for the explore game, like a skin. Or a template. It must easily transfer to another archipelago with minimal effort, utilizing all of the ylands through quests. It has to be random. the person who edited the map would be able to play without knowing all the answers and even someone not that familiar with it would be able to create a new map. It supports 10 players. It has an endgame, a boss which is challenging to both solo or large group. Saving is allowed, a full game might take days. It is easily customized with custom quests, bosses and loot.

No block placement. No mount. No blueprint. No mining. Random quests with randomly placed solutions.

Starting yland. NPC's, like a fisherman, a blacksmith, etc. and a random one has a quest for you. Another player gets a different one. Maybe there are 10 quests maybe 20. Let's call this your class quest, something that strengthens and defines your character. It's powerful and you get the reward item right before you fight the boss, so it's a long quest to get this item. Not a fetch quest, not going back and forth to places you have seen. There is a flaming bush. Find it. Bring the embers to the Temple and light the signal fire. NPC appears and gives you stuff. The flaming bush and the signal fire are mini boss fights. The result is that you have a special purpose and goal. You should be able to team up as a crew and the fights should scale to this, even though only one player might get the reward, he could then use his new weapon to help the team.

Spawn engine is a wave or swarm. All original items and animals remain. Trigger zones are scattered around the map, maybe like an evil Vortex type thing, biome determines type of enemy which spawns (possible?). Player level determines the enemy hit points and damage. Players at various levels can fight together and experience is split evenly, but low level players must fight and might die. All these fights are likely melee. Enemy level may vary randomly and the fight has three to five levels. Each kill adds to a ticker. Kill 10, the enemy gets harder, spawns faster maybe and the rewards grow. Each wave is harder. You can run away, but it all resets at the start. The fight is complete, experience and gold are auto-split among the group. The fight trigger is disabled for a random time to prevent camping the spawn. Your goal is to get ore, that's the loot. Or maybe gold. The really tough fights that randomly go to level five might drop an item and the stats are based on the lowest level player who fought.

Once all of these spawn points have been cleared of enemies, the yland is free of evil, the city gates or the vendors open and you spend your gold or smelt your ore and the yland is cleared. Players who have not cleared the yland cannot use vendors and you cannot trade or drop weapons and armor. You must earn it. The easiest yland is iron yland, then copper, zirconium etc. In addition, there is the cave with similar fights. At the end of the cave is an NPC. Maybe he is your class quest guy, maybe he is the village blacksmith or the chemist held prisoner. It should be random, but linked to quests which were given or special equipment. When the Flaming bush quest is randomly given, a flaming bush spawns. You must kill the wendigo and bring his head to the prince. The wendigo and price spawn in random locations. Top of this mountain, bottom of that cave, the person who makes the map doesn't know the answer. Even if someone kills your wendigo, it will respawn for you and only you will get a head from it because you have the quest. Once you kill the final boss, game over just for you. Other players are perhaps just joining and the spawns and quests will refresh for them as the world continues on without you unless you start over. It's a shared instance. Each player on their own arc, but together.

Now, you have a new map. Place a quest NPC spawn on starting yland. Place Evil Vortexes, 3-4 per island randomized between eight possible spawns. A spawn at the end of each cave, find some cool places, put spawns there. A spawn for vendors or maybe a composition city. You are all set and it is all random, even to you, leaving you free to design a cool world for all this to take place in with custom quests and castles and loot, but it would be playable and random even for the creator. It's a game template that is adaptable.

I have made the spawn engine and it works. Compelling and difficult fights are possible, at least for a solo player. But, it is not adaptable like the engine described here, it takes too much effort to tweak the drops and the resistances from fight to fight, level to level. It is difficult to maintain balance. It is very linear and must be fought in a certain order, which limits it to caves. Plus, my ideas keep evolving, so my projects are half finished. I am interested in comments and criticism of this approach or additional ideas. My scripting is horrible and slow, but I like can't shake this idea of an easy, adaptable overlay for the explore game to breathe more life into it and encourage co-op multiplayer, so I will continue messing with this. Maybe you have some ideas, too. I think the basic idea is sound, but it feels overwhelming and half baked.

 

 

[XXon 31]

Okay, that was a lot of words, sorry. I stitched together two spawn engine experiments this afternoon and stuck it on the workshop. The first yland has a five layer spawn like I mentioned. The second yland has a different, earlier engine, enemies and loot are based on level. All of this is very sloppy and unrefined. If you look up in the sky you will see the spawn engine templates for each of the two ylands. The second yland is incomplete. It's a struggle to get one spawn engine which works well in both cave and open map, I was trying different ideas out. I wasn't going to publish this, but I feel I should show some work and the basic idea of the spawn engine so far.

The game is called Caverna Magika. It's around an hour maybe. The scripting is really bad don't laugh. The first area takes a while then it picks up speed. If you are a true hero you will live to see the sun rise on the second yland without a single death. Good luck with that.

Update: Caverna Magika 03. fixed some stuff. Can't seem to delete old game. Curious to know if the crabs follow you out of the first gate or not. They did for me, now they don't, but I have a crappy computer.

Edited December 12, 2021 by XXon