Re: [Eom-users] Fwd: [Eom-developers] Discussion on the outstanding TODO items:

[Gareth N. <gar...@uk...>]

| {comes down to my opinion. I thought of the castle as a big mana resource
| that will hurt if you lose it (forcing you to act in some way?). Of course
| once a castle falls this pretty much means an enemy will gain most parts
| of the map and get the supremacy.. might take *a lot* of efforts to win
| the game then}

Indeed, but that's half the fun. If it's still possible, let the player
try... It's up to them when they give up, surely?

| BTW, castle destruction should also give some *nice* experience benefits
to
| the player that wiped it off the map...
|
| {hm.. this seems to have a more serious impact as it would mean a player
will
| get 2 EP for defeating the enemy by first defeating the castle and after
that
| the easy-to-kill magician.. I can't say I really like the idea}


Hmmm, that's seriously fat granularity for the dispertion of EP. I was
thinking we'd have much finer resolution of it, so you'd get a large chunk
for the destruction of the castle, and a fairly minor (given the fact he
*has* no castle) distribution for the destruction of the mage [in this
example], and maybe some other "pots" of EP for finding secret things, or
performing some minor miracle, or (decent examples escape me atm)...

If it boil's down to "You get an EP for winning the game", it's just going
to be a question of "He who plays the longest gets the EP", which I find a
bit pants and ever so "unrefined"! :-P

Wouldn't it be nicer to have "He who plays the most refined strategy and
gets the most 'goals' in the game gets some fine EP"?


| -- &TODO; Decide about renaming characters
|
| Seems like we follow the lead of IRC and let them provide two or three
| alternatives so they don't get bounced right back to the front character
| select screen when they try to connect to a nick-filled server...?
|
| {So you create your character and that strange game wants you to give it
| two names? What kind of RPG is that :).. dunno if players would like
that?}

Why? It's standard. What we have to figure out is the "creative packaging"!
For example: package it up into "Nick name:... , Shorthand: ...", so I'd be
"Korruptor" and "Kor" for example. (I'm sure there are other ways)

That example already gives twice the resoultion, and half as many pissed off
players...

Or...

Some creative packaging of character name and machine name for networked
games, something like ' korruptor@scully ' in my case (springs straight off
the top of my head)... Or a mixture of both. Or something else. Or mix name
and IP, Or... (I'll shut up now)

With any of the above examples you can still do a load of jiggery-pokery in
the background to create a unique name for connection to a server, yet
display the expected name to the user. Shouldn't be a major big deal? Just a
question of packaging IMO...

| -- &TODO; Password authenticated games?
|
| Dunno. How paranoid are we?
|
| {How paranoid are the players? The EoM server is certainly not going to
live up
| to something like battle.net of course.. but on bigger LANs (student
houses?)
| there might be a reason for it?}

Student dorms; probably the last place it'll require a password, or at
least, the last place they'll think of requiring one..! ;-) But I see the
point. ATM I'm thinking why bother, but if you can see a need for it in the
future, and it'll be tricky to retrofit later, you might as well stick it in
now. It's not like it's a real big deal...

| {heh.. sure! That question was more like 'did I miss anything in the
manual?' :}

Not that I can think of or see...

| {I still wouldn't know how to properly use it. There is only a certain
small
| amount of possible "spell moves" we could be using (using more would mean
| erroneous spells from time to time) and it's hard to say we're only
applying
| it to certain spells ruling others out. It's also kinda overkilling it
when
| the user can apply spells to mouse movements imho}

I don't agree with any of the points you've made above. Especially with
regard to the amount of spell moves. However, the real argument against it
is one of development time (which I've already conceeded), and the fact that
you don't like it much, so lets forget it! We've already been 'round this
one a couple of times, and agreed to disagree... :0)

|
| -- &TODO; Play the game often enough to actually find some working
| strategies
|
| Blimey! Calm down man! You'll be asking us to playtest it next! ;-P
|
| {Except that you wouldn't get any work done.. what's the bad point about
it? :}
|

I doubt anyone will notice anyway! :-P