Rise of the Old Gods - General Notes

Form for the Rise of the Old Gods mod, currently in development by jbouley (Jeff Bouley)
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Rise of the Old Gods - General Notes

Post by jbouley » Sat Oct 13, 2007 9:42 pm

The following are some general thoughts/plans/ideas for use in the mod. I will add more as more gets added to my plans. Feel free to comment on the existing ideas or to add suggestions of your own...

JEWELRY AS SOCKETABLE ITEMS – Unique and set item rings and amulets can be turned into “runes” (but still look like rings/ammies) in the cube so that they can be socketed into items and grant their bonuses to those items. There will also be a way to turn them back into wearable rings or amulets in case the player changes their mind before putting the converted ring/ammie into an item. Note that in the case of set jewelry, turning them into a socketable item and putting them into a weapon or piece of armor will mean that they will no longer be considered part of their original set. In addition, there will be special “runewords” that can be formed by some combinations of unique/set jewelry that have been converted and placed into items in the right order.

MORE UNIQUES & SETS – In particular, the addition of MANY new unique rings, amulets and charms to the game—and sets that not only make more use of rings & ammies but some that consist only of a ring and amulet combo.

ALTERED WEAPON & ARMOR SYSTEM – I am changing the weapon system to have fewer types of base weapons (e.g. just dagger, short sword, dueling sword, long sword and two-handed sword for edged weapons…along with appropriate names for exceptional and elite versions). There will still be many items in the game’s coded files to have multiple versions of each and modifications to make sure random images show up for each, thus offering a wide range of weapon inventory graphics (in fact, I will likely vastly increase the number of base weapon items…but those items will be sharing the same names). The differences will be in the stats rather than the names (one version of a base weapon, such as a mace, may have large damage and poor durability, while another may have relatively low damage but a fast speed and high durability). Players will chose between items based on really LOOKING at them rather than hunting out a certain name. “Minor” weapons like daggers will have automods (for example, "reduce enemy defense by 50%" or something like that) to make them desirable even when compared to higher-damage weapons.

The kris will be a class-specific weapon for one or more characters, as it no longer fits into the general system for edged weapons but I’d hate to see the animations for it go unused. The same will happen for any other weapons with special animations that get dropped from the list of “base weapons.”

Armor will get a similar set of changes (body armor, for example, will probably just be leather armor, chain mail, scale mail, half-plate and full-plate armor though, again, there will be many variations of each and many different inventory graphics).

MAGIC VS. RARE VS. SET/UNIQUE - Mods for magic items will have potentially QUITE large (or extremely small) bonuses/values, while mods for rares won’t have as many opportunities for extremes. The idea is that rares give you more magic modifiers and will usually be better than magic items, but you also should be able to find a magic item that you would still find useful simply because it has one stat you REALLY need and that stat is very high. The concept is that magic items should be relevant throughout the entire game and not ultimately something to just ignore on the ground because it is blue. Sets and uniques will almost always be better than rares and/or they will offer powers that can never be found on magic or rare items, so that finding a set or unique item will be something characters always want to do.

NEW ITEM: CHAOS DECKS! - Chaos decks are items that you can carry in your inventory (like you do with charms) and will offer the ability to cast some kind of spell or grant some bonus. You will find chaos cards that can be merged with the deck in the cube. A card will change or add powers to the deck, but the player will never know what those changes will be until actually inserting the card. Thus, as you progress through the game (& difficulty levels) you will be faced with decisions as to whether your should leave the deck on an OK or good setting or look for cards that might make it truly exceptional, knowing that you could turn it to crap many times in your hunt for something better. Chaos cards will come in colors that give an idea of the KIND of change or addition they can make (red = fire or blood, for example), but will offer no other clues. Three chaos decks will exist (Deck of Madness, Cards of Pandemonium and Gehenna Game) but only one of each exists and they will drop as part of specific quests late in Act 1.

SPECIAL CRAFTED/SOCKETABLE JEWELRY – Special “craftable” rings and amulets in which you combine a special piece of jewelry that has an empty setting with a gem or rune to get a special ring or amulet with powers not normally seen on jewelry. Appearance of the jewelry changes after this process, of course, to reflect the “insertion” of a gem or rune. Not all gems and runes will work. There will also be socketable rings and amulets in the game in which you simply insert a gem or rune just like you would with a weapon or piece or armor.

ANTIQUITIES – Various vendors will let you know about artwork, ancient relics and other valuables that they are on the lookout for. These items will usually drop as random treasure as unique items (though they rarely have any powers). Each vendor has Transfer Runes for sale and when you find an item that specific vendor is looking for, you can buy a transfer rune and then combine it with the piece of art in the cube. This causes the item to be teleported to the person who hired the vendor to locate it and teleports a cheque to you, which you can give to the vendor in return for gold.

In the case of some of the paintings, you will need to combine the painting with its frame before you will have a completed piece of art that you can transfer and get a cheque for. In these cases, the two parts of the artwork will often be specific treasure drops from a special chest or superunique monster and will be usually be given to you as “mini-quests.” Note that trying to combine a transfer rune from a vendor other than the one who told you about a piece of art will not get you a cheque. It will either do nothing or may destroy the item you have found. So only use transfer runes with artwork or relics from the vendor who told you about those particular pieces.

It should be noted, however, that in a few cases, two different vendors in the same town may tell you they are looking for the same item. Should this occur, it means three things. First, that item will drop in a later act of the game from some specific monster or special chest—or it may even be available for sale from a vendor in another town. Second, it means that one of the two vendors is lying to you about being the person hired to locate that item—you will want to discover which one is lying and which is telling the truth, as the transfer rune from the one who lied to you will not give you a cheque but rather some useless item (there will be clues to figure out who is telling the truth). Third, it means the item is very, very valuable, and the reward you get by using the transfer rune from the honest vendor will either be an extremely large amount of money or a very valuable item that you can use either immediately or when you reach a higher character level.
Last edited by jbouley on Sun Oct 14, 2007 5:49 pm, edited 7 times in total.
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Re: Rise of the Old Gods - General Notes

Post by jbouley » Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:05 pm

Here are a couple other things I've added to my to-do list for the mod...

HARVESTING – Various trees and other plants in the game will sometimes spawn as “monsters” in the sense that they can be selected and have hit points (though just a handful of hit points). There will also be corrupted tress (they look like the blood hawk nests) that are similar to these. They are all immune to all normal elemental and physical damage types. However, various harvesting scythes and harvesting staves in the game will be sold (and sometimes drop) that inflict a very small amount of damage using the “burn” elemental type. This elemental damage type is unresistable (and monsters killed by it give no experience). When “killed” these plants drop treasure in the form of various fruits, reagents, etc. that can be used immediately or in various cube recipes.

EASTER EGGS
– I will include various “Easter eggs” in the game, items that can only be created or found by doing something very odd or non-standard things. In other words, these Easter eggs won’t be in any obvious clues in the game—no NPC or dropped scroll from a monster will tell you explicitly or even in the form of a riddle what to do. That isn’t to say that you cannot find clues in the game’s NPC text or elsewhere; it’s just that the clues won’t be obvious as being clues. One Easter egg, for example, will be a special set of undead jester armor that grants a set of skills that are otherwise impossible to get (including Death by Poultry, Doom Cow, Vorpal Bunnies and Life’s a Beach). Other Easter eggs will include the ability to turn certain items into unique items that I made in the Sanctuary in Chaos mod that were way too powerful. And whatever other ideas come to mind between now and the mod’s release…
Last edited by jbouley on Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Rise of the Old Gods - General Notes

Post by sPoT » Wed Oct 24, 2007 2:26 pm

[quote=jbouley";p="361337"]HARVESTING[/quote]

This is the idea I like very much. I haven't seen any similar attempt to change the way how reagents are acquired. It sounds very promising so far, as it seems like you must harvest some specific monsters (let it be called so) instead of killing everything that comes on your way.

Very nice idea. I would like to hear more about it ;)
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Re: Rise of the Old Gods - General Notes

Post by jbouley » Wed Oct 24, 2007 5:41 pm

I have to admit I was inspired on the harveting front by playing Ultima III, IV and V back in my college days and Ultima Online more recently. Granted, in those games the reagents are mostly just found on the ground or at vendors, but I like the idea of getting them from the "source" so to speak.

I'm not sure how easy or practical it will be to make trees or bushes destrucible "monsters," but I know there is a tutorial on making "monster" versions of chests that need to be borken into ("killed") to access their treasure. I'm hoping I can do something similar with plant life if I can get it to work graphically and be selectable. Nice thing is that I can use the columns normally uses for spawning nests to spawn these harvestable plants so that I don't interfere with monster spawns (at least, I assume the nest-spawning columns still will work this way post 1.09 patch).

Worst case scenario, I use blood hawk nests extensively as the graphical base to make "corrupted trees." They look somewhat tree-like, of course, and since many of my reagents won't be "natural" items like apples or oranges, it makes more sense for a lot of them to come from magically altered or corrupted trees as opposed to natural ones.

More "root like" reagents like mandrake or something like that I may have to get creative with by using something that looks like bushes...or go with the "corrupted" route there as well and use some disgusting, slimy hole in the ground as the source.

I don't have a lot of details on specifically what will be harvestable yet, but the items will benefit all characters in terms of possible potion making, etc. (since everyone will start off with the Horadric Cube). The Ranger character will probably get the most of it, though, since he will be able to make special potions that no one else can, as well as enhance his equipment with some reagents or even make some reagents into socketable items that work like gems or runes.
Last edited by jbouley on Wed Oct 24, 2007 5:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Rise of the Old Gods - General Notes

Post by Adam Diggins » Thu Nov 15, 2007 4:50 pm

[quote=jbouley";p="361337"]Here are a couple other things I've added to my to-do list for the mod...



EASTER EGGS
– I will include various “Easter eggs” in the game, items that can only be created or found by doing something very odd or non-standard things. [/quote]

Bag of Duritos? :mrgreen:
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Re: Rise of the Old Gods - General Notes

Post by jbouley » Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:00 pm

[quote=Adam Diggins";p="365950"]Bag of Duritos? :mrgreen:[/quote]

Inside joke, for those who are wondering if Adam simply has some sort of condition that causes him to spout random snack food names (sort of like munchie version of Tourette's syndrome). Snack foods will indeed factor into Easter eggs in the game...heck, you can probably expect some Jolt cola or Pepsi to make an appearance somewhere as well.
;)

Onto to other news, a small tidbit about another feature of the mod:

HUNTING – Along with harvesting will be the ability to hunt various big game, such as deer and moose. This can sometimes yield reagents but more often is a way to get meat (which can be used like a minor healing potion or turned into something more potent) and pelts (which can be stacked for ease of transport in your inventory, and then sold to vendors or turned into useful items. However, if you’re looking for a nice, quiet hunt, forget about it. Most often, game animals will spawn immediately in the vicinity of more deadly creatures that you will need to dispatch first. Game animals themselves pose minimal threat to adventurers, as they rarely attack unless they are attacked, and their defenses aren’t nearly at the same level as a corrupted animal or a monster.
Last edited by jbouley on Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Adam Diggins » Tue Mar 18, 2008 9:05 pm

Yeah, I probably should have clarified that.
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Re: Rise of the Old Gods - General Notes

Post by Wolvorine42 » Wed Mar 19, 2008 12:50 am

[quote=jbouley";p="361337"]HARVESTING – Various trees and other plants in the game will sometimes spawn as “monsters” in the sense that they can be selected and have hit points (though just a handful of hit points). There will also be corrupted tress (they look like the blood hawk nests) that are similar to these. They are all immune to all normal elemental and physical damage types. However, various harvesting scythes and harvesting staves in the game will be sold (and sometimes drop) that inflict a very small amount of damage using the “burn” elemental type. This elemental damage type is unresistable (and monsters killed by it give no experience). When “killed” these plants drop treasure in the form of various fruits, reagents, etc. that can be used immediately or in various cube recipes.[/quote]
(Bolded, underlined above)
Now you know I can do you better than this, Jeff. ;) Blood hawk nests indeed... dammit, now I'm going to have to wade back into the UO files and find you the monster anims you need for this.
As far as how to do it, I would imagine you'd just have them spawn as custom-made monsters with an AI that keeps them immobile, and has no attack (so they stay put, and don't attack, naturally, like trees). Throw a drop-mod on them that forces them to drop your harvesting reagents only, and there ya go. (Yeah I know.. Jeff's looking at this going "You have me do the txt file work on the monsters and you're telling me how to mod this??" lol)

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Re: Rise of the Old Gods - General Notes

Post by jbouley » Sat Mar 22, 2008 4:58 am

For those who don't know, I've been helping Wolvorine out on conversions of UO monster animations to usable D2 versions. And Wolvorine, I appreciate any trees you can give me.

Still, given that we're talking CORRUPTED trees, I think Blood Hawk nests can still play a role. After all, I ain't gonna use them to spawn blood hawks, which don't exist in my mod...and those pulsing nests actually always made me think of some kind of hellish tree. Maybe I'll call them something other than TREES, but they will be used as some kind of plant in my mod.
;)
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Re: Rise of the Old Gods - General Notes

Post by Wolvorine42 » Sun Mar 23, 2008 4:40 am

What, the Reaper didn't fill your evil tree needs? :P

Hey, you know there's a 'revised' Reaper in there too, humanoid monster tree kinda thing, if you mant to get REALLY freaky and have like "monstrous offshoots of evil trees that act as guardians" or some crap like that. ;)

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