Game Design thread

[ra5946]

Ysne-the idea of a trading port/town is a good idea. Lots of unique shops and characters. The town I'm currently working on has lots of communal residences (longhouses), a warehouse, a few restaurants and a good amount of shops. Lots of little narrow alleys (good for side quests ) We can set up some rental housing for the player as well.

Are the different races peaceful with each other? This could be a cool town to have some street brawls or something.

Once I finish the buildings, I'll work on unique items to sell as well as new decor for the port. I'll see if I can find some good pictures of some trade ships.

Please let me know if there is anything that any of you definitley want to see in this town

[willward]

i think this island would need a shop with some sort of armorer,weapons and i dont think it wud be goood to have restaurants

[Ysne]

I like what you have so far RA. As far as I can tell from lore, the Tang Mo and Ka Po are not at war with each other, but not at peace either. That leaves lots of room for all kinds of interactions.

As far as a deadline goes, I know we can't set anything in stone. But a goal to work towards is a good idea. We will shoot for releasing this sometime in December if it is in good enough shape to do so.

Since the island is somewhere between Tamriel and Akavir, and there was an attempt to invade (ala Disaster at Ionith), the idea of an old abandoned fort does fit lore wise.

The new outpost would not be a full fledged fort at this point, willward. I do like the concept of having it progress and grow over time.

[exilehunter]

In my opinion, we shouldnt overcrowd the island with too many buildings and regions but instead, stick to the central them of making it a fort/harbour island that was designed purely as a bridging land between nations. There is actually alot of behind the scenes work to be done in smoothing the quest, landscaping and adding locations into the land that at this rate, will be too much to handle. This isnt the akavir mod project but a small teaser. Save the best ideas for the big one.

[Shiver-Tail]

I agree with exile, we should save the best for last.
A harbor is a cool idea, i thought and encampment would fit better but a harbor provides more npc's (and more interaction with them) and a more authentic enveroniment with diffrent buildings instead of tents 'n clutter. It also provides a reason for the Tsaesci attack ( a sea route: if you want to invade, ports are key targets).
Actually i don't like the idea "when it's done", okay then you don't have a dealine and no stress, etc. but when you have no deadline some people aren't going to work hard (enough) because it doesn't NEED to be finished at ??/??/2008.
I mean, just look at what happened with "duke nukem forever" ( or forNever as some fans call it) not that i want it to be released (i actually don't like "the duke" but that's off-topic )

EDIT: OMG exile, crossbows! :bananarock:

[Deeza]

So we have an Imperial outpost (in the Edo style), and a Tsaesci camp across the rock bridge. There is also a Tang Mo village on the smaller island made of bamboo huts?

So will the population of the outpost be Imperial and Tamriel colonists, or is it just a military thing with a trade post and Imperial legion garrison?

By the way a very important piece of lore:

The Tsaesci don't seem to have a navy. It says that quite explicitly in the "Disaster at Ionith" book. So either they've built one very recently or they're getting to the island some other way.

My idea was that they were somehow teleporting their armies across. Perhaps they send one across with water walking then set some kind of giant mark and recall to jump the others across.

[Ysne]

The mark/recall idea might work. Take a look at the Ayleid Steps mod.

This could be the first two steps in a network that was built a long time ago and is just now being rediscovered.

So, as far as buildings go, a port on the big island (we can incorporate part of RA's village there), a small tang-mo village on the small island (we can use RA's tang mo buildings for that- and small could be just 5 to 10 houses and an outpost with a small number of items for sale), an abandoned fort (one of Edolsian's) and possibly his volcano cave at the volcano.

As far as quests go, the imperial reinforcement quest will bring the player to the island. The scholar quests will keep the player going. Will we want a fence for the shadier types who like to steal stuff?

As far as a place to pray for recovering, I was thinking a simple shrine of some kind using one of the statues that has been meshed out. It could even be of Tosh Raka, or the dragons that are no longer findable.

[Deeza]

The shrine would probably be a magic curse-and-disease-removing Imperial Cult altar for the colonists, like the ones from Morrowind. The Tang Mo (I suspect, I don't know what your provisional lore is) might have some kind of ancestor screen (a wall with small idols of the gods and family members where they commune with the spirit world). You could make an offering there and get some kind of bonus spell like the Wayshrines in Cyrodiil.

Is the abandoned fort an Akaviri or an Imperial one? If it's Imperial you should ask Razorwing about using the Imperial Fort tileset that was made for Silgrad Tower, because the fort would be a lot more recent than the ruined ones in Cyrodiil (100 years old as opposed to 1000 years old).

As for the fence... I think the normal traders would just buy stolen goods anyway. They're so far away from the mainland that they probably wouldn't know or care where goods come from (the psychic traders who magically always know when an item's stolen is one of the very few things I really hate about vanilla Oblivion - I much preferred Morrowind's system in this respect).

Your thoughts?

[Ysne]

When it comes time to pick classes for merchants, we will need to pick the npc classes that do not reject stolen goods in order for that to work.

[Shiver-Tail]

Deeza, you said the Tsaesci didn't have a navy, right?
What about canoos or something? It's an island close to the Akavir shore so it's possible they came in canoos. They might not have a navy but navy= army of MILITARY ships. canoo's (luckily) aren't military ships