FreeGameDev

Oh you want a probability spreadsheet? Sure, I can do that. Let me run a few more tests and when I'm happy I'll tart up the spreadsheet I'm currently using and release it for perusal. That's easy enough.

Ahh, you already have a spreadsheet. I thought you were doing these calculations by hand, that makes a lot more sense now. The spreadsheet would be good to see, I think I've finally figured out how you are doing this; seeing your formulas would help me understand a lot better. They will also be useful for me if I decide to implement your system in the game engine as I will already have a template formula to work from.

-Buck

Annotated and prettified spreadsheet is attached here. It allows you to add up to ten creatures to your initial dungeon population on the first sheet, and the second sheet calculates the probability that each creature will enter your dungeon through a portal (note that this is only calculated for those creatures who will come through a portal). Sheet three contains the basic creature data needed to populate the table on sheet 1.

You can see the formulae inside the sheet which should help both in understanding and potentially coding the system.

EDIT: The PROPER file is now uploaded and should be more explanatory than the scratchings that was up before.

I have uploaded the actual intended creature spreadsheet which ought to be more useful and work as advertised...

I found a couple of bugs on your spreadsheet. On the 'Creature appearance probability' sheet you in cells C5 through G5 you use a ! to indicate which sheet to read from, this needs to be a dot (.) to work properly (note: this may be an open-office bug where OO does not convert it properly, maybe excel uses a !). Also, on that same sheet in the 3 axis probability calculation when you rescale the probabilities you divide by the sum in O34 which is the 2-axis value, you should instead be dividing by S34. It looks like you copied it over and forgot to change this.

Other than this the spreadsheet looks pretty good. It seems to work pretty well. I will try to play around with it a bit later today.

-Buck

Hi Buck - The first is an office vs. open office thing, and yes I just found the O34 v S34 bug. My check cell was being funny. I'm uploading a fixed version now, but it looks like you may have to change the sheet thing over manually.

Changing it manually is not too difficult. If you release any more versions, try to save them as xls format as this tends to be more compatible than xslx. I don't think you need to re-up just to change the format, just try this if you actually make a new version of the spreadsheet.

-Buck

Heh - I will if it comes to it.

However, the maths are up (as people know) and I've finished the example dungeons as well. The question I have now is: After examples of both are there any views on which alignment system is better to use?

Keldaryth {l Wrote}:After examples of both are there any views on which alignment system is better to use?

I think we should try them in the game before we can say anything useful about that, I do not think we can do much more before that.

But of other stuff to do I think that we should now concentrate on developing the rest of the backstory, here I think of the elves and the mercenaries, and then we should make some concept art and then begin modeling.

svenskmand {l Wrote}:But of other stuff to do I think that we should now concentrate on developing the rest of the backstory, here I think of the elves and the mercenaries, and then we should make some concept art and then begin modeling.

I don't think you need a separate Mercenary force. Each race can simply have a set of creatures that are willing to pop up in other dungeons (simply giving them a neutral faction coefficient would do the trick). Then, any creature that shows up in such a fashion would be considered a 'merc' in the sense that they may not fit in with the main population. At least, this works for Humans and Corpars - it's a bit trickier when you get to constructs and undead. I guess my point is that mercs should be drawn from existing factions, rather than given one of their own.

I imagine the Mercenary force not only as a collection of outsiders from the other forces, but also as a possibility to get new and interesting creatures into the game. We could also have some of the creatures from the other factions in a Mercenary variant which looks more outsider'ish

svenskmand {l Wrote}:I imagine the Mercenary force not only as a collection of outsiders from the other forces, but also as a possibility to get new and interesting creatures into the game.

So create a new faction for whatever creature you want. The problem is that under the current system, other creatures will react to the mercenary faction creatures at a faction level, where if you're after new and varied creatures, you want them reacting on a more specific level as two creatures (say a Rakshasha and a Fairy) would really elicit two very different responses based on the cultures they come from (i.e. factions) over and above their value set (alignment). Please note that I'm not arguing against the concept of mercanaries, per se, but I'm definitely arguing against them as a faction in the faction-alignment system.

I find the term 'mercanary' implies you can purchase their services for money - and in that case, I'd rather be able to do just that - spend X gold to hire a specific creature, whether that creature is available in the general portal (or faction) pool or not. That creature would then command more wages, but otherwise act identically to it's non-mercanary cousins in terms of creature interaction. I kind of see this as separate to a random system of appearance in a portal system. Does that make sense?