Factions or Keepers

[DarkFire4114]

I actually very much like the faction system.

Trully, I prefer that we have different styles of play in different areas. Undead could be sort of a "Resourceful" type play, since when you lose an undead creature, you have to create another by battle, you can't get another one from the Portal. I myself, would be excellent at this type of play as I'm extremely cautious durring battles, I can go through a whole realm and lose only a few Imps. (And not by throwing away "weak" creatures, I keep Beetles too )

This type of gameplay seems ideal, Players can become good in one faction, but not another, which is entirely based on their own strengths and weaknesses.

PS: Where could I got to make a suggestion for a new creature?

[TheAncientGoat]

I do not really care if it will take longer time to create, what I care about is that the quality is comparable to a AAA+ commercial title.

With none of the resources and a infinitesimal fraction of the manpower. "Good indie game" is a more realistic aim, imo

I fear that this would lead to the typical "open source content zoo" - that is you have all sorts of content, which might be brilliant, but it does not at all fit together and your total impression is that the creators just picked out content that was freely available without many regards to how the total outcome of the game would be.

This is a valid concern, but that will always happen if you look for (setpiece) content made outside your project. Even new content, not harshly moderated by an art director, will lead up looking ill fitting

I would like to hear more about this, as one of the main difficulties I have with understanding the story-telling-logic of the alignment system, is which story-logic you would use as a design criterion for the creatures and alignment. Please elaborate on this.

A backstory is a backstory. The story that the game /tells/ is a different matter, however. Alignment vs Faction based is pretty much the same difference between RPG and RTS storytelling methods. RTS stories are told linearly with missions and cutscenes. RPG stories (at least ones with actual Role Playing) are told dynamically by dialogue and player decisions.

One thing to keep in mind here, is that an alignment system encompasses the faction system. Each faction is just the paragon of their respective "alignment"; the only difference is that an alignment system is dynamic, whereas a faction system is static.

The fact of the matter is, if we implement a creature happiness system, /all/ that is needed is there for an alignment system. The only difference is that you have 1/4 the work. Implementing a faction system on top of an alignment system would be as easy as just splitting up the creature/building pool among whatever arbitrary factions you want.

[svenskmand]

...
PS: Where could I got to make a suggestion for a new creature?

That would be the Game-Play sub-forum, just make a new thread called "Creatures" or something, as we do not have that yet.

...
With none of the resources and a infinitesimal fraction of the manpower. "Good indie game" is a more realistic aim, imo

Well we do not have a deadline, and the game will only be as good as our imagination, so why restrain ourself already? As long as it will be playable while we build it then I see on problems in being ambitious.

A backstory is a backstory. The story that the game /tells/ is a different matter, however. Alignment vs Faction based is pretty much the same difference between RPG and RTS storytelling methods. RTS stories are told linearly with missions and cutscenes. RPG stories (at least ones with actual Role Playing) are told dynamically by dialogue and player decisions.

One thing to keep in mind here, is that an alignment system encompasses the faction system. Each faction is just the paragon of their respective "alignment"; the only difference is that an alignment system is dynamic, whereas a faction system is static.

The fact of the matter is, if we implement a creature happiness system, /all/ that is needed is there for an alignment system. The only difference is that you have 1/4 the work. Implementing a faction system on top of an alignment system would be as easy as just splitting up the creature/building pool among whatever arbitrary factions you want.

Well for our current backstory there is no way we can just build creatures from each faction, and let each keeper collect creatures based on their alignment. The problem is that each faction by design is diametrically opposite, having two creatures from different factions would lead to the creatures killing each other, so the strongest pool of creatures you have from one faction would survive. This happens because the story-logic is defined in this way in the backstory section of the wiki.

I am not sure you catch my drift here, you talk about the alignment system having a taste of RPG game-play but you also say that the backstory/story-logic does not matter, so I wonder which RPG's do you play if the story-logic does not matter? You can consider the backstory and the game-story as one and the same continuing story, the backstory is mainly there to help aid in the design process of the game, and hopefully for the player to appreciate it

As I said before I would like to hear just a rough sketch of what the set-up will be like? And in your terminology what the game-story will be? (again just a rough sketch would suffice).

PS: I hope you do not see me as rude, but as a constructive and curious critic

[TheAncientGoat]

Well we do not have a deadline, and the game will only be as good as our imagination, so why restrain ourself already? As long as it will be playable while we build it then I see on problems in being ambitious.

The standards of AAA games are always rising. Therefor, the game will be un-completable.

Well for our current backstory there is no way we can just build creatures from each faction, and let each keeper collect creatures based on their alignment. The problem is that each faction by design is diametrically opposite, having two creatures from different factions would lead to the creatures killing each other, so the strongest pool of creatures you have from one faction would survive. This happens because the story-logic is defined in this way in the backstory section of the wiki.

You wouldn't have creatures that are diametrically opposed to eachother in your dungeon. With the 4 factions you have currently, it isn't completely neccesary for each to hate eachother to such an extent. For example, I can see that Humans won't get along with Corpars or undead, (although you can incorporate evil humans to the human faction, like necromancers and blackgaurds, who would, and who would also get along to some extent with the human faction still, save for the totally righteous humans), but Humans wouldn't mind Constructs so much (especially if you think that not all constructs are part of the "construct rebellion). I don't see why Corpars would hate the undead or the constructs so much, etc.

I am not sure you catch my drift here, you talk about the alignment system having a taste of RPG game-play but you also say that the backstory/story-logic does not matter, so I wonder which RPG's do you play if the story-logic does not matter? You can consider the backstory and the game-story as one and the same continuing story, the backstory is mainly there to help aid in the design process of the game, and hopefully for the player to appreciate it

Nowhere did I say the "backstory doesn't matter", or that story logic isn't important. The thing is, is that changing the backstory is far easier than changing the game, and limiting the gameplay to things that the backstory mandates is silly. Also, any non-linear RPG has a backstory that doesn't define the exact actions of what the player will do is in the situation that I talk about.

As I said before I would like to hear just a rough sketch of what the set-up will be like? And in your terminology what the game-story will be? (again just a rough sketch would suffice).

For the overworld- story mode, think of all the factions you've defined now as story factions. These guys give out missions and own different parts of the world, doing missions for them increases your reputation with them. Your aim is to become as powerful as possible, and you do that by taking over parts of the world yourself. You can do this in a number of ways, taking missions from one of the factions only, getting a good reputation with them, and having them reward you with lands (or choose you as their leader), or you could play the factions against eachother, only taking missions from the highest bidder, or you could just attack the lands you see as the weakest, without the help of any of the factions.

For actual gameplay, you'd need to make inbetween creatures not strongly aligned to each faction ie. not all Humans are part of the Righteous Kingdom, not all Constructs are part of the Rebellion, not all the underground denizens are Corpars, not all Undead are under controll of the Great Liche or whatever. These buffer creatures would allow for flexible gameplay while you build up your playstyle to match that needed to get units from the paragon factions.

Then, of course, there is the option of having an "Avatar" that pre-biases you to one of those paragon factions (in story mode, you'd have 1 avatar that gets bias from the factions he does missions for etc)

[andrewbuck]

Although I object to the notion that we need to do it to cut down on the number of creatures, I do tend to agree with TheAncientGoat on this one. As this game is open source it will never be done anyway, so whether our goal is to make 50 creatures or 5,000 I think we will eventually get there once the game becomes popular and new players, etc, start contributing models.

That being said, I think the alignment system would make for a more interesting game. I think the idea of an avatar as you described it is a good one. You basically start out as one faction and depending on your playstyle you develop into your own unique faction. Depending on how we set up the numbers (e.g. how much knights hate undead and therefore how "good" you would have to be before you could attract them) the game could be anything from "hard factions" (where you are entirely locked in by your avatar choice) to "fable" (as in the game where there was no initial avatar at all and your entire persona was crafted by choices).

Looked at it in this way I think the argument is much easier to resolve; we implement a system using an avatar and alignment system. Then for each of our current factions we decide which creatures are the archetype of that faction (i.e. a knight is the epitome of good and should therefore be almost impossible to attact to evil factions, etc). These archetype creatures then basically form the factions that svenskmand has in mind and are the ones the backstory would mainly apply to. Also, because they are so extreme in there beliefs, a player who chooses the undead avatar at the beginning will find it almost impossible to attract a knight into their dungeon, thus basically creating an undead faction.

Many of the other creatures, however, are not archetypal (an extreme being the kobold who helps everyone, less extreme is the "mercenary" who will help anyone with money, etc). For these creatures we put them much more to the "middle" in the space of personalities and they can be attracted to players who have more varied alignments. Using this design you basically have the factions concept but you get to "customize" a bit by which additional creatures you attract in addition to your core army.

-Buck

[TheAncientGoat]

Well Andrew, it's really cool that you understand my ideas, and I know you are the boss round here, but I think it might be a more community wise approach to make certain everyone is happy with the decision before hitting it full steam. I know Svenksmand and bodsda (and others) have put a lot of work into the imagining of the gameworld, and this will affect that world, so making certain that all the core members agree with/understand this system would ensure that they don't get disgruntled and stop participating

I really don't want to be the cause of a schism here

[andrewbuck]

Of course, and neither do I. I was putting in my opinion, but it is not to be taken as the final word. We will have to see what everyone else thinks but I think the "avatar" system is a good one, and a good compromise so I don't think there will be too much objection. Ultimately though we will have to make a decision one way or another before too long or this will start holding up other development.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

If the alignment system should work out I really thing we cannot use the current factions idea, I do not think it will fit together. I really think the game will benefit more from the factions idea, because the content will be more rich and coherent, whereas it will be too diverse and chaotic in the alignment system.

By the way do you (TheAncientGoat or any other for that matter) have any examples of a strategy game with such an alignment system? That is a game where you get units that you have to control in combat somehow?

[TheAncientGoat]

Creatures can still belong to story faction groups, thus be just as rich as what you've planned. There will be more than 4 groups though, and they won't all be paragons of their respective alignment. Thus, the content can be just as rich.

I can't personally think of any other RTS game that uses a similar system to what we've mentioned, but I think thats a /good/ thing. FOSS should be more than just cloning existing games and gameplay..

[Skorpio]

I think I would choose the system that offers the most freedom, for developers and players. Factions sound like the most restrictive choice. OK you don't want a content zoo (I guess you mean mostly the graphics quality), but DK has always been a kind of a zoo of different animals and creatures, and I don't want to change that. I'd like to have the possibility to build my own army or "faction", be it defensive, offensive, long-range combat, speed or magic oriented. That means we need to have a big amount of creatures, classes and buildings/traps to allow players to design their individual armies. Instead of factions I think we should focus on the personalities of the keepers and creatures. I propose an alternative attribute system to define alignments, because the traditional alignments like fire, water, death, life, are kind of boring. I want attributes like greed, ignorance, intolerance, selfishness, etc. and combinations (and maybe also positive stuff ) which define the characters of the creatures and their alignment.

By the way do you (TheAncientGoat or any other for that matter) have any examples of a strategy game with such an alignment system? That is a game where you get units that you have to control in combat somehow?

Heroes of Might and Magic has an alignment system. Hmmm, it's actually a faction system that lets you combine different creatures in one army with a morale penalty, but you can deploy differently aligned armies at the same time without a penalty. HoMM is one of my favorite game series.

[svenskmand]

Heroes of Might and Magic has an alignment system. Hmmm, it's actually a faction system that lets you combine different creatures in one army with a morale penalty, but you can deploy differently aligned armies at the same time without a penalty. HoMM is one of my favorite game series.

Me too , I especially like HoMM III and V But as you said it is not a real alignment system, but merely a sub-system of the game.

But regarding the factions, system. I think we should either stick with the factions system or scrape it entirely and then start over with the alignement system. But it is mandatory for me that we do not try to come up with some contrived compromise of factions with alignments, I CANNOT stress this enough, it will be a really poor game if we do this.

I think I would choose the system that offers the most freedom, for developers and players. Factions sound like the most restrictive choice. OK you don't want a content zoo (I guess you mean mostly the graphics quality), but DK has always been a kind of a zoo of different animals and creatures, and I don't want to change that. I'd like to have the possibility to build my own army or "faction", be it defensive, offensive, long-range combat, speed or magic oriented. That means we need to have a big amount of creatures, classes and buildings/traps to allow players to design their individual armies. Instead of factions I think we should focus on the personalities of the keepers and creatures. I propose an alternative attribute system to define alignments, because the traditional alignments like fire, water, death, life, are kind of boring. I want attributes like greed, ignorance, intolerance, selfishness, etc. and combinations (and maybe also positive stuff ) which define the characters of the creatures and their alignment.

I think this is ok, but we need some rough framework/story for this to take place in.

One way to do this is to have different overlords of the underworld which rival each other, these have certain goals/characteristics they fight for, and therefore there creatures also have these greater or lesser extent. But then the overall setting would still be Humans vs. Dungeon animals, and Dungeon animals vs. dungeon animals. But this is just one random thought.

And depending on you alignment you should off course get different spells, traps and off course creatures. I do not know if they should also get different rooms?

[TheAncientGoat]

I think this is ok, but we need some rough framework/story for this to take place in.

There's nothing contrived about using the existing story. You just have to think of it as less black/white and not have the world only exist due to a "war between factions".

One way to do this is to have different overlords of the underworld which rival each other, these have certain goals/characteristics they fight for, and therefore there creatures also have these greater or lesser extent. But then the overall setting would still be Humans vs. Dungeon animals, and Dungeon animals vs. dungeon animals. But this is just one random thought.

That's still factions. There's nothing stopping the existence of "evil" humans that help dungeon creatures or non-evil dungeon creatures.

And depending on you alignment you should off course get different spells, traps and off course creatures. I do not know if they should also get different rooms?

Having different spells is a good idea, but I think rooms determine alignment more than vice versa.

[svenskmand]

...
There's nothing contrived about using the existing story. You just have to think of it as less black/white and not have the world only exist due to a "war between factions".
...

There is, and we REALLY should not do this.

[svenskmand]

Everyone who likes the alignment system, please make a post with all the axes you like, then I might have an idea, that even the unsatisfiable Goat would like ;P

Your suggestions should be like this
* Evil - Good
* Alignment2 negative - alingment2 positive
* ...
and so on, so negative first then positive (not to be taken too literal, think of it as real axises in a d-dimensional space.

One example with two axes could be:
* greedy - generous
* violent - peaceful
You get the point

If you provide me with these I will make a rough sketch of how the world and story could be

[andrewbuck]

I like the suggestion of:
* greedy - generous
* violent - peaceful

That basically describes four archetypes which currently represent our factions. If you think of them as being values in a d-dimensional space (in this case d = 2 of course) then the "true believer" of a the factions would lie at:
* Corpars (greedy, violent) numerically this would be (-1.0, -1.0)
* Constructs (greedy, peaceful) numerically this would be (-1.0, 1.0)
* Undead (generous, violent) numerically this would be (1.0, -1.0)
* Heroes (generous, peaceful) numerically this would be (1.0, 1.0)

I'm not sure that this is necessarily the best choices we could use for the axes, or if we do use these axes, maybe we want to make the factions located at different points (also possibly have a neutral faction whose "true believer" is neutral, i.e. right at the center). Then each creature would get a score from -1 to 1 for its "personality". For example a skeleton could have a score of (0.7, -0.9) making it fairly generous (i.e. it doesn't care about money) and very violent; making it much like a typical undead faction creature. A mech (the constructs strong fighter) on the other hand would have a score something like (-0.8, 0.75) making it greedy and peaceful, so it would fit in nicely in an army of someone who had something like the contruct avatar.

When you pick your avatar in the beginning you are set to the extreme value as described above. Then as you play the actions you take move your alignment around in the 2-d space. When a new creature comes through the portal, it is a random creature whose personality falls within a circle in the 2-d space surrounding your current alignment. This way you could start out as a hero, but as your alignment drifts you could eventually end up attracting violent creatures and finding yourself unable to attract peaceful ones.

We could also make spells and rooms have positions in this 2-d space as well and do the same "circle" kind of thing for them to determine what kind of rooms, spells, traps, etc are available to you.

PS: If you did a system like this instead of the player having to pick from one of the four points at the extreme corners, you could have 2-d board with all the creatures standing on it in their respective places (i.e. according to their personality) and then the player just picks a point on the board with the mouse to determine where they want their alignment to start out.

-Buck

[svenskmand]

@TheAncientGoat: I expect you to make a post with suggestions for the possible alignment axes

My suggestion is this:
Greed - Generous
Mischievous - Behaved
Violent - Peaceful
Dispassionate - Passionate
Indecent - Decent
Unrighteous - Righteous

By the way, the number of axises does not matter, as we just have to choose l points in this d-dimensional space (so the more axises the better, as this defines your character more precisely), these points are the archetypes, then we build a (l-1)-dimensional simplex from these points (in fact this is the convex hull of these points), and then you can have an alignment inside this simplex (Also notice l-1 <= d for this to work)

So if we have chosen the points x_1, ..., x_l, then a point in the simplex is given by l_1*x_1+...l_l*x_l where l_1+...+l_l = 1, so we have (l-1)-degrees of freedom

In my current idea I have chosen l = 4, and d=6 (you can see the dimension from above defined axises).

Regarding a selector for a point in the space I would suggest that the player simply types in a point in d-dimensions, and then the game will find the point in the simplex that is closest to what the player wants

I will finish and post my sketch for the story some time this week

[TheAncientGoat]

(sorry I took so long, had login problems)

Rewording your suggestion:

Greed - Charity
Chaos - Order (Lawful -Chaotic)
Violence - Peace
Passion - Apathy
Vulgarity - Chastity

Not sure what un/righteous refers too.. Good/Evil? Or just proselytism/blasphemy

I like the convex hull idea.

[svenskmand]

Chaos - Order (Lawful -Chaotic)

The idea with Mischievous, was the notion of making trouble just for fun, like Grimlins or the Corpars

Not sure what un/righteous refers too.. Good/Evil? Or just proselytism/blasphemy

This was supposed to be someone that is very fair, and has a strong sense of righteousness, and then the online dictionaries said that unrighteous was the only antonym.

I like the convex hull idea.

Yeah I think it is allot better than the d-dimensional box, as it does not always make sense to put a race/faction/grouping in all extremes/corners of it, so I thought the simplex/convex hull system was better.

I have been thinking a bit more about my story idea and will start writing it down tonight, so it will probably be done in the weekend, then I will post it. I hope we would all be happy with it.

[TheAncientGoat]

The idea with Mischievous, was the notion of making trouble just for fun, like Grimlins or the Corpars

Mischief is a form of chaos... The only real difference is the tone they set. Actually, come to think of it, choas is a wider term, you can say a gremlin is mischievous/chaotic, but you can't say a Reaper (or something truly malevolent in the sense that they want to destroy all form of order) is mischievous.. You can say mischievous is 0.5 on the scale of chaoticness

This was supposed to be someone that is very fair, and has a strong sense of righteousness, and then the online dictionaries said that unrighteous was the only antonym.

Wouldn't that be the same as behaved/orderly?

[svenskmand]

...
Wouldn't that be the same as behaved/orderly?

I am thinking about morally righteousness, when I hear behaved/orderly I think of a person/creature which is well organized, which is something completely different. A very righteous person will strive to do the "right" thing, but what is the right thing off course depend on the person . Maybe the word could be just, a very just person. That might be the word I was looking for

[svenskmand]

Vulgarity - Chastity

Here I was not thinking of any sexual undertones, but more a person/creature that does something indecent or decent. Vulgarity and Chastity are words with sexual undertones.

Another thing, these:

Greed - Charity
Chaos - Order (Lawful -Chaotic)
Violence - Peace
Passion - Apathy
Vulgarity - Chastity

have a general wording not related to the avatar, mine was worded so the would fit on a person, which I think is better. Example you can be violent, but you cannot be violence, another one, you can be mischievous but you cannot be chaos (although that would be pretty cool)

But I like some of yous better, e.g. Passionate and Apathy (what is the form of this word you can use like this; he is ... (Insert right form of apathy here)

The idea with Mischievous, was the notion of making trouble just for fun, like Grimlins or the Corpars

Mischief is a form of chaos... The only real difference is the tone they set. Actually, come to think of it, choas is a wider term, you can say a gremlin is mischievous/chaotic, but you can't say a Reaper (or something truly malevolent in the sense that they want to destroy all form of order) is mischievous.. You can say mischievous is 0.5 on the scale of chaoticness

You migth be right about this. Then it should be Chaotic - Orderly, so you can use; he is ...

Regarding the Avatar, I like the idea of having an avatar, although it does not really make sense to picture him, as the keeper does not have a physical form, except from his heart which is enclosed in the container in the Dungeon Temple. Any ideas for this? My first though was to picture the keeper as he looks before he was killed and put into the dungeon temple, but then you cannot really see his changes as you play along. I also do not know If we want this, as we would have to make artwork for all possible allignments of the keeper which will not really be doable I think, except we make a procedual system for changing a 3d model according to his alignment and then shown that as the avatar, but that is also allot of work, only to show a picture of him (which does not really make sense from the start as he has no physical body :S) What does you all think?

With your ideas/changes my new list is this:
* Greedy - Charitable
* Chaotic - Orderly
* Violent - Peaceful
* Passionate - Apathetic
* Indecent - Decent
* Unjust - Just

Edit: Regarding Unjust and just, maybe my original proposal was better, because just refers to an universal justice, but my main idea was a blending of universal justice and a person seeing the path he follows as the only right thing to do.

[TheAncientGoat]

Here I was not thinking of any sexual undertones, but more a person/creature that does something indecent or decent. Vulgarity and Chastity are words with sexual undertones.

What did you mean by it then?

have a general wording not related to the avatar, mine was worded so the would fit on a person, which I think is better. Example you can be violent, but you cannot be violence, another one, you can be mischievous but you cannot be chaos (although that would be pretty cool)

The wording doesn't have to relate to the avatar directly. In the context of a graph, Chaos would make just as much sense as Chaotic, I was just describing them as ideals instead of adjectives. It's a matter of wording, and I feel using the ideals carries a different stylistic weight

*Indecent - Decent
*Unjust - Just

These do not work for me. Simply putting an in or un in front of a word kills the entire stylistic flow of the thing. You don't have the feel of opposition in there..

I think you can replace just/unjust with benevolent/malevolent because "fairness" can be represented by a benevolent-ordered alignment.

Regarding keeper avatars, if we want to keep with the incorporeal omnipresent-type narrative, we can always model a floating head-type thing to represent the keeper and keep in line with the story. That should save work on modeling and animation. We don't nec. have to stick to that narrative though

[svenskmand]

Here I was not thinking of any sexual undertones, but more a person/creature that does something indecent or decent. Vulgarity and Chastity are words with sexual undertones.

What did you mean by it then?

Well more in the style that the player does something that is looked down upon in the society, in the game.

have a general wording not related to the avatar, mine was worded so the would fit on a person, which I think is better. Example you can be violent, but you cannot be violence, another one, you can be mischievous but you cannot be chaos (although that would be pretty cool)

The wording doesn't have to relate to the avatar directly. In the context of a graph, Chaos would make just as much sense as Chaotic, I was just describing them as ideals instead of
adjectives. It's a matter of wording, and I feel using the ideals carries a different stylistic weight

I think the wording is better when it relates to the person/avatar, so I will vote for this. What do everyone else think?

*Indecent - Decent
*Unjust - Just

These do not work for me. Simply putting an in or un in front of a word kills the entire stylistic flow of the thing. You don't have the feel of opposition in there..

I think you can replace just/unjust with benevolent/malevolent because "fairness" can be represented by a benevolent-ordered alignment.

I agree that using un- or something similar in front of a word is bad, but I could not find good alternative, and I did not like yours.

What do you suggest then benevolent - malevolent or benevolent-ordered? or something else? I do not understand? I think Benevolent - Malevolent is a little better than Unjust - Just, but not much because it is still the same word "volent" with something in front.

Regarding keeper avatars, if we want to keep with the incorporeal omnipresent-type narrative, we can always model a floating head-type thing to represent the keeper and keep in line with the story. That should save work on modeling and animation. We don't nec. have to stick to that narrative though

I think it is very much necessary to stick to the incorporeal story. In my current writing of my idea I also have the avatar as incorporeal, which is an integral part of my new story.

[TheAncientGoat]

Well more in the style that the player does something that is looked down upon in the society, in the game.

That's pretty vague. Sorta a mixture of orderly/lawful and (which is basically doing what society approves of/dictates) and the benevolent/malevolent scale. Maaybe you could put it in as depraved / honorable but stilll, I feel that leans on the other axis..

[Bodsda]

Well Andrew, it's really cool that you understand my ideas, and I know you are the boss round here, but I think it might be a more community wise approach to make certain everyone is happy with the decision before hitting it full steam. I know Svenksmand and bodsda (and others) have put a lot of work into the imagining of the gameworld, and this will affect that world, so making certain that all the core members agree with/understand this system would ensure that they don't get disgruntled and stop participating

I really don't want to be the cause of a schism here

Throwing my opinions in a bit late here, but oh well. I dislike the idea of hard coded factions, I think this takes away an important aspect of DK2 which was, you will attract any creature by the rooms you possess. If memory servers me, the only creature not possible (except in modded maps) to have on your side was the Stone Knight, you could torture everyone else into submission.

I would prefer an alignment system much like that of Black and White, where you basically have a sliding scale. You start off dead center and your actions influence the scale. Slapping a creature will give you a minor evil rating, casting the chicken spell and then dropping them in front of a bile deamon would give you a mojor evil rating, whereas, caressing your creature in a confessional box... I mean feeding him by hand would give you good points. The sale should be quite large so it would take either major punishment of your creatures for a long time or excessive stroking (30 mins >) before you get the proper good creatures.

Bodsda