Dynamic Crafting and Immersion/Asthetic Suggestions

[KEBW1144]

Major Suggestions:
- have crafting skills for each weapon/armor type, by increasing these skill levels you get better stats on your weapons, something a little more dynamic. The current system where you simply research to make new quality gear simply does not make sense to me, nor does it really get me attached to my smiths. I can understand learning the blueprints or designs or items as is, though I would like to see you learn them from a smith or discover hidden characters that will teach you how to make certain weapons/armor/items. Something that would add a little more soul. The Blueprints are a good placeholder for now but this is something you could really have fun with as a designer.

Minor Suggestions:

- Ninjas appear only at night, running around the desert during the day is simply un-ninja like. If they will be running around during the day I might suggest some desert camo or color that help them blend in rather then black. When I can spot a ninja from miles away I simply start to wonder what has become of ninjas these days.

- Desert roaming bands should have more clothes, or very dark skin.

- Give those poor samurai some shirts, that armor has to chafe

- More clothing for townsfolk, desert dwellers generally do not go shirtless under the sun. Those that can are usually native tribes that have adapted and have dark skin.

- Level the buildings so they are not slanted. You already have terrain cutting in place and the building models have a significant base that is always below the surface so it should look ok.

- Some kind of in town terrain, roads, dirt paths ect... you get the idea

- I would love to see a procedural shader on the rocks and cliffs/something to break up the repeatable texture if possible. Might be a performance hit though so probably not doable but it would be nice.

- extend the time for sunrise and sunsets they are beautiful and i do find myself stopping to enjoy them from time to time.

- More characters such as the infinite wingwang .... but something a little more immersive, one or two crazy blokes is ok, just as long as that is not the norm

- More immersive Dialog, I believe there is already a mod that changes that a little from what I saw the flavor of the dialog is quite nice.

[Tolwrath]

Have you tried turning the shadows on? Might be sorta what you're looking for. Also: I'm pretty sure Infinite Wingwang is a character made because someone bought one of the higher up donation packages. So if you want some more of those, donate and have Chris add in supper characters of your own design.

[PnzrNorm]

You should check out my thread regarding a way to revamp the smithing system located here:
http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... =16&t=5770

I believe the Roadmap has something about shaders and multi-threading in the future. Check that out from the main page.

[KEBW1144]

Have you tried turning the shadows on? Might be sorta what you're looking for. Also: I'm pretty sure Infinite Wingwang is a character made because someone bought one of the higher up donation packages. So if you want some more of those, donate and have Chris add in supper characters of your own design.

I do play with shadows on and all settings maxed, might also be why I can see em from so far away. Its not that I want to have "my" character in there, its that I would like to see more unique characters that have a bit too them.

You should check out my thread regarding a way to revamp the smithing system located here:
http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... =16&t=5770

I believe the Roadmap has something about shaders and multi-threading in the future. Check that out from the main page.

I do like the way your thinking however I would simply remove the "grades/qualities" altogether and simply have the weapon stats based on the skill of the smith. Perhaps when Chris implements a more detailed resource gathering system you could even have a quality of metal depending on location, that would also factor in to the stats of the weapon. This would make some good quality iron a real find.

[PnzrNorm]

I do play with shadows on and all settings maxed, might also be why I can see em from so far away. Its not that I want to have "my" character in there, its that I would like to see more unique characters that have a bit too them.

There are a couple easy things to add to the variety/flavor of NPCs in the game.
1. There is a .txt file that contains an array of male and female names that are randomly assigned to NPCs throughout the game world (this doesn't change Samurai and Holy Servant to something else, but that's my next point)
2. There is a forum dedicated to modding, and its a really nifty tool, once you overcome the learning curve. I do believe it is possible to mod the names of guard NPCs, add dialogue, etc. to also beef up the flavor of NPCs to your liking. Not to mention that are tons of things you can do with modding.

I do like the way your thinking however I would simply remove the "grades/qualities" altogether and simply have the weapon stats based on the skill of the smith. Perhaps when Chris implements a more detailed resource gathering system you could even have a quality of metal depending on location, that would also factor in to the stats of the weapon. This would make some good quality iron a real find.

The "grades/qualities" system is a strong foundation, but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of each weapon's stats being assigned a variable. This variable could be a formula that produces a floating point value (but in all honesty, I would like it displayed as an integer, as the decimal places in weapon stats make no sense to me) that has a flat arbitrary X value and is multiplied by the Y value of the creator's skill level. Granted, I bet this is a lot harder to implement than just saying it (think about all the weapons on NPCs, then each one would have multiple dynamic values).
My post did mention that each quality/grade would have a pre-requisite skill level in order to craft that grade, so, technically, the stats of a weapon would be dependent on the skill level of the smith, although it would be a much more rigid structure than aforementioned dynamic values.