Unnecessary Mechanics You'd Like to See

[Psychomorph]

Unnecessary mechanics, I take that literally. I'd like to make the character sit down on the ground, or in the chair or a log, stone and things. I'd like to be able to gather wood from the forest and make a fire. So I go and pick up the wood, because SG has proper physics, carrying too much wood would make some of it fall off when I run. If we can move things with the mouse, I'd like to arrange the wood to have a nice fire place. I could also arrange stones around it to frame the heat and make the fire last longer. As Madoc said, fire will be based on physics and look spectacular, so it would burn as intense and as long according to the amount of wood. You could throw in wood at any point and each piece of wood would individually catch fire and burn. You could grab a piece of wood (if it is not completely on fire) and use it as a torch, beat Jackals with it so they stay away from you.
Making fire could also have use for the gameplay. In the dangerous forest, where creatures of the dark walk the earth at night, a fire may rescue your life.

 

[hredthel]

I like your point Rob, I, too, think there should be some sort of carryover with weapon skills. I think your attributes are going to have a much greater effect on your weapon abilities than a bunch of individual skills.

I could also arrange stones around it to frame the heat and make the fire last longer. As Madoc said, fire will be based on physics and look spectacular, so it would burn as intense and as long according to the amount of wood.

I think there is a shorter way to achieve this concept with similar results:
1. Make an NPC that teaches you to dig/build a good fire pit
2. Script the fire pit so that flammable objects within it's collision burn longer and slightly brighter. This can be done for fireplaces and stoves as well.

I love the idea about lighting a fire to protect yourself. If the fire goes out while you are resting: you awake with a message: Your fire has died and you wake with a chill.... then glowing eyes in the trees, howling, underbrush rustling, general sudden fear, adrenaline, and a jolly fight as the woodland beasts tear into your campsite.

 

[Kaizer0002]

I think sight vision cones for my character would be interesting. Project Zomboid and the NG+ for Mark of the Ninja both utilize it. Most RPGs give you 360 vision and at least doors will block line of sight, but not objects.

 

[Dr.Teatime]

Stealth Mechanics and vision cones for players and enemies.
One thing I hate in games is artificial stealth like cloaking devices and invisibility spells because in most games stealth is thrilling when you can use basic slow movement to dampen sound and cover to stay out of sight.

I personally find it thrilling to assassinate a person in equal footing, real close and personal.

Also Throwing Knives. I might want to slit someone's throat but on occasion getting accurate shots with difficult to use weapon.

 

[The Hedge Knight]

I need to be a bard. That way I can entertain the masses for some money, play the guitar at a campfire to make people love me, or just feel like a bad ass.

I WILL BE BOXCAR JOE, THE MAGICAL HOBO.

 

[Rob]

Here's an idea for an "unnecessary mechanic" that would be a really nice additional feature... how about an action replay facility?

Suppose you've just experienced an amazingly awesome "thing" (which would probably be physics-based, probably in combat, but not necessarily) and you want to see it again! And again! And maybe even capture it (with fraps?) and upload it to youtube, etc. So then you hit an F-key and turn it into "action replay mode"!!!! (of course, this effective pausing wouldn't apply to multiplayer).

Basically, it would involve buffering game history, with buffer size being dependent on available resources. But it shouldn't just buffer what's output to screen, it should buffer the whole state of the 3D environment!!! This would allow you to replay the action whilst changing camera angle, seeing that glorious sky, etc. I know that Madoc has already explicitly said the Sui Generis is an isometric game, but perhaps generalised camera angles could be allowed in the case of an action replay?!!! Maybe even isometric, over-the-shoulder and first-person could be toggleable preset views whilst in action replay mode...

...this would allow awesome user-specified cinematic death sequences (as found in other games), without annoyingly automatically forcing you into a different cinematic view at "intelligent" points during natural gameplay (which, whilst cool, often looks like the game's trying too hard to be hollywood, resulting in loss of immersion).

Anyone who wants continuous realistic persistent gameplay without loss of immersion can simply not use the action replay facility. But anyone who wants to have a bit of fun, who's character's just been impressively pwnd by an Ogre (after kicking an imp across a room), can!

Anyone like the sound of that?

 

[trsp62]

Like the sound of it, but it sounds resource hungry.

 

[Rob]

You never know till you try!!!

Also, note that RAM prices are very low, and quantities are getting higher and higher!!! I can't think of any games that fully utilise 4GB RAM, yet now you can buy 32GB or even 64GB if you want, for a home-use system! Let's actually do something with those resources, rather than just let it sit there idle! Come on Sui Generis, break the mould!

Also, don't forget that Sui Generis is (at least?) 18 months from release. A lot of hardware improvements can happen in 18 months (RAM-wise, DDR4, for example). Also, we want Sui Generis to be a classic that will stay around for years, and thus needs to stay relevant and hungry in terms of potential hardware usage! Even if such an action replay system only applies for monster PCs at present, in a few years it would be accessible to anyone with a half-decent PC.

Of course, this feature would be completely scalable - the amount of time you could rewind would depend on how much resources your system has, and you would be able to disable it completely.

I think it would be naive to not implement something purely on the basis of fear of it being resource-hungry (within reason). Let's be innovative!!!!

 

[Rob]

Just realised I went off on a bit of a tangent to the original focus of the thread... sorry... should this action replay stuff be moved to a different thread?

 

[Tony]

Just realised I went off on a bit of a tangent to the original focus of the thread... sorry... should this action replay stuff be moved to a different thread?

Well, the thread is titled "Unnecessary Mechanics You'd Like to See" so I think your post is appropriate And I think such a feature would be neat. If they don't have time to implement such a feature for release, ideas are always good "food for thought" that the devs can use for future enhancements (post-release).

 

[Rob]

If they don't have time to implement such a feature for release, ideas are always good "food for thought" that the devs can use for future enhancements (post-release).

Definitely. And I know full well that sometimes developers get a bit fed up with what they're doing after a long frustrating day, and want to do something different for a bit of fun. I can imagine that implementing this sort of feature probably comes under the "not important, but could be something fun to implement if I feel like it one day" category!

 

[MrIdontKnow]

Plus we'll probably have modding tools so, flying saucers. You Name It!

 

[Cooper Holt]

I like your point Rob, I, too, think there should be some sort of carryover with weapon skills. I think your attributes are going to have a much greater effect on your weapon abilities than a bunch of individual skills.



I think there is a shorter way to achieve this concept with similar results:
1. Make an NPC that teaches you to dig/build a good fire pit
2. Script the fire pit so that flammable objects within it's collision burn longer and slightly brighter. This can be done for fireplaces and stoves as well.

I love the idea about lighting a fire to protect yourself. If the fire goes out while you are resting: you awake with a message: Your fire has died and you wake with a chill.... then glowing eyes in the trees, howling, underbrush rustling, general sudden fear, adrenaline, and a jolly fight as the woodland beasts tear into your campsite.

I like psychomorph's idea alot more, personally. I think that it being fully dynamic and playing a true part in the game would make it alot more realistic and fun.

 

[Cooper Holt]

I need to be a bard. That way I can entertain the masses for some money, play the guitar at a campfire to make people love me, or just feel like a bad ass.

I WILL BE BOXCAR JOE, THE MAGICAL HOBO.

I salute you. I will stand by your side, playing the accompanied ukelele. And I will be Crouton, the thaumaturgical Necromancer-rogue-bard.

-'Long as you're okay with that.

 

[Kaizer0002]

Something I'd like to see in more games is randomized elements of an enemy's appearance. The regular zombies in Left 4 Dead and Rift (I believe) both did this where an enemy has different costume parts, of which it would randomly select some to give each an individual look so they aren't all strictly clones and still make them identifiable. Goblins might have a random pot or pan hanging off them, different head shape, etc. with enough elements that you won't engage 2 identical enemies at the same time.

 

[Granville]

If they allow unarmed fighting it would be great for subduing someone you didn't want to kill (say being able to knock someone unconscious with your fists), but I hope they do not focus on this as a main way to fight armed opponents (I don't want an entire skill set for unarmed combat since they've said skill points will be rare). Fighting armed opponents when you're unarmed is impractical. It works great in Hollywood movies but I hope they stick with the realism theme and avoid Hollywood silliness.

While it's true that fists vs sword isn't really a fair fight, a way of balancing this would be to have some disarming techniques, alternatively have some spiked gauntlets or something that would be as effective against armor as a dagger/short sword.

On another note, i'd love to see you able to build a home and life for yourself either in a town/village or out in the woods, and not just a pointless place like in skyrim, where the only benefit of having one is so you can store more stuff.

 

[TheScythian]

Firstly, hi everyone. Stumbled across this game today and I'm already massively excited...2014 can't come fast enough. You guys have some really good ideas for mechanics I hope some of them make it in.

Secondly, just as an idea I thought it would be cool if parts of your armour could be knocked off during combat. For instance if the ogre/porky smashes you in the face with a flail your helmet could fly off...you'd then have to either decide to continue fighting with your head exposed (and therefore more vulnerable to damage) or dash to pick up the helmet. I thought this would suit the physics based combat style of the game well (especially considering the lack of traditional hit-points from what I could understand) and make fights really tense and tactical...you'd be thinking "can I afford to keep fighting this guy now that my head's one swing from being crushed like a kinder egg?". Also different armours could then be easier/harder to knock off according to armour type, who smithed it etc. Course...I don't know how the armour system is being dealt with, they may be a single suit rather than individual parts in which case this wouldn't be possible.

TL;DR - Armour pieces knocked off in combat.

 

[MrIdontKnow]

Firstly, hi everyone. Stumbled across this game today and I'm already massively excited...2014 can't come fast enough. You guys have some really good ideas for mechanics I hope some of them make it in.

Secondly, just as an idea I thought it would be cool if parts of your armour could be knocked off during combat. For instance if the ogre/porky smashes you in the face with a flail your helmet could fly off...you'd then have to either decide to continue fighting with your head exposed (and therefore more vulnerable to damage) or dash to pick up the helmet. I thought this would suit the physics based combat style of the game well (especially considering the lack of traditional hit-points from what I could understand) and make fights really tense and tactical...you'd be thinking "can I afford to keep fighting this guy now that my head's one swing from being crushed like a kinder egg?". Also different armours could then be easier/harder to knock off according to armour type, who smithed it etc. Course...I don't know how the armour system is being dealt with, they may be a single suit rather than individual parts in which case this wouldn't be possible.

TL;DR - Armour pieces knocked off in combat.

Welcome dude! We don't know about armour being knocked off but they use a dedicated cloth system which can be ripped and dints to the armour so who knows, anything could happen.

 

[Rob]

Yeah, sounds really nice!

No idea how hard that would be to implement... it would all depend on the particular implementation of Bare Mettle's game engine. I'm sure Madoc can shed light on whether or not that a possibility.

 

[The Hedge Knight]

While it's true that fists vs sword isn't really a fair fight, a way of balancing this would be to have some disarming techniques, alternatively have some spiked gauntlets or something that would be as effective against armor as a dagger/short sword.

On another note, i'd love to see you able to build a home and life for yourself either in a town/village or out in the woods, and not just a pointless place like in skyrim, where the only benefit of having one is so you can store more stuff.

Eh, I don't want it to be so that if you have only some spike fists you can still hold your own against a knight. The game should punish those who try to fight knights with fists, not even it out.