Description

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

The Empire is crushing the last remains of freedom in the galaxy, but a small band of rebel forces has started a war against the massive imperial army. It is rumored that a prominent rebel leader has stolen the plans of the newest weapon of the Empire, a weapon that it is said to have the power to destroy an entire planet.

Meanwhile, in the distant world of Tatooine, a teenager dreams of glory and adventure...

Features

This module is in early development and most of these features had not been implemented.

Status

sTarWars is in no longer under development. If someone wants to take over the development or use any of it's parts feel free.

Many things are left to be done, see the /todo list.

Module Version

0.2.0 aka "A new hype": Second sTarWars release! Not really playable, but there are a few interesting things in place. Requires Tome 3.0.0alpha18.

Changes from version 0.1.0

Known issues

There are probably a lot of spelling and grammar errors. English is not my native language, so any help with these is welcome.

Author

ElCuGo <elcugo AT SPAMFREE gmail DOT com>

With a lot of help from: BucketMan <lordbucket AT SPAMFREE hotmail DOT com>

Download

You can download this module from: http://modules.t-o-m-e.net/mods/68__starwars.team or you can chose to download it using the engine. Play it for a few minutes and let us know what you think!

Size: 3.14159265358979323846 kB

Discussion

NerdanelVampire: So I killed a few characters. It's kind of hard to judge anything at this point, as players can't really advance and even money is hard to come by as the stores don't buy what you find. The edge transition subsystem is cool but didn't always work logically - for example once I exited south and found myself on the south edge of a wilderness square. One thing I don't like is the absence of natural regeneration, which changes the game greatly. Hit points have always been about not only physical wounds but fatigue, superficial bruises, etc. You should be able to rest in the dungeon.

ElCuGo: Yes, I know, the game is very hard, that's why I gave players the bactade potions but still is not enough.The only things that you can sell are dragon pearls, but finding one is dificult, there will be a guaranteed way to get one by killing a Krayt Dragon, but it's not implemented yet. I know that entering a new level puts you in a random edge, this is beacuse my solution to place the player in the correct edge sometimes freeze the engine, so I comented it out. And finally, no natural regeneration is part of the design, you will be able to wear heavier armor which can serve as some extra HP, and portable shields that regenerate, but take power cells (bateries.)

Thanks for trying sTarWars and I'm truly, deeply sorry for the inconveniences. In the next release I will try to make the character much harder to kill. :)

Sirrocco: Well, I killed a character. I would say that the basic problems I had were how easy it was to get lost and how hard it was to figure out any plot. A number of buildings had 'c'hat options, but no actual chatting was available, other than the intro-helpscreen guy. I made it up to level 5 from killing random critters, but I didn't really see that there were any advantages to it, as I couldn't find anyone to train me - and as soon as I walked more than one square away from the starting town, I found myself attaced by womp rats. Running away from said womp rats made me effectively permanently lost. Not only were the random terrain sides working against me, but I had no way to get my bearings.

I also never found any sources of bactaid other than the one bottle I started with, and drinking milk gave me a lua error. Still, I'd be interested to see what you do with it next.

NerdanelVampire: I don't think I like the non-regeneration thing at all. One thing that happened to me in one of my games was that I came back to the town with 1 hitpoint, 26 credit (I was never able to gather the 33 credit to buy the better armor), and no bactade. I should have been able to do SOMETHING to get back my hitpoints but I wasn't, or at least I didn't figure it out. I tried resting at the inn for a whopping 20 credit but that caused a Lua error. I really thing the player should have natural regeneration to avoid nasty delayed-death situations like that.

Re: damage reduction, I read an article about the development of the fourth edition D&D that relates to that. The D&D developers experimented with things like adding damage reduction to armors, etc. and how it changed the game. They found out that of three things - damage on hit, AC, and damage reduction - at least one had to be a constant or else things would break. A monster that does random damage that is balanced against one grade of armor is suddenly tremendously deadly against worse armor if it rolls well or absolutely pathetic against a slightly better armor. That's why the next version of D&D will continue to have AC and random damage dice but no damage reduction except for special cases.

By the way, I thought that the reason my hitpoints didn't increase on level-up was because that hadn't been implemented yet. Now I'm getting the horrible creeping feeling that that's intentional for "realism's" sake. Note however that hitpoints are supposed to be abstract. The reason a high-level warrior won't die to a few sword-strikes like a newbie warrior is that the high-level warrior has learned to dodge the blows so that he might get winded up by the effort or a few superficial scratches while the newbie warrior gets a sword in the heart from the same enemy that does the same amount of abstract "hitpoint damage". And in any case, I think realism isn't anywhere near as important as the game being fun.

I think it should be possible to get a view of the big map even if you can't move on it so you would know where you are in relation to the town.

BucketMan: Shields will regenerate over time. Armor can be repaired with tools and nanobots. These things simply aren't implemented yet. It is version 0.1.0 :)

Sirrocco: random thought - not necessarily a *good* random thought, but perhaps a moderately entertaining one, so I include anyway. In town, there is some sort of friendly helpful nurse type - deeply sympathetic NPC. She will happily heal you back to full for a small-to-moderate amount of money, but... well, she is *terribly* compassionate, and can't bear to leave people suffering, so if you have no money, she'll put it on your tab. She'll even *keep* putting it on your tab, beleiving whatever you might tell her about how difficult things are for you right now. Perhaps a "Well, you know, I *really* shouldn't, but..." quote or some such. Easy mark, right? Well, almost. You see, the other merchants in town happen to really like this lady, and if you're running any sort of a tab with her, *they* won't take your money. Solves that whole "stumbles into town with 1 HP, utterly doomed" issue.

BucketMan: A nurse would be good, yes. But again, without shields or armor having been even basically implemented yet, I think it's a bit early to be terribly concerned about convenience and balance just yet. With only one third of the three sources of hit points working, I think it's reasonable that things would be a little awkward. I kind of think it was too early for a first release.

Sirrocco: As a thought for the list of "things to do" - any Star Wars game with force powers in it really needs a Light Side and a Dark Side, and significant effects on the character for going either way. There's any number of different ways to take it, but it should be a meaningful and well-built part of the game. I'm not saying this needs to be done any time *soon*, but it ought to be on the list somewhere.

ElCuGo: Certainly. The Force will play a paramount role in sTarWars and there will be Dark and Light sides. Which side the player will use will depend on the player actions and each one will have unique strengs and weaknesses. That list is just a stub and will be expanded in the course of a few weeks. There are many things that haven't been decided and I want to put things that are certain to get there in the final version.

0.2.0

ElCuGo: This relase is not as complete as I had like it to be, but I didn't want this to bitrot in my computer, so here you go. Before you ask, no, this is not an april 1st joke.

NerdanelVampire: I killed one character, and here are comments...

NerdanelVampire: How do you identify things? I didn't even know identifying existed in the game.

ElCuGo: I implemented a DBT style auto-id system. There are no skills yet, but increasing your INT will help you identify things.

NerdanelVampire: Okay, now I have seen what is probably the final boss of the current content. I was level 8 and got slowly yet inexorably killed by the electric rat on level 5 of the Whatsitsname Station. I tried to run away but someone had replaced the way I had come with a granite wall.

So there I was, trying to kill a super-fast critter that had stat-draining, hp-demolishing distance attacks with my pair of dual-wielded vibroknives in a terrain that didn't favor me at all. I went through most of my stack of unused clothing.

Large parts of the battle went like this:

  1. Zap! Ouch!
  2. Switch hats.
  3. Zap! Ouch!
  4. Switch body armor.
  5. Take a few steps in an attempt to charge the electric rat.
  6. Go to 1.

(I must say, this module's search for realism has gone in a rather unrealistic direction...)

At one point there was also a bantha/dewback/some critter that wandered in and I had to kill because it tried to attack me too. In the end I finally got the electric rat cornered in a dead-end corridor and I even managed to land a blow or two, but the rat's damage potential overwhelmed my tattered nth change of armor and bit into my two remaining personal hitpoints. So I died.

ElCuGo: Hmm, I just killed the electric rat with only a metal pipe wielded. I though the rat was too weak so I made it stronger, but I guess I should halve it's HP again. Also note that dual wielding has a small penalty, which isn't important most of the time, but it's significant when fighting fast enemies.

About the bantha/dewback/etc. These are suposed to be neutral to you 90% of the time, but factions seem to be broken in the engine. I'll try to workaround that in future releases.

Modules/sTarWars (last edited 2008-04-26 04:48:29 by ElCuGo)