Asvarduil

Only say a release date if you want a project to epicphail.

Oh yeah - mind passing me a copy of the source code, as well?

@Marsh: > You could always make it so that the healing spells damage undead. Its a classic and can make priests or healing classes very useful in certain situations. Well, it _is_ classic in Final Fantasy. However, Priests have offensive spells of their own, and there aren't a lot of undead in the world of Frellynor - I personally think Undead are a bit overused and would like to try to get away from them. As far as my classes are concerned, this is what I have in mind: (now posted over on the Frellynor WIP topic.) Warrior - Melee Fighters - Focus on Attack Iconic Moves: Backpedal, Riposte, Reckless Cut Ranger - Ranged Fighters - Focus on Tech Iconic Moves: Sidestep, Leg Shot Rogue - Melee Fighters - Focus on Attack Iconic Moves: Backstab, Cloak, Plant Grenade Priest - Healers - Focus on Defense Iconic Moves: Restore, Chastise, Fortify Archon - Mixed - Focus on Tech Iconic Moves: Terrify, Disillusion, Mirror Image Templar - Mixed - Focus on Defense Iconic Moves: Righteous Shield, Confession, Shackle Wizard - Caster - Focus on Tech Iconic Moves: Flamestrike, Transmutate, Arcane Well Enchanter - Caster - Focus on Tech Iconic Moves: Sentient Weapon, Specialization, Invisibility Warlock - Mixed - Focus on Attack Iconic Moves: Frostblade, Siphon, Nova

Eh, you're right. For a priest, Heal/Damage _dosen't_ make any sense. Chastise should be a Priest's bread-n-butter offensive spell. Restore could become I guess Exhalt (slight healing, atk buff). I can take the self-heal & damage and make that a Warlock spell. They're hardcore destroyers anyhow, some life-draining abilities are up their alley anyhow. Besides, Warlocks in WoW do it. [/uncreative]

While this shouldn't be hard to script, thinking this over made me realize there are some serious considerations with my flexible stat system. In Frellynor, characters wear armors and weapons (medievally themed, no big deal.) Armors and weapons, however, allow you to equip a gemlike stone called an Aetho that changes your stats. Red Aethos improve offensive abilities. Blue Aethos improve defensive abilities. Green Aethos improve technical abilities. …however, I'm also building it such that Aethos also feature a drawback too: Red Aethos reduce a defensive stat. Blue Aethos reduce a technical stat. Green Aethos reduce a offensive stat. …thus causing players to specialize in one stat or another, which I'm OK with, and can probably mathematically plot by writing a short program to look for possible issues/"unwanted" aetho builds. What my real question is, though, is that I'm planning for player's skills to "evolve" as their most powerful stat does, and I would like some advice about designing and balancing it. For example, under my current design, if you're playing a Priest, whose first spell is a heal (Restore), if by a certain number of stats, attack is the strongest, Restore will become Chastise (heals slightly, deals damage as well.); if defense is the strongest, Restore will become Vindication (heals, reduces damage taken slightly.); if tech is highest, Restore will become Vitalize (heals HP and ressurects fallen allies.) Any feedback about considerations from this system I need is much much much appreciated.

Once, I was going to make Oolong my currency. This message brought to you by the letter "T".

I actually had an idea (now that I'm experimenting with SadScript) that could work out really well. in Frellynor, my design-phase MMO, I'm not doing the whole level-up system thing; you gain stats purely by tracking gear down, doing quests, tradeskilling, or daily PvP missions. I also like Push-Block puzzles in games. In Frellynor I was going to give pushblocks a twist: the higher your "Attack" power, the better ability you have to move blocks color-coded to a ATK threshold (red, for example, would take a very minor level of strength, orange would be a bit more demanding, and so on…) I am planning for a ghetto-instance dungeon/PvP system (no, no, not the leet, probably elegantly coded one Blizzard uses in WoW, or that Ragnarok Online adopted...), and I think this would be at least an adequate design idea because: 1 - It forces people to _actually think_, and 2 - It forces players to hunt gear, or travel with a buddy. I'm also planning on throwing those Def-gearers and Tech-gearers a bone too, so that melee fighters and their Atk-stacking don't get too far out of control. Comments on this "stat-capped" ideal?

The Tesseract sounds like a clever idea - and just like the Lost Woods from the Zelda games! I like Zelda. :D One I've got the algorithms for in Ander's Journey is a game of Simon. There's these sigils I've put in strategic locations; simply repeat the randomly-generated combination and either the sigil will dissolve temporarily, or you get teleported, or things appear…goodies galore. My Simon implementation sounds like DNA Virus's idea. Hmmm...keep 'em coming!

Personally, while I enjoy a good grind as much as anyone, I also enjoy some puzzles that require magic or skills to be used in an intelligent fashion. However, having only played games like EQ and WoW, I've never seen puzzles successfully implemented, besides a part of Feralas in WoW (which was a platform-jumping affair for a quest objective.) Since Eclipse is a 2D Engine, I have two questions: 1) In an MMO, is a puzzle even viable? 2) If #1 is yes, what architectures have you found to be effective among your players?

Heh, and here I was about to make a C++ client, because I want to be able to customize the UI, and I don't have VB6 (Actually, I have Dev-C++…you can rofl at me now.) Can't wait to see what this becomes!