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GM Stormcrow View Drop Down
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Points: 3926 		Direct Link To This Post Topic: The Newness - 18AUG10
    Posted: 18 Aug 2010 at 15:39
THE NEWNESS
We had a 3-day internal workshop recently, where many of us sat down and thrashed out - in a few, fleeting periods of lucidity inbetween frankly unfeasable levels of drunkenness - some sort of 6-month plan for Illyriad and our development prioritisation.

There are so many things changing that it's almost hard to know where to begin.

So I'll start at some of the major items, and then give some prioritisation indication.

1. GEOGRAPHY, TOPOGRAPHY & BIOMES
Most players in Illyriad define their geographic location in terms of quadrant "I'm in the Northwest" and distance from the center of the map "I'm 300 squares out from the center".

We always wanted Illyriad to have a serious, proper geography - with each server essentially as a Continent; and with geographical features that make sense in terms of a real, living world.

However, we ran out of time before launch Embarrassed and so we got the homogenised, random-seed square world that we currently have, surrounded by highly unsatisfying streams of endless volcanos.

But no longer.

The World of Illyriad will shortly receive a complete makeover. 

We have written fractal algorithms to regenerate the whole map into a work of naturalistic beauty - complete with seas, rivers & lakes, mountain ranges and sprawling forests, deserts, jungles, archipelagos, islands, glaciers, volcanic regions - basically all the works that one would expect to find on a real continent.

These geographic zones are called biomes.

The biomes we are adding are:
  • Ice Sheet
  • Polar Desert
  • Tundra
  • Boreal Forest
  • Temperate Broadleaf Forest
  • Temperate Steppe
  • Subtropical Rainforest
  • Temperate Forests, Woodlands, and Scrub
  • Monsoon Forest
  • Arid Desert
  • Xeric Shrubland
  • Dry Steppe
  • Semiarid Desert
  • Grass Savanna
  • Tree Savanna
  • Subtropical Dry Forest
  • Tropical Rainforest
  • Fresh Water
  • Tidal Waters
  • Shallow Salt Water
  • Ocean
On top of this naturalistic world we will be adding some hard-crafted features around the place.

Further on top of this fractal biome, we've added topographical height / weighting, so you will get (eg) mountain ranges appearing on the map.

We're treating the current "top" of the map as the Arctic, and the current "bottom" of the map as the Equator.

Don't worry - your cities won't be moving anywhere, and the terrain that you have built your cities on won't be changing either. 

New players will still be seeded into "temperate" zones (ie they won't start on a desert tile). 

We've even written the algorithm so that it won't touch the 5 squares around any currently settled square, so you won't suddenly find yourself beset by threatening glaciers or volcanic lava flows - and will have room to expand in your neck of the woods.

There are a few players who have settled out in the back of beyond - as far from the center as possible - and we're making sure that they will be attached to the mainland rather than floating out on an Island in the middle of the sea.

For the moment, this new geography won't mean very much - except that there will be a visible geography to the world and we know everyone likes pretty, shiny things.

You will also be able to point and giggle for a while as your horses walk on water.

This will, however, change over time, in the following quite dramatic ways:
  • We're going to name the geographic features and regions of the World, and

  • The distribution of the New Factions (more about them later) will be geographic, as will the critters (eg Scorpions in the Desert, Krakens in the sea etc)

  • We currently have bonuses and penalties applied to unit type performance by topography (ie Cavalry are poor on mountains and great on plains) - but we will also be introducing combat and movement speed racial bonuses by biome and topography

  • We will introduce pathfinding - so if you want to go from point A to point B, you will have to go around Volcano C and Swampland D (unless you *really* have to go through them).  Unit speed will fluctuate on a journey - by both biome & topography

    Pathfinding also enables ambushes, unit interception (whilst travelling) and waypointing

  • This then enables roadbuilding, and even the charging of tolls for players who use your roads.

  • Larger rivers, and all seas, lakes and oceans will (ultimately) only be crossable by boat, and this enables everything from shipbuilding and piracy, to naval warfare - and the transport of goods by water (including river barges) as a possible profession

  • Biome and geographically specific map icons.  For example, instead of a "Ruined Tower" NPC square, in a Desert this might be a tomb or ziggurat.
When? Soon (tm)...

... actually, very soon for the first part.

We need to - at the very minimum - generate the biomes and major topographic features before there are so many players in the game that we can't easily make a wholesale change like this; which is why this change is happening with high priority.

We hope you will agree that this is a very exciting enhancement to the game.


Edited by GM Stormcrow - 18 Aug 2010 at 22:30
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2. FACTION ENHANCEMENTS
With the new world geography, and in preparation for Trade v2, we're changing NPC Factions in many key ways.
  • We want lots of NPC Factions, distributed around the new world map of Illyria

  • We want NPC Factions and player/alliance relationships with Factions to be important to the gameworld

  • We want players to have to choose between Factions; they won't be able to be friendly with everyone.

    But equally, players who do not wish to take part in Factions can choose to ignore them, and be - broadly - safe from being pulled into Factions, depending on where they are in the world and what they're doing (ie sending an unguarded caravan train through a faction run by Bandits might result in your caravans being lost, regardless of your wish to be involved in Factions or not)

  • We want Factions to be living, breathing things - not monolithic "just there" entities, and we want their footprint on the gameworld to be organic, and to influence (and be influenced by) external events

  • We want Factions and inter-Faction relationships to be able to be directly and indirectly influenced by player actions

  • We want some/many factions to tie into the religions/deities concept when we introduce this

  • We want each Faction to be detailed enough (including military units etc) so that it could, in time, become a player racial option

    Although don't expect "Dragon" to be an available player racial choice anytime soon Wink

Let's illustrate how this might work with an example of a New Faction called "The Gnomes".
THE GNOMES

Gnomes are natural enemies with the Goblin Faction, and they're naturally friendly with the Halfling Faction and the Dwarf Mercenary Faction (Treggar's Crows), plus a few others. 

The Gnomes live generally in hilly areas, downs and fens, in the Temperate parts of the North West of Illyria.

Their general preference is dealing with Dwarven players - they often offer discounts when trading, and they dislike dealing with Orc players, often hiking up their prices for Orc customers.

The Gnomes are very dextrous with their hands, and are quick-thinking, expert engineers.

The Gnomes have a few trade hubs which they run, and these hubs are the only place where players/alliances with suitable standings can - once we have introduced crafting to the game - use the Gnomes' workshops and blueprints (located in these hubs) to craft special machinery that improves production in their towns (eg, a more efficient gearing mechanism that improves the Flourmill by +1% in a town); or an expertly constructed Siege Engine that has a higher to-hit chance.

The Gnomes have a few cities of their own, and - whilst not naturally warlike - they can certainly defend themselves admirably, especially with the use of cunning traps and mechanisms to foil an attacker's aims.  The few times they do decide to attack an especially dangerous enemy, they often hire Dwarven mercenaries to bulk up their armies.

So, that's the (brief) backstory.

But we want the Gnomes to actually respond to and be influenced by the world in which they live.
  • The Gnome cities will grow in population, and occasionally put down new cities around their Hubs

  • The Gnomes will periodically send out armies to smite their worst enemies - sometimes this will be another Faction (such as the Goblins) and othertimes it might be another player or alliance who has been particularly evil to the Gnomes in the past.

  • The Gnomes - if they have excess troops - might respond to another (friendly) Faction's call for help, and possibly even a player or alliance's call for help if they are sufficiently friendly

  • The Gnomes will grow faster if players supply them with the goods they need to grow - base resources as well as advanced resources; and crafting components that they want. 

  • The Gnomes will produce more items for sale (and demand more supplies) in their hubs as they grow larger as a Faction,  the Gnomes will produce less items for sale in their hubs when they get smited (by other Factions, or by Players/Alliances).

  • The Gnomes (and all factions) will fall in and out of love/hate with other NPC Factions depending on player actions - for example, if a massive player Dwarven army smites the Gnomes back to the dark ages, then the Gnomes might dislike Dwarves and Treggar's Crows for a bit; but over time the likes and dislikes will adjust back to their default natural balance

  • Players who are friendly with the Gnomes will be able to reinforce the Gnome cities and fight alongside them vs other Factions, as well as vs other Players, possibly for reward.

  • Player A might buy up all the Gnomes' blueprints and unique crafting materials - and then pay Player B to smite them mercilessly (or blockade their cities, and intercept their caravans) - thereby stifling the source of the Blueprints, and making their blueprints highly valuable, whilst not personally losing "Good Standing" with the Gnomes.

  • Player Alliance A (who is at war with Player Alliance B, and also friendly with the Goblins) might smite the Gnomes, because Player Alliance B trades with the Gnomes for most of their Siege Engines, and this will cut off Player Alliance B's source of weaponry.

  • We are also considering introducing Faction Quests, but this is further down the line.
I hope this gives you some indication of the depth that we're introducing with the Faction updates.


Edited by GM Stormcrow - 18 Aug 2010 at 19:37
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3. TRADE v2

Trade v2 is, really, the cumulative focus of all of the above.

Trade v2 rocks.  I mean, really rocks.

There are 4 main steps in the path to Trade v2.
  1. Caravan changes

    We are, essentially, introducing a whole slew of different caravan types, with different capacities, movement speeds, and to some extent "goods types" (ie there will be specific caravans for carrying living things, such as livestock and horses).

    This also means that we will be introducing "Volume" as an attribute for all trade goods.  Things that you carry will take up space in the caravans, and the bigger the thing, the more space it takes up in your caravan.

    Caravans will cost upkeep.

    Large caravans capable of carrying big heavy things like Cattle and Siege Blocks will be a lot slower than fast caravans that carry small things like Gold.

    When we introduce pathfinding (and ambush / interception) we will allow military units to be attached to caravans to provide protection.

  2. Monetisation of the Economy

    We're moving Illyriad away from a Barter Economy (which it currently is) to a fully monetised economy.

    Everything will be bought and sold for in Gold.

    The King will take taxes, damn him to hell.

  3. Trade Hubs

    Trade Hubs are siege-invulnerable, Faction-run cities positioned all over the map where Factions and players can buy and sell goods from each other.

    We're bringing in a slew of new abilities to allow players to set prices, offer discounts (or price hikes!) by player, alliance or Faction.

    Hubs are, however, even cooler than that, if such a thing is possible. 

    For example, you will be able to rent space from the Faction who owns the hub - for warehousing your own goods - and also to pay other players to transport your goods around the Kingdom.  

    As another example, you will also not have to transport Gold to a hub if you have a Trader unit present at the hub (and the requisite skills); you can buy directly from the Hub on the basis of a promissary note, and the King will remove the Gold directly and automatically from your town's coffer.

    Cumatively this will enable trading (and hauling) as two much more viable professions than they currently are.

    You will only be able to see the prices on offer in hubs where you have a "Trader" unit positioned, so asymmetric pricing across the world will be very prevalent, and the prices that Factions buy and sell goods at will be dictated by their current demand as well as scarcity and some "regional averaging".

    We may, in the fullness of time, allow alliances to set up and run their own (vulnerable/siegable) Trade Hubs in strategically important places (and collect the taxes as well).

    You can still trade directly from your own city, but we are removing the whole "pre-reservation of caravans".

    If a player wishes to buy goods from you at your city, he will need to send a caravan over to your city bearing sufficient Gold to buy the things you are selling, and he will bring back the goods that he bought.  The King's Excisemen will ensure the goods are there in the players' city and that they get loaded into the buying players' caravans when they're paid for, but they'll tax the seller for this service.

    Directly sending goods to another city (eg barter) will still also be possible, but the "trade" will not be "protected" by the King, as he's not getting any tax revenue from it.

  4. Trade Units, Skills, Faction Standings & "Tradable Things"

    There will be new units - traders - who you can dispatch to hubs to conduct business on your behalf, or report back prices.

    All players will be able to see the prices at the single nearest hub to their city.

    There will be a whole slew of new trade skills which will affect your ability to sell and move your items, as well as skills to do things such as reducing your tax burden. 

    Faction standing will also serve to reduce (or increase) your taxation at a particular hub.  If your Faction standing is really poor, you will not be allowed to trade at that particular hub.

    We're allowing all current ingame items to be traded in Faction hubs - as well as units (trade, military and diplomatic).

    Crafted items and blueprints/recipes (when crafting is released) will also be traded in hubs, as will "Spell Scrolls".  The release of crafting will provide a *huge* opportunity for trade, especially given that many crafting components will only be found in specific geographical regions and biomes.
In addition to this, we will be adding many very cool new graphs and data feeds related to your trade activities.

We've also got some ideas in our heads about the possibilities inherent in player-to-player Contracts, banking, entrepreneurial ventures and mercantile Guilds.



Edited by GM Stormcrow - 18 Aug 2010 at 19:42
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Points: 3926 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Aug 2010 at 19:49
4. EVERYTHING ELSE, AND PRIORITISATION

Well, we can't do everything at once, but we can do things in parallel.

There are some things we're doing now because they get more difficult to do the longer we leave them (such as the Geographic changes).

However, we're acutely aware that we have promised some things (new spell schools, anyone?) for quite a long time, and these items were kept forefront in our minds when drawing up the prioritisation list.

So, here's the Priority List (headline items).



I realise this is a peculiar way of presenting it, but it was the best we could come up with when we were sitting in a garden without our laptops.

The wind rearranged the priority list a couple of times, but this was the latest version; if you can't read it, it's actually a larger image if you right-click on it and open it separately.

We're split into teams, so the items in the three main columns are being done simultaneously, and we're working down the list from the top.

Please be aware that this is not a complete list, it's simply the headline items we're willing to share and/or that you might be interested in.

We understand that these "headlines" may not mean much, so here's a recap of what each one (broadly) means:


Edited by GM Stormcrow - 18 Aug 2010 at 22:36
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Points: 3926 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Aug 2010 at 19:50
LEFT COLUMN

WORLD MAP 1
 - Issuing out the new world biomes and geographic features
 - Sovereignty graphics
 - New Town graphics

TUTORIAL - Hero Commander, retinue, troops, quests
 - Speed Up the relevant techs with tutorial rewrite

INCIDENTAL ICON GFX
 - Concept icons for Mailsystem revamp - Sovereignty & Quest + Compose New, Sent, Inbox
 - Saddle, new Leather Armour icons

(HUMAN) TOWN UPGRADE GFX
 - Graphics for the town buildings (and underlay) that upgrade as the city grows

RIVER GFX

OTHER RACES TOWN GFX

MORE AVATARS

HERALDRY GFX


Edited by GM Stormcrow - 18 Aug 2010 at 19:51
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MIDDLE COLUMN

BUGS / QUICK WINS

WORLD MAP EDITOR (internal tool)

CLICKFEST 1
(Clickfests are essentially our efforts to reduce the number of clicks people have to make to do things ingame, which becomes more arduous the more cities you have)
- Multi town building and production summary
- Army / Diplomatic Multi-town Summary
- Click between towns to retain "page"
- Sending out armies at specific time or to arrive at specific time (up to 48hrs in advance)
 (Possibility of overview at alliance level), requires active prestige account

CHAT 1
 - Links to:
  Player profile,
  Ranking,
  Send Msg,
  Private Chat,
  Report Abuse
 - Block and Unblock

NEW GENERIC WEBSITE

FORUMS 1
 - Maximum Characters
 - Edit & Delete Threads and Posts
 - Full HTML editing

UI V2
 - Research Tree
 - Player, Town, Alliance popups and link standardisation
 - Mail System revamp
 - All pages with new standardised templates

RIVERS

WORLD MAP 2
 - More Zoom Levels
  - Alliances, by relationship type
  - Colour coded by King's Favour
  - Colour coded by Personal Relationship
  - Coloured by Alliance Relationship
  - Population Density
  - Trade Volumes
  - Casualties in the last X hrs

FACEBOOK

FORUMS 2
 - Look and Feel
 - Smilies :)

DIPLO 2
 - Allow diplomatic units to have a reinforce & occupy timer
 - Diplomatic units alertness. Alertness to raise by type of attack/severity (when attack is successful)
 - Alertness doesn't rise if attack is detected and put in casualty resolution.
 - Alertness to decrease over time, and
  - New spy unit
  - New T3 spy unit can report on a town's current alertness and last X diplomatic actions based on number of spies sent
  - Sleeper unit checkbox and Census technology
 - Fanaticism which would kill all units if any one is detected, thus preventing interrogation and casualties, but also preventing success

CHAT 2
 - Private chat, invitable for other people, popup when people come in
 - Chat channels (player run and moderated), password-protected and/or invite only
 - MOTD
 - Players in the room list
 - All non-global chat channels to be blank until joined
 - Options for showing ticker and race
 - Internal URLs allowed
 - Windowing/tabs, docking/undocking, minimising chat windows
 - Moderator version 2
  - Access to all global, public channels
 - New Player Chat
  - Not for the moment
 - Chat when room set up it's public or private, default language is set, and a category chosen
  - Roleplay
  - Trade
  - Geographic
  - Race
  - (Guild)
 - Abuse Reports can only be made on Global chat

WORLD MAP 3
 - Draggable
 - Zoom in, zoom out mousewheel
 - Army Size Icons

WORLD MAP 4
 - Visibility / FoW
  - Watchtowers
  - Forts
  - Visibility Mechanism
  - Scrying spell schools

 - Pathfinding
  - Road building & variable movement speed
  - Waypointing
  - Interceptions and ambushes
  - Tolls
  - Defensive structures on world map (walled areas)

 - Vanity towns & Monuments

HERALDRY


Edited by GM Stormcrow - 18 Aug 2010 at 22:31
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RIGHT HAND COLUMN

BUGS

SIEGE
 - Siege Arrival doesn't bounce if other armies are on the square
 - Sally Forth allowed against multiple squares with individual 6 hour timer
 - Sally Forth if outright win then pauses sieging army for 4 hours
 - 30 Siege Engines max per bombardment (can send more, but only 30 will participate)
  - To hit ratio of anti-building siege engines redux
 - To hit ratio of anti-wall siege engines *drastically* reduced

PRESTIGE 1
 - Insta-complete Sovereign Structures (solo)
 - Naming of Squares
 - Prestige Descriptions, simplicity, cleanup
 - Reset Commander Skillpoint assignment
 - Unlearn spell schools
 - Allow sitters to spend their own prestige on sittee's towns

COMBAT MAGIC
  - Blessings & Curses
  - Include mana spend to increase range of spells (generic)

DIPLO 1
- Scouts & Spies don't trigger generic runes (no ill intentions)
 - Spies to report on the amount of resources on harvestable squares
  - Advanced Scout ability to find out composition and destination/action of their armies abroad
 - Advanced Scout ability to find out troop number, arrival time & source of armies inbound, to include siege camps and blockades
 - Stealth (Covert Ops) for Diplo units
 - Both Stealth and Covert to reduce army/unit movement speed by 50%
 - Advanced thieves should prioritise advanced resources

ALLIANCE RECRUITMENT
- Making it easy for a new player to find a local alliance that matches their goals and objectives, and is recruiting

DATA SHARING
- Multi-town overview of unit movements (inbound and outbound)
- Alliance-level Troop Movement Summaries (inbound and outbound troops, non-Covert, permission/role based)

TRADE V2
 - FACTION
  - Faction Content + Faction Hub
  (- New Faction AI - moved to further down)
  - Faction map assignment
 - TRADE V2 SYSTEM

-RANKINGS
 - Historic data for atk and def
 - check combat res SP for correct assignment of points
 - Add points to bombardment
 - Reset Trade and new for v2. Add Trade score increases for trade quests completed.
  - No trade score for direct trades or non-hub trades
  - Reset Diplomacy. (Diplomatic casualties to each side, and a bonus for success with Diplo 2 above)
 - Diplomacy score increases for diplomatic quests completed
 - Population needs to change to sum of towns
 - Magic points. Base cost of succesfully casting a spell.
 - Standing (non-total score)

NEW ARMY ATTACHMENTS
  - Allow armies to be attached to caravan convoys as military escort

MEDALS, TROPHIES
 - Achievements suggestions thread
 - Achievements in ranking
 - Retrospective Achievements
 - Combat
  - Offense
  - Defense

STANDINGS AND KING's FAVOUR
 - A system for protecting new players, limiting siege attacks.

NEW INTER-ALLIANCE DIPLOMATIC OPTIONS
- Mutual Defense and
- Joint Military Maneuvres
- NAP/Confed/MDP/JMM cooldown before War

CLICKFEST 2
- Multi-town trade summary
 - all caravans in motion inbound and outbound
 - stockpiles in each city
 - trade to a single point
- Quicklist
 - Friends (online, offline - reciprocal vs one-way)
 - Ingame Notepad
 - Locations
- Ability to auto-assign produced units to divisions

PRESTIGE 2
 - Move Town Buildings
 - Customise colour (?)

CRAFTING

NEW SPELL SCHOOLS



Edited by GM Stormcrow - 18 Aug 2010 at 22:20
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sounds like you guys are going all out;  SWEET!!!
§.i.†.Ą.V.‡.¶.€.® 3
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Originally posted by sityviper sityviper wrote:

sounds like you guys are going all out;  SWEET!!!
With a few tricks up our sleeves along the way Wink
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Words cannot express how excited I am. Smile
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