*Important!* The Future of GH2

[Joseph Hewitt]

I am writing this from my freezing cold classroom, since it's the vacation period and I don't have internet access in the office downstairs. Please excuse the typos as my fingers are frozen.

Sorry for the long period of silence. Behind the scenes there has been great wailing and gnashing of teeth. I am going to replace the homebrew scripting system with Lua. This means that all of the series content is going to have to be converted, or in the worst case rewritten. I'm doing this because it's become increasingly apparent that I can't finish this game entirely by myself. The next two years are going to be extremely busy. Given the choice between getting organized and giving up, I choose to get organized.

A few things will definitely change:
- Data structures will use the Dungeon Monkey Unlimited model, which should streamline things immensely.
- The conversation system will be changed, with greetings + some other things generated on the fly and thereby able to react to changing conditions. Each line spoken by the NPC will be modeled as a separate node.
- The core story episode outline will be changed to feature more branches. Unlike before, an episode will not be generated all at once, but will generate new subplots dynamically as they are needed.
- Graphics will be simplified and improved. Instead of being ambitious, we should do a simple display but do it well. Borders and textures will be added all over the ding dong place.

I considered changing the battle system from the original clock-based one to a DMU/SuperRobotWars style tactics one. This would allow larger missions with multiple combat encounters, player-controlled spaceships in the missions, and flat sprites would be okay. If SRW-style Attack/Counter rules are added then different weapon types could be given non-transitive advantages over other weapon types (i.e. Missiles beat Guns, Guns beat Melee, Melee beats Missiles). I am currently leaning towards not doing this but could be pushed in either direction.

I also considered changing the character rules: a character can learn all the skills, can learn more talents than before, and change some of the current skills to talents. Skills would then represent things everybody can do to some degree, while talents would be the things which make your character unique. I like this division because it marks a clear, bright line between skills and talents. If combined with the pure tactics mod above, the talents could include special attacks (Strafe, Whirlwind Attack, Alpha Strike).

Missions will probably be graded, rather than just win/lose. You can get A, B, C, D, or F. F means you lost; D means you won the mission but will still lose renown. At C there is no renown change, while B and above will increase renown as normal. At rank A you may get a special reward in addition to whatever you were promised initially. Rank will be calculated based on objectives completed, damage taken, and time taken. The victory file could include a count of how many As, Bs, etc you got throughout the game.

The same ranking system could apply to the core story: Instead of the difficulty increasing by a set amount each time, it could be determined by the rank of the concluding battle. The game would still end after 13 episodes but your renown progress would determine the stakes/rewards of the final battle. If you get the core story to medium difficulty, you'll get a somewhat unsatisfying ending. To get the best ending you should get it all the way to extreme difficulty.

Before doing anything I wanted to get some opinions. After getting those opinions I want to write up a proper content roadmap, which should explain in pretty good detail the ways in which the PC can interact with the world + what the game needs in order to be considered complete. So what do you think?

(Incidentally, I also considered abandoning GH2 and starting a new game- either a superhero game with SRW-style attack/counter tactics combat or a non-roguelike GH-universe RPG retelling the Typhon Incident from the Aegis side.)

[Burzmali]

Hmm, forum ate my post 

Synopis:

Good ideas that will involve a lot of content creation, balancing and AI upgrades.

Also have you ever played Darklands?

[Rowanthepreacher]

Don't abandon GH2. I've never contributed to a wiki in my life. If you ceased work on it, it would make my expenditure of effort seem pointless, and I would be a very sad cuttlefish.

As for the ideas:

Graphics: Don't forget to keep the ASCII. I can't play GH2 in SDL without a bit of unnecessary tinkering due to library screwups between the partitions of my computer. Also, I play everything in ASCII where possible.

Story: Sounds good. I've taken to avoiding the mission spinner, which is inconvenient when it's somewhere like Theles.

Tactics: I like the clock-based system, but I've never seen the alternative, so my opinion is biased. I'm not fond of the rock-paper-scissors nature of what you proposed. The current system isn't broken, so don't completely destroy it while trying to install a new one .

Characters: You've made massive improvements from GH1 to GH2, and I think you've struck an excellent balance. During this playthrough, I even left a slot open for a while because I didn't have any pressing need for any other skill. It needs a few more talents, and also more opportunities to gain talents, but apart from that, everything is pretty smooth.

Missions: I like this. How many times have I defeated the target, only to be blown up by his lancemates and told that I've failed? NO! I DIDN'T FAIL. Screw you, Herp-derp, 15 year old mayor! I'd prefer that it had different grading specs depending on the objective of the mission. Cruiser defence? The only thing that matter are speed and cruiser health. Taking down a lance of pirates? It's the speed with which you get to the mission, not necessarily complete it.

Got to go serve up dinner now. Lasagne. Delicious.

[Frumple]

I am writing this from my freezing cold classroom, since it's the vacation period and I don't have internet access in the office downstairs. Please excuse the typos as my fingers are frozen.

Sorry for the long period of silence. Behind the scenes there has been great wailing and gnashing of teeth. I am going to replace the homebrew scripting system with Lua.

 

That's kinda' interesting. ToME4/T-Engine influence for the choice? I can't say it'd be a bad thing, unless it'd take more effort to do that than just finish GH2 (or code up a mission making wizard/map editor thing.). Can't code LUA worth a flip, but I do understand it'd make community contribution to code more, uh... voluminous, I guess.

S'great to see you around again, though. Hope th'cold doesn't endanger those precious fingers

- Graphics will be simplified and improved. Instead of being ambitious, we should do a simple display but do it well. Borders and textures will be added all over the ding dong place.

So long as there's ASCII, heh.

I considered changing the battle system from the original clock-based one to a DMU/SuperRobotWars style tactics one. This would allow larger missions with multiple combat encounters, player-controlled spaceships in the missions, and flat sprites would be okay. If SRW-style Attack/Counter rules are added then different weapon types could be given non-transitive advantages over other weapon types (i.e. Missiles beat Guns, Guns beat Melee, Melee beats Missiles). I am currently leaning towards not doing this but could be pushed in either direction.

I genuinely don't know what to think, here. On one hand, I'd really prefer you keep GH's battle system as-is -- for all the advantages that an SRW style might bring, GH2's system is both fairly unique (in a sexy sense, not 'odd thing on bottom of shoe' sense) and quite workable. I love me some SRW, but if I want to play with SRW-style combat, I'll, well, go play SRW. J just recently got translated into english.

The SRW system also feels considerably less flexible and/or fluid than GH's. With gearhead, my attacks are based dynamically on what my machine is and what it's equipped with, while SRW just kinda' arbitrarily assigns stuff as the designers dictated: My Buru can kick something, my Zaku is probably stuck with a heat axe or "Melee (C) (P)". Obviously, you could design a system that worked more akin to SRW that worked more naturally, but it doesn't seem (from the non-coder's view) that it wouldn't take less effort to simply "fix" the current system (if said system even needs fixing at all...).

I also considered changing the character rules: a character can learn all the skills, can learn more talents than before, and change some of the current skills to talents. Skills would then represent things everybody can do to some degree, while talents would be the things which make your character unique. I like this division because it marks a clear, bright line between skills and talents. If combined with the pure tactics mod above, the talents could include special attacks (Strafe, Whirlwind Attack, Alpha Strike).

Would this entail just having Skill A, instead of having Skill A level X? I do like my character progression, and I like GH's system more than I do Zelda's -- which would be closer to doing stuff and getting Skill A. Picking up a Hookshot and getting Mecha Piloting: Strafe wouldn't be terribly different in concept (to me, at least). The Piloting: Strafe design choice, though, would make for a much more... succinct... game -- easier to complete and drain of meaningful content (which isn't necessarily a bad thing!). I wouldn't mind a cleaner distinction between talent and skills, exactly (and would certainly love to see more talents.), but I'd really hate to see skills turn into a binary have/have not, thing.

Talent progression might be interesting too -- I'm reminded of D&D (or at least Incursion)'s Ranger's class whatsit, favored enemy. The bonuses for each selected enemy would increase as you level, while you get new ones later on -- so you'd have Say Goblin +9, Dragon +5, Demon +1 at max level. Seeing your talents improve each time you got a new one might be interesting.

Missions will probably be graded, rather than just win/lose.

 

This. This would be flipping awesome.

The same ranking system could apply to the core story: Instead of the difficulty increasing by a set amount each time, it could be determined by the rank of the concluding battle. The game would still end after 13 episodes but your renown progress would determine the stakes/rewards of the final battle. If you get the core story to medium difficulty, you'll get a somewhat unsatisfying ending. To get the best ending you should get it all the way to extreme difficulty.

Personal opinion: Gods, no. I freaking hate, with an absolute and burning passion, difficulty locked content.

(Incidentally, I also considered abandoning GH2 and starting a new game- either a superhero game with SRW-style attack/counter tactics combat or a non-roguelike GH-universe RPG retelling the Typhon Incident from the Aegis side.)

Please no abandon =(

Curious, though, what is GH2 lacking to be considered finished? Isn't content the truly major lacking point at this time, to at least get it matched up in terms of completion with GH1?

Both of those ideas sound pretty neat, though. I'd love some Aegis up in here, and for all I'm not exactly crazy (don't dislike, o'course, just like giant robots moreso ) for superhero-style stuff, I love me some SRW.

[LomLom]

I considered changing the battle system from the original clock-based one to a DMU/SuperRobotWars style tactics one. This would allow larger missions with multiple combat encounters, player-controlled spaceships in the missions, and flat sprites would be okay. If SRW-style Attack/Counter rules are added then different weapon types could be given non-transitive advantages over other weapon types (i.e. Missiles beat Guns, Guns beat Melee, Melee beats Missiles). I am currently leaning towards not doing this but could be pushed in either direction.

I really like the current fighting mechanics and they're probably the main draw for me! I prefer the current Tactics turn-based mode to the current more free-flowing Clock mode. I think if you remove things like facing and the current weapon mechanics then it would take a lot of depth and immersion out of the combat. The current style could use some balance changes but it still rocks.

I also considered changing the character rules: a character can learn all the skills, can learn more talents than before, and change some of the current skills to talents. Skills would then represent things everybody can do to some degree, while talents would be the things which make your character unique. I like this division because it marks a clear, bright line between skills and talents.

This all sounds like a very good idea, particularly the skills. In the current version skills are very restrictive - there's only a small number of skills each character can have, and some skills are more or less must-haves if you don't want a very frustrating game, so there's not all that much freedom of choice. With 'open' skills like you're suggesting here that problem disappears, and it's all still balanced by the Renown rating and experience being scaled to what gear the character is using.

[magic.coding.fairy.peridot]

- Graphics will be simplified and improved. Instead of being ambitious, we should do a simple display but do it well. Borders and textures will be added all over the ding dong place.

Let me put in a vote for GH1-style graphics. I don't know if that qualifies as "simplified"; certainly it doesn't take much addition to the code base, but I gather what you're worried about is how hard it will be for others to create content. It seems to me that people have demonstrated an ability (and willingness) to create content for GH1 already...

I considered changing the battle system from the original clock-based one to a DMU/SuperRobotWars style tactics one. This would allow larger missions with multiple combat encounters, player-controlled spaceships in the missions, and flat sprites would be okay. If SRW-style Attack/Counter rules are added then different weapon types could be given non-transitive advantages over other weapon types (i.e. Missiles beat Guns, Guns beat Melee, Melee beats Missiles). I am currently leaning towards not doing this but could be pushed in either direction.

You've mentioned this distinction before, but I have to admit I'm really unclear on what you're proposing to change here. Is it getting rid of facings? Making weapon combat more abstract? ("counters"? not sure what that is) It sort of sounds like you're proposing some sort of change to the time system, but I'm not clear what.

One thing to consider, if rethinking the battle system, is the Battle for Wesnoth approach: they don't add any combat feature, no matter how whizz-bang awesome, unless the AI opponents will be able to make effective use of it. Their exception demonstrates why: they put in "stealth", units that can hide, and they ended up having to make the AI cheat and just see the units anyway because otherwise they'd have had to put in code to guess where hidden units might be. I don't know that GH's more-realistic battle system can really be made to accommodate this, but it's worth thinking, for each combat feature, "will the AI know how to cope with this?"

I also considered changing the character rules: a character can learn all the skills, can learn more talents than before, and change some of the current skills to talents. Skills would then represent things everybody can do to some degree, while talents would be the things which make your character unique. I like this division because it marks a clear, bright line between skills and talents. If combined with the pure tactics mod above, the talents could include special attacks (Strafe, Whirlwind Attack, Alpha Strike).

I like removing the artificial limits on how many skills you can learn, but as I understand it, they were what forced some characters to be melee specialists while others were Gunnery specialists (say). I'm not enthusiastic about the talents; too binary. I'm thinking about how other skill-based games handled character differentiation. Crawl is a nice example; any character can learn any skill, but the cost of adding a skill level to anything goes up exponentially. That is, level 1 in swords might cost 100 XP and level 2 in swords might cost 200 XP, like GH, but unlike GH, if you took level 1 in swords, taking level 1 in magic would *also* cost 200 XP (and subsequently level 2 in swords would cost 400 XP). This nicely avoids the issue in GH where if you've got the 14400 XP it takes to bump Mecha Gunnery, you might as well toss a couple of hundred into each of the other skills to get to level one or two. Fallout and Morrowind tried making certain skills easier to learn for certain characters, but this didn't really (IMHO) distinguish your characters much.

The second issue is that in GH skill levels don't affect success rates all that much, especially for skills where retrying isn't very hard. I think a careful rethinking of skill rolls might be useful.

Missions will probably be graded, rather than just win/lose. You can get A, B, C, D, or F. F means you lost; D means you won the mission but will still lose renown. At C there is no renown change, while B and above will increase renown as normal. At rank A you may get a special reward in addition to whatever you were promised initially. Rank will be calculated based on objectives completed, damage taken, and time taken. The victory file could include a count of how many As, Bs, etc you got throughout the game.

I'm not so sure about this idea. It seems like a step away from missions-that-affect-the-world: instead of "you freed the pirate captain but his ship was destroyed so now he's trying to steal yours" it's "you freed the pirate captain but his ship was destroyed; you get a B minus; less money and experience, more grinding before the next level".

That said, I understand that the problem with missions-that-affect-the-world is that it makes writing missions a lot harder, and this would allow more-complex missions that are still easy to integrate into the game.

The same ranking system could apply to the core story: Instead of the difficulty increasing by a set amount each time, it could be determined by the rank of the concluding battle. The game would still end after 13 episodes but your renown progress would determine the stakes/rewards of the final battle. If you get the core story to medium difficulty, you'll get a somewhat unsatisfying ending. To get the best ending you should get it all the way to extreme difficulty.

The difficulty system in GH has long been a pet peeve of mine. Perhaps it's something about how I play, but I seem to spend a lot of time fighting battles of the wrong difficulty - too easy or too hard (usually too easy). I actually prefer to play most games as exploration games, with improving combat skills being the price to pay to get to new areas (or new plot) and with the ability to take as long as I need (and no longer) to get ready for the appropriate difficulty level. With this scheme, well, I guess I'd just spend long enough grinding in each episode to make sure I got the best ending each time, so I guess I have no objection from that point of view (though of course there's the issue of people wanting to see all the endings having to purposely fail missions to the appropriate degree).

(Incidentally, I also considered abandoning GH2 and starting a new game- either a superhero game with SRW-style attack/counter tactics combat or a non-roguelike GH-universe RPG retelling the Typhon Incident from the Aegis side.)

Just out of curiosity, how would a GH-universe RPG differ from a GH-universe roguelike? Less random content? I sort of play GH like an RPG anyway.

[Daemonward]

Sorry for the long period of silence. Behind the scenes there has been great wailing and gnashing of teeth. I am going to replace the homebrew scripting system with Lua. This means that all of the series content is going to have to be converted, or in the worst case rewritten. I'm doing this because it's become increasingly apparent that I can't finish this game entirely by myself. The next two years are going to be extremely busy. Given the choice between getting organized and giving up, I choose to get organized.

What you have been able to accomplish on your own is an inspiration to us all. Converting all that content to Lua is going to be a herculean task, but it should go a long way towards enabling community contributions.

A few things will definitely change:
- Data structures will use the Dungeon Monkey Unlimited model, which should streamline things immensely.
- The conversation system will be changed, with greetings + some other things generated on the fly and thereby able to react to changing conditions. Each line spoken by the NPC will be modeled as a separate node.
- The core story episode outline will be changed to feature more branches. Unlike before, an episode will not be generated all at once, but will generate new subplots dynamically as they are needed.
- Graphics will be simplified and improved. Instead of being ambitious, we should do a simple display but do it well. Borders and textures will be added all over the ding dong place.

These are all great ideas. It will be interesting to see how they look/work in GH2.

I considered changing the battle system from the original clock-based one to a DMU/SuperRobotWars style tactics one. This would allow larger missions with multiple combat encounters, player-controlled spaceships in the missions, and flat sprites would be okay. If SRW-style Attack/Counter rules are added then different weapon types could be given non-transitive advantages over other weapon types (i.e. Missiles beat Guns, Guns beat Melee, Melee beats Missiles). I am currently leaning towards not doing this but could be pushed in either direction.

I do like the idea of having larger missions with multiple combat encounters and player-controlled spaceships in the missions, but the rest of it I would rather keep the way it is.

I also considered changing the character rules: a character can learn all the skills, can learn more talents than before, and change some of the current skills to talents. Skills would then represent things everybody can do to some degree, while talents would be the things which make your character unique. I like this division because it marks a clear, bright line between skills and talents. If combined with the pure tactics mod above, the talents could include special attacks (Strafe, Whirlwind Attack, Alpha Strike).

I think that I like this a lot.

In the past, there have been players who chafed at the limited number of skill selections allowed to the player. It probably didn't help that about half of those skill slots needed to be spent on mandatory skills, which limited character customization.

If I understand your proposal correctly:

Skills would be changed to things that everyone can attempt to do with or without training: basic combat skills, social skills, shopping, etc.

Talents would be changed to things that require advanced training, education, or abilities unique to the character: special martial arts techniques, mecha engineering, biotech, medicine, repair, mysticism, robot construction, etc.

This will give players all of the basic skills that they need to complete the game while allowing them more freedom to create their own unique characters.

Missions will probably be graded, rather than just win/lose. You can get A, B, C, D, or F. F means you lost; D means you won the mission but will still lose renown. At C there is no renown change, while B and above will increase renown as normal. At rank A you may get a special reward in addition to whatever you were promised initially. Rank will be calculated based on objectives completed, damage taken, and time taken. The victory file could include a count of how many As, Bs, etc you got throughout the game.

I like that this allows for differing degrees of success, but how about differing degrees of failure too? There is a difference between letting the bad guys get away and burning down half the city trying to catch them.

The same ranking system could apply to the core story: Instead of the difficulty increasing by a set amount each time, it could be determined by the rank of the concluding battle. The game would still end after 13 episodes but your renown progress would determine the stakes/rewards of the final battle. If you get the core story to medium difficulty, you'll get a somewhat unsatisfying ending. To get the best ending you should get it all the way to extreme difficulty.

I would keep the set difficulty curve the way it is, but have the results of the final battle be based on the character's cumulative GPA from the 13 episodes.

Before doing anything I wanted to get some opinions. After getting those opinions I want to write up a proper content roadmap, which should explain in pretty good detail the ways in which the PC can interact with the world + what the game needs in order to be considered complete. So what do you think?

I think you have a good plan for making a good plan.

(Incidentally, I also considered abandoning GH2 and starting a new game- either a superhero game with SRW-style attack/counter tactics combat or a non-roguelike GH-universe RPG retelling the Typhon Incident from the Aegis side.)

These sound like awesome ideas, but please don't abandon GH2 to implement them. I would recommend taking the occasional break from GH2 to work on other fun projects and avoid getting burned out. If you keep a few different projects active, then you can switch between them to keep things fresh and come back to each project with a new perspective.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Please no abandon =(

Curious, though, what is GH2 lacking to be considered finished? Isn't content the truly major lacking point at this time, to at least get it matched up in terms of completion with GH1?

Content, mostly. There needs to be more variety in the core story. The current core story choice mechanic isn't satisfying. There isn't much drama or variation in the starting scenarios. All of the specialist skills need content- maybe a career track for each, similar to the musical career. Each of the factions need individual content to differentiate them from one another; in particular, each one needs a certain game plan which will be followed (with some deviations) if they're the core story enemy. There are more global events that ought to happen- some of these could be written as core story components, others as quests. The world as a whole needs to react better to both the PC's actions and the major events. All the cities of the L5 region need to be added, with unique NPCs and interesting sites for each, and secret locations like Maupertuis the pirate bay.

I guess this does bring me to another option... keep going with the current scripting language, but scale back the ambitious plans. But I've got a beautiful idea for how to do things with Lua! It would be glorious!

I estimate that I could convert the game to run on Lua in a couple of weeks. Mind you, Lua would only be handling the things the scripting language currently does, nothing more. After that we would need to convert all the content from the homebrew scripting language to Lua. This would be a huge undertaking and I'm not sure how long it would take, even with help.

The advantage of Lua is that it's easy to learn and very powerful. The disadvantage is that the world will need to be re-created from scratch. The advantages of homebrew are that it's well-tested and the game is playable now. The disadvantages are that it's difficult to use and relatively limited.

If I could be guaranteed enough help, I wouldn't mind going in either direction. Of course there's the fact that even if everything is converted to Lua there's no guarantee of getting enough people to create content.

I gather what you're worried about is how hard it will be for others to create content. It seems to me that people have demonstrated an ability (and willingness) to create content for GH1 already...

Well then, let's get to it!

I played the game a few times today and wrote a list of all the things I found incomplete or disappointing. Here they are:
- The beginning needs to be stronger, and the PC could use some starting equipment.
- The presentation needs to be improved. Some decent borders for the menus and text would be a good start.
- Different career paths need to be addressed. Singers can hold concerts, nobody else has much to do.
- Nonlethal attacks aren't really fun. Maybe the nonlethal tag does normal damage but won't reduce someone below 1HP?
- Some useless/depreciated things in the config file/menu/help screens. Needs updating.
- Tactics mode can be exploited by starting it up when you're surrounding an enemy, everybody gets a bunch of free attacks. This exploit could be checked if everyone rolls DnD-style initiative at start of tactics round, or if tactics round starts with everyone only getting one action in their first turn (clock system makes this difficult)
- Some of the skills are troublesome (Mecha Eng as a skill roll), overpowered (Initiative), or as of yet useless (Mysticism).
- Villainous points gained from attacking nonhostiles should be handled in the targeting UI. Also, if attack will lead to villainy, player should be given an option to cancel (config option to turn off safety).
- The procedure which places items on the map fails appallingly often.
- Too little variety in maps. Every building looks like every other building.
- Personality traits aren't a good mechanic for the PC, but good for NPCs. Should be boolean rather than sliders.
- Episodes are too short- on average, one investigation followed by one fight scene. No choices. Expert player should be able to play through on the core story alone (mostly) but right now that's impossible.
- The dramatic choice mechanic is too artificial and largely meaningless. A sort of choose your own adventure selection with meaningful choices would be better, or failing that just allowing the PC to decide where the next episode will take place.
- Stores suck. You can never find what you want, and much of what they have is worthless. Restaurants are not much better.

Based on this list, the first thing I'd tackle would be the core story, specifically the first episode. There should be choices built into the structure. Maybe three acts: the first act introduces the conflict in this episode, the second act allows the PC to choose a course of action to respond to this conflict, and the third act is the main course fight scene.

[Rowanthepreacher]

I'm not much help right now, but I'm willing to learn Lua just to help out.

P.S. BOARDING CLAWS! I went to the only decent black market, the one in Xianzai, only to discover that there are only three shops this time, and the arms store has a piece of toss. I demand more boarding claws!

[LomLom]

- Tactics mode can be exploited by starting it up when you're surrounding an enemy, everybody gets a bunch of free attacks. This exploit could be checked if everyone rolls DnD-style initiative at start of tactics round, or if tactics round starts with everyone only getting one action in their first turn (clock system makes this difficult)

Maybe disallow the current method of changing mode in the middle of combat, instead the player has a clock/tactics mode toggle option in the options menu. Whichever mode is chosen is the one that kicks automatically in when combat starts and can't be changed until the fight finishes.

- Some of the skills are troublesome (Mecha Eng as a skill roll), overpowered (Initiative), or as of yet useless (Mysticism).

For Mecha Engineering, maybe have mecha tinkering attempts auto-succeed but a character can only customize up to a given complexity, determined by their skill level in Mech Engineering.

- Stores suck. You can never find what you want, and much of what they have is worthless. Restaurants are not much better.

I think part of the problem is the same one that Morrowind had: the price difference between low-end and mid-range gear is trivial, so the low-end stuff is worthless and never sees use. For exampe, a new character can easily afford an Encounter Suit or Space Suit with their starting cash, so why bother buying the bargain bin Flight Suit or Utility Suit? So maybe some rebalancing here would help towards a fix.

There should be choices built into the structure. Maybe three acts: the first act introduces the conflict in this episode, the second act allows the PC to choose a course of action to respond to this conflict, and the third act is the main course fight scene.

Sounds good to me.

[cowofdoom78963]

But I've got a beautiful idea for how to do things with Lua! It would be glorious!

If it's really something special you should do it. You can always just come back to where you left off in the current system if it's too much of a problem.

Too little variety in maps. Every building looks like every other building.

Don't forget the dungeons. Every room is just full of empty squares and only every now and then is there something like a box or a computer. I was actually really glad when I started GH2 and saw that my character had a bed and a box and a closet, but then the game just goes to the same empty boring dungeons of GH1. In deadcold you had just about every room(I didn't get very far though) full of chairs and tables or some interesting terrain. What ever happened to that?

Space fights are just depressing... though I guess that's accurate for space. There seem to be astroids around every spinner though, you could toss a few of those in the space fights floating by or something. You spend like 80% of the game in space, so it should be more interesting.

I think part of the problem is the same one that Morrowind had: the price difference between low-end and mid-range gear is trivial, so the low-end stuff is worthless and never sees use. For exampe, a new character can easily afford an Encounter Suit or Space Suit with their starting cash, so why bother buying the bargain bin Flight Suit or Utility Suit? So maybe some rebalancing here would help towards a fix.

Maybe the stores could just stock the more common stuff and the better items have to be found by the character in exploration(except for mech equipment as there is no mech exploration)?

[Joseph Hewitt]

I'd like to ask for some volunteers to work on content. We'll go about this in an organized way- focus on one subset of needed content at a time, then move on to something else. Since the main point of switching to Lua is to attract more people to develop content, deciding whether or not to make the switch should be the first order of business.

With Lua we would need to rewrite everything. Really, everything. The existing content could be used as a guide, but that would probably require that the person doing the conversion understand the scripting language.

With Homebrew, we would need some tools like customizable templates or a wizard-type plot editor. The skills you learn here wouldn't really transfer to any other programming language (except GH1 and DMU). On the plus side, we'd be adding content to an already-functioning game rather than building things from the ground up.

If you're interested in joining let me know below. Also let me know which of the two plans you prefer. If you're only interested in participating should we switch to Lua or stick with Homebrew, mention that too.

[magic.coding.fairy.peridot]

I'd like to help with the content - but only, I'm afraid, with lua. Well, and I can do a little work in Pascal; I did some work on cleaning up Robotics, but ran into some problems with skill rolls (and setting up a test jig; is there a "wizard mode" or should I just edit savefiles?).

Just to be clear, by the way, when I said people were already ready to contribute content, I was talking specifically about GH1-style graphics: sprites, building tiles, portraits, to some extent even mecha sprites. Most of what you list above would need to be addressed in the homebrew scripting language. I've spent a little time trying to figure it out, and it's a real problem. Hence my vote for lua.

Given a reasonable environment to work in - lua with a reasonable ability to manipulate the engine state, say - there are any number of neat plot elements I'd love to add (firefighting quests! an outlawry system! hireable experts!) and I'm perfectly willing to hack on the basics (e.g. shops, basic NPC conversation, spinner services) in the interests of getting lua-GH2 on its feet.

[Daemonward]

I would like to help. I prefer the Lua plan, but I am willing to help with whichever plan you decide to go with.

[Rowanthepreacher]

I'd learn Lua just to help out.