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Joeseph

Citizens

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In addition to the players and npc's, there could be a few animated bots that roam the cities and own homes and such. Just to make the cities seem a little less dead. Even tho going through White Stone City gives you this feeling of population, it would be very cool if we could see the population. I know its probably not possible becuase of the bandwidth, i just thought id throw it out there to the dogs.

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Well, that's up to people who program bots not devs. Btw, there are tons of bots that do this.

 

>Wanderingfool

>The hundreds of Ants

>The hundreds of FireAnts

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In addition to the players and npc's, there could be a few animated bots that roam the cities and own homes and such. Just to make the cities seem a little less dead. Even tho going through White Stone City gives you this feeling of population, it would be very cool if we could see the population. I know its probably not possible becuase of the bandwidth, i just thought id throw it out there to the dogs.

You could do this yourself! Just go and begin roleplaying citizen of Whitestone! :)

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In addition to the players and npc's, there could be a few animated bots that roam the cities and own homes and such. Just to make the cities seem a little less dead. Even tho going through White Stone City gives you this feeling of population, it would be very cool if we could see the population. I know its probably not possible becuase of the bandwidth, i just thought id throw it out there to the dogs.

You could do this yourself! Just go and begin roleplaying citizen of Whitestone! :)

 

PWNED :D

 

 

To come to topic.. its a nice idea. But like the other suggestion of "Raiding Bots" it will be a huge Problem with the server and the bandwith when so much bots are walking around in cities.

Also they just create Lags at crowded places. (just imagine when the VotD storage is full again and a couple of "Citizen Bots" come to the screen.. nice food for our Grue ;) )

 

Anyway it is a interesting suggestion to bring some life into EL :D

even if it isnt possible afaik

 

Greetings

 

Fabi

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More background life would be nice to see. They don't have to be bots inhabiting a town or city, but could be done reasonable well with spawns of townsfolk.

 

This would also require more types of interaction with spawns than just beating them over the head. This is something I would like to see anyway, regardless of this topic.

 

For example, a Beggar could spawn; make him go away by giving him some gold or food (use bread with beggar, use coin with beggar etc). The beggar would vanish, maybe leaving a "deathbag" with something it for your generosity, or you gain experience in some "social skill" (a new skill, or direct addition to OA).

 

Rich merchants could be the target for pickpockets (use knife on merchant), but fail and you summon the attention of townguards.

 

Buxom village wenches... well, lets not go there in a family game :mace:

 

Then there are thieves and cut purses, who'll try to pick your pockets (you cant attack them until you catch them red handed).

 

There plenty of tasks which can be designed around a seperate social skill. Summoning the town guard (within city limits), or calling the Army (anywhere, but higher level), are not magical effects but mundain, exercising your reputation with your chosen city or town.

 

(There have been long discussions on the possibilities of this elsewhere)

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Learner has Ants which he uses to test AI or w/e.

so eventually if he is done testing maybe this idea is possible.

 

btw another idea to add with yours could be to make those citizens attackable, of course the towns would have guards then too which would pk you.

 

btw trollson that idea with the beggar could work (use bread or gc just like u use meat to cook) but i think using a knife on a merchant is a bit harder to do.

 

Roja would have alot of work to do with designing new clothes specially for beggars/thiefs and merchants ^^

but what i really like to see first in the game is the shapeshifting skill :mace:

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I like the idea make the EL world seem so much more alive, I would also like some non-monster/animal characters of which you could fight too. That would be the cool.

Knight

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using a knife on a merchant is a bit harder to do.
Well, I was thinking along the lines of a cutpurse rather than an attack, but we don't have knives as such at present (though they may be coming as a tool?).

 

I wouldn't really expect townsfolk to be attackable; they would just end up being another slaughter-spawn, the same as elsewhere. Though a better social-level model would allow this (and more).

 

The Taverns & Inns thread in the Events forum may fit in here, with its desire to add life to towns and cities.

A few ideas which fit in here, with the aim to get people into the towns and taverns:

Sleep in comfort: If you log off on a bed (or similar comfortable place), you recover some health and mana during your down time (but no food loss). For example, each 1 hour down time counts as 1 minute in-game time*. Encourage players to rest their characters, rather than just parking them in the rain. Rates may vary if you try to sleep in full plate...

* this can all be calculated during log-on if the time of last log-off is recorded.

Taverns are rumor mills: Talk to the inn keeper, especially if you buy drinks and/or food from him, and they may tell you something (on local chat, so others present can hear), which may be interesting, but usually not. This information could originate from, for example:

  • The developers, planting rumours to lead to a quest, clues to a h-bag* of goodies, or such. Hearing one rumour should not be enough though, several would have to be pieced together.
  • Culled from in game happenings, snippets of local chat, sightings and events which can be automatically logged.

* I still think that it would add lots of possibilities to the game if h-bags could store a short (limited number of letters) message when they are created, to allow paper-trail treasure hunts. Additionally, on the subject of h-bags, having a lock (consumable), so only the named character can open, would allow characters to run shops. Of course, we then have to have thieves and lock-picks...

Eat off the table: All that food on the tables? If you could "use" it to eat directly*. No harvesting here, just free food eat-in. The food value and cool-down for prepared food may vary, and could be tempting enough to encourage mixing there, exchaning portage effort for a reliable food source.

*
or get a knife & fork and "use with" you uncouth barbarian!

There could be more 'using' of items littering the world, general effects based on item type if not specified in the map def file; a greater feeling of interaction with the world (reduce some newbie frustrations?). Some thoughts on this:

  • We've already mentioned 'using' food to eat it where it cannot be harvested.
  • If a container (box, chest, etc) is on a non-walkable tile, consider it to have a freely accessible h-bag in that location; 'use-with' deposits the item (if there are available slots), and 'use' withdraws a random item (yep, 'use-with' 1000gc on a piggy bank deposits the lot, but 'use' would only withdraw 1 gc at a time, assuming there is nothing else in there).
  • Clothes on a clothes line could be 'used' to be worn (if and when changing clothes becomes available). This may be considered stealing...

  • Using a newspaper may display some news item, similar to the tavern rumors. To avoid undermining tavern rumors this information should be the same if the paper is re-read on the same day (eg, a paper reports rumour from the current lists based on its map item number).
  • Using a magic scroll or book could cast a spell, if you have the mana and essences; even if you don't have the sigils or required level (though level would affect success chance). This may include new undocumented spells.
  • More use of other books. Some are readable, which is a nice feature, but we could do something more. Using the map-item-id number to index a large list of topics (unlike newspapers, the contents of books should remain the same).

I think I've drifted into a different subject here though...

 

 

One last interjection: More clothes! No need for any special effects, infact its better if they don't have any unusual properties, and I'd prefer this over some wizzy new swords. Just more variety in the population appearances that everyone can access. I know this requires work done on Texture Masking and some meshing for different shapes, but hopefully it hasn't been forgotten about. Then we could have also have the buxom wench, fat merchant, ragged beggar, etc to populate the town.

 

Edited by trollson

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