Bob's RPG Era (now with achievements!)

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Glad to help. This reminds me that I still have to poke around with the armor and material descriptions, so I'll look into getting that done soon as well.

The descriptions for materials are not shown anymore, so that is not a priority. The armour descriptions remain, but they are only included to add flavour. I might think of a decent way to use armour later, but maybe not.

Incidentally, all the classes have a choice of 2 talents, except warriors. I disabled the second warrior talent because it caused the game to crash. It is called 'rider' and uses variations to allow you to mount and dismount a horse. I'll add it when I've got it fixed.

[Turuk]

The descriptions for materials are not shown anymore, so that is not a priority. The armour descriptions remain, but they are only included to add flavour. I might think of a decent way to use armour later, but maybe not.

Ah okay, well that solves that then. If you need anything else, let me know.

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Since this era has been changed so extensively I'm going to post a new overview.

Firstly, the point of this era is to give the player choices. In some RPGs the only decision you get to make in your turn is whether to attack or not.

In this era, players can choose their character's class, race, traits, portrait and gender - as well as boosting their stats with a bunch of custom abilities and perks. You also can adopt various stances to temporarily tweak your unit. In addition, there is an inventory system allowing you use or give items, drink potions and equip weapons. Meanwhile, talents allow you to make medicinal balms, sharpen weapons, concoct potions, conjure creatures, tame animals, set traps or pickpocket gold from your team-mates. You can even send in-character dialogue messages to other players - perhaps to brag about your latest theft.

Of course, not all these options are available at once. Character advancement partially mimics the mainline unit tree, and stats never get to SX levels, so no character ever gets complacent about charging a pack of Yetis.

Here is some more detailed info:

CLASS

There are four character classes: Warrior, Ranger, Vagabond, Magician
Within each classes there are five levels: Layman, Novice, Experienced, Veteran, Master

- A Pure-Class character begins as Experienced in their chosen class and a Layman in all others.
- A Mixed-Class character begins as Novice in two classes.

Despite this initial choice, a character can progress, at a cost, in other classes - giving players the option of specialising or being a jack of all trades.

Warrior
HP: 44
Melee: 6-4 or 8-3
Ranged: 4-3, 6-2 or 12-1

Ranger
HP: 40
Melee: 4-3 or 6-2
Ranged: 6-4 or 8-3

Vagabond
HP: 38
Melee: 6-4, 8-3 or 12-2
Ranged: 4-3, 6-2
Bonus: +1 Moves, Elusivefoot

Magician
HP: 34
Melee: 3-4, 4-3 or 6-2
Ranged: 6-4, 8-3 or 12-2
Bonus: -3 Max XP, Magical

RACE

Your choice of race tweaks some stats, as well as determining resistances and movetype.

Human
Smallfoot movetype (40% grassland, etc)
+20% arcane resistance

Dwarf
+3 hitpoints
-1 movement
Dwarvishfoot movetype (30% on grassland, 70% mountains, etc)
+20% blade/pierce/impact resistance, +10% fire/arcane/cold resistance

Elf
-3 hitpoints
Woodland movetype (70% forest, etc)
-10% arcane resistance

DAMAGE

Classes are balanced by their overall damage (both attacks of a character add up to 36.)
- Warriors and Vagabonds start with 24 overall melee damage, and 12 overall ranged damage.
- Rangers and Magicians start with 12 overall melee damage, and 24 overall ranged damage.
- Mixed Class characters start with 18 overall melee damage, and 18 overall ranged damage.

Melee damage can be increased by advancing a Warrior level; while ranged damage can be increased by advancing a Ranger level. Note: strikes cannot be increased.

TALENTS AND DEFECTS

Each character must choose a talent and a defect. These are also related to class.
Defects are passive and come into play automatically; whereas talents are interactive and give the player special right-click options.

Talents

Warrior Talents
Weaponcraft - allows you to use raw materials to improve melee weapons.
Rider - allows you to mount and ride horses. (currently broken.)

Ranger Talents
Herbalism - allows you to use raw materials to create simple balms.
Tamer - allows you to temporarily tame creatures.

Vagabond Talents
Trapper - allows you to make and set traps.
Pickpocket - allows you to steal gold from other units.

Magician Talents
Concoction - allows you to mix raw materials to create potions
Conjurer - allows you use raw materials to create new units

Defects

Naïve - You start with -5 character points.
Selfish - You cannot give or be given items.
Clubfoot - You have -1 movement and cannot use the run stance.
Cowardly - You fight worse in melee combat when wounded.
Diseased - Every turn there is a 15% chance you'll be poisoned.
Stupid - Your Max XP is increased by 20%.
Psycho - When you attack there's a 10% chance you'll go bezerk.

IMPROVING CHARACTER

Each player starts with 10 Character Points to spend on improving their character - and they get 10 more when they AMLA. These are used to gain perks, abilities, weapon specials and stances. They can also be spent to advance to the next level of any class. Advancing a class doesn't boost any stats, it simply allows a new set of options.

Novice Warrior - Power, Stamina, React.
Experienced Warrior - Power, Stamina, Robust, Inspire, Deft, Attack.
Veteran Warrior - Power, Stamina, Tough, Lead, Counter, Blitz.
Master Warrior - Power, Stamina, Mentor, Marksman, Defend.

Novice Ranger - Accuracy, Hillsmanship, Woodsmanship, React.
Experienced Ranger - Accuracy, Desert Trekking, Snow Trekking, Loner, Deft, Firststrike, Aim.
Veteran Ranger - Accuracy, Mountaineering, Swimming, Maverick, Counter, Quickfire.
Master Ranger - Accuracy, Potholing, Marksman.

Novice Vagabond - Speed, Firststrike.
Experienced Vagabond - Speed, Conceal, Backstab, Dodge.
Veteran Vagabond - Speed, Hide, Distract.
Master Vagabond - Speed, Stealth, Skirmish.

Novice Magician - Wisdom, Heals 2.
Experienced Magician - Wisdom, Heals 4/6, Scare.
Veteran Magician - Wisdom, Blessed, Heals 8/10, Terrify.
Master Magician - Wisdom, Heals 12, Illuminates/Darkens.

STANCES

Stances apply temporary bonuses and penalties which are reversed when the stance is changed. They basically allow you to change your stats to suit the situation: do you sacrifice defence for more attacks? Or do lose speed in favour of more damage? Hopefully there will not always be a correct way - it's up to the player's style. In addition, the run stance is handy for quickly crossing parts of a map with not many enemies.

Attack
+2 melee damage
-2 movement
-10% defence

Blitz
+1 melee attacks
-1 melee & ranged damage
-10% chance to hit with melee weapon

Defend
+20% to all resistances
-2 melee & ranged damage
-2 movement

Aim
+10% chance to hit with ranged weapon
+3 ranged damage
-1 melee & ranged attacks

Quickfire
+1 ranged attacks
-2 melee & ranged damage
-2 movement

Dodge
+10% defence
-2 melee & ranged damage
-1 movement

Run
`+2 movement
`-2 melee & ranged damage
`-10% defence

INVENTORY

Players can access their inventory by right-clicking on their unit. Certain items in the inventory have one use (click on a potion, for instance, and you drink it), others have on/off options (lantern, snow shoes, etc). Many of the items are raw materials (clay, leaves, rocks, slime, etc). These can be put to various uses by characters' talents.

The inventory screen also allows you to equip different weapons. There are currently 32 possible weapons, though in an average game you'll probably only ever own one or two. For the sake of remaining faithful to the unit sprites I have made it so that characters can only equip variations of their starting weapon. For example, a character that begins the game with a sword can only equip other types of swords (Salamander Blade, Holy Sword, etc.)

All maps will have various items scattered around it, which players can pick up by simply moving on to the hex. Other items can be bought in shops or must be placed by the scenario designer. In addition, some items will be placed on the map when certain creatures are killed (for instance, slay a wolf and you can pick up a fang).

- You can also give items and gold to adjacent players by right-clicking on them.
- When a character dies, all their stuff gets dumped on the ground allowing other players to pick it up.

I will update the first post of this thread for easy reference.

By the way, you don't have to understand all this to have fun with the era. Just try it out!

[Aethaeryn]

Classes are balanced by their overall damage (both attacks of a character add up to 36.)
- Warriors and Vagabonds start with 24 overall melee damage, and 12 overall ranged damage.
- Rangers and Magicians start with 12 overall melee damage, and 12 overall ranged damage.
- Mixed Class characters start with 18 overall melee damage, and 18 overall ranged damage.

Typo?

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Yep, it should be 24 ranged damage. It is now.

[Aethaeryn]

This makes a lot more sense reading it like this...

Perhaps the dwarven warrior rides on (a slowed down for balance and unable to fly over deep water) gryphon instaed of a horse?

[jb]

Hey Bob,

Neat to see you still plugging away at this ol mod.

Are you going to make a new adventure to showcase the goods?

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Hey Bob,

Neat to see you still plugging away at this ol mod.

Are you going to make a new adventure to showcase the goods?

Well, one of the results of the remake was that the era can be used on any map or scenario. Having said that, I do have another mini-rpg planned.

However, first I'm hoping to put together a RPG Creation Kit. Once that is working, I will probably knock out a few. In fact, I might time myself to see how quickly a working RPG scenario can be constructed.

Heh, maybe I'll even host a two-day scenario-building challenge.

[daniel.santos]

This is good stuff Bob! When examining the cache after installing your new RPG, your object is down to 1.16 MB (uncompressed) as opposed to 21-ish MB that version 0.8 was. I'm a newbie to WML and probably wont dig too deeply into it, but as a veteran programmer, I highly encourage encapsulation using mechanisms that don't have to expand a macro to use in multiple places (which you probably addressed in 1.2). I've recently learned from zookeeper that you can fire custom events from code to do this in WML. Either way, you did something right =)

Edit for clarification: There's nothing with using macros in multiple places, but if it needs to do a lot of work, it's probably best to have that macro fire an event -- that should keep bloat low.

From a saved game using 1.2, I did notice that a lot of code still exists twice, I didn't dig too deeply, but the uncompressed save was only 2MB, so that's not too bad! Your RPG era of old was quite addictive! (I installed 1.4 just to play using it again!) Thanks for updating it. I hope I have time to play with it soon! Labyrinth of Champions was broken last I tested (using 1.6.4 on AMD64/Gentoo Linux) =( so I only did a small test on a random map.

Great work!

[Bob_The_Mighty]

Another update: 1.2.1

I fixed an annoying OOS problem caused by storing sides. Now character creation is commenced with a right-click, rather than a move. This eliminates the possibility of an ai leader getting a menu. I also fixed some animation glitches, and made the printed messages more readable.


As for the code appearing twice in the save file. I saw that, and noticed that one of them seemed to be inside the [era] tag and one was not. Could it be reading the files where the macros are defined, then re-reading the macros when they are called in the era file? If so, how to solve this?

[zookeeper]

As for the code appearing twice in the save file. I saw that, and noticed that one of them seemed to be inside the [era] tag and one was not. Could it be reading the files where the macros are defined, then re-reading the macros when they are called in the era file? If so, how to solve this?

The code appears twice because one bit contains the full code as you've written it (which would be used as the starting point when playing a replay) and the other bit contains the current state. For example, the former will contain all your first_time_only=yes events, while the latter won't contain any that have already been fired and thus don't anymore exist in the "current state".

I'm afraid there's no workaround.

[daniel.santos]

Well, I should say that it's still a good deal slimmer than it was before.

Also, what scenarios play well on 1.6.4 with this era? (My fav, Fall of Trent, isn't working in 1.6.4 and Labyrinth of Champions is also not working with Bob's RPG Era).

[Jeff513]

what maps does this era work on

[St.John]

it should work on any ole map you throw at it.
But it's specifically designed to work on Fall of Trent and Labyrinth of Champions. Maybe others?
i dunno.

[Bob_The_Mighty]

I've uploaded another small update to Bob's RPG Era: 1.2.2

- Fixed the Elf Lord's ranged animation
- Reduced the probabilty of finding clay and leaves
- Fixed a few of the items that weren't showing in the inventory
- Fixed a few of the units that are meant to drop items when they die
- Corrected some ability descriptions
- Revised the shop macro (it is now easy to manipulate both the price and stock of items in individual shops - this helps for designing scenarios)

Currently, the only map in which you will find these era-specific shops is Labyrinth of Champions. Thus there is a new update of that, also.