| The main reason for me wanting to remake Uncharted Waters
was to add/fix some strategy elements of the game:
for instance - i found problems with:
1. UW's political system:
I once had the relation between portugal & spain drop to -5, yet they still kept the
alliance running...
I also did those alliance/peace treaty missions from the kings, yet no new alliances were
ever forged.
Both's relations with italy was near 50, yet they still warred against italy.
The same goes for blockades - no matter how many peace treaties they signed, blockades was
never lifted.
2. economy effect on game...?
this i find lacking on almost any related game (sid's pirates etc.)
what is the real point of invest/capturing ports for your country? what do they use the
profits for?
= In pirates it gets boring capturing the 10th town for then you are already a duke
(nothing left to gain),
so you start giving ports to the other countries..
= in UW you get friendship/titles for this & soon end up with the same
predicament & defect.
There is the option to talk to a king/guild to find out what profits they are making, but
that tells me nought
- its not like i see them spending those profits on improvements or fleets.
No one even retires with their money once they have a certain amount.. ie. you can die of
old age, but not your king.
This is branching into another topic so i stop here. play europa 1400 if you want
to see that fixed.
The only thing i've seen happen when capturing ports for say italy, is that this seems to
be the only way to get them out of the capital
- merchants move out to trade with the new ports & send escorts...
----
With rpg-maker its very easy to make an adventure/rpg combo, but setting it up to handle
economy & politics seem to be impossible.
a Solution a came up with:
1. ecomony: i can have guilds lie about profit by displaying a random
profit. [faking it]
2. ports: the user can invest in a port & then i can simply (through
some random encounter) change ports to another nation
like we saw on the very 1st pirates! game. (where there was no other ships to be seen
sailing around)
3. alliances: this can be set at any time - just variables, however it
wont affect the game much.
[since we don't have actual enemy ships sailing around.]
[guess one could have the allied nations get more random ports to illustrate their
superiority]
4. other ships: if you want you can put in other ships & lay out
'paths' {trade routes} for them to travel on, set speed etc.
Once again this will take up lots of time & wont really matter since those ships will
be mostly for scenery.
5. battles:
*in town:
bar figths... easy, very easilly implemented. two ppl dueling...
*at sea:
a. if you have other ships running around:
you'd need to set up each ship so that the user can interact with it like an npc &
maybe remove it from the map after the battle.
b. if game is like pirates! [no other ships to be seen]
battles can be started easilly through random encounters [set up on a map's 'properties']
other notes: for ship battles the 'battle pics/sequences' for heroes must be changed to
ships instead of the normal characters.
[so that it looks like ships are fighting]
The experiance system is already there since its an rpgtool.
c. the easiest, is what i have implemented already - two captains dueling it out.
To summarize:
One can make a very nice game with this, but if it hasn't become obvious how much work is
involved,
you will certainly see once you start. Combine that with the fact that one must do other
work to get bread on the table
& you'll realise why i've handed this 'hobby' over to the community to help work on.
Will take me years doing it alone.
Where to go from here:
----------------------------------
the idea is to have the community improve on the game by downloading the source, then
uploading the changes back to
someone's site or via email so the the others can update 'their' versions again.
Using a forum one can discuss/track/assign development tasks to certain pll ie. teamwork.
(it wont help if everyone starts making their own new version of the map - or if everyone
makes their 'own version' of the
port 'lisbon')
That reminds me - i want pics/photos of the ports during those times - it can be used
displayed upon entering a port like on
pirates before you choose to 'talk to governor' or 'visit tavern'.
current status/todo list:
--------------------------
Map:
i'd say complete, much credit goes to my friend Willem van Staden.
towns {outside}
i dont think all the ports are on the right places. & i want to have all small ports
reduced in graphical size - ie. most
look like castles.
need port pictures to display upon 'visit'/contact.
towns (inside)
designing an 'inside' area for each town will be too much work so i've decided to do that
only for big capital cities & have
all smaller ports work like on the game pirates ie. you get a menu with options to visit
the pub or whatnot.
therefore, current active ports:
algiers - pirates! style.
genoa - uncharted waters style.
Battles:
need small ship pictures to import & use in battle animation.
or
[currently there] simply 2 captains duelling like in pirates!]
storms:
can be trigger activated eg. near west africa, or random timed encounter, eg. every
500mins.
action: display picture of storm & decrease health of character
Rpg:
need story related elements to keep the user entertained, else it becomes like
pirates/merchant prince/patrician.
i think that's what made uncharted waters so popular.
there was always replay value because you could try out another story/character. imagine
if it only had trading... :(
anycase, this is set up easilly too - you can put 'flags' on each encounter eg. 'a port
visit' such as
"if catalina is in the party",
then 'this' happens"
Villages? havn't given much thought yet.
contact info:
port pics & source updates can be mailed to me at rianvoogt at yahoo.co.uk
I'm south african - don't assume UK cause the address.says so :} |