[CPT] Alchemy Skill Expansion Pack

[hal9000]

Hi guys, it has been more than one year since I published my prototypes #001 and #002. During this period I was busy on obtaining my master's degree in chemistry and on moving from Italy to Australia.

Now that my situation is more stable I can keep contributing to the project. In the meanwhile I've gladly noticed that: TMW has received a massive update, that now mages love to wear their new dyeable hats (#001), and that the old boring snowland is now full of snowy trees (#002) .

..about the concept:

one of the main aspects of an MMORPG is the Skill System. TMW has some useful/unuseful skills..

however TMW totally lacks of Crafting Skills, critical for the development of the game as they contribute in:

- making the levelling less boring;
- increasing the customization level of PGs;
- promoting trade & commerce between PGs;
- increasing longevity of the game.

through the Mana/TMW Development Weekly Summary (thanks Betram), I've read that a basic crafting skill system is in developing (maybe Crush could know more about the status of the project).

IMHO having a very basic but usable Skill System could be a great starting point for future improvements, and add future skills.

One of the most beloved skill is, without any doubts, Alchemy.

At the moment, Alchemy in TMW is limited to trading potions with Wyara and asking Caul the Alchemist to make an Healing Potion.
The concept aims to expand the Alchemic experience, improve Caul NPC and give him a proper domicile. What I don't like of the current implementation:

(1) Caul looks like a banker of the 19th century;
(2) Caul shares his home with other NPCs, you can't recognize it as the "House of Caul, the Alchemy Master";
(3) Caul's room is a normal room with a caulderon and a table with a potion on it;
(4) Passive Skill feeling, you can't "create", you can just ask for a potion.

So, how to improve these aspects:

(1) Caul looks like a real alchemist;
(2) Caul is a lonely scholar of the science, and loves to live far from the chaos of the
villages: he has an house in the depth of Woodland's Forest and doesn't share it with anyone;
(3) Caul house..it's not an house, is a real alchemic laboratory full of chemical glassware;
(4) Active Skill: you can craft your specific potion using a correct combination of reagents, a solvent and an empty flask.

Each Active Skill will require a related proper Equipment to work. It means that if you want to brew a potion you have to use the Alembic of the alchemy laboratory, if you want to craft a sword you need the Furnace of the local blacksmith,...so you can't craft items wherever you want. This is important to keep players moving across the world.

Once you have learnt a particular recipe (from the master, from a legend told by an NPC, from a secret book,..) you have just to click the Alembic to start crafting your potion.

(STEPS)

- when the player interacts with the alembic, a crafting dialog box appears, allowing the players to choose among the reagents stored in their equipment;
- by pressing <React> the dialos box disappears and the crafting system checks if the reagents match one of the correct alchemic combinations;
- if one of the combinations is matched, an animation of the alembic and a related sound effect are both played;
- eventually, a message informs the player that the new crafted potion is being added to the Inventory.


The Expansion Pack:

All the 4 aspects previously listed are better described in the chapters of the following mini-book I've wrote. The book contains lots of ideas that have to be intended as PROPOSALS, some of them have been even created just for fun.

<<< PDF DOWNLOAD >>> - Watch it in fullscreen mode for more confort.

I think it would be great if we'll be able to implement even a really basic skill system, and then just add advanced features later.


If someone of the coders is interested in the project, I can adapt the graphics to the needs.
Graphic artists can contribute, for instance, designing the exterior look of the house.
Content developers can contribute with Dialogues Scripting/Quests Scripting.
Sound developers can contribute assemling a background sound for the animation (below), composed by 2 sec. of heating (fire sound), 3 sec. of heating + boiling (fire + boiling water sounds), 7 (6,75) sec. of distillation (liquid sounds).


And now feel free to share your ideas and opinions to improve Alchemy in TMW.


Here below, some pictures included in the PDF, and obviously the alembic animation



---


---

Alembic animation:

---

All licence-related information of my new and old works, are avaiable in pixel tags form through the links of my Signature.

[yourmistakes]

First off: welcome back, hal9000
i completely support this initiative to make tmw into more of a real mmo with the introduction of of an alchemy skill.
having said that, there are a couple of ideas i've been toying with but have never had the skill in coding to implement in any manner . . alchemy is one of them.
i personally think alchemy should be one of a few trades or job skills that players should be able to train and increase their skills in. other trades would include such mmo staples as: agriculture, mining, medicine, smithing (turning various ores into usable objects), craftsmanship (similar to alchemy, but combining objects rather than reagents).
there are a number of others, but i'd have to grep my old irc logs for them.
the important thing about a real job system like this would be that all skills would have another skill that they depended on, in order to stimulate trade, and keep the game more or less balanced.

[hal9000]

First off: welcome back, hal9000

ty

I personally think alchemy should be one of a few trades or job skills that players should be able to train and increase their skills in. other trades would include such mmo staples as: agriculture, mining, medicine, smithing (turning various ores into usable objects), craftsmanship (similar to alchemy, but combining objects rather than reagents).

yeah, once that a basic skill implementation is developed, adding a new crafting skill would be really easier (a master, a proper facility, an animation, a brainstorming about the "reagents' combinations" and objects produced to keep things balanced).

[Crush]

through the Mana/TMW Development Weekly Summary (thanks Betram), I've read that a basic crafting skill system is in developing (maybe Crush could know more about the status of the project).

That system is for Manaserv, not for tmwAthena, and currently completely server-sided. So there is nothing you can use for tmwAthena.

The player interacts with it through a chat command. It hasn't got a GUI yet. When you would create a crafting GUI for the client it would also help Manaserv, provided it is not too specific.

The technical implementation works like this:
1. The player tells the server which items to use in a crafting operation (This does not require a certain location).
2. The server verifies that the character owns these items
3. When the character does, the list of items is passed to the scripting engine
4. The scripting engine receives the item list and decides which items to remove and which items to give to the character. During the crafting operation the script can also do a lot of other things like check the characters stats to decide the outcome of the crafting operation or apply effects to the character.

But this is just a suggestion. You needn't do it the same way on tmwAthena, because you have a different requirement profile than we do.

[Bertram]

Hi Crush,

I just wonder: Making a crafting NPC shouldn't be that difficult, btw? (You see where I'm going, right?)

I guess the idea is almost doable as is in Manaserv already thanks to Crush work on crafting.

Best regards.

[Crush]

I just wonder: Making a crafting NPC shouldn't be that difficult, btw? (You see where I'm going, right?)

Are you referring to tmwAthena or to Manaserv?

A dialog-based crafting is of course easy to do on both servers (it is already done on tmwAthena, after all). But a gui-based crafting triggered by NPC interaction is something different.

My current Manaserv plan is designed under the premise to allow crafting everywhere and everytime by the click of a GUI button. But I understand that some server administrators might rather prefer a crafting system based on interaction with objects in the game world like hal9000 is proposing here. Maybe we could
1. also trigger the still-to-be-made crafting dialog during an NPC interaction which results in passing a parameter to the crafting script indicating the world object used for crafting so that the script can react differently
2. disallow crafting not through an npc dialog in the server configuration. This should result in the still-to-be-made crafting button not being shown in the client GUI. We should add the possibility to activate and deactivate certain GUI features server-sided in general, because not every server might want to use every feature the Mana plattform has to offer. In that case GUI elements which server no function would just confuse the user. I've created a Mantis ticket for that. http://bugs.manasource.org/view.php?id=355

[yourmistakes]

for the crafting, it should be possible to do simple crafting anywhere, and advanced crafting after interaction with an npc, whether the npc is a workbench, forge, or chemistry set imo.
and even though the simple crafting would not be possible without some hackery on the current server (horadric cube, anyone?), it still seems like a sound gameplay element to be able to create items whilst out and about. after all, us mages can make lifestones on the go and transmute various items.

[hal9000]

for the crafting, it should be possible to do simple crafting anywhere, and advanced crafting after interaction with an npc, whether the npc is a workbench, forge, or chemistry set imo.

Mmhh, I think that it would be better choose just one of the 2 options to keep things simple.

Btw I don't like when in some mmorpg I see all the player sitting in the main city crafting all kind of items sitting on a bench without making a step..I don't know maybe I'm too romantic (in an rpg way)

[Crush]

So you want to see all the player sitting in the crafting room crafting all kind of items sitting in front of a table without making a step?

Just kidding.

I think that crafting facilities that are not that accessible could add an interesting exploring component to the game. When some of the more interesting crafting facilities are well hidden or in dangerous areas, it could make the life of a crafter much more interesting. I am thinking about things like crafting magical items on an altair in a monster-infested temple. Players who enjoy crafting are usually from the explorer archetype, so they would surely enjoy such a component.

We could also have crafting facilities which are only available to a character after completing a quest ("Do this errant for me and I let you use my anvil").

[Bertram]

Hi Crush,

Thanks for issue. Yes, we need such a thing, and we already enable/disable certain functionalities based on the net layer type, btw.
Also, note that we entered the path of client configuration through customized client data some time ago.
Hence, you can send the server config in a packet, or let the client download its world data and read there what elements need
to be enabled or not, too.

Both paths are ok to me as long as they stay relevant in term of bandwidth, and flexibility.

I think that crafting facilities that are not that accessible could add an interesting exploring component to the game. When some of the more interesting crafting facilities are well hidden or in dangerous areas, it could make the life of a crafter much more interesting. I am thinking about things like crafting magical items on an altair in a monster-infested temple. Players who enjoy crafting are usually from the explorer archetype, so they would surely enjoy such a component.

We could also have crafting facilities which are only available to a character after completing a quest ("Do this errant for me and I let you use my anvil").

Would be fun

for the crafting, it should be possible to do simple crafting anywhere, and advanced crafting after interaction with an npc, whether the npc is a workbench, forge, or chemistry set imo.

Yes, that sounds very flexible to me.

1. also trigger the still-to-be-made crafting dialog during an NPC interaction which results in passing a parameter to the crafting script indicating the world object used for crafting so that the script can react differently

The addition of a npc/actor parameter could maybe easily fix that problem, even without having to create the gui for testing purpose.

That's for Manaserv. Yet, I don't know what o11c or Wombat are ready to do for tmwAthena.

Thanks to all for the spontaneous brainstorming.

[hal9000]

When some of the more interesting crafting facilities are well hidden or in dangerous areas, it could make the life of a crafter much more interesting. I am thinking about things like crafting magical items on an altair in a monster-infested temple. Players who enjoy crafting are usually from the explorer archetype, so they would surely enjoy such a component.

I love it. And it completely fixes the all-the-player-sitting thing.

[Angeliex]

You all are welcome to use my icons if you would like. They are not great but if you want to use them: http://www.aethyraproject.org/forum/vie ... p?f=4&t=15

[Jumpy]

hello and gratz for this

hope to see that in game since it is lacking of some back story and quests for mages all the way leveling and interacting with other classes (warrior, archers)
that would make the game much more interesting
found off the special places, and quests and interaction within classes to reach a goal without the need to buy

sincerly