The Mana World Forums

So, for a while now I've been working on designing - just designing, nothing more - a new branch of the Mana World. Feel free to contribute your ideas, but please read the following first (I've divided it into bite-sized pieces...).
Also if you can code or art, you could try make some of this stuff. I only will be mapping.

Clothes - priority +++++

People use their individual looks to distinguish themselves from the crowd. In any RPG, the more combinations of colour and style, the better. I propose to have different shapes and materials and colours as follows:

Materials
There will be at least for materials: Cotton, Wool, Silk and Leather. Graphicswise, Cotton will have a very slightly rough texture and a firm, just slightly stiff movement. Wool will have fuzzy lines, possibly detracting from the attractiveness. Silk will be shiny and smooth. Leather will be extremely stiff and shiny, but rough.
As to defense, as well as the base defense of the item style (eg, Short-sleeved Shirt, 2%) there will be added to this the defense of the material, which does not vary.
Cotton: 2%, Wool: 4%, Silk: 1%, Leather: 6%.
However, some items of clothing cannot use all materials. The Short-sleeved Shirt, for example (and I keep making the same typo when I write that: I leave out the 'r' from Shirt... I make sure I correct it every time) can be made only from Cotton, Wool or Silk.
I don't know if this would be possible, but what about this system of dyeing: A player can make three colours of dye only: Either Red, Green and Blue or, yes, Yellow, Magenta or Cyan (or Yellow, Red, Blue). Each of these costs 1-3 of a certain ingredient / s. This yields a very small amount of dye. To create a proper colour, the player must mix a whole heap of Dye together.
Pure, bright red would cost 255 Red Dyes. The ingredients for a phial of red dye, then, would have to be a lot more common than in TMW (25.5 times, to be exact).
The item of clothing is then dyed with a 50% transparent colour, ff0000. The item's coding will be 'cotton_shortsleeve_shirt-ff0000'. I'm not sure if the transparency would work... but whatever, the item is dyed with that colour.
More complex colours could be created thus: 255 Green Dyes and 192 Blue Dyes would yield a blue-green, 00ffc0. 'cotton_shortsleeve_shirt-00ffc0'.
To darken the dye, Prepared Soot is used. Ordinary Soot must be taken to some NPC somewhere and he prepares it for a price. Then you can add Prepared Soot to the dye to darken it (so darker colours will be more expensive than light ones).
To create a dark blue-green, use the 255 Green Dyes, 192 Blue Dyes and add 50 Prepared Soots. Although with real RGB this colour would be achieved using 128 Green and 96 Blue, in the game the same amount of Green and Blue dyes would be used to increase the cost. 255 Green Dyes + 192 Blue Dyes + 50 Prepared Soots = 008060.

Now that you've worked your way through all that (or skipped it) here's a few basic ideas on different shapes of clothing:
Short-sleeve Shirt
Long-sleeve Shirt
Tunic
Wide Trousers
Short Trousers
Long Trousers
Torn Trousers
Short Jacket
Long Jacket
Tricorn Hat
Four-corner Hat (I sort of invented this one... it's like a four-sided version of the Tricorn. 'Four-corner' sounds better than 'Quadcorn')

etc, etc, etc. Lots of different shapes.

There would be more clothing slots, too:
Shoes
Trousers
Belt
Gloves
Armlet / Ring
Hand 1*
Hand 2*
Shirt
Jacket
Mask / Eyepatch / Headband etc
Hat

* When you create your character, there is a 95% chance of right-handedness, a 4% chance of left-handedness and a 1% chance of ambidexterity. If you are right-handed, single-handed weapons will work better for you than if you are left-handed, because the handle has been shaped that way. Although left-handedness is abominated, there are a few blacksmiths and merchants willing to trade in left-handed versions of weapons. These will work better for a left-handed person. If you are left-handed, a different attack sequence is used, showing you using your left hand rather than right.
Ambidextrous people will be able to use both types of weapons, and get an extra bonus with two-handed weapons.

~here endeth the Post No. 1, Clothing.... maybe another soon
Enchilado

Sorry to do this to you, people, but... a few ideas, this time code-related.

NPCs

NPCs should have an Inventory of sorts. Each item in this Inventory contains one of three tags:
[shop], [quest] and [equipped]. Items with the shop tag appear in the NPC's shop; items with the quest tag are simply there, and can be given by doing a quest; items with the equipped tag appear on the NPC.
Shop items then have a few more tags:
[amount|#] This is how many of that item the NPC has.
[replenish|*] When the number of that item replenishes. Different things are used here:
time=#minutes# The inventory replenishes to full after a specified number of minutes.
time-slow=#howmany#per#minutes# The inventory replenishes a number of that item every specified number of minutes.
time-after-empty=#minutes# The inventory replenishes to full a certain number of minutes after emptying.
time-slow-after-empty=#howmany#per#minutes# Replenishes number of items per specified number of minutes once emptied
etc...

Real estate

This will be easy with the addition of NPC inventories (especially if an NPC can be made to disappear...). If NPCs can disappear, a For Sale sign is, initially, outside every buyable house. This For Sale sign has a Latchkey and a Title Deed in its inventory. If the address of the house was 27 Flowerpot Lane, Hurbsbury then the description of the Latchkey would be: Key to 27 Flowerpot Lane, Hurbsbury. The description of the Title Deed would be: The Title Deed to 27 Flowerpot Lane, Hurbsbury. If the house was purchased, the player would get these items and the NPC would disappear (for everyone). If you have the Latchkey to a house you may enter it. Only a player with the Title Deed to a house may have new keys cut, however. He may also Change Lock, so that if he has given keys to other player to allow them temporary admittance, he can afterward Change the Lock of the door so that the keys no longer fit (how would this work??).

~that's all for now... bed is near!
Enchilado

Having a rest from this for a while. I've taken up an interest in Whispers of Avalon.
Find out more about this great new project at http://s1.zetaboards.com/Whispers_of_Avalon/index/.

~project plum lies forgotten... (after so much work, too!)
Enchilado

Oh noes, it was very promising after 2 days of work.

Two days? I've been working on it for months! What I've written here is a fraction of the lists I have made of weapons and towns and monsters and little things here and there and maps (on paper) and all sorts of other stuff.

~Whispers of Avalon is my new interest (apart from TMW, of course!)
Enchilado

*smacks Matt*

Len, I agree.

indeed!

you owe me back the time I spent reading, Enchilado

Len wrote:*smacks Matt*

ouch! poor pikachu-me

Sorry everyone. Matt, you didn't deserve that.
(By the way, how come your avatar doesn't look anything like you?)
I still want to make this game one day. At the moment, though, I'd like to help Len with Whispers of Avalon, which I still don't know much about but what I do know sounds good.

~sorry everyone,
Enchilado