Deadlock Ideas

Ideas! Ideas! Ideas! Ideas! Ideas!

A successful design needs a million

And they all need to work together!

Contact : deadlock@yagc.demon.co.uk

Mission
The Deadlock Dungeons
In the beginning, there were the four elements - Earth, Air, Fire and Water. The elements existed in prerfect balance, and the goddess Aprohodite was loved by the peoples of the world; but the god Ares, her one time lover, grew bitter and jealous and uleashed chaos and strife into the world. The harmony of the elements was lost and elemental fought elemental. The world was ravaged and became a blasted barren place, save in a few redoubts under the protection of the saddened Aphrodite. One of these redoubts was the Academy of Llyr where of oldentimes, many great healers were trained. Now the alchemical arts are studied with great industry - in the hope of finding a way of halting the war. For most of your life you have been trained for this. Now you are ready to descend into the dungeons of Ares - ready to do battle, to parley, or by whatever magical means to end the strife. The well wishing of your colleagues fades from your ears as the magical vortex summons you away to the plane of the Gods. 'Good luck!' 'Godspeed' 'Farewell' ... 'Send us a postcard!'
Four Player Types
The Aquamancer
Has an affinity with water elementals : mana source is a fountain.
The Geomancer
Has an affinity with earth elementals: mana source is a cairn.
The Pyromancer
Has an affinity with fire elementals: mana source is a fire!
The Areomancer
Has an affinity with airelementals:-) Mana source is a mist. (OK a bit crap, anyone with any better ideas?)
Skill levels
The hierarchy of competence (and how much trouble you are in)

Ignoramus
Neophyte
Novice
Apprentice
Journeyman
Witch
Wizard
Warlock
Sorcerer
Magus
Mage
Arch-mage
Thaumaturge
Gods : Very powerful NPCS
Ares
The god of war: tends to destroy things, bash things up. Responsible for moving things when you are not looking. Ultimately, you want to top him.
Aphrodite
The godess of lurrrve. Casts the spells that create things. Make her unhappy and you will be, too :-(
Other NPCS
A variety of NPCS: To talk to, make pets of, kill, or enslave.
Dragons
Rats
Humans
Cats
Orcs
Giants
Dogs
Rats
Bats
Iguanas
Elementals: Your willing servants (mostly)
Faery
Air elemental
Mermaid/man
Water elemental
Goblin
Earth elemental
Sprite
Fire elemental
Other Items
Handy things that just happen to be lying around
Coffins
Silver
Books
Boxes
Bronze
Scrolls
Pits
Altars
Amulets
Gold
Maps
Banners
Magical System.
Every spell will be classified as needing a particular skill at a particular level and a keyword needed to cast it. Magic keywords can be found in the game by reading books, scrolls, engraved objects and banners on the wall. They can be bartered with other players. To progress a level, a certain amount of experience must be accumulated and full mana must be sustained for a certain length of time say 10 moves. This is to provide a penalty for excessive aggression.

Player Attributes

  • mana level
  • mana regeneration speed
  • experinece level
  • divination experience
  • divination keywords / spells known
  • revelation experience
  • revelation keywords / spells known
  • conealment experience
  • concealment keywords / spells known
  • possession experience
  • possession keywords/spells known
  • creation experience
  • creation keywords /spells known
  • destruction experience
  • destruction keywords / spells known
  • teleportation experience
  • teleportation keywords/spells known

Spell Attributes

  • skill class
  • level needed
  • actutation keyword (?)
  • manna consumption
  • effect
  • bias (towards water/air/earth whatever, lowers mana cost)

Nearly everything happens through the spell system. Gods are two sever controlled players? Your servants are elementals. Mana comes from a mana source. It is renewed on levels where a mana source is available, otherwise it is renewed more slowly. Majoritiy of levels will not have a mana source.

Object Hierarchy
World
A container for levels. In the client it only contains the level the player is currently on (I think)
Level
A container for things.
Thing
A genric class for a thing with a position in a level and some properties of some kind. Every thing has to have a unique numeric id for clients and servers to exchange across network. Generating an id will have to be part of the protocol.

Things.......

  • Wall
    A simple sub class of thing with an 'impassable' property
    Exit
    A more complicated sub class of thing with a property that links it to another level
    Container Thing
    A thing that can contain other things (within reason)

    Container Things.........

    • Chest
      A sub class of container thing
      Magical Thing
      Something that has some kind of magical effect on whatever Container Thing contains it.
      Mobile Thing
      Something that can move about of it's own accord between levels and can contain things.
      Magic Using Thing
      Something that can cast spells (usually also a mobile thing)

      Magic using, mobile, container things.........

      • NPC
        Non player character
        God
        Ares or Aprhrodite. Gets to use level and world creation / destruction spells.
        Player
        The hero.
        Elemental
        A certain kind of npc
        Borg
        Yes! They connect using the loopback socket to your server should you fancy a solo game!
Acknowldegements
  • Some of the display code is from the Snippets collection.
  • The format of this web page, you may recognise. Thanks to the old - look Rougelike News Page.
  • The networking library used is a very handy dandy one indeed called APE which is top for cross-platform multithreaded networking.
  • The scripting language used will be Tiny Scheme
  • Database services for the server will be written using the GNU's gdbm library, ported by ?
  • Finally, the display and keyboard input package is good old pdcurses.

You're going to need these to build it!