Rethinking the Example Suite

OpenMW's very own demo, template and game to show off everything that OpenMW is capable of.

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DestinedToDie
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Rethinking the Example Suite

Post by DestinedToDie »

The initial idea I had for the Example Suite was to do a fortress in the forest lovecraftian mystery thing Morrowind-style. I still like the idea, but I'm thinking less about making the game like Morrowind. One issue is, who would play our small game over the huge and rich world that Morrowind offers? Morrowind is great as a single player and we've also seen it in TES3MP's multiplayer, which the game isn't exactly designed for but is amazing play anyway.

What if we designed Example Suite specifically for a co-op experience? That would provide an alternative experience that TES3MP currently lacks and I think people would actually play it occasionally on the side of exploring Morrowind with friends. So how would this co-op game look like?

The Kingdom of Man. King Arthur has claimed himself the ruler of all. However an Old God would disagree. He decides to create you and others to slay the king for such heresy and claim the title of kingslayer. Of course, before you can get to The Kingdom of Man, you must first find the road to the Kingdom of Man.

You start in Deadwood with basic items and although the game offers you a couple of directions to go to, its ultimate destination is the king, so it's not open world like Morrowind. However each area has a (raid) boss monster for you and your party to kill. Sometimes it drops useful items and gold, other times a key required to unlock a direct passage to the next area instead of having to go around. Almost every area also has a merchant and there might be quests, whether optional or actually vital to progress to the next area.

The scope for this game is content from Deadwood all the way to the king. However, I plan on using a lot of placeholders since I'm a little intimidated by the amount of work a full-fledged game might require. For example, I currently plan on making only a few weapon models such as a single sword model and then using the same skin on all swords such as bastard sword, longsword, etc. I'd only start working on different skins when the base game is complete, until then every NPC would look like they were wearing the same armor and weapons. So that's what version 1.0 would look like, a bare skeleton of a game that can technically be played from start to finish.

There is of course the possibility of someone else coming along and filling in those gaps. Sometimes people actually post on the forums looking to contribute in some way with art and I'm usually not sure with what they could help at this stage. For the moment, I'd prefer Example Suite to be a 1-man project until I get some basics in place. I think things will become more open to outside help once I push through an update or two.

If we ever get to 1.0 and past that, I was thinking of making a Nexus of the Old God that connects you to different paths to do his bidding. For example, The Kingdom of Man would only be one portal that leads you to a place in Deadwood where you can discover the road to The Kingdom of Man and eventually lead you to the King. However another portal would take you to a path that leads deeper into Deadwoods, to a necromancer who has revolted against the Old God and needs punishing. These linear scenarios could have the same level of difficulty or different levels of difficulty, with each giving you an ability (Kingslayer, Necrosis) at the end.
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psi29a
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Re: Rethinking the Example Suite

Post by psi29a »

I like the the Lovecraftian or Ravenloft idea, but remember that the point of the ES was to be a demo to show off what OpenMW is capable of. A technology demonstrator. It doesn't have to be huge, it doesn't have to be immersive it doesn't have be a full blown game. However, you do have a point in that it should also be done with tes3mp in mind as well.

It is entirely possible that once there is an ES that we can create add-ons (expansions!) that increase the scope/story/etc into a full game.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: Rethinking the Example Suite

Post by AnyOldName3 »

At one point, I think we were planning on eventually using every new OpenMW feature in the example suite, in which case, a design that could be gradually extended as more things are added to the engine would be best. If we're not doing that, then we'll have to come up with something else that can be used as a demo for new features.
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DestinedToDie
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Re: Rethinking the Example Suite

Post by DestinedToDie »

The main difference between this idea and Morrowind is that it'd have linearly progressing premade adventures rather than being a full-blown open world where the player makes his own story. I think either way we can demo whatever we want, unless some feature explicitly requires a non-linear path of progression. The reason I started leaning toward the linear co-op experience is that it's an unfilled niche right now, though I am not completely opposed to going for Morrowind-style open world either.
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lysol
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Re: Rethinking the Example Suite

Post by lysol »

I like this new idea. Showcasing that the engine can handle an open world is kinda pointless because, well, Morrowind exists for that. Showcasing a co-op rpg on the other hand...
testman
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Re: Rethinking the Example Suite

Post by testman »

I am still interested in Example Suite, so I am happy to see it is not being abandoned.

And I will gladly test any new releases that you upload.
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silentthief
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Re: Rethinking the Example Suite

Post by silentthief »

I had thought of the concept of trying to make a multiplayer TC/example suite. The biggest issue to me seems to be that we still (as far as I know) don't have any character models. I was thinking of a multiplayer siege/RTS style, perhaps similar to KOF

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxKiMNQtTdo

I only played the 2nd game (Kingdom under fire: heroes) but I fell in love with the game play style. The game play style is that you control one or more units on a battle field and you have the units follow your commands such as move, attack, etc - and you are tasked with missions in a story ranging from kill all enemies on map missions, to escort, to stealth/fleeing. the units consist of a group of troops which are all the same character type (like soldiers/cavalry/archers) who all walk or run in tandem, and when the unit takes damage it starts losing these troops. Sometimes these units have a leader type (general/sergeant, and perhaps a specialist such as a bodyguard for the leader or a spellcaster that you can do additional attacks with), or are a big bad monster such as a giant scorpion. You could cycle through the different units that you controlled, but you also had friendly units to protect or aid, and of course enemy units that would attack you.

To do something like this - you would have to add a couple of game engine features (depending on what gameplay elements you wanted) such as not having friendly fire (you swing in battle in KOF and your attacks go right through the friendly troops in front of you), or allowing control over more than
one unit of troops.

ST
PS - only mentioning this as conversation. I would love to do this kind of thing, but time is hard to come by. This is why I have such appreciation for the devs - I mean real life is a pita some times
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lysol
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Re: Rethinking the Example Suite

Post by lysol »

Just a wild idea that appeared to me suddenly.

A neat feature would be if the ES could be both single player and co-op. You could for example have like side quests that you can only do if you are more than one player.

To show off cool stuff, you could have a side quest where the players must activate some kind of beacons (super cliché I know). One player activates the first beacon and it sends away a beam to the next beacon, which needs to be activated within a few seconds after and so on. The problem is that the next beacon is not even in the same cell as the first one, so you need to be multiple people to do this. This way we can show off that "hey look, we can have scripts running between several cells at once. Oh and in case you didn't notice, we have multiplayer".

Just a random thought.

Oh, and you could actually make a puzzle out of this that does require more IQ than five. I'm looking at you, Skyrim.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: Rethinking the Example Suite

Post by AnyOldName3 »

The Skyrim puzzles aren't there to keep adventurers out. They're supposed to keep the Draugr in.
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lysol
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Re: Rethinking the Example Suite

Post by lysol »

Oh right. :roll:
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