Saturday 4 July 2015

Realistic gameplay and torches

The current equipment has a slot for light sources. It's kind of "third" hand to hold the torch or whatever. You still have left and right hand slots where you can equip weapons and shields.

However if you want to be realistic you should have only two hands to hold things. But is it worth it? If you need one hand for the light source you would not be able to hold a shield when fighting in poor lighted places, not to mention two-handed weapons. You could always drop the light source on ground (in Kaduria it's possible, the item will still work as a light source) before fighting, but it would be quite annoying I guess.

The way to make it less annoying would be lot of lights around the dungeon in most places. This is actually what I'm planning to do anyway and it could be a nice way to reduce the need for a personal light source. But then again, dungeon wall torches are the great role-playing example of unrealistic light sources, because they never go out. If they did, they would be always burnt out, unless there is an army of goblins replacing them all the time.

I like the idea of "more" realistic gameplay, but you have to be really careful or it will create some tedious tasks for the player who start to hate it after a while. I know I would.

4 comments:

  1. You could have a shield that had a sconce on the outside to put a torch in. Obviously it's going to get knocked out or go out in combat but you can deal with that after you've finished the combat. That's in real life- in the game it can remain lit all the time.

    Or there's always glowing magic stuff for a light source.

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  2. You could have a shield that had a sconce on the outside to put a torch in. Obviously it's going to get knocked out or go out in combat but you can deal with that after you've finished the combat. That's in real life- in the game it can remain lit all the time.

    Or there's always glowing magic stuff for a light source.

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  3. Let's say a hostile NPC comes into view. You could always have a mechanic where the player dumps his torch at a strategic spot. Or a tactic where he lights several more and throws them around. Or a tactic where he even throws it at the hostile and rushs at them.

    Take Incursion for example. All these monsters living in the dark. It makes no sense. There should be light sources placed where necessary, and monsters should even carry them around (unless they can see in the dark).

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  4. With more realistic options you have to ask does it make the gameplay better? "Third hand" for light source is quite useful feature, but you could adjust the game world for using the light source in actual hand, mostly by placing lots of light sources around the level structure. I think it's also quite difficult to know which decision is better until you try it, which I'm probably going to do.

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