Grimrock

But I hate having to make sure all my party gets a hit, even if it's a 0 hit, just to get full XP. I really hope everyone gets full xp, like most other RPGs, which do it that way for a reason, so I can just enjoy the game and focus less on min-maxing.

As a gamer for more that 30 years, I bought both DM & CSB for the Atari ST. LoG is a great tribute, but I would love to see Tirnanog (ZX Spectrum side scroller) being remade. I really loved its puzzles.

Here's my wishlist for LoG 2:
- new spells: levitate (move over an open pit), way points (navigator), alchemy (turn a lead key into a gold key), ghost form (you pass through monsters and not affected by teleporters), teleport (move through a wall), spy (explore ahead), breath underwater
- new mechanics: tabbed backpack, log book (record all notes), climb up (if you can go down, why not up), key ring (more sense than a crate), tool kit (disassemble items to make new ones, hilt from one, blade from another, etc), cauldron (make better food when combined), sewing kit (repair damaged leather & cloth), swimming, split party (split screen if you need to push 2 buttons at same time), crawling through a small tunnel
- new zones: underwater (push a button to drain it or resurface further), world map connected to ruins (custom made dungeons)

A small explanation of my world map idea:

You travel from city to city and in each town there are stories about treasures from nearby ruins. In a city you can swap a party member that might be better suited for a specific ruin. Each ruin is a custom made dungeon (made by you) and contains a treasure you keep or might need to do more difficult ones. For each player these ruins are at random places per difficulty group, but the treasure don't vary too much. So, doing the same easy ruin over and over is impossible. Each visit is recorded by LoG through internet once and every 1000 visits is reward to the author. The rewards can be an unique wallset or weapon he can use in his next creation. The difficulty determines to the region the ruin is in and it'll have a better treasure. The treasure can be better weapons and equipment or spells you might need to reach a higher difficulty region.

As an optional twist I really Lords of Midnight (ZX Spectrum) where you needed diplomacy and strength to move into hostile regions. So, the world map might be in war and it might not be safe to travel. A local baron might hire you to save a princess or retrieve a lost treasure from a ruin. And in return he might grant you access to his lands so you can safely enter the previous hostile region. The twist goes darker what if you really like the treasure and you want to keep it. Or the princess wants to join your party. The baron might put up rewards for your capture. If captured you lose your treasure but you might also lose some of your equipment

Frenchie wrote: A small explanation of my world map idea:...

We actually experimented a bit with the world map idea some time ago. But we abandoned the concept after prototyping it. See more about it in the blog post. http://www.grimrock.net/2013/03/21/scra ... e-designs/

Have you thought about "8-directional travel" and "diagonal walls"? It doesn't need to slow down movement. If you press west or north and the corridor is north-west you move the proper direction. Of course players can select the option whether they want the left/right turns to be single or double moves. Single moves are 8 times to fully turn around and double are the classic 4 times to fully urn around. The latter might be desired when in combat moving around in 4 squares.

Rope ladders, elevators or even mine carts might be a new transportation method. So could be water if you're trapped in a well and the water is rising. Or perhaps you have to dive under to remove a brick so, the water is sinking. Normally when a trap door opens you fall vertical, but what if the trapdoor opens to a vertical diagonal floor where you slide down. I've seen mods where you fall 8 levels down. Normally that would have killed the whole party. What if the 2 fighters have iron hooks and stop their descend midway, use an explosive to break out a wall and exit halfway.

there are many cool things said ...

i haven't read all of the posts, but i would like to make two suggestions:

- why no one speaks? all encounters are always attacking ...
make some riddles with NPCs and small dialogues ..
(skill: Persuasion?)

- would like to get skill points for skills i use often ...
only level-points for the attributes?

keep going on!

Palima wrote:there are many cool things said ...

i haven't read all of the posts, but i would like to make two suggestions:

- why no one speaks? all encounters are always attacking ...
make some riddles with NPCs and small dialogues ..
(skill: Persuasion?)

- would like to get skill points for skills i use often ...
only level-points for the attributes?

keep going on!

That skill point one won't work well. Check out the blog, they revamped the skill system.
Skills are going to have about 1-3 ranks only with players getting 1/level. Thus that won't work now.

I also did not read all of the postings. Maybe this topic was addressed already. What about lockpicking (treasure rooms, chests and so on)?

It could be interesting to have some simple Risk vs. Reward level elements in LoG2.

For example Nethack had kitchen sinks around the dungeon. If you kicked them, they usually did nothing, but occasionally a valuable/useful ring popped out of the sink. Usually the ring was either enchanted or just had a really good resale value when you reached the next shop. So it was usually useful to kick those sinks in hopes of getting rewarded.

What made the sinks really interesting though was the fact that almost equally often you managed to summon a really nasty monster out of the sink, ie. water demon or such. More often than not this meant that you got killed a few moments later. Still the players kept kicking the sinks because the potential rewards were so good. The pure randomness of the outcome made them exciting, i.e. "the lottery effect". The fact that the sinks usually didn't disappear after something came out of them made them even more interesting. It was almost like the sink was asking you "Do you want to try your luck again?" after you miraculously survived the demonic attack.

I always had the feeling of relief when nothing actually happened after kicking the sink. But then I just had to kick it again. If I got rewarded with a ring, it felt like winning a small lottery. If I summoned a water demon, I didn't blame the game but only myself for being so stupid as keeping on kicking the sink for so long.

Something along these lines might work well also for LoG2. If it's not sinks around the game level, maybe it could be a "spirit stone" or some kind of statue which you can try to break. When the thing breaks, out comes nothing/big reward/really nasty surprise. The really nasty surprise can be almost anything: a deadly monster, access to some area of the game level is taken away from the player, some item or even skill level is taken away from the player. Etc. etc… Note that the problem with breaking the thing to get the effect takes away the "want to try your luck again?" aspect of what worked so well in Nethack.

Maybe this could be implemented as a fountain (again an idea from Nethack) which could give you temporary/permanent powers or skills. The risk vs. reward could be implemented so that you might actually lose some skills/skill levels or become cursed for awhile. Maybe sometimes you accidentally summon some nasty creatures which attack you etc.

So basically, tap into the player's greed and give them the choice of taking the risk.

Anyway, I hope this explains the general idea what might work for LoG2.

I hope it's okay when I abuse this thread for asking about Nvidia 3D Vision support in LoG 2. I've searched for the topic and only found few threads about 3D Vision in the first game. I used the fix from helix.blogspot which disabled bad shadows. The ingame 3D still has been a blast - being very immersive and intensifying the atmosphere. I'm sure you would make a good bulk of people happy by integrating it into Log2.

The world map idea reminds me of Evil's Doom, which is IMHO the most epic classic Dungeon Master-alike made in the 80's-90's era. It was released at the end of the Amiga's lifecycle, and only a few copies made it out while it was still in a buggy semi-beta state. Over a decade later a fixed version (1.8) was made and it's finally playable without random crapouts and such -- and I highly recommend you play it on an emulator to see what can be done with the town/map idea!

Essentially it shows that you can do an epic-scale DM game that is story driven and has detailed non-dungeon places to visit and talk and do things. =) The towns are not in-engine, but you can buy and sell items that are reflected in your inventory (and operate as such when you are in the dungeon engine)

It also had a good rune+spellbook compromise magic system.

The dungeon graphics aren't super colorful, but were done that way to make the engine fast. =)

Edit -- Can be downloaded here: http://www.oldgames.sk/en/game/evils-doom/downloads/

Intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDXA_u0kcQM

Town example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMF63J-Z85U

Example of map travel and other town (video creator cuts out actual shopping parts, but there are shop menus): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erg1QxMsarc

Dungeon example (with overpowered party): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNT4SN-DOqs

Underwater dungeon (previously dry, but now flooded and shark-infested, visited with breath-underwater magic): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLF-pPF-zEc