- We want some sort of quest system and merchants to buy stuff from.
## Game concept
With these points in mind, here's a quick blurb for our game:
_Recently, the nearby village discovered that the old abandoned well contained a dark secret. The bottom of the well led to a previously undiscovered dungeon of ever shifting passages. No one knew why it was there or what its purpose was, but local rumors abound. The first adventurer that went down didn't come back. The second ... brought back a handful of glittering riches._
_Now the rush is on - there's a dungeon to explore and coin to earn. Knaves, cutthroats, adventurers and maybe even a hero or two are coming from all over the realm to challenge whatever lurks at the bottom of that well._
_Local merchants and opportunists have seen a chance for profit. A camp of tents has sprung up around the old well, providing food and drink, equipment, entertainment and rumors for a price. It's a festival to enjoy before paying the entrance fee for dropping down the well to find your fate among the shadows below ..._
Our game will consist of two main game modes - above ground and below. The player starts above ground and is expected to do 'expeditions' into the dark. The design goal is for them to be forced back up again when their health, equipment and luck is about to run out.
- Above, in the "dungeon festival", the player can restock and heal up, buy things and do a small set of quests. It's the only place where the characters can sleep and fully heal. They also need to spend coin here to gain XP and levels. This is a place for players to socialize and RP. There is no combat above ground except for an optional spot for non-lethal PvP.
- Below is the mysterious dungeon. This is a procedurally generated set of rooms. Players can collaborate if they go down the well together, they will not be able to run into each other otherwise (so this works as an instance). Each room generally presents some challenge (normally a battle). Pushing deeper is more dangerous but can grant greater rewards. While the rooms could in theory go on forever, there should be a boss encounter once a player reaches deep enough.
Here's an overview of the topside camp for inspiration (quickly thrown together in the free version of [Inkarnate](https://inkarnate.com/)). We'll explore how to break this up into "rooms" (locations) when we get to creating the game world later.
For the rest of this lesson we'll answer and reason around the specific questions posed in the previous [Game Planning](./Beginner-Tutorial-Game-Planning.md) lesson.
Generally, the more work you expect human staffers/GMs to do, the less your code needs to work. To support GMs you'd need to design commands to support GM-specific actions and the type of game-mastering you want them to do. You may need to expand communication channels so you can easily talk to groups people in private and split off gaming groups from each other. RPG rules could be as simple
GM:ing is work-intensive however, and even the most skilled and enthusiastic GM can't be awake all hours of the day to serve an international player base. The computer never needs sleep, so having the ability for players to "self-serve" their RP itch when no GMs are around is a good idea even for the most GM-heavy games.
On the other side of the spectrum are games with no GMs at all; all gameplay are driven either by the computer or by the interactions between players. Such games still need an active staff, but nowhere as much active involvement. Allowing for solo-play with the computer also allows players to have fun when the number of active
We want EvAdventure to work entirely without depending on human GMs. That said, there'd be nothing stopping a GM from stepping in and run an adventure for some players should they want to.
_Bulletin boards_ are a sort of in-game forum where posts are made publicly or privately. Contrary to a channel, the messages are usually stored and are grouped into topics with replies. Evennia has no default bulletin-board system.
In EvAdventure we will just use the default inter-account channels. We will also not be implementing any bulletin boards; instead the merchant NPCs will act as quest givers.
- Traditionally, from in-game with build-commands: This means builders creating content in their game client. This has the advantage of not requiring Python skills nor server access. This can often be a quite intuitive way to build since you are sort-of walking around in your creation as you build it. However, the developer (you) must make sure to provide build-commands that are flexible enough for builders to be able to create the content you want for your game.
- Externally (by batchcmds): Evennia's `batchcmd` takes a text file with Evennia Commands and executes them in sequence. This allows the build process to be repeated and applied quickly to a new database during development.
It also allows builders to use proper text-editing tools rather than writing things line-by-line in their clients. The drawback is that for their changes to go live they either need server access or they need to send their batchcode to the game administrator so they can apply the changes. Or use version control.
- Externally (with batchcode or custom code): This is the "professional game development" approach. This gives the builders maximum power by creating the content in Python using Evennia primitives. The `batchcode` processor
allows Evennia to apply and re-apply build-scripts that are raw Python modules. Again, this would require the builder to have server access or to use version control to share their work with the rest of the development team.
**EvAdventure Answer**
For EvAdventure, we will build the above-ground part of the game world using batch-scripts. The world below-ground we will build procedurally, using raw code.
In some game styles, players have the ability to create objects and even script them. While giving regular users the ability to create objects with in-built commands is easy and safe, actual code-creation (aka _softcode_ ) is not something Evennia supports natively.
Regular, untrusted users should never be allowed to execute raw Python
[read more about Evennia's stance on softcode here](../../../Concepts/Soft-Code.md). If you want users to do limited scripting, it's suggested that this is accomplished by adding more powerful build-commands for them to use.
There is a plethora of options out there, and what you choose depends on the game you want. It can be tempting to grab a short free-form ruleset, but remember that the computer does not have any intuitiion or common sense to interpret the rules like a human GM could. Conversely, if you pick a very 'crunchy' game system, with detailed simulation of the real world, remember that you'll need to actually _code_ all those exceptions and tables yourself.
For speediest development, what you want is a game with a _consolidated_ resolution mechanic - one you can code once and then use in a lot of situations. But you still want enough rules to help telling the computer how various situations should be resolved (combat is the most common system that needs such structure).
**EvAdventure Answer**
For this tutorial, we will make use of [Knave](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/250888/Knave), a very light [OSR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_School_Renaissance) ruleset by Ben Milton. It's only a few pages long but highly compatible with old-school D&D games. It's consolidates all rules around a few opposed d20 rolls and includes clear rules for combat, inventory, equipment and so on. Since _Knave_ is a tabletop RPG, we will have to do some minor changes here and there to fit it to the computer medium.
_Knave_ is available under a Creative Commons Attributions 4.0 License, meaning it can be used for derivative work (even commercially). The above link allows you to purchase the PDF and supporting the author. Alternatively you can find unofficial fan releases of the rules [on this page](https://dungeonsandpossums.com/2020/04/some-great-knave-rpg-resources/).
This follows from the RPG system decided upon in the previous question.
**EvAdventure Answer**
_Knave_ gives every character a set of six traditional stats: Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. Each has a value from +1 to +10. To find its "Defense" value, you add 10.
You have Strength +1. Your Strength-Defense is 10 + 1 = 11
To make a check, say an arm-wrestling challenge you roll a twenty-sided die (d20) and add your stat. You have to roll higher than the opponents defense for that stat.
I have Strength +1, my opponent has a Strength of +2. To beat them in arm wrestling I must roll d20 + 1 and hope to get higher than 12, which is their Strength defense (10 + 2).
If you attack someone you do the same, except you roll against their `Armor` defense. If you rolled higher, you roll for how much damage you do (depends on your weapon).
You can have _advantage_ or _disadvantage_ on a roll. This means rolling 2d20 and picking highest or lowest value.
In Knave, combat is turn-based. In our implementation we'll also play turn-based, but we'll resolve everything _simultaneously_. This changes _Knave_'s feel quite a bit, but is a case where the computer can do things not practical to do when playing around a table.
There are also a few tables we'll need to implement. For example, if you lose all health, there's a one-in-six chance you'll die outright. We'll keep this perma-death aspect, but make it very easy to start a new character and jump back in.
> In this tutorial we will not add opportunities to make use of all of the character stats, making some, like strength, intelligence and dexterity more useful than others. In a full game, one would want to expand so a user can utilize all of their character's strengths.
The main drawback is for games with slower roleplay pace. While you are having a thoughtful roleplaying scene over dinner, the game world reports that two days have passed. Having a slower game time than real-time is a less common, but possible solution for such games.
It is however _not_ recommended to let game-time exactly equal the speed of real time. The reason for this is that people will join your game from all around the world, and they will often only be able to play at particular times of their day. With a game-time drifting relative real-time, everyone will eventually be able to experience both day and night in the game.
The passage of time will have no impact on our particular game example, so we'll go with Evennia's default, which is that the game-time runs two times faster than real time.
This is a big question and depends on how deep and interconnected the virtual transactions are that are happening in the game. Shop prices could rice and drop due to supply and demand, supply chains could involve crafting and production. One also could consider adding money sinks and manipulate the in-game market to combat inflation.
The [Barter](../../../Contribs/Contrib-Barter.md) contrib provides a full interface for trading with another player in a safe way.
We will not deal with any of this complexity. We will allow for players to buy from npc sellers and players will be able to trade using the normal `give` command.
This is a common thing in RP-heavy games. Others will only see you as "The tall woman" until you introduce yourself and they 'recognize' you with a name. Linked to this is the concept of more complex emoting and posing.
Implementing such a system is not trivial, but the [RPsystem](../../../Contribs/Contrib-RPSystem.md) Evennia contrib offers a ready system with everything needed for free emoting, recognizing people by their appearance and more.
Changing room descriptions for day and night, winder and summer is actually quite easy to do, but looks very impressive. We happen to know there is also a contrib that helps with this, so we'll show how to include that.
There is an [Extended Room](../../../Contribs/Contrib-Extended-Room.md) contrib that adds a Room type that is aware of the time-of-day as well as seasonal variations.
**EvAdventure Answer**
We will stick to a normal room in this tutorial and let the world be in a perpetual daylight. Making Rooms into ExtendedRooms is not hard though.
One could picture weather making outdoor rooms wet, cold or burnt. In rain, bow strings could get wet and fireballs fizz out. In a hot room, characters could require drinking more water, or even take damage if not finding shelter.
**EvAdventure Answer**
For the above-ground we need to be able to disable combat all rooms except for the PvP location. We also need to consider how to auto-generate the rooms under ground. So we probably will need some statuses to control that.
Since each room under ground should present some sort of challenge, we may need a few different room types different from the above-ground Rooms.
This also depends on the type of game. In a pure freeform RPG, most objects may be 'imaginary' and just appearing in fiction. If the game is more coded, you want objects with properties that the computer can measure, track and calculate. In many roleplaying-heavy games, you find a mixture of the two, with players imagining items for roleplaying scenes, but only using 'real' objects to resolve conflicts.
**EvAdventure Answer**
We will want objects with properties, like weapons and potions and such. Monsters should drop loot even though our list of objects will not be huge in this example game.
The advantage of having multiple items is that it can be more immersive. The drawback is that it's also very fiddly to deal with individual coins, especially if you have to deal with different currencies.
**EvAdventure Answer**
_Knave_ uses the "copper" as the base coin and so will we. Knave considers the weight of coin and one inventory "slot" can hold 100 coins. So we'll implement a "coin item" to represent many coins.
### Do multiple similar objects form stack and how are those stacks handled in that case?
If you drop two identical apples on the ground, Evennia will default to show this in the room as "two apples", but this is just a visual effect - there are still two apple-objects in the room. One could picture instead merging the two into a single object "X nr of apples" when you drop the apples.
Limiting carrying weight is one way to stop players from hoarding. It also makes it more important for players to pick only the equipment they need. Carrying limits can easily come across as annoying to players though, so one needs to be careful with it.
_Knave_ limits your inventory to `Constitution + 10` "slots", where most items take up one slot and some large things, like armor, uses two. Small items (like rings) can fit 2-10 per slot and you can fit 100 coins in a slot. This is an important game mechanic to limit players from hoarding. Especially since you need coin to level up.
Item breakage is very useful for a game economy; breaking weapons adds tactical considerations (if it's not too common, then it becomes annoying) and repairing things gives work for crafting players.
In _Knave_, items will break if you make a critical failure on using them (rolls a native 1 on d20). This means they lose a level of `quality` and once at 0, it's unusable. We will not allow players to repair, but we could allow merchants to repair items for a fee.
Since _Knave_ deals with weapon lists and positions where items can be wielded, we will have a separate "Weapon" class for everything you can use for fighting. So, you won't be able to fight with a chair (unless we make it a weapon-inherited chair).
Crafting is a common feature in multiplayer games. In code it usually means using a skill-check to combine base ingredients from a fixed recipe in order to create a new item. The classic example is to combine _leather straps_, a _hilt_, a _pommel_ and a _blade_ to make a new _sword_.
A full-fledged crafting system could require multiple levels of crafting, including having to mine for ore or cut down trees for wood.
Evennia's [Crafting](../../../Contribs/Contrib-Crafting.md) contrib adds a full crafting system to any game. It's based on [Tags](../../../Components/Tags.md), meaning that pretty much any object can be made usable for crafting, even used in an unexpected way.
**EvAdventure Answer**
In our case we will not add any crafting in order to limit the scope of our game. Maybe NPCs will be able to repair items - for a cost?
As a rule, you should not hope to fool anyone into thinking your AI is actually intelligent. The best you will be able to do is to give interesting results and unless you have a side-gig as an AI researcher, users will likely not notice any practical difference between a simple state-machine and you spending a lot of time learning
For this tutorial, we will show how to add a simple state-machine AI for monsters. NPCs will only be shop-keepers and quest-gives so they won't need any real AI to speak of.
"Mobs" or "mobiles" are things that move around. This is traditionally monsters you can fight with, but could also be city guards or the baker going to chat with the neighbor. Back in the day, they were often fundamentally different these days it's often easier to just make NPCs and mobs essentially the same thing.
Since Evennia differentiates between `Sessions` (the client-connection to the game), `Accounts` and `Character`s, it natively supports multi-play. This is controlled by the `MULTISESSION_MODE` setting, which has a value from `0` (default) to `3`.
Due to the nature of _Knave_, characters are squishy and probably short-lived. So it makes little sense to keep a stable of them. We'll use use mode 0 or 1.
- Rooms. This is the traditional way. Each room's description tells you what command to use to modify your character. When you are done you move to the next room. Only use this if you have another reason for using a room, like having a training dummy to test skills on, for example.
- A Menu. The Evennia _EvMenu_ system allows you to code very flexible in-game menus without needing to walk between rooms. You can both have a step-by-step menu (a 'wizard') or allow the user to jump between the
Knave randomizes almost aspects of the Character generation. We'll use a menu to let the player add their name and sex as well as do the minor re-assignment of stats allowed by the rules.
The way classes and races work in most RPGs is that they act as static 'templates' that inform which bonuses and special abilities you have. Much of this only comes into play during character generation or when leveling up.
Often all we need to store on the Character is _which_ class and _which_ race they have; the actual logic can sit in Python code and just be looked up when we need it.
**EvAdventure Answer**
There are no races and no classes in _Knave_. Every character is a human.
We will use an alternative rule in _Knave_, where Characters gain XP by spending coins they carry back from their adventures. The above-ground merchants will allow you to spend your coins and exchange them for XP 1:1. Each level costs 1000 coins. Every level you have `1d8 * new level` (minimum what you had before + 1) HP, and can raise 3 different ability scores by 1 (max +10). There are no skills in _Knave_, but the principle of increasing them would be the same.
Deciding this affects the style of your entire game. PvP makes for exciting gameplay but it opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to "fairness". Players will usually accept dying to an overpowered NPC dragon. They will not be as accepting if they perceive another player as being overpowered. PvP means that you
have to be very careful to balance the game - all characters does not have to be exactly equal but they should all be viable to play a fun game with.
PvP does not only mean combat though. Players can compete in all sorts of ways, including gaining influence in a political game or gaining market share when selling their crafted merchandise.
**EvAdventure Answer**
We will allow PvP only in one place - a special Dueling location where players can play-fight each other for training and prestige, but not actually get killed. Otherwise no PvP will be allowed. Note that without a full Barter system in place (just regular `give`, it makes it theoretically easier for players to scam one another.
Going through the questions has helped us get a little bit more of a feel for the game we want to do. There are many, many other things we could ask ourselves, but if we can cover these points we will be a good way towards a complete,
