Portion of future Epic user stories

It is a collection of future Epic User Stories for our Trello page, their purpose is to help us to achieve our Epic goal:

Create living simulation of underground postapocaliptic world with a steampunk flavor.

Player should be able to take any role in this society from explore and warrior to builder, shopkeeper or beggar.  

==

Towns and Cities.

As a player I want to have access to various activities without leaving town or traveling between towns. I can play game for hours without living city border. (quests, crafts, trades, mobsters, temple and corporate stuff etc)

So, I want towns to have..

I want towns to have different houses consisting from more than one room.

I can meet real home owner. Home owner wants me to respect his or her privacy and property;

I want towns to have shops based on town size and resources.

Smaller towns and homestead would have one general store and / or one specified shop.
When big cities may have even shop district.

I expect general stores to sell different stuff from all categories of items by reselling it without real production.

Special shops would be built near specified workshops.

I want to see:

Smithy - melee weapons and smithy tools;

Apothecary - chemicals and solutions;

Inventor’s shops  - cogwheels, springs, steam engines and other mechanical stuff;

Leatherworker and cobbler – armours, and leather cloth,  boots;

Clothier – cloth;

Gunsmith – firearms, bullets and tools for guns;

Baker, Butcher, winemaker – foods and drinks.

Snailmaster – sells pack snails.

As a player I want to buy or setup my own business in any of theirs categories. Run my own shop, hire and fire workers. Also, I want a competition from competitors.

I want towns to have Taverns and halls (Also they should exist on their own near roads).

I want to buy food and drinks in Taverns, gamble and chat to locals.

Towns should have law enforcement, that will do more job except  killing random necromutants.

Law enforcement keeps records of crimes (including mine).
From one hand they will not attack me on sight if I have stolen a spoon, but from other hand they have to understand 2+2 and be suspicious about me if thievery spree starts right after my arrival.  

Towns should send patrols to fight necromutants and ruffians.

I want towns and locations to keep reputation of other eternities (including me).

It should be Civilization-like relations model like:

We caught you stealing -10;

You killed a lot of necromutants around town +15;

You sold artifact at our town. We appreciate it! + 10;

You own small property in our town. +5

You have made nasty deeds against our foes. We like it! +5.

Total: +25 (warm)

I should be able to find small jobs in town. Some of them are not very heroic.

For the relations with other eternities it would be decided during world generation.

I may expect to be attacked by law enforcements if  wear cloth associated with other eternity they hate.

I want towns to be source of different quests I can solve to get fame, coins or food, if am really desperate and it is really tiny quest.

City watch (law enforcement) should set prizes for necromutants around town if mana wind is strong enough.

Good bonuses should attracts bounty hunters that will not be in town for long.

Big enough towns should have Magistrate.

Magistrate should keep records of people and their lives. Also they should give ‘political’ quests and other various tasks for you to do. They will pay you for cartography achievements.

As player I want to meet interesting people with a history, fears and stories.

People may tell me their stories or refuse if they find me repulsive or unfriendly.

I may gain friendship of people by doing stuff they find good for them. Both for specified persons or whole eternity.

Builder:
I should be able to build house, shed or even manor. Yes, building.

These objects should be properly registered as map objects or even global map objects.

I want to assign a role for this building except for my ‘hero’s lair’.

I may want to build, for example, a workshop, hire people and start working as a smith there.

Wealth:

Making a fortune should be useful for me.

I want to buy interesting items. Especially I want to have a market, maybe black market, of great and rare and utterly expensive good.

I want to hire people to do tasks for me or assign my own quests for NPC.

I should be able to give bribes to people and get their favor or they may refuse it they hate me enough or find it disgusting.

I want to purchase property, hire someone to create property, including monuments in my honor or the honor of my cat.

I want to make crazy things with my wealth, like building ruby houses.

I want to donate my money to development of cities, towns or homesteads.

I want to use my money to corner local economy and buyout towns!

Exploration and explorers:

Mana fluctuation may occur opening rifts to different locations. Even if they close in some period of time it will reopen later.
Because of this local governments pay you good coins for exploring it and bringing back artifacts from these “lagoons”.   

Once you find a lagoon entrance you can enter it and travel there. Your entrance may occasionally close and you will have to find a new one.
With enough skill you may understand when it will close or keep it open for longer period.

‘Lagoons’ are strange locations completely perverted by wild mana.

Novice adventure:

As a novice adventure I want to have a chance to join a guild of adventurers and seek their guidance and help.

World Generation

I want game to create world with a history starting from Exodus (moment when people fled to Catacombs) instead of just placing them.

I want to see and read history of fist conquer of the frontier, met historical locations or monuments.

Underground rivers

I want to find and explore underground rivers and lakes.

Exploring water needs special equipment.

Very specific loot can be found underwater.

Bridges and ferries.

Mana wind

I want mana to be dangerous contamination agent.
It will affect necromutants activity, so they will rise in bigger numbers and be more aggressive.

It have to contaminate living beings giving them strange changes and effects.
Towns should be built in calm places, while interesting locations maybe have high mana level.
I want equipment to help me with mana contamination (like suits).

Mana should contaminate trees (huge mushrooms) turning them into flesh hunting monsters.

Trees:

I want more use of trees (huge mushrooms).

Traps:
I want to experience traps, both natural like quicksand and made by living creatures (sapient and not).

Farms:

They grow food and shepherd snails and roaches.

I want to steal fruits from farms or grow them.

Necromutants

I want them to be a blight of world of Fallen instead of just mobs.

They shouldn’t be constantly aggressive, but if mana level is low they may just wander around without purpose.

Mana they drop should be very contaminating. It should change the look of the level in period of time.

Ruffians

Small groups of villains. They shouldn’t be always aggressive towards player (For example, by default they would be semi-neutral, don’t attacking player inside their camps).
Player should be able to take villain role, lead the band or wipe them.

Villains offer quests that usually bring disorder and chaos to ‘civilized’ towns.

Game maps for next version

I believe in procedural generation.
Combined with hand-made game features it can give virtually infinite replayability both for RPG and strategy games.
That's why, map generation algorithm was my target number one for a long-long period.
You can't imagine how many different algorithms I have tried.
From one hand I want semi-open word for our game.  (semi-open, because we don't need another world without game project).
From other hand, game should have interesting mazes and labyrinths to explore.

So! I think, that I close to my goal. Open this screenshot.
Yes, instead of blocks variability it has couple of outstanding bugs, but it combines maze to explore and enough space to add special locations (towns, lairs, crypts etc)

0.3 map

This is version 0.3 main  random map (Full size: LINK).
I have tried to make more cave like dungeons.
You can see underground town, its outskirt, few farms, homesteads and other random locations.
All of them need stories, quests and adventures. ^_^
From 0.3 and after I'll add more and more stuff to explore and loot!

Map generator lib

This is the map generated by Jesus05 algorithm. 74994 rooms at one map. ^_^
Of course, we don't need the map of that size. I don't think we need a map of 100 rooms, but it is good, when algorithm can do its job regardless of size.

But, the most important part, algorithm distributes room types over the map.
I say about enter, exit, boss room, pre-boss room, treasure room, puzzle room etc.

We wouldn't add this lib ti "new year" version. It isn't finished yet, but I am preparing lib interface while Jesus05 polishing generators lib.

Road map

Fallen has huge world. That's it.

When I was choosing the platform, I have mobile and PC on my table.

Mobile is cool! It is potentially the strongest 'marketing' decision, but it has it's own limitations.
Big computer, from other hand, has 'gift of power'. The simplest notebook has overwhelming resources for the roguelike game.
Last year I weight all pro and contra and take the side of big computers.

From this point, I found that it is rather silly to use PC as platform and fight for every kilobyte, because it is 'great tradition of roguelike development'.

Yeah, yeah. One of that, I hate so ugly.

Of course, we can battle the level design and make game, that wouldn't take more that couple of megabytes of the memory and be so proud of it.

Who cares, lol.

Players want to play game. Run it on their computer and have fun. Nobody cares, how many gigabytes of operative memory would stay empty and hollowed, while he or she plays the game.
That's why I decided to use PC and utilize it's vast resources. Game eats up about one gigabyte of the operative memory. It simply keeps everything in memory an has huge maps. All world are in play, every second.
It gives great possibilities, I'll wrote about them, but has its drawbacks.

One of them – pathfinding.

If one creature tries to find path from point a to point b, when the range between them is about 200 tiles, it is no problem.
It would be done on fly.
But, if the group of 100 creatures wants to take a million tiles long stroll?
Heh. Easy. I shouldn't reinvent the bicycle. It has been done thousands of times before Fallen.
First of all.
They move as unit. It means that unit does all long-distance checks, when single creature looks for the path to units position or its position in formation.
Part two, until player stays close, they don't literally move using standard algorithm.
Unit just pull out all its creatures like carrot and replant somewhere else in a bulk.

And the last, but not the least – the road map.

When map has been generated, the game creates the road map – highly abstract copy of actual map at 20x1 or 30x1 scale. Tiles of this map aren't complicate. They are just true or false, can go or not.
Unit looks for its goal on this map and select closest tiles block, where it would tell it's creatures to go. It isn't a strict order. Creatures is going to follow it, if they don't have anything important at their hands, like fighting. It means, that guards patrol will help you to fight this monsters, but wouldn't stay there forever and will go away. You can follow them for your safety, but it is your choice.

Heh. That's the story. This routines are useless and burdening if you have small maps, of course.

Road map in Fallen, you ask?
Finished and correct.
Now I have to test pathfinding and let creatures' groups to move all over the world of Fallen!

Minimap

I didn’t plan to post about this, rather minor event, but plans changed.

I speak about the minimap. I finished it yesterday and everything gone unexpectedly easy and smoothly.

I don’t feel lost any longer while travels, also, minimap gave me couple of ideas about future development and showed one unpleasant bug, that slows down the game.

Few creatures are sent inside the walls and clatter pathfinding in useless attempts to fight and be fought.

Interesting idea about future development? Well. As I wrote, I plan to create routines, which will move creatures around map and wouldn’t consume lot of CPU time.

It looks like, that with a little efforts, this routines would emulate full scale ‘life simulation’, without creating this disturbing couple of lifetimes goal - ‘Game algorithms copy the real life’.

I gave this evening and all Saturday. Let’s see, is it worth to bother.

I don't feel any aspiration to work on new grab, open and other interface menus, right now.
But, I started making config files, maps and random canvases. It looks like for every 10 configs, we need at least 50 maps and 20-30 canvases. It would provide decent quantity of combinations.

Also, as promised, I'll "confess" why I have deleted previous global map.
Well, It wasn't interesting, no, it was booooring!!!
So, next version would have really small map, literally, maybe 20x20 tiles, some sort of new player territory, but it would have sufficient quantity of interesting features. When we would be sure, that randomization working  good and this small zone would provide gameplay interesting enough, we would enlarge it.