I think the "Ancient" VS "Modern" idea is that technology and magic are opposites. Ancient magic is more powerful because of its age and origin in a world of purer magic. Recent tech is more powerful because it's a human invention and we perfect it. Having said that, you could argue that as time goes on, our understanding of magic would also increase.

*shrug*

I'm glad this thread was started, you guys are so smart and helpful!

On the subject of Magic...

Not everyone will be able to use or be proficient in using Magic. Maybe a character or two doesn't get magic well, so they can't learn any!
Or normal soldiers don't have a single magic they can use, etc.

Just something to think about once again

(03-30-2015, 05:47 AM)Bounty Hunter Lani Wrote: Why do "Ancient" potions always seem to be better than regular, modern potions? Did the potion-making technology somehow take a nosedive after years and years of innovation?

because... the World Health Organization of your game found out that potions are toxic and introduced regulations to limit their power. :D

I think it's not so much the fact that the potions are Ancient, what makes them strong, but the fact that BECAUSE it's ancient, it comes from a diffrent background of knowledge; possibly a diffrent culture.
If you think about it, there are a lot of treatments and types of medicin that are specific to a certain part of the world, or a culture. Chinease medicin is said to be a powerfull one, shames are known to have healing powers, other types of treatment for illness aind injuries might not be taught to those who study to become doctors these days but can in fact still work.

There is nothing wrong with having some ancient knowledge be surperior to current one, as long as it doesn't apply to everyting. (Maybe the potion made fom terraberrys really does heal wounds faster then anything else, but the potion made from snarkleaf actually has some nasty sideffects if you take to much.)

On the other hand, no one's abusing the snarkleaf by merely chewing it to relieve their toothache except that shady guy boiling it down into snarotine. That's what happens when some modern guy finds something they can abuse.

Still, I can't help but think of Wade Davis, a professor of anthropology and an ethnobotonist who went to Haiti during Jean-Claude (Bébé Doc) Duvalier's reign tyrannical reign to investigate the yellow zombie powder and claimed to have seen it made by a witchdoctor ( a houngan... or male priest for the vudon aware). Oh, make no mistake.... his claims of the chemical compound he believes is the active ingredient responsible for the Zombie state have been repeatedly called into question, but damn what story.

So you could think that ancient or forbidden medicine could be more passive until a modern user obtains and refines it. OR it could still be couched in mystery and still more potent (and possibly lethal if you want).

Ah yes, side effects are a nice way to deal with this, as it's even true today with modern medicine. Today, rigorous testing is in place to prevent compounds from being used if they are too strong or create undesireable side effects and this often means reducing the dose or including a second (or third+++! for example for cancer treatment) compoud the person needs to ingest to ensure the side effects are managed.

Does the benefit outweigh the problems?

Also, did you know that according to recent research and testing, we can reverse the aging in a body but it creates cancers? Following the previous logic, if we can defeat the cancers we could perhaps expand the human life cycle!
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/...ice-humans

(03-30-2015, 12:10 AM)MetalRenard Wrote: Alien Isolation... (other stuff) .....feels "gamey".

love this game so here's my take: you're not supposed to find everything. the alien is stalking you through the ship, you gotta run and panic and hope there's something where you're running. you probably weren't "playing it right" (being hunted in a game like that is a really unique, adrenalizing experience. if you haven't played alien isolation, DO EEET! (and start on hard)



that's a dumb sentence. don't ever make me type that again. if there's a "right" way to play your game, then you're the wrong person to be making games. Mega Man is the perfect example of what i'm talking about. in every level, you're taught the basic mechanics, then they throw you two more curveballs based on them, and then you fight the boss. you have to remember to make your games intuitive not just to you, but to people who aren't you, who don't see from behind your eyes. this was the hardest part for me to overcome in testing, because my friends would just blast through areas, and i meant them to slow down and explore my ego world. it's almost like an interpretive dance that you're leading. you have to take the player by the hand without them knowing, show them what to do without telling them up front, and know when to take the gloves off and let them run when they're ready.

Discussions on Tutorials, NPCs and Scenes

Tutorials. Teach the player to do stuff somehow. Up to you how to do it!

Is that what you were trying to say, Kasper? 'Cuz the first part was Ra-Ra-Ra about a game that was used to make a point about item placements, and I wasn't sure where it was going

Anyway, ON TO THE NEXT IDEAS!

Make sure to not make NPCs give you a whole storybook every time you talk to them. ESPECIALLY don't put Wait frames in between those long conversations, 'Cuz... well, self-explanatory

Furthering on the subject of NPCs...

Not everyone will call something the same thing!
What may be called the White Shadowspaghetti in one area may be called Grey Wigglemagoo in the next town over!

Also, not everyone will understand your language. Perhaps making up a new language could be in order?

Oh, and SLANG!
Making up some slang for different towns could be a fun thing to do
And perhaps weird quotes on a character would add a little humor!

I know one of my characters will say weird lines, like:
"Today's future is tomorrow's past!"
"I hope you had your breakfast, 'Cuz you're about to be LUNCHED ON!"
and other such gems.

Making some stuff up, or modifying an already-set phrase adds character to characters!

...CHARACTER.

(Have I said "character" enough? )

Hey, on the subject of lengthy dialogs with NPCs, let's not forget the ever loved (loathed) cutscenes.

You know how it is. Sometimes, someone makes a nice cutscene sequence that is interesting. But you had to restart the game and ... oh, dear lord... THERE IT IS AGAIN!. What happens if you died before saving..? ACK! THE LENGTHY A** CUTSCENE AGAIN!

Now I'm not saying that you should eliminate cutscenes. But nor am I saying make them epic monologues of psychobabble and filled with tomes of techno-crazed knowledge. Rather that, use a mechanism to allow the player to SKIP THE WHOLE THING AT HIS/HER LEISURE!!!!!

My personal favorite within RPGMaker XP is by way of having two parallel process events running. ONE event controls the dialog.... your normal garbage "GUY TALKS" ... "OTHER GUY TALKS" ... "PLAY MUSIC" ... "MAKE SOUND OF GUN GOING OFF" ... "SHOW BLOODY CHARACTER"... "CUE THE SCREAM". BUT at the same time, the second parallel process event does a check with the 'Button Input Processing' command to see if any key was pressed. If it was, stop all the music, kill the sound effects, and just go to the next map.