Monster and item descriptions

Oct 14, 2014, 1:16 pm
#1
Joined: Apr 2, 2014
Occupation: Navastating
Location: Aslona
Posts: 764
How would you feel about adding descriptions for monsters and items?

For example, you would see a monster descrpition either while looking at and examining it, or if you use a stethoscope on it. Item descriptions could be accessed through inventory, so that pressing the item letter would open a description.

For monster descriptions, I imagine something like the "fiction" for floating eye or hedgehog on the wiki.

I would gladly try to write some of these, but any non-script programming is way beyond my reach.
Oct 14, 2014, 2:23 pm
#2
Joined: Dec 11, 2008
Posts: 1,770
Maybe you could gain access to these descriptions via a monster encyclopedia?
System would indicate in graphic if person is mounted on horse or not.
Same system also show if person mounted on boar, elephant, polar bear etc.
Or if person mounted on ass.
Ivan find mounting on ass funny.
Oct 14, 2014, 2:47 pm
#3
Joined: Sep 8, 2010
Occupation: Petty Functionary
Location: Drinking pea soup in the world map
Interests: Mangoes
Posts: 1,216
And to get access to the entry in the monster encyclopedia, you have to kill that monster first.
Batman? wrote
its been so long since i had gotten that far i didnt think it through. arrrr!!!!!!
Oct 14, 2014, 2:51 pm
#4
Joined: Dec 11, 2008
Posts: 1,770
Warheck wrote
And to get access to the entry in the monster encyclopedia, you have to kill that monster first.

That kinda defeats the purpose of an encyclopedia, unless the encyclopedia entries remain constant over all games?
System would indicate in graphic if person is mounted on horse or not.
Same system also show if person mounted on boar, elephant, polar bear etc.
Or if person mounted on ass.
Ivan find mounting on ass funny.
Oct 14, 2014, 3:01 pm
#5
Joined: Sep 8, 2010
Occupation: Petty Functionary
Location: Drinking pea soup in the world map
Interests: Mangoes
Posts: 1,216
Could do, a bit like the hi-scores.
Batman? wrote
its been so long since i had gotten that far i didnt think it through. arrrr!!!!!!
Oct 14, 2014, 4:08 pm
#6
Joined: Dec 11, 2008
Posts: 1,770
I do kinda like the idea of a constant encyclopedia that gets updated as you play, but the idea I was going for was like an actual book with entries on monsters, so you could learn about them early and prepare.
Of course you'd have to find (or purchase) one such encyclopedia, and then there could be multiple different types of varying content.

e.g. "Common or Garden Wildlife" could be a book with entries on bunnies, large hedgehogs and carnivorous plants, whereas "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" would take forever to read and only have information on eddys.

Having the books presented in such a way is also a good reason for having the monster's lore there.
Of course there should also be some monsters which do not have entries in any such encyclopedia (i.e. uniques or people) but could have mentions or hints to them.
System would indicate in graphic if person is mounted on horse or not.
Same system also show if person mounted on boar, elephant, polar bear etc.
Or if person mounted on ass.
Ivan find mounting on ass funny.
Oct 15, 2014, 12:01 am
#7
Joined: Dec 3, 2007
Occupation: Chaos Weaver
Location: Standing between all life and death
Posts: 2,888
I rather like this idea. Having said that, how are you going to present the information? The text box isn't really suitable.
Uchuudonge wrote
creating stable chaos
making patterns where there should be none
sewing order into the chaos
you spit in the face of random numbers, of chaos
Oct 15, 2014, 1:08 am
#8
Joined: Dec 11, 2008
Posts: 1,770
Maybe if we could see how the stethoscope code works we could use its unique little box to display some longer text.
System would indicate in graphic if person is mounted on horse or not.
Same system also show if person mounted on boar, elephant, polar bear etc.
Or if person mounted on ass.
Ivan find mounting on ass funny.
Oct 15, 2014, 1:58 am
#9
Joined: Apr 2, 2014
Occupation: Navastating
Location: Aslona
Posts: 764
4zb4 wrote
Maybe if we could see how the stethoscope code works we could use its unique little box to display some longer text.

That.

Also, learning the lore from different books sounds nice, even though it could be annoying to lose all your monster knowledge after each death.
Oct 15, 2014, 3:20 am
#10
Joined: Dec 11, 2008
Posts: 1,770
red_kangaroo wrote
it could be annoying to lose all your monster knowledge after each death.

Heheheh, and that's what your memory is for!
System would indicate in graphic if person is mounted on horse or not.
Same system also show if person mounted on boar, elephant, polar bear etc.
Or if person mounted on ass.
Ivan find mounting on ass funny.
Oct 15, 2014, 7:07 am
#11
Joined: Sep 8, 2010
Occupation: Petty Functionary
Location: Drinking pea soup in the world map
Interests: Mangoes
Posts: 1,216
We could also make it that learning about unknown monsters could be an outcome of sci-talks, and update the encyclopedia that way, as a supplement.

This gets me thinking about another thing: keeping a graphical, tabular record of things that have killed the player, as a supplement to the high score table.
Batman? wrote
its been so long since i had gotten that far i didnt think it through. arrrr!!!!!!
Oct 15, 2014, 11:11 am
#12
Joined: Dec 2, 2007
Location: New Attnam
Interests: bananas
Posts: 2,299
This all reminds me of Moria, which I like.

In Moria the way it works is: you can query your knowledge of "humanoids" but the "necromancer" doesn't show up because you haven't encountered him.

After you see your first necromancer, you can then recall some basic details about him.. how quickly he moves, etc. But nothing about his fighting ability.

After you first battle - he casts a spell on you or hits you, then you gain knowledge of that specific attack and how much damage it can do.

So it's all very gradual. If you kill them before they can attack you then you never really learn what they're capable of. And then yeah it also tells you how many necromancers have ever killed you in the past and vice versa.
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