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| Idea Info |
Name:
Rotting Castles
Index:
Primary
Category:
Online
Submitted:
10/10/2003 9:17:16 PM
Written By:
9-11 |
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Rotting Castles
10/10/2003 9:17:16 PM
By: 9-11
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all Game Ideas by this Member
Category: Online Games
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Rotting Castles
Story:
Long ago, there was the Reficul, the Light and humanity. None else existed save animals and plants, no Life-Theives, Feral Wolves, Granite Shaped, Black Ones or zombies. The Reficul, with his sadistic nature, twisted corpses to create the Life-Thieves, twisted wolves and dogs to create the Feral Wolves, twisted stone itself into the Granite Shaped, twisted men to create the Black Ones and twisted the air itself to a vile concoction, spawning undead from corpses.
The Light, angered at seeing its beautiful creation of Alvion twisted and turned, banished the Reficul far from life, or death, in the great nothing of Void. However, in addition to creating the four Change-born, the Reficuls twisted air changed all humans, into sinners and wrong-doers. Seeing not only the few but the many changed, the Light decided to allow the four Change-borns to survive, as well as humanity.
We can only hope He was right to do so, for after centuries of hunting, all the Change born were caged in the small, hill-surrounded city-state of Under the Hill, or De’ount. Under the Hill citizens fled, leaving their thirteen castles to waste away in the once peaceful land.
Left within their blood, thirst for bedevilment lay, and so they killed the large armies waiting around their new home. Now, with long centuries gone, the Change-born exist forgotten, in the ruined castles of De’ount, warring amongst themselves, remembering the hundreds who died attempting to escape in the cliffs. The new citizens of De’ount need not leave their lands, for that land is still fresh and alive, despite the new denizens.
Philosophy and Laws of the Alvion Universe:
The Change-born are hated by humans, and instantly attacked. The only way to avoid an attack (though humans are weak comparatively) is to be a Black One and possess a human, thereby giving the look of a human. Returning, fire however, the Change-born will automatically attack the humans, desiring to cause them pain for their centuries of hatred.
The Change-borns inner feuding is comparable to four states, with different beliefs and ideals, living on a land which is not meant for four, but two, or perhaps one. Overall, they live in uneasy peace, but lands are shifting, and blood is nearly always pouring by one Change-born from the actions of another, though not necessarily of different types.
Another important note of Alvion is that every being has, what we might call “Life Force”. Now, this isn’t health or hit points. It is, indeed that spark that separates us from rocks. A very intelligent person, however, has no more than the dumbest. Rather, it is perception and aptitude that combine to form “Life Force”. When a being dies, most of its Life Force goes to be judged by the Light, to be sent to either go into the Void, or go upwards into Joy. However, just a wee bit stays behind, to allow things to grow in corpses.
The Change-born, however, have discovered a way to prevent their souls from going to be judged; a special portal which sucks the soul of a deceased Change-born into it and recreates their body and moves their items to them. However, the portals must be fine-tuned to the specific type of Change-born, so Life-Thieves will never be revived in a Black One city.
Gameplay:
Gameplay takes place in real time, and attacks are not as in Everquest combat; rather, they are like a platformer, but with jump majorly reduced. Depending on weapon, skill and your talent, your attack will have a greater or lesser cooldown. Damage also depends on those factors. I won’t go into it majorly, but the basic formula is;
Weapon Base - [skill-10/3] - [talent/6] = Final cooldown (in half-seconds), down to 1 sec.
Weapon Base + [skill-10] + [talent/2] = Final damage
So, a character who has a weapon with a base of 2 second cooldown and 3 damage with a skill of 17 and a talent of 4 deals 12 damage and has a cooldown of 1.5 seconds. Therefore, if you have a skill value of less than ten, you’ll be worse with it than normal.
Even with these numbers, the player has to click (or press, or trigger) quick enough.
Characters in Rotting Castles, regardless of level, are pretty dang hard to kill. A beginning character would probably have 80 health, therefore it’ll take a long while to kill him, plenty long enough to escape a madcap battle. Each level gives about 20 health added. The average character, lets say level 21, would have 700 health, sure he’ll deal more damage, but nonetheless, he’ll be a tough cookie to crack.
Whichever Change-born controls the zombies first controls them till control ends.
Shadows play a major part in Rotting Castles, as Life-Thieves, Granite Shaped and Black Ones can hide in the shadows from the light till sundown. Areas indoors and away from windows are always in “shadows”, and areas over hanged are shadow for most of the time.
A day in Rotting Castles in 24 minutes, and the day/night sequences are 12 and 12 (possibly varying for season if you have time).
Unlike games such as Everquest, when you die you will be revived with all your items, but you loose 50 experience and your corpse is a corpse, of course. Corpses rot after 72 minutes, turning into skeletons, then after 24 more minutes they turn into a pile of dust. Revival takes approximately thirty seconds.
Customization:
Now, as most everyone knows, there are three (starting) basic variables in your standard MMORPG other than appearance; race, class and statistics. Rotting Castles, however, sports race, statistics and…talents (skills too, but nyeh, they aren’t starting). Yes talents, just like we have. In Rotting Castles, talents are player-chosen, and are things like weapon talent or one (or more) movement talent.
Weapon talent is, as you may have guessed, affects your untrained (and trained) talent with a weapon. See above. Weapon talent, nonetheless, is no substitute for skill (see above equations). The same applies to the other talents. Even if you’ve got a really high Flight talent as a Granite Shaped or Life-Thief, you’ll need to earn some skill by flying around.
Skills increase slowly through using the skill-based task repetitively (not once every once in a while) or reading books on the skill in question. So, if you decide to go out tiger-hunting with your axe, and you kill fourteen tigers, more likely than not you’ll get a skill gain from all that swiping. Note that weapon skills do not increase if you aren’t hitting anything alive, like tigers or bears. If you are just standing there, your movement skills likewise do not increase.
Races are four; Life-Thieves, Black Ones, Feral Wolves, and Granite Shaped. I will describe them below, along with zombies.
Zombies 101:
Zombies come in two types; natural and life-theft. Natural zombies can be turned or controlled, depending on the Change-born in question, but they lack the ability to be majorly controlled; they are really just a tactical number on a large scale.
For more information of life-theft, see Life Thief 101, below.
Life Thief 101:
Life Thieves have the natural ability to cause natural zombies to surround them, like a wall. The zombies will attack, but they won’t move without the Life-Thief. That means two, three zombies tops will be able to attack a single target. This is called mobbing. Another thing is that they can heal themselves with dead corpses, so in great battles or after small ones they can heal.
Unfortunately for Life-Thieves, they cannot walk around during the day because they’ll take damage...at least early on. A potent object allows them to walk around freely during the day, but it’s available only to high level characters, as the low amount of them (steadily increasing with the number of players) are created only in Black One and Feral Wolf towns.
Life-Thieves at medium levels and higher can create zombies of steadily increasing power, but this cannot be used on corpses which are have already been used by other Life-Thieves for healing. Summoned zombies are completely under the Life-Thief's control, allowing them to send them running in any direction they please.
Finally, the Life-Thieves can turn themselves into a pair of yellowsky eyes and silver teeth, allowing them to fly and still suck life, although they can be hurt normally.
Overall, Life Thieves are good for the player with a reasonable grasp of tactics who doesn’t want to die often. Life Thief tactics should be to come in quick and hard, pull back, heal and repeat. They are not the ultimate tacticians or the ultimate survivors, but their capability in both is very useable.
Note: 1:500 Sun Stone to Player ratio. (Sun Stone is the item that allows you to walk around in the day)
Black One 101:
Black Ones can ‘mass’ or ‘swarm’ nearby zombies in a certain direction, up to about 100 feet (this means about 17 laid out corpses, head to toe). This is called moving. They can steal life from enemies with less than 10% health remaining.
Black Ones can walk around freely during the day, but they are slowed and their strength is reduced in the light. In this way, they are targets, but not too majorly. Being in shadows does in fact, undo this reduction.
Black Ones can possess humans and animals, allowing them to look like them, as well as use them for a “meat shield”. The possessed will take damage as enemies deal it to the Black One, until the possessed dies, at which point the Black One will emerge from the attack unscathed.
Finally, Black Ones can fire fireballs, highly damaging projectiles that shoot up to 50 feet away. Fireballs, as you might expect, cannot go through walls.
Overall, Black Ones can are good for a player who likes to sit back and kill enemies from afar. Black Ones tactics should be to flank their opponents and get the enemies from afar. They are not the ultimate fighters from afar, however.
Feral Wolves 101:
Feral Wolves can reverse the direction of incoming natural zombies, as long as no-one else is controlling them. This is called turning. They cannot steal the life of enemies, but this is compensated for.
Feral Wolves have full day-night freedom, unlike the Black Ones or the Life-Thieves. This is incredibly useful, as they have a full 12 minutes free from Life-Thieves.
Feral Wolves can turn living target human and other natural life-forms into wolven slaves. Wolven slaves operate similar to life-theft zombies, but they are faster and have less health cannot be used all the time, as they require the target to be alive and reasonably stationary. However, their range of control is full as that of a life-theft zombies.
Finally, Feral Wolves can turn to and from a half-wolf form and a large wolf form. The half-wolf can wield weapons and wear armor, but has much less capability unarmed and is slower. The other way around is, well, the other way around.
Feral Wolves are good choices for beginning players as well as experienced ones, lacking such major tactical decisions as the “Drain or Zombify?” question, or the timing of the Black Ones. Feral Wolves tactics should be to run in fast and hard, hopefully right after the enemies battle, with wolf slaves and all. Regardless, they are not the ultimate in anyway.
Granite Shaped 101:
Zombies which are not targeted by a Black One ignore the Granite Shaped. This is called stone cold. They can take refreshment by shifting to a form made of true stone, where they regenerate at 4 times the speed and twice the defense but are completely immobile.
Granite Shaped turn to a very slow moving stone when hit by sunlight. They move at about 1/8th their normal rate and fight just as slowly. As per usual, shadows cure this.
Granite Shaped can turn a target human into stone, and once the sun goes down, the human will turn to a servant to the Granite Shaped. The servant human is a cross-way between zombie and wolf speed, not shambling but not streaking either, with zombie-like defense and wolf-like strength. However, once the sun comes up the servant turns to stone and shatters.
Finally, Granite Shaped can fly through the air, but only a while up; about 12 feet levitation and 24 feet for a very short period of time.
Granite Shaped are good for a player who has played all three others and would like to take a combination and new race. They are not ultimate in anyway, just like the Feral Wolves, the Life-Thieves, and the Black Ones.
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