Design and mechanics of Gothic 1

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Ateiggaer's picture
Ateiggaer
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Just wanted to put this here, not as a wishlist, but just for some people to see and maybe take some inspiration from.
And who knows what may be possible through Open MW in the future. ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSc-WRl-0pM

Biboran's picture
Biboran
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There are opect for gothic - ReGoth or something

Ateiggaer's picture
Ateiggaer
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Ah interesting, didn't know that existed.
One aspect I would love to see in Morrowind too, is different animal behavior, maybe with Open MW that will be more feasible, especially since TR adds a lot more non hostile creatures it would be nice to have some creatures that only attack you when you get to close or are near their nest.

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Kevaar
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Technically do-able via scripting I think. For attacking near a nest, it'd theoretically go something like

if ( GetDistance, "nest_object" <=500 )
setFight 100
elseif
setFight 10
endif

Give or take some syntax. I'm not sure what it'd do to framerate though.

Or the less hacky way of doing it is having two different creatures, one that's naturally aggressive and its spawnpoint gets placed near nests, and the other that's not and is placed everywhere else.

The idea has me intrigued though...what TR creatures would you have doing what behaviors?

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Ateiggaer
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Well for example Velks, some of them could show some natural fleeing behaviors if the player comes to close but stop again after a short distance. Of course there would also be some who are more used to strangers and let them come near them.
Then bigger creatures like plain striders or other wild but not hostile creatures of bigger size could have some temperament, especially bulls, which would require some custom animations (which are a pain in the a** to do in Morrowind, or so I heard), of warning the player before charging.
Then some pack behaviour like showed in the video of this topic of some carnivourous animals that normaly don't attack the player if alone, but in greater numbers try their luck, and scavenger type of animals.

All this would greatly enhance the experience for the players IMO, if they can observe different animal behaviours and patterns just like in the real world, where people tell you to act a certain way around bears, because they can be dangerous but not attack everyone on sight like in most games.

Now I get it that that's probably not an easy thing to do in Morrowinds engine, but if TR would design those creatures with those behaviours in mind, as you said scripted solutions could impact the framerate quite a bit, but who knows what will be possible if some modders create easyier to use, better optimised tools for that in the Open MW engine

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Gnomey
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From the help file that shipped with the CS:

The following table gives you the following general behavior:
100 Always Attacks
95 Will Attack as PC gets close (3000 units)
90 Will Attack as PC gets close (2000 units)
80 Will Attack as PC gets close or if he dislikes you (1000 units, 40 Disp)
70 Will Attack if close and strong dislike (1000 units, 35 disp)
60 Will Attack if he dislikes you and you get close (Disp below 30)
50 Will Attack if he hates you (Disp at 0)
40 Will attack if he dislikes you, and you get close. (500 Units, Disp 10)
30 Will Attack if hates you and you commit crime.
20 Will Attack if dislikes you and multiple crimes.
10 Will attack if he hates you and you do multiple crimes on him.
0 Will ONLY attack if attacked first.

Note that I'd always take the help file with a pinch of salt, as I expect it was written before some mechanics were finalized or tested. It's also not clear how this would apply to creatures, where disposition is not a factor.

I've only ever played (some of) the demo for Gothic 1, but it definitely caught my attention, and if I ever go back and play older games it's pretty much at the top of the list. Most of my memories of it involve being killed by powerful creatures, having trouble understanding the controls, and smoking joints.cheeky

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Ateiggaer
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Haha yeah that sounds about right, but I can really recommend it, although you may need some mod to make it work on newer systems.
By all the differences you'll notice that Gothic 1 has also a lot of similarities with Morrowind, hostile evironment, NPC treating you badly until you have proven your worth, the sense of accomplishing something growing from a nobody to a killing machine, enemies that are higher level, believable and immersive worldbuilding etc., or maybe that was just the general design philosophy of RPGs around that time, I don't know.

Would be interesting to try some of those numbers on creatures for sure, which reminds me I think I saw a similar table but for morale and when a character decides to flee in Morrowind, although I could be wrong.

PS: as an example, I was especially impressed with how detailed the Gothic series could be in some aspects, like at lower levels you can clearly see your character holding a sword in a akward way and hitting enemies pretty unaturally and later after some training, this changes and he uses the sword in a much more effiecent manner.