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Ah, Goblin Fort. A sentience classic. The place to get those pesky last few first class levels... A place that makes me wish I still had all of Nymhju's cloned WMD's.
Yes, it's time for the next installment of Sirin's Design Notes: Helping remake the world one area at a time, without excess radiation!
As usual, the first thing one notices upon entering this area (like most of it's age) are the repetitive descriptions. Now I understand that sometimes you get alot of rooms that are all similar, but you'd think one could still try to make a few distinguishing factors. Goblin Fort doesn't suffer from this as much as my previous 'review', Cult of Shadows, but it's still there. No, something more insidious than repetitive descriptions haunts this place: Room descriptions with action. I would guess that nearly 80% of the rooms possess some form of action description, usually the scene of a battle between the Kobolds and Goblins. Of course, this could all be done much better with mob echoes and scripts. I'm no god among builders precisely, but I think this area has gone a -long- time without any serious updating, just by the look of it. The greet scripts I encountered, for example, possessed one interesting flaw or bug: They fired for each person that entered the room, at once. Areo and I looked at the goblin inventor as an example, fixing this with a simple application of a token with a 2 tick timer:
[quote]
[i]
[b][u]Before:[/u][/b]
emote jumps suddenly at your arrival.
mob zecho BOOM!!!...A loud explosion rocks the fort!
say Now look what you've made me do!
say Get out!
mutter
[b][u]After:[/u][/b]
if hastoken $i 201
else
token give inventor 201
emote jumps suddenly at your arrival.
mob zecho BOOM!!!...A loud explosion rocks the fort!
say Now look what you've made me do!
say Get out!
mutter
endif
[/i]
[/quote]
I would wonder if this is a common flaw amongst old areas such as this. Areo is going to look into how the token give stuff works to determine whether or not this is a bug, but the token did not work if it was given to the player. Only if given to the inventor mob itself.
[i]Quoted from Areo: "Correction. It would work if given to the player, but works better on the mob, as that keeps it from causing explosions too often (if a lot of people are in there)"[/i]
The item/mob descriptions themselves aren't as bad as others, though they all suffer from the usual spelling errors and occasional references to strange things. For example, I looked at several mentions of a 'Mighty Kobold Empire'. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've never seen such a thing anywhere else in the game. Specific room mentions are in the two tactical intelligence quarters rooms, (291 and 292 for vnums) and the Throne Room (287). Also, Gorak's throne is described as 'massive' and 'solid gold' in the room description, where as the item itself is wooden and very small. Punctuation seems to be a problem too, but it's to be expected. The layout for all the rooms themselves is less of an issue, being fairly consistent with what one would expect from some kind of castle or defensive structure. Relatively square, with high walls, thick gates, and defense towers. Still, with all the goblins being described as something along the lines of cruel savages, I question how they could logically build a solid structure of that kind.
For shits and giggles, my notes taken during the actual area tour. (Yes, I know I swear too much.):
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[i]
Goblin Fort: Action descriptions and repeat descs for the lose. Edit: Fucking spelling errors. Also, fucking greet and grall script code. Possible second. Many of the greet scripts firing for each person that enters the room, (tested with Sirin and Areo, fixable via a restrict token that makes it so a script can only fire once every two ticks or so) Design advice: Keep the theme, but a complete overhaul is needed. I suggest a new layout, and perhaps some kind of story-driven quest to go along with the entire thing. Too many contradictions as it is, especially with mentions to a 'Mighty Kobold Empire'.
[/i]
[/quote]
In light of all this, my suggestion would be to keep the theme of the place, but change the layout with new descriptions, as well as going over all the mobs/items/scripts. This place could be an absolute goldmine for story-driven content, later on. As usual, I'd like everyone else to give their thoughts in the matter too! Suggestions are the things that will make this game glorious, in the end. (Good suggestions, anyway.)
I don't yet have the point at which I'd suggest this area be redone, but the final suggested order will only be submitted after I've reviewed all the areas I've been asked to.
Edit: Next up, Dungeon Mystica!
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While Goblins may be thought of as cruel savages, Kobolds aren't nearly as cruel or as savage. The possibility of the location of the "great Kobold empire" could have been Goblin Fort itself. Goblin Fort having such a uniform fashion could indicate that they did not create it, but rather, took it over. It could have been dwarves, humans, even Kobolds.
I guess the only person who would know that would be the creator, and in my many years of being on this game, I have no clue who made Goblin Fort.
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I'm sure Areo or Syn could find out who made it. I cannot remember, off hand.
However, an 'Empire' suggests far more than just a fort. It doesn't make sense that it would consist of a single location. Now, on the other hand, perhaps the aforementioned empire is subterranian. This could even be the basis for a whole new area, if the concept is good enough.
Mostly what I meant by goblins being savages was their theoretical inability to make complex standing stone structures. Kobolds might, perhaps, which would follow the whole 'Goblins in your base, killing your mans' train of thought.