formulas (alchemical, alloys, herbal, etc...)

From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-04 08:57:25

Formulas for mixtures of components needs to be addressed. If we were to allow players to experiment and find there own formulas by just randomly mixing the ingredients hoping to find a mixture that does some good, we would have to take into account every possible mixture of every possible ingredient and define an effect for each mixture. If we didn’t take quantity into account, the task would still be monumental.

What is a much better approach but not so perfect, is to just provide “blueprints” or better “recipe” of the proper mixtures to players (via learning from books, sages, other players, etc..) If the player has the recipe and all the ingredients and required equipment they should be able to produce the mixture. This would save the immense amount of work needed to calculate every possible mixture by just making recipes and including them in books or having sages teach players.

This would apply to any type of mixing

Alloys
Alchemy
Potions
Runes?
Herbal mixtures
Anymore?

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-02-04 14:19:10
In-Reply-To: 521

Yes, recipes are the way to go.

I'm not sure how you intended this, but I don't think players should need to learn the recipe before making a substance, in the sense that they could simply try out different mixtures and stumble upon a valid recipe we have pre-defined (the same thing as with spells).

In any case, it's important to note that substance combinations that we have not defined should yield random results, ofttimes nasty ones like explosions or acid or poison. This is intended to discourage people from experimenting without any proper knowledge on the subject. In other words it would be a good idea to learn from someone more experienced before starting your own chemical factory.

From: Stikes
Date: 2002-02-06 14:53:39
In-Reply-To: 521

Coking Skill..COOKING SKILL!

From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-04 16:18:01
In-Reply-To: 525

It shouldn't be RANDOM, since if they wanted to do the result again (produce an acid) if they did the same exact steps they would get the same exact result.

Doing so would require us to define thousands uppon thousands of mixtures and there results.

From: yorkaturr
Date: 2002-02-04 16:55:47
In-Reply-To: 528

Yes, it should be random if it was undocumented. It would be an unstable combination.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-04 18:51:10
In-Reply-To: 532

Thats good because for herbs alone without takeing quanity in account. If you allowed 4 different elements in a mixture it would be:

28*27*26*25=491400

almost 500 thousand possible combinations!!

From: Zugreb
Date: 2002-02-04 21:11:07
In-Reply-To: 532

well you can have a list of unwanted results and you can hash the component index'es down to valid result integer and that will remain the same if this is repeated but still be random in nature

If you don't want it to be random

From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-05 00:03:30
In-Reply-To: 547

Possibly, some sort of algorythm could be made that assigns a effect to some combination of components, that way you wouldn't have to explicitly define each one, but the results would still be predictiable, possible a "bad" result is wanted in some circumstances.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-06 19:02:03
In-Reply-To: 598

why do you need a cooking skill? an average adult will know how to cook from medieval times. And this isn't the topic of this thread.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-02-06 22:03:28
In-Reply-To: 599

[OT] But how well he knows? if someone wants to play a cook in some castle, he have to know how to make something else than oatmeal and carrots. On the other hand, is there so big difference wether it tastes awful or delicious.. The lord will eat it anyway. Or, maybe we want a test against (somekindof) willpower to see if he is able to eat such bad food. After all, he is a lord.. :) Hmm.. Or maybe we don't want...

From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-06 22:24:33
In-Reply-To: 600

who will want to play a cook in a castle... Some medial basic tasks like cooks should be left to NPCs.. IMO.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-02-06 22:47:40
In-Reply-To: 602

[OT]You never know, you never know.. Ok, truly, the cooking skill can determine some other things as well, for example how nutritious food you are able to make from hunted animals, fishes etc. etc.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-07 03:09:08
In-Reply-To: 603

nutrients contained in fish is the same no matter how its prepaird (with the difference of spices it contains.) if you eat raw fish or cooked fish there really isn't much different in nutrients, just the proteins are denatured and its warm, and has less bacteria. So skill shouldn't determine nuterients found in food.

THe object is to make as few skills as possible and the ones that are given (people from this age will know how to cook)

There may be skills in knowing plants and hunting skills, which can determine what foods you have avaiable to eat, you might not know you can eat the bark of the whatever tree if you are starving and end up starving to death while the person that did know would live.

I don't think a skill just how well you can cook should be made, i meen, there is no facility for how good something tastes to a player, so why worry about cooking things gormet style or eatting it raw.

Just make skills that enable the player to find more food sources or have greater skill in hunting wild animals. Some animals may be very hard to track down and kill because they avoid humans at all costs, but if you are able to hunt them you have more food options and the ability to surive better.

From: Nahl_Shadore
Date: 2002-02-07 22:14:30
In-Reply-To: 613

okay, the cooking/preparing of food could decide how much edible meat you get from an animal
ie. low skill could cut the fish sloppily, getting less meat, and then burn it to a crisp

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-02-07 22:18:21
In-Reply-To: 629

Well that is something I agree.. That's the point I tried to hunt here :)

Anyway, IMHO there should be a cooking skill. And if we want to include the taste variable it would fit to skill very well actually. But I can't see so many advantages in that system, so any good suggestions? Is it superfluous?

From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-08 04:53:14
In-Reply-To: 630

the design goal is to have as few skills as possible.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-02-09 14:22:58
In-Reply-To: 635

But if we could use it, why not to take it? And IMHO if this game is not only h&s I think there should be, in some limits, as many non-combat skills as necessary.

However still the question is, do we need a cooking skill?
IMHO yes.

From: raeky
Date: 2002-02-09 19:17:07
In-Reply-To: 644

IMHO no.

A skill for hunting/tracking (for finding and killing wild game)
and a skill for plant knowledge (for knowing what plants one can eat)

I still think the average adult in medieval times would know how to cook something well enough to not burn it to a crisp, so having a specific skill that one can improve at for cooking is just silly.

From: Archantes
Date: 2002-02-09 19:35:53
In-Reply-To: 647

The truth is. This is not only a medieval world. We have orcs, elves... Orcs are not as skilled in cooking as humans I think. And how about elves? If a moon elf wants to make some 'lembas-like' (Elven bread in LOTR) for his journey, what would be the skill determining if he manages to make one or not?

There can be average adults, but they are not only ones to cook.

Of cource one can eat it raw, but vomit then. An elf can't stand raw meat. (Just invented it:) And some fungi are poisonous before they are prepared. It's true that you can gain the fact for this from plant knowledge, but how to make them harmless and in that way gain the nutrients from it is an other thing. Need to cook them, but how?

If this game is to survive, interact and advance the cooking skill fits there. IMHO.

I'd like to hear opinions from others too. :) What say you?