The Magic Man is setting your head on fire!!

And is hard to figure out and implament properly.

System I have right now is that herbs and some other items can be mixed to make potions.
The system works in a relatively simple way, all items used in alchemy can make specific potions, get items which make the same potion and mix them together and avoila, a potion is born (most items can be used to make several different types of potion, so you have to mix and match). Some potions have other requirements too, such as you must used between a certain amount of items and so on.

Seems like a system that appears complex in the game and it works fairly well.
Except it... Needs a hell of a lot of items to make potions. Maybe it is just that I have too many types of potions to make (some 200+). But yeah, right now I am trying to make it so with 50 herbs you can make all those potions (and remember, you might need 3, 4 or even 5 herbs to make one specific potion).
Anyway, the problem is simple. 50 HERBS (+ other items)... Is this too much or not?
It makes finding the herb you do want difficult (because of the massive variety) and it makes remembering what herbs do what even harder.

So :[ Should I keep the system I have now in all it's stupid complexity, or come up with some other, easier to use system? (If so what?)

Actually, screenshots! But yeah, the progress in the game I am making is going suprisingly well.

http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/shop.PNG
Added working shops now.

As well as random quests.
http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/grq1.PNG
http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/grq2.PNG http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/grq3.PNG
http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/grq4.PNG

As you can see, different NPCs will offer different flavours of random quests.
Grogs quest usually involve killing some humanoid monster because they are negatively effecting his business.
Whereas Azrael offers a quest to assassinate a random town folk (this is the generic assassin guild quest).
Other quests might involve killing pests for the junk shop, collecting materials for the armor shop and so on.
There will also be predefined quests, for the assassin guild this might be killing a certain target in a certain way and so on.

Parts of town (older screen shots)
http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/kv1.JPG
http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/kv2.JPG
http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/kv3.JPG

An example of what the dungeon in the game might look like. (Old screenshot again)
http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/ silverbell.PNG

http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/ chainmail.PNG
The Chainmail Bikini! Hot armor if I ever sawed it!

A small selection of spells and Missile Storm highlighted (there is about 50-60 spells in that list, out of 200, the other buttons will also display other types of spells, in this case they are Arcane, Divine and Psionic, an about a total of 400 spells will be added, not including skills and bard songs), which is a horrible spell (I also like to call it massacre spell)
http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/mstorm.PNG

http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/geno.PNG
Here is why I like to call it massacre spell. Because it basically turns everything on screen into giblets :[

http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/court.PNG
Unfortunetly crime doesn't pay, and for massacring that church I ended up in court. (Crime doesn't pay)

(Be warned, this game is nowhere near finished and the game might change by the time it is released)

And finally...
http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/mcbs.PNG
MUDCRABS! (Most generic NPCs will spout out random dialog when spoken to, this just happens to be one of those lines)

Anyway. Comments, criticism or suggestions are all welcome!

http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/mcbs.PNG
ALKDFJSLKFJSKLDFJKDLS CJDKJDKLSJCLKDJCKLSDJCKLSDJCKLDSC ************** MUDCRABS!!!


RAGE...

To cut a long story short, a while ago, maybe 4-5 months I was browsing around BYOND guilds and saw that the action guild was basically dead. The only games hosted were... Not that good zombie games, not that good at all.
And so, I decided to make my own action game... Well, to tell you the truth I had already begun over a year ago, but just never bothered with it after a few days. More than anything it was just to play around, but I decided to revive the project and did a fair bit with it!
I ended up getting bored though, I made the game almost entirely on my own, from coding to sprites and what not. I always get bored, maybe sometime in the future I will actually finish the game.

And so, I am going to release the source code to the game.
The game is a generic zombie survival game, you and other players are slapped into a level and have to survive from an endless wave of zombies for as long as possible. It is played in an overhead mode with 8 directional movement.
It contains a wide assortment of guns, all of which are upgradable, and most have different types of ammo. All of them are based off of real life guns too.
There is
4 Automatic Rifles. Excellent all round weapons. Nice damage, good firing rates, manageable recoil, good ammo capacity.
Machineguns. Insane ammo capacities and fire rates, but horrid recoil.
4 Pistols. Average ammo capacities, decent fire rates, good accuracy and low recoil, but poor damage.
4 Revolvers. Low ammo capacities and poor reload speeds, but usually very good damage for a pistol type weapon.
Rifles. Good damage, good accuracy, low ammo capacity, average recoil, reload times and fire rates.
Shotguns. Excellent damage at short range, at long ranged with certain ammo types can hit multiple zombies. Poor accuracy however, low ammo capacity, horrid reload times and high recoil.
Sniper Rifles. Excellent damage and accuracy, loow ammo capacities, firing rates and horrid recoil (some of these sniper rifles were intended to be fired at armored vehicles, not people).
Sub-machine guns. Fast firing rates, high ammo capacities, low accuracy and damage and average recoil.
There is also 2 rocket launchers. Insane damage over a wide area, but very low ammo (usually 1-2 shots) and slow reload times.
Two grenade launchers, one is single shot. The other holds upto 6 grenades (or was it 4)? Excellent damage over a wide area, slow reload times and rare ammo however.
There is also a crossbow. All stats for it are average except ammo and recoil, it has practically no recoil and can only ever hold 1 ammo. However, crossbows have loads of ammo types, making them have a wide array of uses.

There is also melee weapons. Divided into blunt and slashing types.
Slashing types generally do more damage but blunt types stun enemies for a short time and can knock enemies backwards.

There is even bombs!
C4 which can be set to explode after a set time, when triggered remotely or when stepped on.
Mines which will trigger when stepped on.
Grenades, which can be thrown. There is standard grenades, smoke grenades, flashbang and even napalm!

There is also things such as bandages and first aid kits to heal you up. And torches to help you see in the dark (and even heat vision goggles!)
(Light and dark were going to play an important part in the game)


The game uses minor RPG elements too. All characters have stats, like how strong, fast and good they are with guns.
Strength determines how much damage a character does with melee weapons and what objects a character and push/pull around.
Accuracy effects how often a gun hits, and whether it will hit certain body parts of not.
Stamina is how much of a beating a character can take.
Resilience reduces any damage a character takes.
Speed effects how fast a character can run.
Recovery effects how fast a characters health and injuries regenerate.
And Survival makes a character more adept at surviving. They make better use of food and healing items.


http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/ Survival_src.zip
You may download and use it anyway you want, provided you give credit where credit is due. The game is suprisingly close to completion (for me). All it needs is a decent method of setting up and hosting games, and some levels to play on.

But be warned, the coding (especially the AI) is neither clean or optimized. It is sloppy, probably inefficient and uncommented on. And for the average joe BYOND user it will probably not be nice to look at.

The game uses one library which you will need
http://www.byond.com/developer/Shadowdarke/ sd_DynamicAreaLighting

Anyway, if you want it, download it. Use it as you want.
Maybe when I have finished on the current project I am working on I will come back to it, finish it off and release it. But that could be months away, or even never. And I'd much rather that it at least gets used because it is so close to actually being a game.

Also, depending on how well this goes I might release the source codes to other projects I haven't bothered finishing.

Basically I need some people to test stuff for me.
Either download and run this.
http://www.byond.com/members/TheMagicMan/files/RPG.zip
Taken the game down for now because no one seemed to want to help test with anything.
Be warned, if you download and run the game then it will have to generate a dungeon and a few other things, on a slow computer this can take a long time. And if you connect to the game I am hosting I have a cable connection, so my upload speed isn't great, and I probably cannot have many people in the game without them experiencing lag.

Anyway, go and test now! I don't have anything specific I want testing. Just mess around and tell me if you find any bugs or problems, what they were and how you caused them. Otherwise just play around and give me opinions!
What did you like, what didn't you like? What could be improved? And what not!

Also, remember, this game is in the early stages of development. There is probably bugs and a lot of the game is still not finished yet.
And for the purposes of this test you will be made stronger upon logging into the game and have access to all the spells currently in the game straight away. You also cannot die. (Also, if you do try the dungeon is in the bottom left of the island and pressing the spanner button will bring up a list of controls and what not)

Also, this game is a text mode RPG with Roguelike elements. So don't be expecting some flashy graphics or ANOTHER [insert random anime here] game.