Pet System / Animal Looks:

[Zeraph]

Warning! Not Updated to date: see: Updated ?familiar? system Outline Here & also Longggg?un updated version of ?Pets? system:

If your looking for Old Familiar post look @ 3rd Reply:


( From Other Post About Animals: )
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As for ?Real? Earthly Animals, I think we should have many earthly sort of animals, but Breeds of them that do not exist on earth, or make them many times larger or smaller such as 4ft. tall elephant like things & gigantic eagles/birds with 20ft. wingspan. I strongly discourage many Animals being hellish/Spawned from the Underworld looking monstrosities, with the exception of some places that call for that sort of thing, like ?Underworld Opening?, ?Evil Black Cursed Forest? & any place with a really Dark Magic Corruption & or Underworld Influenced place. I do not think there should be to many of thoughts sort of places though (personal opinion)?
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(New Stuff):
I think the animals should be something like this, since Yliakum has many different types of races, I think it should be somewhat of a melting pot of ?Worlds? one of which is Earth. By some chance a long time ago when Yliakum was created, many aspects of other worlds or ?Planes of Existence? influenced the life on the planet, ether by coming in through portals or by other means, many of the animals have crossbreed to similar species from other worlds & the result is a very strange & interesting clash of strange but vaguely familiar Animals. I think that it should @ first be a mix of Earthly Animals & Animals from a goodie-fairy-land & also mixed with animals from a underworld setting in certain places . I think that many animals should ether have learned the ability to use magic & or have beastly strengths.

I believe that having a pet or ?familiar? as described under Empathy skill should be a major part of the game & no one should be without one, no matter who they are or what they do, there should be a pet for everyone! If there isn?t already a place specifically made for Pets/Animal creation, I would encourage a place for it. Everyone should have some kind of animal training ability or pet keeping ability. There should be a whole system in-game for pets. I think that you should be able to ether choose if your pet would grow large or stay small. The difference is:

That small pets will be more intelligent & use magic abilities more, however I think that since they are more intelligent, that they would maybe be less inclined to blindly fallow what you do, unless your loyalty with it is high, & the pet happiness & trust? Small animals would be useful for scouting such as small birds will give you a ?Birds eye view? of the place, & would also increase magical abilities, or can just be ornamental, such as small cats. Or, for transportation, for example BlackCats can give the ability for witches to fly & small birds can increases the fly ability of winged races?

I think that the ones that you decide to become Big would be more of Battle/Transportation oriented. In the ways of Large Birds like eagles or winged daemon type things can carry people from place to place, & obviously grounded pets usually have great speed on land & or water. Also there could be countless uses for large pets in battles such as Power Attacks & Warcry type effects that increase strengths of people & other pets around & frighten or paralyze enemies! Obviously Big pets would be more useful to warrior type characters?

As for implementation, I think it shouldn?t be hard to do, I read somewhere that the new version will support Cal3D characters with Bones. I also read that with Bones you can resize characters @ will so animals should be no exception & they should grow while they gain experience until they are fully-grown.

Also I think you should be able to nickname your animal i.e. name=(?Zeraph?s ?Wolfy?) or something to that effect for a name?

Also maybe have a summon ability, so if you do not really want your pet around everywhere, or maybe take it places it is not comfortable such as if you have a fire-type one & you want to dive into a lake, you should be able to temporally make it disappear, & then have the ability to summon it whenever you need it, something like a ?Magical Kennel? ? this will not hurt the relationship of you & your pet, but will your pet will not be able to get exp. If your pet gets killed in battle, then it goes to the ?Magical Kennel? & slowly recovers health & there is a time limit until you can summon it again, also a penalty of exp/trust/obedience or something.

I do not really think people should be able to have maybe 2-3 pets @ a time or more likely just make the ability to 1 @ first when developing. I think that peoples should be able to change there pets type using special mutation spells/potions so that you are not stuck with a pet you doesn?t really like when first starting out? maybe a ?familiar? which is what you start with, can change into other animals until you get to a certain level & then you have to choose what sort of animal you will have for the rest of the life of the character?

I can?t wait until CB comes out so that we can start making Animal models for it, I think that Wheel of Wishes should be expanded for Animal/Pet design. I will want to make something like a tutorial about Animal design once I learn how to do it myself!

Ok, I know this is allot to process, but I think it is a very relevant topic of desiccation. Although this sound like something like pokemon  I would like to avoid that sort of (Capture wild animals & make them pets) thing. Maybe we only should have people have one pet also because that will save cpu processing & also refrain from pets do the battling thing, so that the character will have the majority of the work on killing things & pets only help out & do about 25% of the work & function more of transportation & assistance, thinks like locating hidden places & finding monsters & performing special magical abilities. This will be very flexible, but I think that we should consider having some similar system like this, maybe not so much integrated into the game, but since everyone will have a familiar why not make everyone have it be a sort of a pet?

I volunteer to try my best @ making models of these, but I have never tried it & probably will need a lot of time to get to be an expert on it, by then I will be 18 & able to join the team (October 2004), maybe I can just specialize in just animating the sprites of pets or something?

This is long & by now you are probably not even taking the time to read this so I will quit jabbering now & let every-one have a chance to put there say into this topic? I hope I haven?t repeated & or changed any already established & unchangeable ideas thought up last year or something? LOL this is long!

I have many Ideas & this took a couple of hours to write up, but can conform to the wishes of the majority of people here & change any aspect of it! ? As you can see my sig-tag has animals on it & this was really brought on by my participation in the (Minnesota, USA) Humane Society?s Walk for Animals fundraiser today, but I will just end this now before I start typing another couple paragraphs?

What do you think of this whole thing?

(This has somewhat of been an expansion of the Fallowing Threads: )
combat animal training
Monsters Ideas
Ideas on EVERYTHING!!!
Mules...Hireable mercenaries... welfare system

Especialy this one!: Pets

[Moogie]

Wow... extremely long. 8o

I don\'t reply very well to such lengthy posts but there are a few points I want to reply to.



First of all, I got the impression that you\'re saying \"everyone would have a familiar, without exception\"? I think people should be able to choose whether they have a pet or not. PlaneShift, as a whole, is going to be all about freedom to play however you wish. If you don\'t want to fight monsters, you can do something else, such as crafting or trading. I think the same should apply to pets- if you don\'t want a pet, you don\'t have to have one.


About changing their appearance: I think this should be limited to magically summoned animals, not ones that have been trained from the wild or raised since birth. A magician would perhaps be able to \'transmute\' the animal into a different species, but I\'m not sure how much I like that idea. Either way, you shouldn\'t be able to do it to natural creatures.


The \"Magic Kennel\": I think this could be an alternative to a normal kennel which should also be in the game. The magic method would be for players who are constantly on-the-move; that is to say, not hanging around a single town for more than a few hours. However, for those of us who tend to congregate at a particular location in the world for most of our characters\' lives, a normal kennel should be provided in each town, where pets and beasts of burden can be kept safely (for a fee).


I agree that the number of pets you are allowed to have should be kept to a minimum. This, imo, would serve two purposes:

1. Eliminate the need for pets to be extremely expensive to buy/train/raise/equip.

2. Lower server-side CPU usage, allowing room for slightly better AI scripts and more functionality.


And, quickly going back to the very first point you made in your post, I agree that many creatures should certainly resemble Earthly animals, but I do not think they should be limited to this. PS would, I think, tend to have more original creatures than those we are already familiar with in the real world.



[Edit: And by the way, nice thread, it was interesting to read. ]

[SaintNuclear]

Personally, I don\'t like familiars and stuff like that. Labor animals (e.g. oxes), or transportation animals (e.g. megaras) are good and useful, but familiars that follow you around can be really annoying.

Let\'s say you\'re running around in the labyrinths, and your familiar follows you. Then there\'s a curve, and before it, an obstacle. While you avoid the obstacle, and run around the curve, the familiar tries to pass the obstacle. You continue, not noticing your familiar is stuck, and pass another curve. Now the familiar is totally lost. Once it passes the obstacle, it tries to go toward you, but there\'s a wall in the way.

A following AI can be really annoying, even the most \'intelligent\' AI (wich won\'t be used in PS anyways) will be too stupid to follow a human, unless they\'re in a huge open, empty field with no obstacles what-so-ever (wich won\'t be the case in PS either).

I can\'t see why the devs would go and develop an AI and a whole system about familiars that will be nothing but an annoyance. Too much effort on something that won\'t do what it\'s expected to do, no matter what.

[Zeraph]

Warning! Longggg?un updated version of ?Familiar? system:

Ps. This does not apply to captured & or domestic things like ox or horses like things, & there is also some balance so that if you really do not want one then you can choose not to & have some advantages/disadvantages, also maybe you can get one later in the game & or choose merge & then not have one. You do not have to read this if you don?t want to mainly for the fact that it is extremely long like the first post & may only apply to thoughts thinking of having a familiar, & we could also have them walk through walls or fallow a Chars movement exactly behind & same speed, or if they get lost they will re-appear by your side or something (most likely walk through walls @ first version):


Type this up last night:

> Don?t read this if you?re not wanting a Familiar: <

Ok, recently I read a book series that pertains to PlaneShift & familiars called His Dark Materials.
Even though it is atheist & goes against my beliefs, but hey it is fiction so who really cares >ops off topic<... I will try to give as brief a summary > as I can even though I am explaining a book series:

This first book is set in another plane of existence similar to earth but different in many ways, one is that everyone in this world is born with a familiar called a \"daemon\". & there are 3 major races living on that world; Humans, Witches, & Armored Bears.
Humans live to be as old as us but they each have a daemon, Witches are similar, only they live to be 1000 Years Old & can fly via pine branches, Armored Bears are really Talking Polar-Bear mercenaries that ware extremely heavy armor. (Main character in books travels to other planes of existence later in books 2-3 with different races in other worlds)

More on \"Daemons\" Everyone human has one only not every world\'s humans can see them & I will explain them now as described in His Dark Materials:

1. Everyone has them when they are born.

2. It is a terrible taboo to touch another person\'s familiar but they can touch each other.

3. If a familiar is killed, the owner dies immediately & if the owner dies, there familiar disappears in a flash of flame. (There are some exceptions...)

4. There is an Invisible bond or link between familiar & owner about 10-15ft long @ most: exception to this rule is witches, they can separate from there familiars for more then 10-15 & go for miles only because there is a certain area in there world that Daemons cannot pass & this separates them & yet they live, this breaks trust & it takes a long time to gain it back... humans can do this as well, humans from are earth who pass through get there familiars ripped from there bodies & so then can see them.

5. When children are young, birth to about 11-13yo (puberty) A familiar can take any animal form (including mythical) with the exception of size, they can\'t get bigger then say a tiger I think. after puberty, Both Familiar & Master decide what form it would like to take & stay for the rest of there life, this form & appearance reflects what sort of person they are.

6. Witches usually have flying familiars after they \"settle\" because they can fly with pine branch.

7. If a person is female, there familiar will be a male, if the person is male then there familiar will be female, with some rare exceptions when familiar & master are of the same sex...

8. Familiar & master are one individual, only different parts of the same person.

9. Familiars can talk, although it is not vary often that they talk to anyone else besides there masters. it is a rare occasion...


Changes I would make to these rule in PS:

Ok, that is the basics about what I know about Familiars or \"Daemons\" as described thro-out \"His Dark Materials\", I think some similar system should be implemented in PlaneShift, although if the user does not want a familiar, it will be hidden inside & maybe later in the game we can have a place were you can draw out your familiar if you have not already started with one.

I think for balance issues, we should have some exp that would normally be given all to the char will be split & be giving partially to the familiar. therefore, people with familiars are not as strong as people without, however, that missing strength can be found in there familiar & barrowed in battle so it may not be so different if you decide not to receive one in the beginning. also you can always choose later to get one, but you will have to give a certain amount of skills when it is pulled out of you because after all, it is part of you...

We should have an option do \"hide\" your familiar, if you decide you doesn?t want it around however, it may be strongly advised that you have one if you are new to the game, because it could talk to you & give you hints like a tutorial. Otherwise it may be able to tell you when danger is near or other things like hidden places, other players will not be able to hear what your familiar is saying, mainly because it will really clutter up the chat window. Since there are many more races in Plane Shift from other Planes of existence, the rules will have to change a bit from the above, if we will even use this as guidelines for familiars.

I think that familiars should only \"change\" until they are a certain level instead of a char age. Familiars should have magical abilities depending on what way you fallow, for instance the Blue way, you will get a water/ice sort of related animal, you can set which way you want your familiar to fallow, or if you just want yours to use fighting techniques like (war cry/weapons equivalent attacks). if you have the familiar Fallow the Dark Way then you may get a animal like a Black cat or demon-like one. if you fallow Red Way you may get a small dragon or something, as a general rule, Familiars would not be used as transportation. we can domesticate other animals you can buy from trainers for that. (this will balance non-familiar Chars from being excluded).

Non-familiar Chars, Large bonuses normally given to Familiars will be given to the player as if they were the familiar but this may cause balance insure on arias like armor, because non-familiar Chars will have a large advantage, maybe for balance we can have armor type skills be the same for Familiar Chars as non-Familiar, or give bonuses to Familiars Like Water Shield/Magic Shield so that Familiar Chars can fight Enemies the same level as non-Familiar Chars of the same level, maybe some bonuses/penalties for fighting certain opposing Ways like fire vs. water, water gets the attack bones. Also the there should be only one HP bar for Familiars & Masters, that means if Familiars get hurt then Master do also, & vice versa... Empathy is a very important skill for Familiars in that you can communicate better & have other bonuses (unThoughtUp for now)...

> End of Long Stuff  8o  <
Anyone else besides me think this is a good guideline for Familiars?
Anyone in the development team think this is a good base for making the Familiar Rules & Gameplay? Or have you already thought & implemented a system in CB? Tell me what you think should be changed or dropped, & I am aqueous to find out how to model & position bones of 4 legged figures in 3DsMax for Cal3D for the new Crystal Blue! Is it the same as Character Models?...

Maybe I should go write up something for the story forum section about Yliakum?

Edit: link: His Dark Materials

-This has been another endless post by:

[Shariom]

When I read it (the first book), it was called Northern Lights.... read that ages ago in high school english. I  kind of like the idea but don\'t know how relevant it owuld be to the world of planeshift and perhaps hard to implement - how would you control the famliiar, what poweres would it have etc. The server can\'t control it with AI, it would take FAR too many processor cycles. It might be interesting system, but I don\'t think its really right for PS.

[DepthBlade]

Well on Graalonline they had things called Bomys that were like little creatures on the p2p servers that would be auctioned off for amazingly high prices and traded off in the trade building! They basicly followed you everwhere you could sit on them and ride them or float on them in the water and they could spin at high speeds and take you places hella faster! Although I loved my bomy Raven , this idea would only be good for top down games like graal! Pets like that shouldn\'t exist you need to capture them train them and earn their loyality!

[Zeraph]

Ok, Find the Updated ?Familiar? System Outline here, you can contribute to it.

Thanks for reading it, I played Graal Online for a while & couldn?t find the place to bye a pet, but they were expensive lol?

Familiars will not be transferable I would think?

Originally posted by Mogura
I think people should be able to choose whether they have a pet or not. PlaneShift, as a whole, is going to be all about freedom to play however you wish. If you don\'t want to fight monsters, you can do something else, such as crafting or trading. I think the same should apply to pets- if you don\'t want a pet, you don\'t have to have one.

[DepthBlade]

There was no assigned place to buy them once teh were released the GPs and Adminstrators put them up as a prize for a event game or auctioned off, then the only way to get one was to find a player who had one and was willing to sell

[Toadhead]

Wow, I think Zeraph likes longs posts... I\'m not going to quote trat or there won\'t be any webspace left.

I didn\'t understand everything, you can to have animals from other worlds or something that will come to the normal world or something? ::

I hope monsters/pets/animals whatever will mate with eachother so there will come new races of monsters etc. and that you can let animals mate with eachother to create new pets and monsters to let them fight for you



[Edit: Methinks the word you was looking for was \'mate\' -Mogura]

[KwartzTheKran]

zeraph: you should make an executive summary on posts like this, some of us are lazy business folks. =)

[Zeraph]

I try to, haven?t had much time to summarize, sorry for the length lol!

Summory Outline of A ?Familiar? Systems