A thought for the mining system.

[Drilixer]

hmm - I allways liked ore simply respawning in mines... that way people have to compete for the ore that is there until they have the money to plant a structure around the mine\'s entrance - of course some mines would not be able to have a structure built around them

[Fish]

I wonder if instead of responding the same spot in the mine it would be possible for the mine to actually go deeper.  One would think that traveling in the mine the graphics would actually render quite quickly.  There wouldn?t be as many polygons.  So when you go into a mine it?s more dynamic.  There would be a set of standard mine configurations that would be fed to the game engine in your computer that would stitch the configurations together.  It becomes like plumbing, fitting pipes together.

Sections of the mine could even become flooded.  So either the minors would have to be unaffected by water or you would need a pump.  But since your underground you could actually have mining that goes up.  Then the water would just pour out.

You can have the usual mining disasters as well.  You can hit gas pockets or have a cave-in.  Then you have to use your skills to get out.  It would also important for the minors to do some preventative maintenance to their minds.  Say after going by a place that?s going to have a cave-in there would be the telltale signs that something?s going to go wrong.  So from time to time it would be prudent to inspect your mine.  Or if you spend extra money reinforcing a particular tunnel you can guarantee there never will be a cave-in, a lot of extra money.  But if it?s a main tunnel it would be cost effective.

Another thing this might do is to turn a mine into a Guild hall or something.  Once a mine is played out you hollow out a few room?s leave the passages as they are.  Install a few doors and you?re in business.

One thing that hasn?t been talked about is prospecting.  It would be another skilled minors would have to train.  Just because you dig a hole doesn?t mean anything will come out of it.  And finding a good mine sites begin with this skill.  There is also the issue of being able to follow a vein of good ore that bears the minerals and metals that you?re looking for.  Prospecting is another one were some interesting spells might be applied.

Just batting around some ideas...

[Saphire]

those are good ideas fish, but they arn\'t for the little buildable guild one... those are more for like a dungeon mine or the public mine sort of thing.

i really do like the idea about \"plumbing\" the whole mine together; lots of little rooms and peices that can be randomly compiled and peiced together, something like Diablo. uber idea.

actually i just thought of how cave-ins could be done without crashing the server; just have \"dirt\" nodes that almost instantly regenerate at a certain time. a cave-in node would act like this: you mine it out like a normal dirt node, except that after 48 hours (real-time) little spikes apear all over the roof. this is the warning that \"hey, this roof is about to collapse!\" and 4 hours later it will (all the more reason to have a builder on-site!) collapse in with all the effects; pushing the miners to the nearest safe area (having to excavate your body when you come back wouldn\'t be fun) falling rocks that do some minor damage, and the sound. gotta have a good sound.

builders could put up supports and a area around the supports would be protected from cave-ins (aka \"the spikes of d00m.\" ) and walls do the same except they block the ore flow, as well.

maybe on the lower levels there would be flooding, but the only way a mine could flood on the upper levels is if the miners accidentally ran into a under-ground stream... or magma vent.


[e]prospecting sounds like the guild mine idea... maybe you would have to go into town and buy a prospecting permit and buy a deed to the land you want to prospect. maybe as a visual cue there could be lots of little pebbles and maybe alittle bit of coloration on the rocks nearby to suggest \"OMG I FOUND GOLD!!! 1337!!!\"[/e]

[Drilixer]

I\'m not sure about digging and everything... sounds a bit complex to program

[Saphire]

im gonna make a picture (MS paint owns you. ) to better explain this entire concept. how/where do i upload my stuff? i just want to know ahead of time so i have a answer when im done my picture. :]

[Drilixer]

I use hostmysig.com

[Saphire]

I thank you, Drilixer!
The image and blurb will be up shortly... as soon as i find a format that can give me the resolution i needed. Jpeg SUCKS for resolution... X(

[Evanchild]

gif

[Saphire]

The picture! .png format

sorry, but .png was the only one that could give me the necessary resolution. open it in another window and read along. (ph33r my 1337 MSpaint skillZ )

Ahem. Alright. First thing i want you to know, this would be a dungeon mine. dungeon mines work just like public mines, except that monsters are inside and cave-ins happen. Second thing you should notice: there are multiple areas for other rooms to be attached to on existing rooms; however, because the mine size is uniform but layout is not, the computer randomly generates peices of rooms like in diablo. [edit]look on the walls on the map if you cant spot them. they\'re little purple/blue dots[/edit]

hallway K could\'ve been attached to the start room on another opening, and on another rotation. rooms can be randomly generated next to rooms, and with hard rock looking exactly like impenetrable rock a room could never be discovered since everyone would think \"oh, thats just impenetrable rock. i wont check if it could be hard rock, since it looks like impenetrable rock.\" and dont worry about someone digging a huge bottomless pit, the floor is the floor and that can\'t be changed (unless theres a floor node there, but most of the floor node stuff tries to reach for the roof)


[edit] sorry that its .png format. i think you all should still be able to veiw it, its just that JPEG doesn\'t do it justice (some parts dissapeared in JPEG and text became fuzzy; unreadable) and .gif reduced the amount of colors (again making things unveiwable) i hope the image helps though![/edit]

[another edit] if you want a closer look, right click on it and \"save as\" and save it to your hard drive. open it in mspaint and zoom in to about 2x mode. you should see it with much better clairity[/another edit]

[Drilixer]

still sort of weird... how would this fit into an mmorpg?  does the \'sand\' respawn so later miners can have the \'pleasure\' of digging through it?

[Saphire]

this would fit into a MMORPG as to provide a new way of the usual \"click click click\" sydrome of mining. just because its a repetative task doesn\'t mean it has to behave like a repetative task. with this its \"click click \'oh, no more ore\' *move to another part of mine* click click\" and it gives multiple jobs to multiple classes. it can even be a great place to put a quest in...

Think; A fighter, mage, miner, and builder all head into a dungeon mine to retrive a peice of a mineral (some soap stone, lets say) and they all go in. the fighter + mage kills off all the enemies at the front of the cave and such so that the miner can clear out the dirt in safety, and the builder prop up the just mined and stop any chance of a cave-in in the area. as the 4 make it through the place, they stumble upon a mineral node. the miner from experiance knows that it isn\'t the mineral they are seeking and they continue on. the miner hits a wall face and *crumble* there lays a open cave room. some giant spiders here-and-there which the fighter kills off with ease but its too dark so the mage casts a light spell to light the place up.

and there it is! in the middle of the cave, a boulder that gleams with the mineral they seek! they all head in, and get some of the ore, but when they are heading out a thunderous roar erupts from the center of the cave and the big boulder becomes alive! they all run away as the beast tears the builder\'s supports usunder, causing a cave in that not even the supports can stop (hey, a new cave creature spell!) and they all run for their daintly little lives and make it out alive. with mineral in hand the 4 head to the old man and and claim their prize. the end.

the \"dirt\" nodes do not respawn. the cave-in nodes do though, which is why you need a builder to put up supports. there are no differentiations between dirt and cave-in nodes, so until the spikes apear you wont know.

(and the supports last longer than it takes for the ceiling to collapse, so as soon as the supports go and wait a hour later... *squish* for any NPC (PC\'s still get pushed away, though. \"OMG I GOT FLATTENED! NERF IT!\" would not look good spammed 100 different ways 1000\'s of times a day on the forums would not be fun))

[Fish]

Yes there would be programming involved but let?s break it down a bit.  They?re already talking about the players building buildings.  So let?s think about what would be minimum to make it work.  I might be wrong on some of these points a jump right up and correct me please(not that you wouldn?t).  Crystal space, the engine that this is based on, has the room portal system.  Essentially build a room and to get to the next room there?s a portal.  If you don?t make the portal two ways it becomes one directional.  So each tunnel section would have a portal on the front and back end of it(I don?t know if they call them portals but you get the idea).  So if you?re duplicating the same section for say long hallway you essentially use the same room back to back.  So for a straight mine shaft you would have a duplicate hall in the straight-line.  So then you?d have to build three sections, a standard mine entrance, hallway, and the end being mined.  It?s up to the server to figure out how deep the mine is and where you are in it.

Having the mine split, shafts up and down, a section filled with water, and all the other stuff can be done later.  However when you mine you have to mine enough material to add a section or you have no chance at all of getting anything out of it.  That?s the general idea.

One might argue that after a few years of this there would be mines everywhere.  I argue it is a nice habitats for monsters.  Making the mining professional little bit more dicey and interesting.  The entire mine system would be set up at the server end so as mines increased in size and scope you don?t have to update.  Another possibility is if a mine hasn?t been used for an extended period of time because it?s played out and nobody?s in it just have a collapse.

Even though I think there?s no chance that this will be in the first official release it would be a cool add-on for later on.  Although there would be some programming to it I don?t think it would be daunting.

So I guess it?s really an idea for the future.

[Drilixer]

hmm.. it\'s an interesting idea but I think it\'s sort of cheezy  you have to realize that you want to make it more interesting in realistic but making peoiple HAVE to party like that is one thing alot of players dont like and dont have time for...  miners would much rather just go mine and not have any of these problems... I understand what you are saying now with this system... but it doesn\'t look like it would be much fun  I\'d rather have one big premade mine than a dozen of these.

[Saphire]

Public mines: No \"special\" stuff for miners to do, sometimes little amounts of monsters, builders do their work here to help the miners work better at their job(wood floors wear out fast, but provide a moderate speed boost! stone floors are thusly better. walls to give places to hang torches/etc) however, they are gynormous, and take awhile to explore completly. not randomly generated

Guild mines: Small, however, they carry the majority of \"special\" features in a mine. player owned, they let the player mine in peace, and let in other miners where certain conditions must be met if they so choose. randomly generated when the player makes a mine entrance.

Dungeon mines: Monsters roam in these, they are smaller than public mines and carry some of the \"special\" features. not randomly generated

Dont like cheezy? use a public mine. Looking for something different and somewhat of a adventure? use the guild mine. want a real challenge with beasts gaurding the best ores? use the dungeon mine. (rather ballanced towards anyone\'s tastes, i\'d say)

[en3r0]

you make fun of RuneScape in your topic, yet use its metals in your idea, i really dont think there is such thing as mith/ addy ore. but ive been wrong before. nice ideas

God bless,
-Jag