Post by Volyren Nightsong on Aug 31, 2011 17:35:50 GMT -5
I am currently working on a compilation of information wich should prove invaluable as a guide to new players and a reference to more experienced players.
This Manual/Bible/Almanac (whatever you want to call it) will be formatted in two seperate versions. The first will be a printable, indexed manual, that can be carried around in your pocket (it will be formatted to print on small pages. (imagine a normal piece of printer paper, then turn it on its side to landscape, and cut it vertically down the middle. this will make two pages.)
The goal here is to have a neat little guide that can be small enough to be portable, and still provide the full ammount of information available in the other form of the guide.
The second form of the guide, and probably the most used, will be set up in HTML. From the start page, you will see the map of Cyber Knights.
From that map, you can click on a single "Tile" of the map, which will take you to that area's page, complete with the name, faction affiliation, and numerical map # (for ease of reference. the top left frame is 1, the bottom right is 36).
Below that header, will be a list of locations in that area. Each of these will link to the page for that specific location, which will list the services, important contacts or mission givers. In the case of shops, the inventory will be listed, including the weapon/armor/item/cyberware's stats, price, and any other special notation needed.
**NOTE FOR CORY** I think that this might be a good place for me to add the extra descriptions for weapons and armors that use duplicate descriptions. Once I am done, feel free to let me know which of them you like, or don't, and I will either set them, or change them back to default. I will only do this for items that share a common description, not ones that you have written something unique for.
also, if you like, I will correct any spelling mistakes, or grammer slips, and maybe help out with all that re-reading and proofing you are doing.
****END NOTE******
Below the shops and locations will be the Global Terminal/Data Terminal. When this is clicked on, the nodes for that particular area will be listed, as well as the percentage chance for finding paydata within each node. (provided I can determine a pattern denoting a set range, and not just completely random)
On each section's page, there will also be a listing of the types of enemies most commonly encountered there. (this section will for obvious reasons change often, and I will not bother adding statistics for the enemies, as I am unsure if they are set, or random.)
Sections will also be present for statistics, skills, EXP, DV, Heat, Rep, and all the other usual stats. I will try to expand on what is listed in the instructions manual, because this is intended to be a companion and reference guide to the game, not a replacement of the instruction manual.
I am unsure if the CyberKnews files can contain HTML or a similar page linking ability, but if possible, I can try to create a file you could use for that as well.
The manual will be updated as quickly as I can do so when a new release warrants a change. I imagine that this guide will be able to help out people for quite some time, unless the game's mechanics change drastically, or the items are revamped.
I will also gladly accept help from anyone who would like to contribute, as I seem to be biting off more than I can chew lately, relating to workload.
I am Voice Acting in two games, writing this guide AND the Cyber Knight/Junkie Story about John. (which has taken on a complete life of its own.) AND trying to teach myself some programming/scripting language so that i can begin work on my XBOX Indie game. (see below, if you care to hear about it)
*****UNRELATED RAMBLE (Feel free to skip it.)***********
It's an Action RPG- Twin Stick Shooter: Space Trading/Pirate/Mercenary Game featuring full control of parties while on world or while boarding ships.I can tell you now, that one will be taking up a lot of time, and while the graphics shouldn't be too bad (I plan to hand draw them on graph paper, to give the game an old school "doodling on paper" Pen and Paper rpg feel. My plan is to have the game take place in a strategy like turn based manner. when you move to attack, you will have the option of either having your crew attack (use AI and random generated outcomes based on skill levels) or taking control manually where you would take direct control of a corvette or lower class ship (usually a fighter) and moving to a twin stick shooter type mini game where you have a certain ammount of time to attack and damage capships/destroy other fighters, or to defend, where you will focus on taking out fighters and shooting torpedos before they impact your capship/fleet ships. provided i can get that programmed without too much trouble, i may add a few sections where you could play a tower defense style game, where you would have to fend off a base assault.
The game will be an open ended/choose your own path type of affair, where you choose your starting captain, skills, background, and ship. After that, you can do whatever you want. Freelance for the military, run escort for large freighters, or buy yourself a good cargo carrying ship and trade for yourself. once you get a large enough ship, you can hire crew, and get officers (for every 100 crew, you can assign 1 officer) The officers will be characters, just like you, and you can level up their skills, assign them to bridge positions, and take them on away missions (explore planet, board and capture ship you have disabled, assault a military or pirate base, etc.)
I am planning on cutting down the workload by making everything tile based, so that the strategy sections, whether they be fleet battles in space, or an away team breaking into a secret military facility to break out an alien diplomat, captured by an enemy faction, the game will use the same battle engine, just changing the tiles from space to floor tiles/grass and the sprites from capships and space stations to player characters and hovercars.
Since I am working on this game by myself, and I do not have a lot of experience or skill in the actual production of the game (I did take a course in Game Design, which I aced ;D , but never did get around to programming.) I will be using the story of the game itself, to ease the burden on me for creating game assets.
The premise is thus:
mankind has developed plasma engines capable of taking them around THIS solar system, but not out into interstellar space.
after finding a large quantity of anti-matter, the first anti-matter powered engine is made, powerful enough to take mankind beyond its home. you are chosen to go on the journey, to.....
this is where you pick your profession. from captain to scientist, etc.
there is a freak accident causing not so much for you to travel a great distance, but a great ammount of TIME. you appear a few million years after you left, and there is no trace of humanity. earth is not there, and mars looks habitable and is home to a race of kind aliens, who are willing to help you and give you a ship so that you may explore the universe and find your lost race.
The aliens living on mars, are a religeous group and refuse to leave the planet. Therefore, they have no maps of the systems beyond the few that surround Sol.
This way, not only is it going to be fun to explore the universe, and see what is out there, it also gives me the ability to focus entirely on the gameplay, and let EVERY system be randomly generated for the player, so that you never know what is going to be just one system over. not only that, but every single game you play will turn out differently due to the random angle.
anyway, it will be quite some time before i come close to even having a playable build of this game.
*******END OF RAMBLE*********************
but BACK TO THE POINT! If you find this text, then you win a prize. PM me with the message "Fenrir Alpha" for a nice present.
*!*!* Cory, I am making this guide with the express intent and purpose to help you. This is not going to be a Walkthrough, or Cheat guide. I will not list the different quest lines, or any story elements in this work. It is strictly a guide for new players, to help them find their bearings in the New Boston Zone, and for more experienced players to have a handy reference, so that if they saw a hard to find cyber implant, they could simply go to the "Implants" page, find the one they are looking for, and then click "Locations" to display the store or stores that sell the part they are looking for. When I finish it, you are welcome to edit it, chop it up into pieces, use it in your game, or just print it out and use it when you run out of toilet paper if you need (though my feewings wouwd be huwt, cuz dat wud bee meeny weeny waaaAHHHHHH!
)
I have no plans to post this guide anywhere outside of this site and through email to my friends.
The things that I could use help on are as follows: (In order of how badly I need them)
Thanks for reading the post, and let me know what you think of the idea! (Or if you would like to contribute--All contributions will be credited to those who submit the info.)
This Manual/Bible/Almanac (whatever you want to call it) will be formatted in two seperate versions. The first will be a printable, indexed manual, that can be carried around in your pocket (it will be formatted to print on small pages. (imagine a normal piece of printer paper, then turn it on its side to landscape, and cut it vertically down the middle. this will make two pages.)
The goal here is to have a neat little guide that can be small enough to be portable, and still provide the full ammount of information available in the other form of the guide.
The second form of the guide, and probably the most used, will be set up in HTML. From the start page, you will see the map of Cyber Knights.
From that map, you can click on a single "Tile" of the map, which will take you to that area's page, complete with the name, faction affiliation, and numerical map # (for ease of reference. the top left frame is 1, the bottom right is 36).
Below that header, will be a list of locations in that area. Each of these will link to the page for that specific location, which will list the services, important contacts or mission givers. In the case of shops, the inventory will be listed, including the weapon/armor/item/cyberware's stats, price, and any other special notation needed.
**NOTE FOR CORY** I think that this might be a good place for me to add the extra descriptions for weapons and armors that use duplicate descriptions. Once I am done, feel free to let me know which of them you like, or don't, and I will either set them, or change them back to default. I will only do this for items that share a common description, not ones that you have written something unique for.
also, if you like, I will correct any spelling mistakes, or grammer slips, and maybe help out with all that re-reading and proofing you are doing.
****END NOTE******
Below the shops and locations will be the Global Terminal/Data Terminal. When this is clicked on, the nodes for that particular area will be listed, as well as the percentage chance for finding paydata within each node. (provided I can determine a pattern denoting a set range, and not just completely random)
On each section's page, there will also be a listing of the types of enemies most commonly encountered there. (this section will for obvious reasons change often, and I will not bother adding statistics for the enemies, as I am unsure if they are set, or random.)
Sections will also be present for statistics, skills, EXP, DV, Heat, Rep, and all the other usual stats. I will try to expand on what is listed in the instructions manual, because this is intended to be a companion and reference guide to the game, not a replacement of the instruction manual.
I am unsure if the CyberKnews files can contain HTML or a similar page linking ability, but if possible, I can try to create a file you could use for that as well.
The manual will be updated as quickly as I can do so when a new release warrants a change. I imagine that this guide will be able to help out people for quite some time, unless the game's mechanics change drastically, or the items are revamped.
I will also gladly accept help from anyone who would like to contribute, as I seem to be biting off more than I can chew lately, relating to workload.
I am Voice Acting in two games, writing this guide AND the Cyber Knight/Junkie Story about John. (which has taken on a complete life of its own.) AND trying to teach myself some programming/scripting language so that i can begin work on my XBOX Indie game. (see below, if you care to hear about it)
*****UNRELATED RAMBLE (Feel free to skip it.)***********
It's an Action RPG- Twin Stick Shooter: Space Trading/Pirate/Mercenary Game featuring full control of parties while on world or while boarding ships.I can tell you now, that one will be taking up a lot of time, and while the graphics shouldn't be too bad (I plan to hand draw them on graph paper, to give the game an old school "doodling on paper" Pen and Paper rpg feel. My plan is to have the game take place in a strategy like turn based manner. when you move to attack, you will have the option of either having your crew attack (use AI and random generated outcomes based on skill levels) or taking control manually where you would take direct control of a corvette or lower class ship (usually a fighter) and moving to a twin stick shooter type mini game where you have a certain ammount of time to attack and damage capships/destroy other fighters, or to defend, where you will focus on taking out fighters and shooting torpedos before they impact your capship/fleet ships. provided i can get that programmed without too much trouble, i may add a few sections where you could play a tower defense style game, where you would have to fend off a base assault.
The game will be an open ended/choose your own path type of affair, where you choose your starting captain, skills, background, and ship. After that, you can do whatever you want. Freelance for the military, run escort for large freighters, or buy yourself a good cargo carrying ship and trade for yourself. once you get a large enough ship, you can hire crew, and get officers (for every 100 crew, you can assign 1 officer) The officers will be characters, just like you, and you can level up their skills, assign them to bridge positions, and take them on away missions (explore planet, board and capture ship you have disabled, assault a military or pirate base, etc.)
I am planning on cutting down the workload by making everything tile based, so that the strategy sections, whether they be fleet battles in space, or an away team breaking into a secret military facility to break out an alien diplomat, captured by an enemy faction, the game will use the same battle engine, just changing the tiles from space to floor tiles/grass and the sprites from capships and space stations to player characters and hovercars.
Since I am working on this game by myself, and I do not have a lot of experience or skill in the actual production of the game (I did take a course in Game Design, which I aced ;D , but never did get around to programming.) I will be using the story of the game itself, to ease the burden on me for creating game assets.
The premise is thus:
mankind has developed plasma engines capable of taking them around THIS solar system, but not out into interstellar space.
after finding a large quantity of anti-matter, the first anti-matter powered engine is made, powerful enough to take mankind beyond its home. you are chosen to go on the journey, to.....
this is where you pick your profession. from captain to scientist, etc.
there is a freak accident causing not so much for you to travel a great distance, but a great ammount of TIME. you appear a few million years after you left, and there is no trace of humanity. earth is not there, and mars looks habitable and is home to a race of kind aliens, who are willing to help you and give you a ship so that you may explore the universe and find your lost race.
The aliens living on mars, are a religeous group and refuse to leave the planet. Therefore, they have no maps of the systems beyond the few that surround Sol.
This way, not only is it going to be fun to explore the universe, and see what is out there, it also gives me the ability to focus entirely on the gameplay, and let EVERY system be randomly generated for the player, so that you never know what is going to be just one system over. not only that, but every single game you play will turn out differently due to the random angle.
anyway, it will be quite some time before i come close to even having a playable build of this game.
*******END OF RAMBLE*********************
but BACK TO THE POINT! If you find this text, then you win a prize. PM me with the message "Fenrir Alpha" for a nice present.
*!*!* Cory, I am making this guide with the express intent and purpose to help you. This is not going to be a Walkthrough, or Cheat guide. I will not list the different quest lines, or any story elements in this work. It is strictly a guide for new players, to help them find their bearings in the New Boston Zone, and for more experienced players to have a handy reference, so that if they saw a hard to find cyber implant, they could simply go to the "Implants" page, find the one they are looking for, and then click "Locations" to display the store or stores that sell the part they are looking for. When I finish it, you are welcome to edit it, chop it up into pieces, use it in your game, or just print it out and use it when you run out of toilet paper if you need (though my feewings wouwd be huwt, cuz dat wud bee meeny weeny waaaAHHHHHH!
)I have no plans to post this guide anywhere outside of this site and through email to my friends.
The things that I could use help on are as follows: (In order of how badly I need them)
- Pictures of the areas that you see when pulling up the travel menu (I will be placing them in a grid, so that I can make the interactive map)
- An Item list would be a great help ( I have seen the one here, but it is a bit outdated) I am especially interested in items that are not available in stores, such as v-chips, cyberknews, passes, and other various things.
- A list of the nodes (in the correct order) that each terminal connects to. (i am starting from the bottom of the map, so if someone wants to start at the top....)
- Pictures of the different faction symbols, and possibly other things, such as the map location icons, the headshots of the NPCs, and maybe a few of the icons for the items and weapons and cyberware. I would like to keep this guide informational, but it helps to have a visual reference, not just for appearance and appeal, but also to help people recognize things, or help them find the location they are looking for.
- Finally, I welcome suggestions. Let me know what you would like to see in the guide, or make a suggestion about layout, or anything. I welcome any suggestions or comments, EXCEPT for silly flamebaiting comments like "You're a Doodie head!". Comments like that will be ignored (after I reply with something EQUALLY as childish.) seriously, call me anything you want but,if you call me a "Doodie" head, I will be forced to murderalize you until you die, or cease to live. I am a "Poopie" Head, and don't you get it confused. My god-daughter gave me that nickname, and you better not get it messed up!
Thanks for reading the post, and let me know what you think of the idea! (Or if you would like to contribute--All contributions will be credited to those who submit the info.)
)