How about this?
Magical Weapons aren’t crafted. But made by the wearer of the weapon/item. Let’s say a guard killed 50 outlaws on duty. His trusted Iron Sword will be called Peacemaker from that moment on and it will get slightly better stats.
You could expand it so that these weapons cn be inherited as heirlooms or be sold on the market.
Yes I have thought about that one - items can level up if they have a colorful and impressive backstory. It’s an appealing idea, but in the original norse myths weapons are magic because they were made that way, not by association. Also, i want to give importance to craftspeople, and self-creating magical items would take away from that.
As I’ve mentioned before on this thread (or at least I reckon I did), I’m currently working on a game set in Scotland and am trying too to stick to the Scottish myths and everything. But I don’t think you have to stay that close to it; I mean, at some point, I thought it would be cool to have a Banshee in my game — which is not a typically Scottish creature, more like Irish —, and since it fit well in the environment I had created, I left it there :point: Though as you said, if you want your gameplay to be orbiting around crafting, then of course you HAVE to make magical items craftable!! ;D
J0
Actually no, they don’t. In fact it’s kind of cool to have completely unique items that you cannot make and that are not common. This is an arbitrary design decision so it could be either way. Sure you could make it craft-able, but just think about if they weren’t. You wouldn’t see them often or potentially for a long time, and you find one. When you do it gives you a sense of wonder and excitement.
Indeed! But I do believe that is possible with craftable objects as well. I remember that in one of the Dragon Quest games (I reckon I must have played it on DS), there were so many recipes and some of them were so well hidden that you would sometimes find very unexpected items. In my opinion, it’s also a good feeling to craft for the hundredth time (maybe not that much though, 100 seems quite a lot heheh) an item that used to be extremely rare at the beginning of the game and that you may have not known existed until maybe going through half of the story. Gives you a feeling of being able to master new things, in a way.
Cheers! J0 
I’ve got nothing against special items that cannot be made by any actor in the world, those just aren’t interesting from a programming point of view at the moment. I can always add in special items, but at the moment I am just trying to get the Vangardians making all the stuff they need on a day-to-day basis.
I wouldn’t say the focus of the game is crafting… this is just necessary groundwork for the world. What I really want to focus on is intrigue, backstabbing, treachery, epic destruction, magic that is not simply a glorified projectile weapon, and so on. And I also want a subtheme where you can reject all that dark stuff and withdraw from the maelstrom and lead a reclusive pure and idealistic life. But I can’t get onto that until I have the world ticking over nicely. Once I have added the priests and the hunters, I can start the more difficult task of balancing the economy (if I can get it right, the economy should balance itself, once I have built in appropriate negative feedbacks to moderate behaviors and keep the low-born in their place*).
*In the real world, no-one has ever balanced an economy. So, good luck to me!
Maybe the ingredients used in an item can determine whether it’s magic? I mean, a regular iron sword isn’t going to be anything incredibly special, but what about one made from a dragon’s fang? What about a set of armor made from woven Warg fur, or the hide of a sea serpent?
Maybe some materials aren’t actively magical, but hold the potential for magic much better, like the aforementioned dragon’s fang - it would take very well indeed to magic concerning flame, as it has been exposed to dragon’s fire for a long time. The smith might, after years and years of practice, be able to draw out that nature into a blade that spits and hisses with fires whenever it’s swung.
But powerful magic may be even further beyond that, requiring divine guidance. That dragon fang sword that spits fire is impressive, but the smith had guidance - now the blade itself can absorb fire, lob it, even cause an eruption of flames. Maybe he was even able to recreate the dragon’s essence with runework - and the sword summons small fire dragons, or maybe even not-so-small exploding fire dragons.
Depending on how large you want magic to scale, an artifact made of the highest-quality materials, by the greatest of smiths and with guidance from the gods themselves - such an artifact might have some truly insane capabilities.
… On a side note, suggestions are fun! I had to struggle not to start getting really crazy with the ideas!
I’m no economist but, tell you what, in my opinion, balancing the economy in a game is easier than balancing it in real life. There’s no outcome or income you don’t have information on, and you know exactly what entity needs what and so forth. So I guess you just need to lay it on paper and sort it out :point:
Cheers, J0
I’d argue the opposite: 7 billion minds (and the forces of nature) are constantly balancing the economy. Good luck to you indeed!
I think it would be fairer to say the 7 billion minds are all actively trying to unbalance the economy in their favor, resulting in the current economic balance.
This is called a general equilibrium (GE) model and you’re right, if you know all of the agent’s preferences (utility curves) and initial wealth (endowments) then it may be possible to figure out the general equilibrium prices of all goods. However there might be more than one equilibrium, or even none. Also, the way that you get to that equilibrium is not very well understood in economic theory.
That’s a fair point, there’s a type of model called an ‘Agent based computational model’ (ABC) which tries to represent all the random people in an economy. This sounds like what ags1 has created in his game:
The general equilibrium models usually have trouble dealing with heterogeneous agents but the ABC models are better in this regard and appear to resemble reality more closely than the GE models which usually assume that everyone has the same preferences and are rational economic maximisers with perfect information.
Interesting work on Vangard ags1, will be cool to see how your computer game economy works out. I’ve heard that in MMO games, humans tend to hoard and dump products and generally act irrationally which can make the balance between fun and the realness of the economy difficult.
Sounds like most of your players are computer-controlled so maybe this won’t be a problem.
I like the polygon graphics and bright green artsyle too.
By the way, be careful that your agents in the game don’t create their own game with their own economy, and so on, or else there might be tragic consequences!
I don’t have a top-down control of entities so I can’t just work it all out on paper. I need to set up rules and behaviors that balance by themselves and make the world behave “realistically”.
These are the basic rules of the economy:
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People work until they have enough money for their outgoings and wishlist items, then they switch to training/social behaviors. This means that poor people don’t typically get rich, and rich people stay rich. If a person changes behavior and for example upgrades their hovel to a large hall, then they start having to pay servants and higher maintenance costs, so they start working longer hours to cover this. People also try to maintain a certain amount of savings, depending on their outlook and general social status.
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Items and services have a default recommended retail price that is influenced by item quality, availability and trading skill of buyer and seller.
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Cash-strapped Vangardians can get into debt to buy items they can’t immediately afford (e.g. woodcutter breaks axe, needs new axe, has no money, would starve unless they get a new axe on credit). This means poor people tend to pay more for the same item as a rich person.
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Money is constantly injected into the economy by mines. Also from hoards, or course
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Surplus money is taking out of the economy as religious offerings at the temples.
I need to work out the details. For example, if food is in short supply, a peasant can get more for their apples. That means they need to make fewer apples to reach their target income, so as the item becomes scarcer, the production becomes less. If I let peasants cash in on the high market prices I can get into a situation where the peasants are weirdly rich (unless they burn their newfound wealth as temple offerings). Probably I need to add some element of planning, so that the chieftains can react to supply issues by adding new citizens to the settlements.
Is this project dead?
Huhh??? What???
It’s alive and well, why do you ask?
No updates for five days, you’re scaring us 
I’m just inbetween phases, I have added most careers and now I have to go on to totally different aspects of the game. I’m working on hunters and deer and combat at the moment, and also trying to balance the economy.
Got over the excitement of building a PC. Hunters are tracking:
Rannveig found a deer 99.76412331822027m away.
Unn found a deer 386.84841314152357m away.
Gudfinna found a deer 399.05202528122174m away.
Gunnhild found a deer 483.4492922292207m away.
Rannveig found a deer 394.834353239086m away.
Hlodvir found a deer 481.8736082024527m away.
At the moment they just run up to the deer, tag it, and run back home. Next step is they get to a certain distance, stealth their way closer, and then shoot the deer with an arrow. Got to give the deer survival behaviors too, so they know to run away and can alert each other.
In other news, my Intel IGP can’t cope with the pathetic graphics in this game. I have an idea for a batcher that should improve performance.
Might as well have (int)'ed those values before printing them :persecutioncomplex:
Are you using OpenGL flags for your JVM? I enabled it and it gave me around 10x better performance (frame times of <1 ms) - transparency can be accelerated too. I could give you some pointers on your rendering code, if you like?
Hey, if he calculated the distance between a peasant and a deer, with an accuracy that is a fraction of the radius of a proton, he should be showing it off. Hat’s off to you, sir!