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Post by thecrazyianator on Dec 3, 2014 5:01:54 GMT
I've seen references to Dragon Riders on the role play server, and I'm curious as to who will get to be the riders, and how they will be chosen. Will it be entirely random? Or will it be a calculated desicion based off of a player's activities on the server?
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Post by MCAlagaesia on Dec 5, 2014 3:12:10 GMT
We're still open to ideas on this front. Most likely, players will have to complete a quest or series of quests to get the Dragon Rider permissions. Thinking of this, Dragon Riders may require less research to unlock a magic spell...
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Post by thecrazyianator on Dec 5, 2014 4:44:38 GMT
We're still open to ideas on this front. Most likely, players will have to complete a quest or series of quests to get the Dragon Rider permissions. Thinking of this, Dragon Riders may require less research to unlock a magic spell... I would most certainly agree that the riders should have some advantage over others concerning the research and use of magic, but I would imagine more that the riders lose less energy (hunger) when casting spells and/or have access to more spells. One other thing that I would be interested in is the implementation of the ability for riders to draw energy from their surroundings. I'm not sure how it would work, and it would have to have limitations so it's not overly OP, but I feel that it could be a very cool thing to add.
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brisingr
MCAlagaesian
Posts: 68
Minecraft: DiamithorDragon
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Post by brisingr on Dec 5, 2014 21:54:40 GMT
That's unfair
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Post by MCAlagaesia on Dec 5, 2014 22:52:48 GMT
We're still open to ideas on this front. Most likely, players will have to complete a quest or series of quests to get the Dragon Rider permissions. Thinking of this, Dragon Riders may require less research to unlock a magic spell... I would most certainly agree that the riders should have some advantage over others concerning the research and use of magic, but I would imagine more that the riders lose less energy (hunger) when casting spells and/or have access to more spells. One other thing that I would be interested in is the implementation of the ability for riders to draw energy from their surroundings. I'm not sure how it would work, and it would have to have limitations so it's not overly OP, but I feel that it could be a very cool thing to add. Perhaps the Rider must be standing completely still for a minute before their hunger slowly, very slowly, refills? This would mean that the player would be vulnerable during this "meditation" time.
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Post by thecrazyianator on Dec 6, 2014 0:41:16 GMT
I would most certainly agree that the riders should have some advantage over others concerning the research and use of magic, but I would imagine more that the riders lose less energy (hunger) when casting spells and/or have access to more spells. One other thing that I would be interested in is the implementation of the ability for riders to draw energy from their surroundings. I'm not sure how it would work, and it would have to have limitations so it's not overly OP, but I feel that it could be a very cool thing to add. Perhaps the Rider must be standing completely still for a minute before their hunger slowly, very slowly, refills? This would mean that the player would be vulnerable during this "meditation" time. That could be pretty cool. It certainly makes sense and isn't overly OP, so I'd be open to it.
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Post by lubenqwebjartskular on Dec 9, 2014 7:22:48 GMT
i think that since the riders are bonded to their dragons they should have more hunger/energy to cats spells with but it A. either goes down really fast, or B.(as you were saying) it takes ages to regen. however i think that one minute would be too long to wait, and also if you can only regain health with meditation, how do you eat?
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Post by MCAlagaesia on Dec 9, 2014 20:36:31 GMT
i think that since the riders are bonded to their dragons they should have more hunger/energy to cats spells with but it A. either goes down really fast, or B.(as you were saying) it takes ages to regen. however i think that one minute would be too long to wait, and also if you can only regain health with meditation, how do you eat? What do you mean "how do you eat?"? You can still eat! Also, riders will regain hunger, not health when meditating. Again, this is not confirmed.
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Post by ThatRedhead on Dec 12, 2014 7:26:35 GMT
My suggestion for this topic is as follows:
All players on the server would be ranked based on when they originally joined the server, how much active time they have logged, achievements they have made, maybe even as stated above by completing quests or adventures.
Dragon eggs would be in constant supply, and would be slowly replenished by dragon mating. I'd recommend making a population of wild dragons, since dragons with Riders rarely mate. So these dragon eggs that are laid would be given a chance of being given to elves/humans(/dwarves if we are being inclusive). Each egg destined for a Rider (by being given to elves/humans(/dwarves)) would immediately be given a random number between 1-100, and then whoever holds that rank (so long as they aren't already bonded with a dragon) would be assigned that egg. If the rank already is bonded to a dragon, then the egg's number would automatically decrease by 1 until an unbonded player is found.
No longer needing the number, the egg would drop the number and in its place would store the name of their selected player. When this player gets within say 32 blocks of the egg, even if the egg is in a chest or another player's inventory etc. they would be alerted or their attention would somehow become fixated on the egg, and the egg would hatch for that person. This would be when their growth starts.
The dragon and their Rider could transfer energy(hunger) back and forth as needed, and dragons would be able to store lots of energy. Their maximum energy capacity would be proportional to their age and size, and would be refilled by eating animals. To balance this, difficult spells would need to be very energy intensive. Still, riders would be powerful (and should be) especially since everyone would have a fair chance of becoming one if they work to be in the top ranks.
As for regenerating hunger from your environment, I feel like this should be dependent on the amount of trees, grass, animals etc. in a short area, and be quite ineffective, but be available to anyone who can perform magic.
This may be way too much for the developers to develop, but I think if they could pull that all off it would really be a good solution to fair selection for dragon riders, and would make it somewhat competitive and interesting.
Please suggest changes or revisions to the idea, it is still somewhat rough.
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Post by MCAlagaesia on Dec 12, 2014 9:47:53 GMT
My suggestion for this topic is as follows:
Awesome, we'll go through and give our input for each suggestion! All players on the server would be ranked based on when they originally joined the server, how much active time they have logged, achievements they have made, maybe even as stated above by completing quests or adventures.
Sounds like a good idea, but we'd have to come up with a formula to calculate the number. How will all these numbers become equal to a rank number more than 1 and less than 100? Instead, why don't we just choose a player name and ignore this rank system? Dragon eggs would be in constant supply, and would be slowly replenished by dragon mating. I'd recommend making a population of wild dragons, since dragons with Riders rarely mate. So these dragon eggs that are laid would be given a chance of being given to elves/humans(/dwarves if we are being inclusive). Each egg destined for a Rider (by being given to elves/humans(/dwarves)) would immediately be given a random number between 1-100, and then whoever holds that rank (so long as they aren't already bonded with a dragon) would be assigned that egg. If the rank already is bonded to a dragon, then the egg's number would automatically decrease by 1 until an unbonded player is found.
Dragon eggs still need to be "rare". There's also a few unnecessary calculations in there that could waste CPU cycles. Other issues with this include the fact that there'll be more than 100 players and that there could be more than 1 player with the same rank No longer needing the number, the egg would drop the number and in its place would store the name of their selected player. When this player gets within say 32 blocks of the egg, even if the egg is in a chest or another player's inventory etc. they would be alerted or their attention would somehow become fixated on the egg, and the egg would hatch for that person. This would be when their growth starts.
This could be done, but would be very, very resource intensive as we would have to check if many variables concerning a player and any possible nearby eggs every time a player moves. Instead, to reduce lag, we'll probably have to only execute the code if the player has the egg in his or her inventory. Don't forget that we're not using mods, just plugins. We want everyone to be able to connect to the server without pre-downloading client-side modifications. Because of this, we can't visually have the dragon grow from a hatchling to a powerful beast, as it's simply not possible with what serverside code allows. The dragon and their Rider could transfer energy(hunger) back and forth as needed, and dragons would be able to store lots of energy. Their maximum energy capacity would be proportional to their age and size, and would be refilled by eating animals. To balance this, difficult spells would need to be very energy intensive. Still, riders would be powerful (and should be) especially since everyone would have a fair chance of becoming one if they work to be in the top ranks.
This is an interesting idea! We'll keep energy transfer in mind, but as Dragons as an entity don't have a hunger bar, we'll have to read and write to some sort of file whenever the player uses the energy/hunger from their dragon because we can't simply add and subtract hunger as we do with players. We'll also have to implement a simple way to feed dragons, for example by right clicking them with food. Remember that for the reasons we stated above, dragons can't have variable sizes. Unfortunately, they will be fully grown when they hatch. As for regenerating hunger from your environment, I feel like this should be dependent on the amount of trees, grass, animals etc. in a short area, and be quite ineffective, but be available to anyone who can perform magic.
It should be pretty easy to do this based on entities. This means increasing the speed of energy regeneration when there are more players, pigs, sheep and zombies nearby. While still possible, it's harder and more intensive to loop through nearby blocks to see how many leaf or grass blocks are in the area. This may be way too much for the developers to develop, but I think if they could pull that all off it would really be a good solution to fair selection for dragon riders, and would make it somewhat competitive and interesting.
Please suggest changes or revisions to the idea, it is still somewhat rough.
All of what you suggested is possible, but certain things could cause horrible lag and depend on too many variables. Hopefully our idea is a good compromise (see below). It was always our intention to make sure that anyone can become a dragon rider.
Anyway, with your ideas and our changes, our developers have written this pseudocode: every minute, choose a random number between 1 and 1000
if the number is equal to 1, a dragon egg has been laid.*
{
choose a random race (elves, humans, dwarves or urgals)**
{
choose a player from this race who is not already a rider***
{
write player name to a config
add player name to dragon egg lore. This is used instead of the location-based system****
}
}
on inventory event (when the player interacts with their inventory or that of a chest, etc)
{
if there is a dragon egg in the inventory and the dragon egg chose the player interacting with it
{
send player messages, give player permissions, basically make the player a rider*****
remove the player name from the list of players that have been chosen by an egg but are not yet riders
}
} on player death
{ reset everything - player has died, they start from the beginning. They are no longer a rider. } *This simulates the dragons breeding. A 1 in 1000 chance may seem very small, but it can be expected that a player will be chosen every 16.6 hours. Remember that the server is online 24/7, so increasing the chance of an egg being laid would mean that everyone on the server would be dragon rider within a few days. **Only choose a particular race if that race has any players who are not already dragon riders or have been chosen by an egg. ***The player does not have to be online, but they do have to have been online recently, eg. within a week or two. This is to reduce the possibility that the system chooses a player that might never join the server again ****To increase the likelihood of a player finding his or her egg, any player can use a certain spell (if they have researched it) to reveal who the egg they are holding has chosen. The player who has the egg can then choose whether to tell the chosen player that they will be a rider and track them down to deliver the egg or hide it for someone else to find. *****We give the egg to the player rather than spawning it to prevent a number of issues, and also because we already have plans concerning how dragons are "hatched".
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Post by ThatRedhead on Dec 12, 2014 15:56:40 GMT
Pseudocode looks pretty good, except I still feel like players should be able to increase their chances of being selected to be a rider. This is like gaining honor and making them more worthy of being a rider. Random chance across all players would make it too likely that inactive players or players who would abuse the dragon/rider bond would become riders. The ranking is what comes in to play. How CPU-intensive would it be to have each player gain 'honor points' or something as they do stuff in the world and be listed in a file in order of these points? (Ties would then each have the same chance of being chosen.) Each time a dragon egg hatches it would have a (number of honor points of player)/(total honor points) chance in hatching for that player. I'm unfamiliar with Java plugins so I don't know how this would be done, and there's probably a better method of implementing this while leaving a lot of CPU open. As for dragons being fully formed at hatching, would it be within a plugin's bounds to add completely new entities, so that you could have stages of growth by having it change from a small dragon to a medium dragon and then fully grown dragon?
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Post by lubenqwebjartskular on Dec 13, 2014 0:39:00 GMT
I agree with you that we shouldnt get random , inactive players getting to be the dragon riders who are meant to be the protectors of alageasia/the server and that a ranking should be in place to stop this happening. what we dont want happening is people paying to get honor points or just rank farming because that would ruin the dragon rider aspect of the server, i think. Also if we want to make "baby" dragons all we need to do is use a custom resource pack in 1.8. i know this SOUNDS crazy but in 1.8 resource packs can have custom block and entity models. so all we'd have to do is find a mob no one is ever going to see that's the right block dimensions, re-texture it and change is behavior code. when the "baby dragon" reaches maturity it replaces it with an ender dragon. however with this method baby dragons may or may not be able to fly, and the groth chende would be REALLY unrealistic. it may not even be possible, but hey its just an idea. lubenqwe brightscales
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Post by ThatRedhead on Dec 13, 2014 3:56:31 GMT
I agree with you that we shouldnt get random , inactive players getting to be the dragon riders who are meant to be the protectors of alageasia/the server and that a ranking should be in place to stop this happening. what we dont want happening is people paying to get honor points or just rank farming because that would ruin the dragon rider aspect of the server, i think. Also if we want to make "baby" dragons all we need to do is use a custom resource pack in 1.8. i know this SOUNDS crazy but in 1.8 resource packs can have custom block and entity models. so all we'd have to do is find a mob no one is ever going to see that's the right block dimensions, re-texture it and change is behavior code. when the "baby dragon" reaches maturity it replaces it with an ender dragon. however with this method baby dragons may or may not be able to fly, and the groth chende would be REALLY unrealistic. it may not even be possible, but hey its just an idea. lubenqwe brightscales The use of a resource pack for baby dragons sounds great, and it's OK if they can't fly because Saphira couldn't fly for a few days either. And the jump would be a little big, which is why I was suggesting the whole small medium large dragons. Not sure if that's unreasonable, but it would be very cool to see the dragons growing like that. Back on the topic of honor point farming, earning them would probably be done through completing certain tasks/adventures/quests. This would make it too difficult to have any way to really cheat the system. Maybe we could assign or select leaders for each group of people, such as a monarch for the elves and one for the dwarves, as well as a Lord or Lady for each major town. They would be able to send players on quests of sorts to perform some difficult task for the leader(s) and earn honor points in return after completing it. These players would most likely be admins just because of the nature of the position and the responsibility in not just giving free honor points to anybody.
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Post by lubenqwebjartskular on Dec 13, 2014 4:09:03 GMT
Yes,i think that this method would work well, the admins and such being appointed "rulers" of towns and cities, of which the have to monitor and give out honor points. also about honour points we should find a way to display them on the forum if the idea is used. i was thinking, and actually the only mobs we could use for baby/medium dragons are nether mobs and silverfish. everything else is kinda already in use in survival. silver fish could be baby dragons , blazes medium(they could fly) and ender dragons for adults.
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Post by ThatRedhead on Dec 13, 2014 5:01:38 GMT
Yes,i think that this method would work well, the admins and such being appointed "rulers" of towns and cities, of which the have to monitor and give out honor points. also about honour points we should find a way to display them on the forum if the idea is used. i was thinking, and actually the only mobs we could use for baby/medium dragons are nether mobs and silverfish. everything else is kinda already in use in survival. silver fish could be baby dragons , blazes medium(they could fly) and ender dragons for adults. Using blazes as the medium would be great to show the dragon first beginning to fly. What do you think about using ghasts as a size before full size? It would be the stage where they begin to breathe fire and they would still fly. With all this use of other mobs though, AI behavior of the low stage dragons might be off. Is it possible to modify mob AI with plugins?
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