NPC Village [Function & Template]

    Alright, a new problem came up that I'm now trying to solve while it's still on the drawing board. The problem of "being too basic" that you might as well not have them. Here's a way to make them useful, while also being useful to the player, and to make the player be able to interact with it in a Rising World manner.


    NPC Villages should be appropriate to their biome, yet should also have a standard type of 'lay-out' they would set themselves up with. They would come with some buildings, yet not the others that you would either have to search for other settlements around the map, or assist the NPC villagers in setting up a type of building they're either seeking, or missing. People would simply build stupid appearing structures, yet if they're also encouraged to build proper ones then you could have fun seeing villages turn into a town.


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    NPC Village Templates:


    This being a pre-placed, yet still randomly generated villages which would spawn with various buildings as a puzzle piece. You would encounter them with certain buildings, yet not others.

    • Inn: A place for both the wandering NPCs & players to sleep at during a nasty storm, travel, or just a stop between other settlements. May or may not have a pub within it.
    • Bar: If an Inn doesn't have a pub/bar/saloon then you would see a chance of one appearing in the village.
    • Marketplace/Small Grocer: An open market place to either buy food from naturally spawned NPC traders, travelling merchants, or you may see a closed general store selling basic necessities.
    • Library/Archives: A place to purchase your knowledge needs (books, scrolls, and such), to learn new book & food related recipes, cooking recipes, among others. You could learn some of the basics here, while also having to various other books to check out. Whatever they contain shall be up to Red51.
    • City Hall: Something to help the villagers out with their city planning, donate supplies, assist with building structures, while also possibly tending to some basic 'quests' they might need. (Millionaire mod inspired).
    • Park/Tree Lined roads: Either a park, tree-lined roads, or even both could be seen added, or missing.
    • Clinic/hospital: In whatever form, they may or may not also appear. They would heal the NPCs, as well as players, back to health (depending on their tech-line also). They would attempt to cure various illnesses to the best of their abilities, yet suffer themselves also that players may also wish to assist by donating items to assist them in their healing cause.
    • Entertainment Center: Something with basic board games at first, yet could eventually grow into having soccer, football, hockey, tennis, & other types of basic sports. Archery & fencing ranges.
    • Spa/Hot Springs/Baths/Swimming pool: Any sort of water-related relaxing & recreation to assist the player to keep clean, ward off any environmental diseases, as well as either keeping warm or cool when depended on biome environment. This would tie in with health & weather related matters.
    • Horse Steeds & vehicle garages/parking lots: It's obvious that these villages shall need a place for you to tie up your horse when staying there, as with having a place to park your vehicle also. If proper, one would probably even find a horse/vehicle dealer to allow players to travel around the map without their own personal transports.
    • Train Station: Basically an unused & abandoned train station that could be used to link your settlement up to these NPC villages. They would motivate the player to connect the settlements to also see how gorgeously & formal these stations would be. They would have a place to load, unload, and even a place to wait/relax at. Anything a train needs to function, it would have a facility for it.
    • Port/Docks: Fishing villages would have a place for docks to hold fishing boats at. If welcomed (by Red51), a bigger dockyards & even bigger ships would be spotted here from both the player & NPC side.
    • Assassins + Village Guards: This would be more of a passive feature for when players abuse the village's system. If players steal, don't tend to loans, and such then they would warn you an assassin is coming your way with another timer set up to slay you, and to take back what's rightfully theirs. A penalty would be given to then have the village on guard, more reluctance to use their services, as well as constantly punishing the player for abusing their system. If the assassin's fail to slay you, then a new trigger would be activated to have bandits harass the player until the situation has been mended.

    That's the basics, yet I'm assuming more could be added which slipped my mind. Basically trying to think what one would build in the likes of 'Rise of Nations' & Civilization games. May have missed something, or may even be complex to what Red51 may have considered. What I have listed ties in to what we know, what's planned, and a way to make NPC villages useful for food, hygiene, climate, and even general needs. A place to sleep, stay safe, as well as even services that could be used.

    This is great! I like the idea of various functions within a town.. My complaint on the other thread was about how minecraft villages seem rather pointless. The villagers offer items of little value to trade. Also, villages are always isolated which makes no sense in a world where rail technology exists. So if there were villages then they would be connected to others by old roads and rail lines or be on the borders of rivers or oceans.


    Since this vision of a village is to be is on a grand scale and interconnected, it would make sense for village spawning to be optional since it would greatly alter the terrain generated. Many of us want the world to remain natural and are content with wandering NPC merchants.


    Also, i like the idea of a library to purchase crafting books. This would address my issue in games like 7d2d where you collect boxes of parts you need but no skill learned to use them. Knowledge should always be available, even at a price.

    Wow! That sounds like a great set up for the villages. As for the entertainment area I would add in theaters or at least music halls. If combined with a preset for cultures one could have an old west style town or a medieval village or go for a modern setting as well. Really hope Red implements this idea in the future.

    I'm going to assume that this should be resuggested once the game is considered complete with everything being knocked out of the list. Even so, I now justified having villages/settlements/tribe camps, and etc while tying it into the climate & survival side of things.


    Also, when I say crafting books I mean supplies to make books (covers + paper, or a scroll), and various food recipes randomly generated to the library's collection. Things like learning how to make various soups, sandwiches, pumpkin pie, and etc. Maybe could tie into tools & etc to make sure you don't progress "too quickly", or similar. It would all be randomized recipe wise that it would keep things interesting. The rest would have to be obtained by traveling merchants & dungeons. Maybe even lost among the terrain generation.


    I also agree that Minecraft's villages being a cheap gimmick. Something they added, yet a wasted potential that Thaumcraft & Millionare done better by adding actual guards, and such. Millionaire gave you recommendations of what villagers needed to build structures, as well as tending to their own needs of cutting down trees, replanting, gathering supplies, and just general trading. You help them, and they help you. The Vanilla Minecraft failed on this front because Mojang is a greedy pile of shit. Minecraft is awesome, just that Mojang is busy having their lazy pride screw them over. Emeralds were nice, just a wasted way to trade. They even ruined the way we traded by locking how many times you could trade for one single item that they forced you onto a new one. It would lock you out, forcing you to trade for another item, then the next, & etc. You couldn't wait a day to go back & swarm-trade with the villagers. I enjoyed it when I could simply farm wheat or sugar canes/reeds for emeral, or something similar, instead to then return the next Minecraft day for more Emeralds. Even catching fish to trade. It was a nice 'cool-down', yet Mojang saw this as an exploit, or similar. Nothing wrong with it.


    It seems a cantina/musical hall/entertainment building slipped my mind. I guess that ties in with the 'pub' type structure, yet having an entertainment structure would be neat. Some place to chill, more so in SMP (survival multiplayer), would be awesome. Just somethign to hear the NPCs make music, have instruments auto-play music, and etc as you chat, craft, & whatever else players would do.


    If Red51 doesn't want to do this then I'll be disappointed. Granted, he's busy & stresses out a lot, yet I'd now find it another missed opportunity to make Rising World awesome. We all care for Rising World, yet it would be depressing if it wasn't at least considered. I'll agree that everything would have to be kept to modding then if Red51 can't find the time, nor energy to do it maybe a year or two later.

    @zfoxfire Only room for one spoony bard in my world and thats me :)


    @ArcticuKitsu I'm sure Red will work to make as many of our suggestions come true as he can with out mods but I can also see we have enough talented players to make mods of anything he can't get to. Hoping Red even adds in the best mods as a part of the end product if Rising World ever goes to other platforms.

    Hi


    Maybe I can add soùe suggestion to the NPC Village.Could be nice to have the possibility to build some of them. Let me explain :First you have to unlock the City Mall blueprint (High Cost) that allow player to build a little Lvl 1 City Mall.


    This City Mall could come with 4 little houses blueprint for workers, and some other basic facilities blueprints. You'll need necessaries ressources to build them. Workers could be affected to task like hunting, building, mining, cut trees, gardening, planting trees, farminig, etc... at each lvl up of City Mall you'll find new blueprints to be able to build new houses for workers or new facilities


    Later, at Lvl 2 or 3, you'll be able to build the Store. The NPC Storeman will give you the posisbility to upload some receipes (kind of blueprints, but cheaper) into a global store, specifying the tools needed to craft it, and a price, in ingame money. You also can buy some receipts with in-game money, and each time you buy one receipts it will credit the creator's ingame wallet


    At Lvl 4 or 5, you'll be able to build the Architect Store. You'll be able to sell and buy blueprints. For ex I could buy a bridge blueprint at the Architecture Store, and as soon I have necessaries ressources I can place it into my world.There's so basics ideas to add some fun for solos.What do you think about it ?


    Cheers
    Winael

    I made up a solution or proposition to solve this technically aka programmatically and any other custom buildings. I never considered a progression in buildings as some are suggesting that's a different scheme needed like a crafting progression simply like buying blueprints rather than world generation. In my "Past Suggestions" of my signature below I had a response to this in April look for "Suggestion for rendering Developer API for rendering custom world Templates"

    I like Winael's idea of unlocking blueprints. I suggested to Red that we set up some hosted repos for plugins, instead of github. Perhaps we can host blueprints as well? We can set up scopes for blueprints where each one has an author and version (like plugins). Each is hosted in internal git servers which ties in with the current user database.


    Red51 wants the game to allow players to advance through the ages. We are going to have more primitive tools soon. Perhaps user submitted blueprints for things like simple huts, wigwams, or houses from different cultures and eras can be unlocked over time. All are tied in with the blueprint manager in the journal except now you can share blueprints and access maybe themed village blueprint sets for each building type. The set can be specific to a time period you are exploring and be used when villages are auto generated. Each blueprint set can containa blueprint for various building type such as city hall, pub, blacksmith, hotel, healer, residentials.

    Just reading the replies while one of them just makes me go 'WTF!?!" with the rest being fine.


    I do like Winael's idea, and the detailing it's going into. The whole mall thing, yet you having to build one, earn the functions, among others. It be like Terraria, or even that new PS4 Vita game with the name escaping me based on Minecraft. Something with Dragon, or something.


    I'd happily welcome blacksmiths, farmers, & such. Even fishers. Things like building & advanced professions may be pushing it, and we might cycle back on resource farming abuse. The villagers/NPCs would have to have a will of their own to refuse jobs every now and again to keep things from being exploited/abused.

    @ Zfoxfire it's funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday. I was looking at those cute gift boxes and thinking how nice it would be to be able to craft a unique item and put the blueprint in a gift box. A nice housewarming gift would be fun!

    Quote from BeamMeUp

    @ Zfoxfire it's funny, I was just thinking about this yesterday. I was looking at those cute gift boxes and thinking how nice it would be to be able to craft a unique item and put the blueprint in a gift box. A nice housewarming gift would be fun!


    That would be neat. The only use I've found so far for those gift boxes is as a decorative storage container for all that coal I can't use yet ;-p


    I also envisioned being able to put a specific blueprint into an inventory item and trading it with other players.

    Trading blueprints, yet needing the resources to build those blueprints should be the way to go. Treating blueprints as tradable recipes. Yeah. WOuld be sweet if we could learn recipes this way also by it having traded to us, being found, and such. Some would simply be off limits until a vendor, player, or someone else came across. Would even give servers the ability to limit & give access to specific types.


    Learning from the settlements, bandits, merchants, among others.


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    Alright, bumping this thread because I want to make note of this train of thought, which I lost, to recently have regained is dealing with NPC Traders. It could deal with settlements, in a way, but this is more of what Red51 mentions of seeking player-made blocks.


    Seeing as how Red51 mentioned we'll have a roaming merchant that it be wise for this merchant to have a coding of seeking out player-made structures, similar to how there's a code to find the 'most' human made blocks there to find your spawn. Just use the similar type coding of going from one chunk to the next (as quietly as possible), until this merchant calmly travels from one region to the next. From one settlement to the next. Even allowing to to go near dungeons, various NPC related settlements, among others. Even dungeons.


    I'm also relating this to Skyrim with the roaming vendors there being 'Khajit Caravans' with them appearing in one settlement to the next. They're there one moment, gone the next. It be odd to see this in one settlements being vast in Rising World, yet be neat to see this merchant roaming both on foot, as well as in a horse & in vehicles.


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    - Bonus: Any future vegetation could be bartered for (yet currency could also be a thing) by gaining access to corn, wheat, among numerous others. Even completed foods, like poutine, Won Ton soup, pizza, among other local & foreign foods of various points of interests. Even various teas, orange juice, tomato juice, watered down beer, wine, among other sorts. Red51 mentioned he wanted to tone down the food-related vegetation, thus this being a good way to go about it. That, and to steal such from bandits also whom steal from your chest also. Even having a Raccoon to spy in the manner of "Raccoon showed me how to drink maple syrup from a tree" (first nations style), type thing.

    The Kitsu suggestions are all awesome but I kindly agree with zfoxfire that,although I believe in Red implementing a lot of our desired suggestions,some NPC functionality just won't happen.It would be great If it did. Also, I am kind of against mods,unstable ones,crushing worlds irrepairably,conflict between some mods etc. SO,hopefully most of the requests,at least the most desired ones will be added in the vanilla main game.

    *sighs* I feel majority of my posts have been missed that I'll of course receive those types of replies that people shall side with Zork. Not trying to be rude in replying back, nor attention seeking, but yeah. Guess it'll happen because newer information trumps all.


    Did note that these things shall not to be expected, yet that's what suggestions are to keep improving things. Red51 simply wanted NPC Traders to have basic RPG elements. Basically Pokemon gameboy game style of moving in any direction, scripting patterns, conversation bubbles, and simple bartering. We're now (or loosely planned) into obtaining wandering merchants after the constant requests for NPCs in our world from myself & others.


    Not sure where I noted that, if on here or the forum, yet it's now back on here. And I also agree that most of this should be vanilla as much as possible because my Minecraft worlds constantly kept getting wiped & corrupted from all the modding. I want it as much vanilla as humanly possible that there's really no frustrations to be had on mod side of things. Maybe even some sort of script to constantly weed out the modded stuff to replace it back with vanilla content, or similar. Some safeguards, even on NPC village side & such.


    But hey, I hope the post above has been noted because I nearly lost it in time. No joke. I hope it doesn't go to waste.

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