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And here is a bit from the Lionheart forums:Eric Dallaire (Cabal)Not visualisin a portrait
The low tech fix for this would be to choose a portrait and just hold your thumb up over the spot where the portrait appears on the character page, and visualize away. Barring that, we'll look into other possibilities.
You will also be able to customize your avatar, skin, hair, etc.
AI
The flip side of dumb and erratic AI is sometimes simple AI can be be so effectively brutal that it becomes too hard for the player to manage. I remember speaking with a friend of mine who worked on AI for an old RTS game. He implemented simple yet effective scripts where the AI would build up efficiently, create a swarm, and pound on a player for a good length of time, keeping the player at a constant state of repair and rebuild. At a certain point, the AI would switch scripts and let off the gas, so the player could catch up. The player got the sense that the AI was smart and hard, and by hanging in there survived a great challenge.
The Velocity engine used in Lionheart has a basic skeleton AI system by default. This allows monsters to exhibit basic intelligent behaviors, like patroling an area, guarding a specific area, attacking, etc. In addition to the skeleton AI, designers are free to build and implement AI scripts for a variety of situations. We can tell creatures to run away if they've been damaged to a certain level, take advantage of cover (in the game, there are full cover and half-cover objects), have them switch to run and gun tactics, have them decide whether they want to go for more criticals or not, and many other possibilities.
I think AI is effective in a game when there are multiple scripts to match behaviors for the different creatures in the game. Some creatures will be using a general 'see and destroy' script where appropriate - for instance, you wouldn't expect traditional undead to flee if they've been damaged, as they don't fear death. But you would expect animals to react by instinct, vicious at first, ferocious after they've been wounded, but they might flee if severely wounded. Players pick up on blanket AIs where all creatures simply charge and fight to the death. We are endeavoring to keep the players on their toes, by mixing up creature strategies.
Game Depth
I loved Ultima games myself. Ultima IV was one of my favorites of all time. But if I remember correctly, you couldnt' beat most of the Ultima games without getting a bit bloody.
That being said, Lionheart is evolving more and more to allow for non-combat role-playing choices in addition to a variety of combat roles.
So I suppose my answer is.. a lot!
Insta-Death
To answer Flynn's question, there won't be any 'insta-kill' combat situations in Lionheart. You can suffer critical hits, but we won't be putting in situations where an 'insta-death' event occurs from a random combat (although some crits can be very very debilitating, we are removing insta death from the crit table). Although in real life it's possible to kill with one shot, in a game it's not necessarily fun to walk into a room and be forced to reload without any chance of preventing that situation.
I see your point here Visceris, and while I am a proponent of realism in games, game balance needs to be more important than logic sometimes. Fun factor and game balance are inexorably linked.
In your example of meteor swarm, I would agree that it would be realistic and acceptable for a low level character to get wiped by an archmage if he continued to pester him. Since in your example the character could have avoided the situation by not bothering the wizard, the situation is not unbalanced and is a logical consequence for a character who pushed too far.
But if I understand Flynn's question correctly, walking into an encounter that could randomly kill you immediately is not fun for most people, although I also understand some gamers have more patience and would probably consider that pretty cool.
In Lionheart, there will be a mix of easy, medium, and difficult encounters. Some enemies will be able to dish out some considerable damage, and they might even crit you from time to time.
DanienAI
Another point that affects AI is the reward system for players. An experience point system based on rewarding players for kills only tends to encourage players to chase opponents that know when to flee. While some may find this interesting and realistic, others find it tedious to have to chase opponents across large areas. A balance needs to be achieved somehow. A skill based system (earn as you use) may work better with such an AI system.
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Lionheart Forum Update
