Long term KF project

[Holy_Diver]

BTW: My take on Guyra is he is somehow imprisoned in Melenat, rather than being from another dimension.

I even like the idea that really he is imprisoned inside the Dark Crystal, and when you go to his map you are really entering the Dark Crystal or Dark Slayer that is in your inventory. But it doesn't have to be that way. And honestly I'd be almost inclined to not have Guyra restricted to that techno zone on Melenat. But it would be a shame to not include it because it is so striking. I don't have a real opinion here either way, but the idea of Guyra being imprisoned in the Dark Slayer, and him taking the Moonlight Sword in there with him, while Seath is imprisoned in the Moonlight, is really trippy. That would even give Seath a reason to wet his britches.

Ultimately I think the dragons are just ephemeral by nature. They can walk between worlds, because they don't really exist in the first place. Because they create existence, so for them to exist is silly. But they do also create bodies for themselves to inhabit from time to time. Transubstantiation (edited: also the gods in my mind are just the bodies of the dragons if the dragons were their cells so to speak. The true demons then are like axioms, platonic truths, like mathematics, that exist on a whole other level, but are kind of at odds with dragons, they can't coexist)

I think the Dragon Fountain and Dragon Tree are connected. Like the fountain waters the tree. In proposed game IV there is no more water on the planet. So survivors must drink the poison water of the Dragon Fountain to live. That said the hidden pure elves are still blessed by Elfos and Elwin and create artificial atmospheres where water exists. And I think demons who migrated by water to other continents during the dry spell have erected domes with artificial atmospheres. Some water also exists deep below ground enjoyed by dwarves. But anyway the Dragon Fountain is eternal, created by Elfos, first and foremost as a means to limit the movement of the pure elves who cannot live on fresh water, but also as a compact with Valad to water the Dragon Tree for the sake of sustaining vegetation which is not the domain of Elfos and Elwin.


EDITED: Possibly some monsters carry water with them that no one understands how they get hold of it. Perhaps they can even synthesize it with their magic. So people hunt them for their water to survive. Its not like the planet is completely without an atmosphere, but its close, rain almost never falls. It's like a desert everywhere prior to the flood to say the least. Maybe there are oasis around the fountains, but they are poison water oases, so only monsters will grow there. Much vegetation is really monsters.

I think the giants being original creations of Valad can live without water not being compatible with men (there are no half-giants and no women either) as can many kinds of monsters.


PS: I see the Dragon Tree as being an analogue to the world tree in Norse mythology. Its roots go every where underground and even plant themselves into the deep underworld right into molten magma. Its kind of like the child that all the gods had. Valad has very childlike qualities. Elfos is the mother, and Elwin is the father, and Sylval is Promethean (at least from the perspective of the dragons/gods, all began with him, and all will return to him)

[Holy_Diver]

Here is an interesting perspective into the cosmology.


Say that the creation cycle always begins with magic, beginning with proto dragons gathering into proto-Sylval culminating in a consciousness.

Sylval then subdivides into the other gods, which may or may not even be Fire, Water, Wind, Earth. Then the gods order the universe.

And depending on how that ordering goes. From one of the elements two dragon demi-gods of magic and logic emerge due to a natural duality, which could be said to be the emergence of a morality.

The nature of the morality depends on the prevailing element. In our case that is Earth. There is probably a natural bias towards Earth based universes.

From here the logical dragon is fated to terminate the age of magic. The only question is how long this will take to come about, and how absolute will the termination be.

Dragons take a backseat to the Demons of logic. Their natural adversaries.

Until the new age of logic runs its course. At which point the whole process reverses. And favor is on the side of the magical demi-god.

So in a way, you could even have another set of trilogies on the back end. Where things are much more sympathetic to Seath. Logic has become passe. People are pining for magic. And so its time for the creation cycle to wind down once again...

And for that to happen first a new age of magic must emerge, and at its culmination Sylval will reemerge, and reboot the entire thing for another go.

Works for me. I think it would be interesting to see it all go down in reverse.


Offtopic: The whole Milia game play in VIII. I like this concept. Summoning monsters and controlling them would be a perfect opportunity to approach the problem of making all NPCs playable across the board from then on out. Be they animal, vegetable, or mineral. I like the concept of each game having a different goal in terms of game play so that no one feels the same, and each one achieves something new to add to SOM's utility belt... or if not that, at least showcases some little known feature. And more importantly expand the scope of what kind of games can be pulled off with SOM.

You see a lot of games innovating in this way for innovation sake. Like a new magic system or whatever in every Final Fantasy game. But I think the way to innovate is to just offer different ways to play essentially the same game. So if you want X flavor of coop you can play this game, or that game. Or if you want a wide open world you have III, or if you want a classic dungeon crawler, I. Or if you want a labyrinth II. Speaking of which I can't resist naming the player 2 character in KF2 Beth...

So if Aleph is A, then Beth is B. You wonder if Aleph is like "The First" like he is first in line to succession, and maybe his real name is one of the many other names he has tacked onto the end. Hebrew does go right to left. Just a thought

[dmpdesign]

Just to clarify a few things that are fleshed out in the context of the series...

In kf3 it mentions twice that melanat can be seen off the northern shore of the mainland where the castle is located.

The easterners are those with the power of the wind... I would then assume they have an affinity with elfos.

Dias's army are reanimated verdite soldiers the truth glass as well as a couple villagers confirm this.

I suspect the two dragons aree unable to do direct battle as the game mentions many times they each choose champions such a galth fee and Merrill urr.

Hope this is of some use to you.

[Holy_Diver]

The geography of Elegria the continent, from what I can gather of the (From Software) manuals is thus...


It's conceptually a diamond. Verdite is in the middle. Granitiki in the west. Ygrec in the south. The east is a feared wasteland that the 3 kingdoms do not even have maps of. I think anyway. It could be the deep south that is that. But there is not a kingdom in the east, so I'm going with that until I stumble across that bit in the manuals again.

I don't know where Elfos and Elwin are mentioned in game. I got them from a website, and have heard they are in strategy guides. Anyway, I like Elfos for water, and as a girl. I don't know if gender or elemental affinities are mentioned anywhere. I'd rather not change them. I think if one is going to be the moon and the other the sun (again just something I've spun of hay) the girl should be the moon. And moon I associate with the tides, so water, and Elwin sounds like a dude, and Elfos sounds like elf, and so I think the elf race should be named after the mother, or the female god. Plus usually sky/sea god couples put the guy in the sky because he is the top.

So Elwin is wind. I associate Wind with the west. Not the east. Because Granitiki uses Hebrew sounding words. So Jews are from the desert, wind and sun feel like desert to me, so I have the west is a desert kingdom.

Likewise I have the Asian tribes (with a proper kingdom on an island off the coast like Japan) being water. Because Japan has tsunamis, and fishing is a huge part of the eastern esthetic.

Anyway. I think this setup is better than anything in the original games. So I would give it primacy even if it disagrees with the games.


Finally the North of Elegria doesn't have a kingdom. It has a sea in the middle of it called Veld that is landlocked as far as I can tell. There is thick forest around the sea on all sides. And Melanat is in the middle of the sea. I think Veld and Verdite are a play on dialects. In other words, the local dialect of Verdite eventually drifted until it was pronounced Verd instead of Veld, and ite, probably means something in addition to the general vicinity.

Its possible that Verdite is closer to Veld in the north than being strictly in the middle of the continent. But Veld is a place where people pilgrimage to during the summer months where people bathe in the beaches and camp out. Its a tradition to bring the peoples of the kingdoms together to encourage peace and probably to discourage inbreeding or whatever. Also the kings meet there to discuss international affairs.

My impression on the champions is they just want to decide who to let carry their swords and lead their armies. I think originally they led two armies of men (including half elves and dwarves) against one another in a great war. So you'd have both sides fighting with the dragons visible on the battle field and making strategic decisions. So the champions were like standard bearers for moral. One dies and they find a new one...

But that time is long past. And only the elves of Melanat carried on the memory of the dragons. And even they are long gone in KF2.


PS: Since I haven't mentioned it. I like the idea that Meryl (or Merril) and Merrel, are the same word that is a title for the fountain maiden depicted in the Dragon Fountain on Melanat and in the Seath idols. Its a word chosen because its one of the few words that the pure elves and men share in common pronunciation wise. Its just fun with words. But I think a good explanation for Meryl in KF2 is she is or was the current fountain maiden. And that's how she can move around the island easily through secret passages, which only fountain maidens can do. Basically the maidens are ambassadors since the pure elves never interact with others on the island except for the maiden.

Anyway, and then in times when the island was more populated, the men (half breeds etc) would assign a guard to the fountain maiden called Merrel Ur. I don't know if it would be a company of guards, or just a single man. Probably a company. But anyway, eventually that just became a generic title for the most accomplished warrior among the high elves. And then the Merrel Ur that became the final champion of Seath over time led to the confusion between the fountain maiden and Seath. Until the high elves began to think they were one in the same.

Anyway, the only alternative to this explanation is Seath deliberately masquerades as a woman. Or just that there is no explanation.


PPS: Just on Dias' army as you say. They don't look like Verdite soldiers to me. Obviously they don't look like the group dispatched to the island. But anyway to me Verdite is a very metropolitan kingdom but especially a fusion of the Franco-German and English empires. To me his army looks almost eastern if not at least more like a religious order than regular soldiers. If they weren't already doing something on Melanat they wouldn't have all of those uniforms handy. Plus I am pretty sure that the island is considered to be cursed. People only go there to risk their lives to mine crystals. So it seems like they'd have to be a cult or religious order of sorts already established on the island. They don't even bear a resemblance to the townspeople or miners, but still I like their look.

[Holy_Diver]

^Just to be clear on some things...

I don't know why the East is associated with Wind. I think there is the Japanese sword in KF2 and maybe KF3 too? That may have Wind magic.

Regardless. Just like all of the peoples are half-breeds, there is no strict division of elements by region. Even the Earth Dragons breath fire, and stuff like that. Seath has all magics even though he is an Earth dragon.

When I say Wind is in the East etc. That refers mainly to the period of the Dragon Kings (and Knights) which goes way back. Each king was seated in one corner of the continent, possibly installed by dragons or gods. And that period of high magic influenced the geography and division of the races.

That's why there are races with distinct characteristics, languages, and habitats to this day anyway, despite all of the interbreeding.


PS: It's on page 2 or something. But the Dragon Kings are a setup for game V. Basically there are giant crystals in the four corners of the continents. Only the Dark Slayer can open the doors to them. And it can find them like a compass. You must visit each one to rekindle the Dark Slayer. The Dark Slayer itself is the Dark Crystal, which was originally a portable key linking the four crystals of the four kingdoms held by the king of the kings whose throne was somewhere beneath the cemetery in KF1.

You also needed the Dark Crystal to visit one of the larger crystals. So that it was like a key (presumably the gods arranged for all of that)

[Holy_Diver]

Just logging another idea.

What if Valad invented dreaming when he made the giants?

This has a few interesting things going for it. You have dreams in KF3. So that could be part of the series. Playing dream sequences would be fun. Dreams don't have to be the same as the way we dream. They can be more literal. Its a world of magic after all. That's why we make stories with magic.

But also, what if the sleeping giants are the dreams. So their brains or whatever make up the dreamscape.

This is interesting. And not just because you could meet giants in dreams, Twin Peaks anyone? But also because if the flood forces all of the giants out of hibernation in V then they wouldn't be able to know what the demons (edited: maybe we'll have to make a habit of distinguishing between Demons and demons and Dragons and dragons. Demons are especially confusing, but maybe that is for the best, since its an esoteric concept) are up to on the other continent(s). So they (the giants) wouldn't be able to tell the Elegrians they (the demons) are coming before VI. Which would explain why there is no preparation up to then.

This works by the way because giants can't sleep unless they are underground. Plus it takes them a while to get settled in. They'd get back to sleep just in time for VI so that dreams could come back as a feature.

Giants are never born (edited: maybe Valad made one each time he wanted a feature of the landscape; the larger the feature the larger the giant) so presumably they've been around for just about forever. So they could give you really interesting tidbits of ancient information. Handy to have something like that.

But maybe after the Dragon Tree started making monsters they began to experience nightmares. And that has made some of their memories (of dreams) and dreams sometimes unreliable. Their memories of the earliest days are best, the same way as a grown man you still dream about stuff you did as a kid more than anything else.

That could even be a way to visit events that took place before monsters appeared, since it wouldn't be worth making a game in those times. Not a conventional one anyway.

I think Valad should be pretty childish. So it would be like him to invent dreams. Just so he could do anything he wanted to in his dream worlds.

[Holy_Diver]

^You know what would be a really fun feature?

What if you have to sleep as part of the game. And whenever you do odds are pretty good you will have a dream. But sometimes it isn't obvious that you are dreaming. You might go on your way for 15 minutes and only realize that you are dreaming after something really weird happens.

But since weird things happen in games like these. You really never know for sure if its a dream or not.

But chances are good that it is if you suddenly face an inescapable overwhelming challenge. That can be a mechanism to try to beat really tough challenges. And if you die, no big deal. If you don't you get experience.


Speaking of which. I really think it would be better if you got experience for every action you take. Like if you hit a monster for 10% HP that should immediately give your 10% of the EXP you would get if you killed it. That would be especially useful if we get a system working where the monsters would runaway. I don't think you should be unnaturally compelled to follow them and kill them.

This kind of system also prevents any kind of cheating to gain EXP in multiplayer. And just feels more commonsensical.


Back to dreaming. I think gotta catch'em all players would get more out of it if the dream points were scattered across the maps always in the same place. Giants would facilitate that pretty well in the open range games. It might be less common and done differently in the other games. Like how the cyclops comes to life in KF2 and KF3 also I think. Maybe you could have waking dreams too. And dreams where you come to your senses like sleepwalking.

I don't think it would suck if playable dreams became a staple. Its certainly different.

[dmpdesign]

Playable dreams could definitely be cool, Kilroy's 'Before Melanat' demo game he sent me before he quit working on it was mostly based on that sort of thing. ‎  Interacting with your dreams/visions modified reality in some manner for progression.

[Holy_Diver]

^I am really not a fan of boss fights. But a nightmare is a good excuse for a fun boss fight without any consequences.

The reason we have nightmares (and depressing dreams) it seems is to prepare us for the inevitable so that we are not made catatonic by our fear and dread when the real thing happens. Its also great for foreshadowing (how its used in KF3)


PS: I was reading Vampire Hunter D the other day (2nd novel) and there was a monster that fights you in your head. You die if it kills you. Wouldn't that be interesting. Though I'm not sure how you'd tell the difference. I guess it would be useful if you are in an otherwise peaceful environment that suddenly shifts in an improbable way. Basically a dream monster.

D should be required reading for anyone wanting to make a KF game. They are similar enough. And you'll learn more than a few things. Its really the pinnacle of fantasy from a design perspective. You have all of the thrilling stuff people love about fantasy in a single in one place and it totally works.

D wanders through a far-future post-nuclear Earth that combines elements of pulp genres: western, science fiction, horror, high fantasy, H. P. Lovecraftian mythos, folklore and occult science.

Did we leave anything out?

[Holy_Diver]

I really intended this thread to be about storyline. But I think I just put the last piece of the controls together. So I thought I'd post an overview. This is how SOM will work standard. And by standard I would like to suggest that games should have standardized controls. We've had so many adventure games made for so long, I think its time we settled on some standards. You can compare and contrast these controls to Dark Souls.

A detailed breakdown for authors is here (\<span> site blocked, contact your administrator/bbs2/index.php?topic=136.0)


First in the case of King's Field. The most striking thing is a new magic system. This magic isn't described in the link above. But it is in the link at the top of this thread. Controls wise though magic works the same way regardless. But in KF all magic works like "Support Magic" and there is only one spell per element. Though you can also have spells that combine elements in a way that is completely predictable. So that all combinations of two elements have the same damage ratings, just for different elements.

You don't have to even use a magic button. You can assign spells to any button you want. The spells each produce a "field" that is invisible but can be thought of like a bubble around the caster, just like Missile Shield. The field's power lasts the longest if you just use it as a protective barrier and it never absorbs any damage. After the spell is cast the magic gauge drains down to indicate the power remaining in the field. The combination spells are equivalent to taking two fields of the same power and overlapping them.

I won't go into the details, but all of the traditional KF magics can be produced by interacting with the field. So for a fireball you attack it with a thrusting attack. In other words all magic is like sword magic. You can also shoot an arrow through it. The field does follow the spell caster. Except for curse magics, they remain where you cast them. Cursing everything in the area. You sit down to do those. If you use the same magic with a field raised, the field is reabsorbed. That's how instant healing works. Armor with a good Earth rating is better for healing. But you can get better healing just by standing in the field. It just takes longer. All fields have side effects. ‎ 

You do huge room blasting summon attacks by doing a gesture that is unique to each kind of magic and depletes the field. I don't know about Light. It won't likely appear until game VI at the soonest. But for Fire you look up and hold your weapon up. For Earth you look down and stab into the ground. For Wind you do a fast turn around and around with your weapon held out, and for Water the same, but to the right. You can tell when you are looking far enough down for example because the view will bounce back if you let go.

You can assign a different magic to each button. But to combine them you need two casters or a caster casting a combo spell. If your weapon matches the field the magic will be powerful. If it doesn't match the field at all then it won't weaken the field or produce magic attacks. This way you can have a Fire field against a fire monster, and use an ice sword that will straight through your defensive field without weakening it and straight through the fire monster because they won't have ice defense. For example. But if you are in an area with many fire monsters your fire magic will be stronger. You can figure out what the area is like by going into the magic menu and seeing which spell has higher than normal ratings.