@Senseidragon tries to flex the pain out of his overworked fingers.
I've been thinking about how a potential rework of the initial stages toward a more goal-oriented focus might be done. Something that if not directly compatible with HQM, certainly wouldn't be far out of line with it should the authors of a couple of different mods (Like Noppes from CustomNPCs or
@Vswe and the gang from HQM) get together and implement some sort of trackable interactions. If completing a quest or gaining a reputation in CustomNPCs could be detected by HQM, I think a LOT of options open up for content designers.
I'm thinking about a mashup of some ideas I saw from RedYoshie101 over on Minecraftforums in his
Empire Building Challenge thread which, apart from some thread-necromancy, hasn't seen any significant activity in a year. The creation date of the thread puts it at around July of 2012 though, so it has been around for a bit. The Refugee to Regent Challenge thread started in April of 2013, and both seem to derive from the City Construction Challenge by Iamchris27 from back in September of 2011.
@Maul_Junior acknowledges this in the main page of this thread, whereas RedYoshi101 specifically disavows any connection between his Empire Building Challenge and the City Construction Challenge. He states:
1. Disclaimer
While I know this bears a similar name, and probably some similarities, to the city construction challenge (City Construction Challenge), I took no inspiration whatsoever from it, and had these ideas before I even knew that thread existed. If you read the thread, you will find that they are different.
Most of these ideas, I'll have you know, came from playing Microsoft's "Age of Empires II: Age of Kings". Which is an awesome game.
I've emailed RedYoshie101 for explicit permission to do a mashup, but as he hasn't been present on the forums for over 6 months, I am not expecting a timely response. In any case, he does grant permission in his original post:
If you want to make a spinoff of this challenge, or an additional add-on challenge (as a separate thread), it is allowed, as long as you link to this thread somewhere relatively obvious.
In the early parts of the thread, he outlines an idea (although VERY disjointed) where you progress by unlocking professions and buildings as you play. At the top of this progression chain is the player, or 'Chief', on his diagram.
Immediately under the Chief is a Crafter, which is required to unlock the ability to use a Crafting Table. Until you actually build a hovel for a Crafter villager to live in, and meet their food/housing requirements, you can't use a Crafting Table. Once you HAVE met this villager's basic needs, you can craft and use crafting tables as you see fit.
For nitpickers who would point out that you can't craft a bed or a chest without a crafting table, I would assert that building the basic hovel and gathering the necessary materials for (1) a chest, (2) a door, (3) a bed, and (4) a crafting table, in addition to gathering a sufficient number of wild edibles to feed the villager would be sufficient to satisfy this requirement.
No, the villager can't shack up with the player.
No, the villager's name isn't Wilson.
Once you have the basic materials to meet that requirement, you could then spawn in the CustomNPC to represent your "Crafter" villager, set their hovel as their home, craft up their furnishings out of the gathered materials, and proceed with the next goal.
Getting a hovel together for the player and one for that initial crafter villager would be roughly equivalent to our Dirt Stage.
On Yoshie's chart, he then branches out from the crafter to Militia (to permit monster-killing), Hunter (for gathering Animal Meat) and Treasurer (for storing village supplies). Each profession unlocks another resource for the player, and after you've crafted living space and met the food requirements of the additional villagers, you can move them in and start expanding.
While I don't particularly like the chart as it is, I think the concept is pretty darn good. It would allow for some very clearly defined goals to be planned out by the players and achieved in whatever order the player chose to unlock them as long as all prerequisites were met.
To get out of each 'Age', you still have some basic requirements to meet, so getting the ability to mine unlocked will require getting out of the first age, getting a Lumberjack to join your village, and then getting a Miner to join. At that point, you can mine down to yLevel 60 and above. To go deeper, you need to advance to later ages.
It adds thematic elements to your village, as well as a place to naturally build some of your gear. Furnaces for smelting would be found at the smith. Another furnace (or oven, if you had an appropriate mod for it) could be found at the baker. Log stockpiles would be located at the lumber yard, and a carpenter would likely reside not too far away.
Similarly, certain structures or building materials would unlock as you advanced through the ages. Early protection would consist of nothing more than fences or piles of dirt, which would then be replaced by wooden palisades in the next age, and stone walls in the age following that. This fits fairly easily with the Dirt, Wooden and Stone stages of the R2R challenge.
Again, I don't necessarily care for the original material, but the concept I think could be incorporated into what we're doing in R2R to provide some measurable structure to the stages. If you have 4 villagers you NEEDED to be able to unlock your crafting/gathering goals, you now have a reason to make sure you have the infrastructure to feed them.
@Maul_Junior mentioned somewhere that farms could specialize into particular crops, or raise a certain type of livestock. By creating these professions, you then have a reason to build residences and land for:
Crop Farmer
Butcher
Tailor
Militia/Infantry
Archer
Cavalry
Swineherd
Shepherd
Rancher
Fisherman
Poulterer
Houndsmaster
Gardener
Horse Breeder (not necessarily the same person as a Horse Tamer)
Blacksmith (works with Iron and Steel)
Redsmith (works with Copper, Brass, and Bronze)
Brightsmith (works with precious metals and gems, potentially also your Coin Minter and Money-Changer)
Beekeeper
Charcoal Burner
Engineer/Architect (can't build past a single story without one of these around!)
Brewer (have you TRIED drinking the water back then? Eww!)
Cartographer (perhaps unlocking this guy allows an in-game rationale for the minimap)
Artist (Working with the gardener, would be your go-to person for dyes of all sorts)
By tying specific tools to professions, the villages will kind of naturally grow as a players needs increase. A glass-maker for example would be required before the player could legitimately start using glass for anything.
This could also be easily expanded to include the criminal elements or even various levels of nobility within the challenge.
Am I spinning my wheels here and tilting at windmills? or is there something here worth further attention?
