 The Pit |
eddwills
Guardian
Registration Date: 26.06.2006
Posts: 62
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The Pit is Skyrim's take on the Arena that Cyrodiil offers, only being
Nord-run, the Pit is obviously a lot more fun, a lot more brutal, and
there are a lot less rules. There aren't so many ranks to obtain in the
Pit, because it's more for general reputation and boasting value.
There are a few Pits spread across Skyrim, some are quite major, where
as some are just a small fighting spot for the locals of wherever. It's
certainly possible for the player to become well-known at any of the
Pits, although you could be practically famous for it in one place and
still be deemed a nobody in another.
So far my ideas for the Pit are as follows, although I'm not in charge
here and anyone else can say whatever the hell they want and even
dismiss my thoughts completely if necessary, it's a joint project
afterall.
(Apologies for my pathetic sketching skills, I rushed it with my wacom).
This is one of the more well-known Pits. From the exterior, it looks a
lot like the Thirsk meadhall we find in Solstheim, but inside it's a
bloody arena for anyone who dares enter. As you walk in, you are
greeted with another set of doors, just like Thirsk (they need to
protect their buildings from the weather, afterall). Beyond these doors
you see the Pitmaster, who stands in front of the decision board (open
to name change).
There are various types of matches to be fought in the Pit, but instead
of you choosing, they are based on a random factor. This random factor
is no script, because I simply do not believe in dice rolls in games,
that's what makes TESIV so great when it comes to combat compared to
other RPG's. Have you ever seen those little boards with pegs sticking
out, and when you place a ball in the top it falls to the bottom,
landing in any one of a load of possible slots depending on how it fell
down through the pegs? They were in Shenmue 2, if that helps.
Well anyway, there's a large one of these behind the Pitmaster. When
you ask him if you cn participate in a match, he puts an object (also
open for decision, could be a ball, could be a sheep's head, anything)
into the top, and you watch it bounce it's way across the pegs to the
bottom. Depending on where this lands, depends on wether you fight
either:
1 vs 1
1 vs 2
2 vs 1
2 vs 2
1 vs 1 a
1 vs 2 a
2 vs 1 a
2 vs 2 a
1 vs a
A stands for animals, which aren't on any side, just hostile. It costs
300 gold to fight here, and if you win you recieve all the profits
minus a 100 gold cut for the Pit. So, in a 1 vs 1 fight you would get
500 gold (200 profit), in a 1 vs 2 match you would get 800 gold (400
profit), and in a 2 vs 1 fight you would get 400 gold (200 profit,
because your ally would get 400 gold also, unless they died 
). Animals can't pay so you get nothing for fighting them, although you do get a refund if you win against animals only.
There are traps here. I haven't decided quite what sort of traps to put
here yet other than retexturing the ayleid foorsmasher and placing them
across the wall to shoot out if you get too close.
Spectators stand around the edge of the Pit, and cheer you on (actual
cheering rather than the sound in the arena). I was thinking that this
could be an isolated Pit village, where the locals all sleep and
spectate at diferent times of day. We could even have 2 Pitmasters,
doing day and night shifts. One could be male and one could be female,
to keep all the anti-sexist fans happy 
. If not, we could just have perma-spectators, but that wouldn't feel
quite so good. Getting spectators to cheer would be easy enough, using
a similar scripted spell to the one as Martin leaves Cloud Ruler Temple.
I'm not entirely sure what to do as far as ranks are concerned, but I
have an idea and am open to any others. My idea is that there are a
load of smaller Pits across Skyrim, and that the player has to win a
number of matches a certain amount of Pits before they can access the
Grand Pit, where a major tourny is held every month. It's similar to
the Mages Guild recommendation system, only uou don't have to go to
every last Pit, just a certain number of them. Also, depending on the
size of a Pit depends on how many victories you need to get a
'recommendation' from them. Hell, we could even have a badge system in
a similair style to Pokemon (although not resembling that tripe in any
way, shape or form).
Is that it? For now, yes. I'm going to have a shot at creating the
decision board in max tonight, but I don't have time to work on the
Pits themselves just yet. I can't do all this alone though! So if
anyone even thinks of something, post it here. If anyone wants to claim
a Pit, feel free, although it should probably go through the necessary
people unless I'm granted Pit management or something (which would be
nice 
). If anyone wants to contribute in any way whatsoever, then speak up,
because the more ideas this has the better it will get. I can work on
other areas of Skyrim, but this is the one I'd like to focus most of my
attention on.
I also haven't finished my Temple Justice mod so things might be a
little slow from me until that is done, but after that you have my full
devotion. Cheers for reading, I'm looking forward to hearing what you
guys think
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This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by eddwills: 28.06.2006 01:46.
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28.06.2006 00:53 |
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Siegfried
Archduke
Registration Date: 07.03.2006
Posts: 2,598
Location: With Your Mom...
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It sounds good, I'm thinking there will be a pit in every town in
Skyrim, just for the fun of it, because once we have the scripts set up
the pits will be relatively easy to implement, and it will be a great
way to keep players occupied. Each Pit should also be unique, for
example the Riften Pit is just a lowered piece of ground behind some
taverns, every evening the menfolk of the town gather to watch
combatants smack eachother around, and sometimes everyone gets
involved... For traps they can vary from pit to pit, one pit might have
the Ayleid floorsmasher, another pit might be in the ruins of a fort
and have darts that fire out of the walls, and there might be a pit
that is just a pit, with nothing special in it. BTW that concpet of a
pit lacks a place for a man to sell mead 
you're not really gonna deprive Nords of their mead are you 
The concept that you drew looks like it would fit well in the town of
Sunguard. For an advancement system I think the player should have to
score x number of points in each pit, and when they earn the select
ammount of points in each pit in an area they gain access to the
regional championship, they have to win every regional championship to
gain entrance into the grand-championship.
You shouldn't have to pay to get into the pit, since if you lose you
die, and so it wouldn't really matter if you were 200 gold poorer, plus
most of the Nords competing in the pit don't have 200 gold to spare. |
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28.06.2006 01:23 |
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eddwills
Guardian
Registration Date: 26.06.2006
Posts: 62
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Mead! I forgot about the most important Nord culture! I'm a
non-alcoholic, so I forget these things sorry, I'll be sure to
implement it. Free entry is fine and understandable, so yeah that's
definately in. I need to do some revision on the various towns to see
what sort of pits are required where, but a little help on that would
be nice
. Having random people joining in the fun will be a little tricky, but
a fun challenge that is definately do-able. The only problem I can
forsee in that is towns quickly running out of NPC's, but I guess we
could spawn them around the corner to walk up and join in. If they
don't die, they can walk off afterwards and disappear.
Is there any towns where I could implement a Pit within an Inn, like a
sort of backroom boxing ring/dojo? I've always wanted to do that, and a
caged Pit would be cool also. Exterior pits are slightly trickier due
to the landscaping, you'd have to have a reasonably wide space around
it to allow for the terrain to drop low enough to have the sunken Pit
(I tried to make a swimming pool you see, plus the inside of the temple
in Temple Justice is hollow because you fall down the centre).
I quite like your advancement system, but let's not get too ambitious
here, Skyrim is pretty much as big as the game itself and we don't have
a dev team as big as Bethesda. We can deal with that at a later date
anyway, for now I'll just work on making the Pits themselves. Thanks
for the sticky also. I just did a bit of testing for dtom, now I'm
going to make that decision board (realy needs a better name). Cheers
for the input, if anyone else has something to contribute, knock
yourself out (not RPing a Nord here, don't do anything painful). |
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28.06.2006 01:46 |
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Siegfried
Archduke
Registration Date: 07.03.2006
Posts: 2,598
Location: With Your Mom...
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You could put the one in the back of the inn in Reich Corigate, I'm not
sure about the cage, but I'm sure I can dig up a place for it. Don't
worry about the exterior pits, I think I can handle them
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28.06.2006 04:27 |
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eddwills
Guardian
Registration Date: 26.06.2006
Posts: 62
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Neat
. Anyway, I made the little Decision Board thingy, only I ran into a
texturing problem. It was only a quick texture but he transparency map
didn't work a intended at all.
As you can (sort of) see here, on the left when you look at the glass
front you can't see the insides properly, where as on the right when I
floated above (no glass on the top) the insides are in fact fine.
Here's a better example, on the left you can see everything messed up,
and on the right I clipped half way through the glass, and you can see
everything messing up as the glass comes into play. I can probably just
delete the glass and keep the collision, but then it wouldn't look
quite right if the player tried to grab the apple mid-fall or hit the
thing with a sword or whatever.
And another one to show the apple and collision working lovely
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You can't really see it very well because the lighting was terrible in
the test cell I whipped up. Having the whole 7 places for it to land
was a bit too hectic, so I made 4 instead. I figured if I made a little
Nord head and a little creature head, we could drop them both in just
after each other. The human head would decide between 1v1, 1v2, 2v1 or
2v2, and the creature would decide between 0, 1, 2, and 0 creatures.
Twice the chance of none because creatures are less appealing, and
having them in every fight would be a slight pain.
Anyways, I made a thread about it on the ESF, and I'll work on getting
the glass fixed, but I just thought I'd share what I did before I wen
to bed. It's 20 to 5 here, which is a lot earlier than I've normally
been going to bed as of late 
.
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28.06.2006 05:38 |
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Corwyn
Chieftain of Skyrim
Registration Date: 10.06.2006
Posts: 157
Location: Sydney, Australia
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The problem with the poles might be a zbuffer problem. does the texture
for the pole peices have an alpha channel? oblivion seems to have
problems with rendering transparencies over other transparencies
without manual adjustments to the nif files (I think?)
it looks good, the model for this could be made very ornate, would be
sweet. maybe even little shutes with statues at the bottom depicting
what fight had been chosen by the ball?
__________________
Skyrim for Oblivion
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28.06.2006 05:45 |
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eddwills
Guardian
Registration Date: 26.06.2006
Posts: 62
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It's all the same mesh using the same texture, so yes it has an alpha
channel. It's all white apart from the bit using the glass, which is
dark grey. Hmm, I guess I can seperate them.
It's only a quick texture I knowcked up out of some floorboards,
nothing special, the final thing would be a bit more solid, made out of
only a few chunks of wood.
Chutes coming out of the bottom? I'm really not great with max, but I
suppose we have a lot of time so I can give it a go possibly, but I'm
doubting it. Haha, the whole thing just reminded me of a lottery draw,
I didn't think of it until now.
I'm taking a gap year as of July the 5th to save up for a new motorbike
and a better computer, and after that I'm going to do games design at
uni for 5 years so expect my max work to just get better and better
hopefully
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28.06.2006 05:52 |
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Corwyn
Chieftain of Skyrim
Registration Date: 10.06.2006
Posts: 157
Location: Sydney, Australia
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ah well that would probably be your problem then. Try using seperate parts in the model, and using a seperate texture.
Just wondering, maybe there could be some parts of the taverns for
nightly fights. just fist fighting and only knockouts if it could be
done. and once you become a renowned fighter you can participate in the
towns pit? Might be cool to include other fights purely for gambling,
dog fights would be cool =p
Also if possible maybe some way of not having everyone die in the local
fights? it just seems a little too unrealistic to have nightly or even
weekly fights with every fight being to the death, the population of
skyrim would be non existant!
__________________
Skyrim for Oblivion
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28.06.2006 07:40 |
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eddwills
Guardian
Registration Date: 26.06.2006
Posts: 62
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I keep thinking the same things, and there was a thread a while back
about fist fights and stuff. It could be done by doing health check,
and if someone gets too low they yield or flee or whatever, but there's
still a chance of the player just smiting them to hell and back. Pub
brawls would naturally be very fun indeed. |
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28.06.2006 18:55 |
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Corwyn
Chieftain of Skyrim
Registration Date: 10.06.2006
Posts: 157
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Yeah, since they are alcos including innebriation or something similar
would be good. boosts to your endurance or health (simulate the feeling
of painlessness you get from being drunk) would also be good and make
it somewhat of an advantage to get wasted before getting into your bar
brawl.
Glad to see you were thinking the same things edd, and yes sometimes
people would die, and it would be slightly unfortunate, but that in
itself would be realistic.
__________________
Skyrim for Oblivion
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29.06.2006 02:19 |
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eddwills
Guardian
Registration Date: 26.06.2006
Posts: 62
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I think that drunk mod just uses the 'TriggerHitShader' function, or
whatever it's called, so it should be easy enough to just make instead
of getting permission
. You can set the intensity of it with the number after, 1 is what you find on traps, and 10 is just painful.
Somewhere else on here there was talk of a bandages mod which Seig (or
someone) said we could just re-make, so it might be an idea to get the
crowd to throw in bandages if people are low on health? Just a thought.
Anyway, update on the decision board, have a video
. I changed the script from before so the apple falls now, but that
broke the script in the TrigZones at the bottom unfortunately. I'll fix
it though, somehow. Tomorrow I need to do a ton of college work to hand
in on my last day on friday, so I most probably wont be making an
appearance here. By tomorrow I mean later, it's half 6 am here now, but
ahh well.
I also made everything a lot more visible in my test cell, because it sucked before
. See you guys around.
Edit: Thanks to a very quick response from scruggsywuggsy the ferret on
the ESF, I fixed the script, and updated the video with it working
. Still needs a good texture though.
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by eddwills: 29.06.2006 08:03.
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29.06.2006 07:35 |
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Corwyn
Chieftain of Skyrim
Registration Date: 10.06.2006
Posts: 157
Location: Sydney, Australia
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hehe looks cool, need to come up with something suitable to put in the
top, a goblin skull or something. or if thats too crude (too crude for
nords?) a specially made mini silver skull or something.
it was actually me who posted about the warrior bandages. Pretty sure
once again its a pretty simple mod, I think its really just clones of
the potions with a different drink sound, model, description and icon.
__________________
Skyrim for Oblivion
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29.06.2006 07:50 |
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Smokindan
Chieftain of Skyrim
Registration Date: 13.06.2006
Posts: 813
Location: Western Australia, Australia
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Everyone has great ideas. Keep up the good work
eddwills: very nice work on the decision board 
__________________
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
->Sir Winston Churchill
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29.06.2006 13:13 |
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gravedigger84
First Knight
Registration Date: 31.03.2006
Posts: 139
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Thats almost perfectly same idea I presented in Black Marsh forums.. so yea, I like it
THE PIT!!
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29.06.2006 13:36 |
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sacredstick
Warder
Registration Date: 29.07.2006
Posts: 30
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it would be cool to have a pit in nearly every city, 2vs1 fights.. oooooooooooo
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30.07.2006 19:26 |
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What if we had a pit with wolves surrounding the outer edge. They are
trained so that if either participant in the pit gets too closer to the
edge they will attack him till he goes back in. Also if a player gets
knocked down a wolf will come in to attack him until the player gets
back up and hits it a few times to make it back off.
__________________
"Those who know don't speak, who who speak don't know"
Lao Tzu
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10.08.2006 07:24 |
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TheImperialDragon
Councilor
Registration Date: 21.06.2006
Posts: 6,208
Location: Ontario, Canada
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Or spikes around the edge, but a pit would be very important to include in this mod, I think. 
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10.08.2006 07:33 |
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Alasdair
Jarl of Skyrim
Registration Date: 29.08.2006
Posts: 1,169
Location: Somerset, England
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My high elf wants to wrestle bears with his bare hands
, the pits should be a lot cooler and offer more freedom in the type of
combat than the arena in the IC. i'd be willing to script some of the
pits if you want. |
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07.09.2006 22:50 |
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I'm going to auction off the Pit faction soon.
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08.09.2006 05:39 |
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Liquid Cheese
Elder of Skyrim
Registration Date: 24.07.2006
Posts: 624
Location: England
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Heehe yea it is great, I think they should be pits that are basically
just a hole in the ground, aswell as the fancier ones. |
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16.09.2006 14:34 |
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OblivionMon
Seigneur
Registration Date: 20.08.2006
Posts: 178
Location: The Abecean Sea
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yeah me too but with traps
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16.09.2006 16:22 |
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Liquid Cheese
Elder of Skyrim
Registration Date: 24.07.2006
Posts: 624
Location: England
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I think it would be fairly easy to implement the crushing roof/floor
traps however the log ones will result in logs rolling all over the
place, npcs will probably get stuck behind them, might be a bit
trickier. |
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16.09.2006 18:51 |
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Green @nt1-n00b
Count
Registration Date: 08.07.2006
Posts: 884
Location: Mmm Egos
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just spitbalin but a labrinth esque style for one of the pits
probibly one of the fancer ones if it were to be so
__________________
Sincerly
Green Cutlass
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17.09.2006 05:57 |
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Psychotic
Jarl of Skyrim
Registration Date: 30.07.2006
Posts: 3,420
Location: Sheogorath's Realm
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Not all the fights have to be to the death. Many of the fights will be hand-to-hand and will not be lethal.
This thread is a bit dead because there isn't much to work do for the
pits yet. We can make a start on the scripts I suppose, but they will
need to be tested and we need to build an actual pit in order to do so
first. We can set up a test pit in one of the completed towns, but it's
not a priority.
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02.12.2006 18:55 |
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I think the best sort of "pit" would just be a wooden fenced ring, like
the one in Bloodmoon, or alternativly like the ones in Fable.
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02.12.2006 21:41 |
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Gustave
Elder of Skyrim
Registration Date: 18.11.2006
Posts: 81
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I don't think a fenced ring would be as fun as a pit. A pit just has
more of the brawl feeling to it, especially if it is a fight to the
death.
In a fenced ring you can just hop the fence and run like hell if you start to lose 
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02.12.2006 22:25 |
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Gustave
I don't think a fenced ring would be as fun as a pit. A pit just has
more of the brawl feeling to it, especially if it is a fight to the
death.
In a fenced ring you can just hop the fence and run like hell if you start to lose
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But giving the player the chance to run away makes the whole thing more macho, why run when you can fight?
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02.12.2006 22:30 |
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Psychotic
Jarl of Skyrim
Registration Date: 30.07.2006
Posts: 3,420
Location: Sheogorath's Realm
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| quote: |
Originally posted by The Old Ye Bard
| quote: |
Originally posted by Gustave
I don't think a fenced ring would be as fun as a pit. A pit just has
more of the brawl feeling to it, especially if it is a fight to the
death.
In a fenced ring you can just hop the fence and run like hell if you start to lose
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But giving the player the chance to run away makes the whole thing more macho, why run when you can fight? |
Err... to save your life?
Every Pit will be different, some will be actual pits while others
would be simple fencing rings or marked areas of tavern basements.
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02.12.2006 22:37 |
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Gustave
Elder of Skyrim
Registration Date: 18.11.2006
Posts: 81
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I agree, I think variations would be good.
Some ideas...
I think the pits should be the more classic "nordic" way of fighting
and be used more in the rural and more nordic areas of Skyrim. More
brutal and more fights to the death (but not always).
The fenced rings would be something they use in more populated and/or
less nordic areas. Have more rules in place and no fights to the death
in the rings.
Something that just came to mind is maybe something similar is the
fight in the movie "13th Warriorr". Anyone seen that? They're norse men
and one of the guys has a duel with another man. They each have a sword
and three wooden shields. When all three shields are broken you'll
probably lose. I think that could be a fun nordic way of dueling in the
pits. Each opponent starts with three shields on fairly low durability
so they break during a fight.
Luckily I found a video on the fight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5Cr7TiG-vY
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02.12.2006 22:58 |
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Gustave
Elder of Skyrim
Registration Date: 18.11.2006
Posts: 81
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That sounds pretty good, it gives a reason for a player to travel to
different cities depending on what they want. That way there is a
different experience everywhere
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02.12.2006 23:22 |
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Siegfried
Archduke
Registration Date: 07.03.2006
Posts: 2,598
Location: With Your Mom...
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Was looking back through this thread and decided I'm gonna put an
actual "Pit" in the Redwoods outside of Vernim Wood. Also we really
should start looking into getting someone to start scripting pits
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01.07.2007 00:36 |
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Alasdair
Jarl of Skyrim
Registration Date: 29.08.2006
Posts: 1,169
Location: Somerset, England
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Once I've finished with the master file I may give it a go.
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01.07.2007 00:54 |
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Siegfried
Archduke
Registration Date: 07.03.2006
Posts: 2,598
Location: With Your Mom...
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| quote: |
Originally posted by Alasdair
Once I've finished with the master file I may give it a go. |
That would be sweet-- if we can have one faction nicely fleshed out for
an alpha release, it should be the Pit, I think players will get a real
kick out of that.
I was actually thinking about trying to email eddwills and seeing if he
wanted to come back-- if I can get him back, that would likely take the
workload off your back.
BTW whats left to do in the master?
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01.07.2007 01:23 |
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Alasdair
Jarl of Skyrim
Registration Date: 29.08.2006
Posts: 1,169
Location: Somerset, England
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I have the heightmap merged into the main master file, and I have
merged area 7 and Riften into the file, as well as what I have done on
region 10. I merged a few exteriors into Riften (all the CR claims,
cept 8 which was broken) but many are still unfinished and need more
work (including some I merged). Updating interiors/exteriors merged
into the file is easy, so hopefully all the Riften interiors can be
finished in time for the next release after this. If I just added the
textures and basement set to the file, I could probably release it
tommorow, and then release a newer version with stuff like Reich
corrigate in a few weeks. It would probably be best, now that the HM is
in the master to release updated versions of the file every few weeks
to a month, instead of waiting ages between each release. This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Alasdair: 01.07.2007 02:35.
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01.07.2007 02:34 |
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Richard
Chieftain of Skyrim
Registration Date: 23.08.2006
Posts: 747
Location: Invercargill, New Zealand
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DAMN now THAT is a pit. I never put one in Vernim Wood, initially what
I had in mind was simply using the animal pen area lol. That pit looks
great. I think the more primitive areas should have the 'baddest' and
crudest, brutal pits like that one. Cities should have more
sophisticated arena-style ones. Sound good?
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01.07.2007 09:10 |
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