Ok, I'll try to explain a little what is the redline behind Lands of Elderlore :
- Create a huge world, evolving on its own, with different geographic areas, cities and trade between them.
- The player must adapt himself to this world, he should not have the feeling that the world is build around him
- The main goals of the player : survive and explore, through his own will and through quests given during his journeys
Here is what is coming in the next releases. That is a little rough, since most of the time I add features one after another, without excessive planning.
What to expect for release 0.1 :
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Next releases will have monsters (at last !), basic shops, music, caracter stats and basic battles.
Monsters : They will be animals first, as I'd like to build worlds where magic is very rare, close to historical middle age. So they will be wolves, bears, snakes, giant spiders, rats, giant scorpions, giant bats, crocodiles and chicken.
Other enemies will be human, like bandits, sauvages and so on.
Shops : Towns will have shops and merchants so you can buy equipment and sell treasures.
Music : I'd like to add free music to Lands of Elderlore. Jamendo is the perfect place for that. This guy:
http://www.mikseri.net/users/?id=61143 has produced ambient music that would perfectly fit, it has been used in some Oblivion mods.
Caracter stats and basic battles : I'll start simple here, as it will need a lot of balance further on.
What to expect for release 1.0 :
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I have started some days ago to add posts on my french blog to write down some ideas I'll be adding, so I'll start with that.
Honor titles : By killing monsters or achieving city quests, you'll get titles that will grant you advantadges.
Dimension doors : Those doors will give you access to other worlds, that will be more evilish (demons has conquered the world), faerish (faery world), living deadish (living dead fighting humans) or fantasish (Tolkien heroic fantasy).
Each of these worlds will have unique artefacts you'll find nowhere else.
Tactical battles : I'd like to add tactic to battles, with charge, feint, and so on, without complexing too much the fight system.
Other features :I try not to plan too much, since it is very easier to have ideas than to code them in something usable. Still there are many more features I'd like to add, without having developped them a lot. Here is a list :
- advanced cities, with different buildings, guilds, based on different cultures, expanding on several world cells
- economy between cities, with goods and different market prices, caravans and sea roads
- inheritage between caracters of a player, heirs and advance player creation based on karma points
- advance quest system, based on the big list of RPG plots : http://www.io.com/~sjohn/plots.htm
- a complete crafting system, with goods collecting, and item crafting