Medieval Merchant is a tycoon style game being produced with the Love Engine. The game consists of a player interacting as a merchant in a fantasy realm.
Gameplay features/mechanics- The player will control a merchant that will buy and sell items to the heroes in the fantasy world. The heroes will automatically accept quests, battle monsters, and return with new loot. They also will level, join group raids, and create guilds. As the merchant, you must chose your purchases wisely, and the prices you offer will affect how well a hero does, as well as if he will even return later to trade. With the money earned, the player can upgrade their shop, hire assistants, learn new skills, and much more. The current version contains over 30,000,000 items, 12 hero classes, 5 assistant types, 15 terrain types, and a whole bunch of other numbers.
-- Picture of the map in Medieval Merchant
The first playable should be available by June.
Currently working on:
NPC generation- The NPCs were previously randomly generated based off of their occupation, but in lieu of having NPCs changing their positions, I have decided to change it so they are generated based off of parents, gender, and race. The initial set of NPCs will not have parents, so their names will be generated randomly as well as their race and starting stats/occupation. If a child is born, they will gain their Father's last name and a random first name based off of their race/gender. Also, their starting stats will be based primarily off of their parents stats at birth.
Stats- Originally, I hard coded in all of the character stats (Strength, Agility, etc). I decided to make these part of the mod environment, so players can define their own set(I may change my mind on this still). These stats will of course affect the NPC's ability to do pretty much everything. If the NPC does not have a job, and one becomes available, the NPC with the highest stat for an open occupation will be selected.
Occupation system- Instead of only having Heroes and Merchants, Merchant will have a variety of occupations, ranging from politicians to craftsmen. The NPCs filling these roles will be just as important to the Player as the Heroes and the competing Merchants.
Right now, I am setting up the occupations so they will be editable and modifiable, and not a predetermined set. This will allow for people to make jobs specific to their universe. (Shipbuilder in Space, Carpenter in Fantasy, etc). The roles are split into a few major forms- Craftsman, Gatherer, Supporter, Hero, Merchant, and Politician. Each of these main types will be a subclass of job, and the specific job will be a subclass of the main occupation type.
Also, NPC occupations will have skill levels. These skill levels will increase as the NPC continues their practice. When gaining a new skill level, the NPC will also gain the ability to create new items and upgrade their facilities/work speed.
Recipes- Recipes will be specific sets of items required by craftsman to do their craft. These will also be modifiable, and will only be usable based off of the occupation level of the NPC.
