Or resigned. (ie; dan, possibly callimuc?)

Dan is kind of part-time/casual do to personal issues, and yeah calli resigned.

The point is i dont see a scripting app i know scripters but where should they apply?

Also andrew could finish it isnt he skilled?

Also in the lakes coudlnt you like add a job like hunting crocodiles sorry for the spelling.

We don't have a scripting app no, given that I assume we're looking to hire scripters I would say upload some of your scripts to era-go and see what happens from there.

I'm sure it's hard to be a scripting staff member on iOS servers especially iEra than the other dev servers.. They only hire real skilled scripters I believe

Can't Wait!

I'm not talking about me im not that good at scripting talking about how others how should they know how to apply for scripting team or if they hiring.

Okay well I believe iEra has a forum of it's own. Getting back on topic here..

I think we're going to have the axes be craftable and purchasable. One of them will be cheaper than the other. Do we want to push crafting more? Should we make the fishing rod later on craftable?

Also, the town's name is now Oasis, which was decided because it makes the most sense. "a fertile spot in a desert where water is found."

Do we have a name for Gang Points and a concept that everybody is cool with?

Do we still implement firemaking as a skill? (I still want people to cook their food on fires)

Should woodcutting be like mining where you just cut at the tree, or is there a better way of going about this?

Any other ideas for the town?

If you really want to go off with the skill system here are a few new ideas, and some personal revisions to some of the skills you're already contemplating.


WOODCUTTING

Should be handled similarly to mining. Different trees require a higher level to cut down, and yield noticeably different wood types.


FIRE-MAKING

Aye, this should be a skill.

Different types of fires can be made utilizing different wood types, and fire-making level is critical here. If you're just starting out, let's say you can only make oak fires. (oak would be like...the lowest level tree you can cut). Next thing ya know, you're at level 5 for fire-making, now you can make birch fires or something like that. The higher the level of wood you're making the fire out of, the longer it burns for.

Fires can be grabbed and sat around depending on which direction you grab. This would institute a maximum of 4 people (up, down, left, right). Maybe you could even restrict sitting around the fire to people who are members of the same guild as the fire creator.

Sitting around the fire will slowly heal players, and will also allow for cooking (see cooking skill).


HUNTING

Hunting should be revisited, redone and expanded on. Rather than random hordes of mobs to gun down, it should be a much more...intricate process. New hunt-able animals should be added (bears, deer, rabbits, coyotes, etc) and two methods should be introduced to hunt them in.

Gun 'Em Down Method

This would be the most simple, and yet most irritating method. Game should be programmed to run away from the player when the player reaches a certain distance, and run away when a gun is fired within a wider radius. However some animals should also remain aggressive to the player. So let's say I'm hunting a deer. It takes 3 bullets to put them down right? Easy? Not so much. I have to chase them around and wait for them to settle before I can try and get a shot in. Maybe even add a chance system for the occasional critical hit? To mimic an instantly fatal head or heart shot?

Sly Hunter Method

This is where it gets a bit fun, introducing items such as rabbit traps. Rabbit traps can be purchased from a hunting lodge and are placeable by the player. Once put down a timer for 5 minutes shows above the trap as well as the trapper's name. If the trapper is lucky, a small game animal will "get trapped" inside. (What really happens is the system will randomly trigger the trap at some certain point within the 15 minutes with a certain animal being caught.) Once this happens, the player must retrieve his/her trap and the animal caught inside. They will get fur and/or meat from the animal and lose the trap. However 1/5 times, the trap will run the 15 minutes without "catching an animal" in time. At this point, the trap springs with nothing inside, and the player can retrieve his trap and re-use it until something is caught. Players can place a max of 3 traps on the map, to ensure that the map doesn't become clusterf*cked with traps. Maybe after a certain point, other players can gather the trap, just to make sure people aren't leaving traps there forever.

How do levels affect hunting you might ask? Well they play a higher part in the trap method than the gun method, but do affect both.

In traps, the higher the level, the more likely a player is to catch an animal and in a lesser amount of time. Also levels can be made to affect what kind of animals are caught, example: squirrel = level 0+, rabbit = level 5+, fox = 15+, beaver 30+, etc.

In the gun method, levels can effect how long an animal runs for, or how close you can sneak to an animal before it runs off. Or even how much it drops. Who knows?


COOKING

Meats gathered from hunting and vegetables farmed by the player can be cooked in fires made via fire-making or in stoves buy-able by the player as furniture. The interface will be similar to the smelting interface, however only stoves require a fuel item to operate.

Different meats and vegetables will require not only a higher cooking level, but take a longer time to cook. This means if you're cooking in a fire, you might not be able to cook something on a lower level fire. Which will spur you to improve your fire-making skill. This also makes stoves a valued method, as the go for as much fuel as you put in. Meaning, you can bump up the price on stoves a bit. ;)



I'll add more as I think of it.

Not true, I got hired on iEra for scripting.

Skill balanceing
 

I like the idea of having more skills but one thing i fear is that they wont be worth it like the new mining. The new mining you lose money(not very much) until you get to like lvl 40(still not much profit made). Even if you do get to diamounds you still dont make enough money for how much time and effort you put into it. So i think that the sell prices should be edited or that you can craft modfiers for your tools(the higher the lvl in crafting lets you craft better modfiers and you need to be a certian lvl in the other skill to use that modfier)Now to expand on modfiers for a mining example you can sharpen your pick which makes it do more damage or improve your handle(swing or preform action faster).

Also i only have 1 idea for a building.

CASINO
For the rich who have no idea on what to use there money on and the lucky of course.

I was thinking that the casino could have roulette, poker, blakcjack etc. Were you can win more money or win casino credits to buy prizes. (these games could also be played with other players)

Also agian great job alpho and others on the great updates.

hmmm so say gang points were added and they could be used to buy upgrades, wouldnt that only make high gangs (obsidian, abernathy, anarchy etc...) be way more powerful and other small gangs rising up wouldnt have a chance? It just seems like it would feed the already powerful and provide nothing to lower gangs

The mountains on the grass map need to change color to more stone coler gray ones or something in my opinion:)

When I get back I plan on changing these. Alpho and I have already talked about it.

The current ones, I believe, are the default ones used on PC Ol' West.
Thanks for suggesting improvements! :)

^^He's got a point there, considering the fact that we already got some hardcore basing gangs filled with hardcore *fanatics* that already got the upper hand because they base earlier and potentially longer than those newly-made gangs.

How can we improve the mining system so that it's worth it? I want to make all skills give you profit. Though it's important to realize that there's more than one skill on Ol'West, and each skill gives different profit. Most people will be doing skills to level up because the rewards (profit) at higher levels are more worth it.

Casino is a very cool idea. Though since the games would require a lot of graphics and coding, we would want to wait until after Oasis's release so that we can release the other skills in time, if we are making a casino that is.

Thank you :)

We never said you'd buy upgrades for your gang. We still have yet to discuss the rewards for redeeming your gang points. How can we make this fair? Any ideas?

I agree, something with gray or darker earthier brown colors would be good.

making Skills woth it
 

To make the mining skill worth you would should make lvling have more of an effect such as lvl up increases the speed you mine(by very small increments) or increases the damage of your pick every couple lvls. Also dont know if this 1 would be to much but you could make it were theres a small chance to receive 2 or 3 ores from the rock instead of just always 1.(agian haveing a higher lvl in the skill would increase the chance)

Or you could have some sort of skill tree with perks. You could invest in speed increases, mining damage, or payout increase. I just think skill trees would be a nice addition to the jobs as it would provide for more motivation to do them.

Thought of a few more skills. Also attached all previous skills in the spoiler below.




RIDING

The riding skill brings about mount/horse tiers. As players level up their riding skill, they can now buy and use higher level horses which move faster, can hold more than 1 player, or even swim in certain depths of water (granted the team does all the necessary dev to make horses swim).

To upgrade the riding skill players must successfully lasso, and ride a wild animal around until it's calm. How I'm envisioning this process is as follows. Player equips lasso and throws it at a wild animal. Once lassoed, the player will proceed to ride the animal, just like usual. However for the first minute or two, the animal will either move around randomly or shake violently. There's a 70% chance (chance becomes lower as level increases, and is also affected by the type of animal lassoed. Lower level players will have more of a struggle trying to lasso and ride a bull than a sheep) that the player will be thrown off and gain no experience. However, if the player does stay on through the whole minute, he/she will have "tamed" the animal and can now ride it freely, and will receive skill points based on what kind of animal it was.


CRAFTING

Don't know if this was the plan or not, but crafting should become its own skill. Levels can be gained by smelting ore bars, fashioning planks from wood, or crafting items with said materials.

Recipes will require a certain level, and so will smelting higher level ores. (All ores besides gem stones should become smeltable.) Also a shop should be made to sell ore bars for high prices.

Pretty straight forward. Just some more leverage room.


ENCHANTING

Before y'all give me sh*t for getting off theme here with some magical bullsh*t, let me explain. Right now there isn't much differentiation between the Native Indian faction and the Cowboy faction. This helps change that.

Natives had shamans. Witchdoctors. People more in tune with the mystical side. And we have a bunch of gemstones that are more or less useless besides as a way to get gralats right? Well let's knock out two problems in one.

This would be an Indian exclusive skill, and ties in closely with both hunting, mining and crafting. Players would need bird feathers which would be obtainable by hunting birds, and gemstones by mining.

So let's say I had a diamond and a ruby. Diamonds require eagle feathers to enchant, and rubies require...let's say swan feathers or something. Now I have to go hunting birds for those feathers. Once I attain those feathers I go to a witchdoctor/shaman's hut. There I can enchant the gemstones.

I have some enchanted gemstones, what now? Well you can use it in crafting recipes for speciality items or weapons like the Indian Axe. Or you can make quite the profit at the trade tables, as cowboys can't enchant gems, and people might be too lazy to do the process themselves.


FISHING

Simple concept...pretty sure it's already planned somewhere here.

Get a fishingrod and cast it into water. There's a 1 minute timer on the rod. 40% chance you'll catch something. Chance increases as your level increases. Every 5 or 10 levels a higher level fish is thrown into the mix of what you can catch.

Caught fish can be cooked, or sold to a fisherman at some fisherman's hut.

If enchanting is a Indian only skill, Cowboys should have there own skill as well, otherwise everyone would just switch to Indian.

I'm changing to Indian if theres Enchanting that only idian can have.

Well currently there is no real reason to be an indian anyways, cowboys has more ups than indians already so this would encourage the indian side somewhat more

What are you talking about, there's barely any difference between the two factions currently...

There actually is, as an indian you will get targeted by npcs a lot more since most of the important places are in the northern part of the map

Wow huge diffrent no, back to topic.

Obviously there'll be skills that are cowboy specific as well. Just haven't thought of any.

Well.. cowboys being part of western society, why not a capitalism skill B-)

Spittoon skill

Im only half way through mining levels and now a new skill is here or should i say skills x.x

Well it isn't supposed to be easy to achieve 99 in all skills :P

I have noticed. The time it has taken to get to level 48 :'(

How about the ability to enhance the current guns as the Cowboy's Special Skill? Since they fancy themselves with metal parts a lot,lol :P

An engineer skill wouldn't be such a bad idea actually!

Another little teaser :)

http://i.imgur.com/9inME8e.png

Edit: Yes, you can pick up / destroy the bushes.
Also, the flowers move randomly and they also move when you walk over them. Same for the mushrooms. The trees also shake when you chop at them and fall when they die.

Wow... I think you're overdoing it on the foliage just a teensy bit there.

I wonder how awesome it would be to introduce new buildings in that area... (;


Ol' West stepping up its game.

Something about the graphics of that roof looks a bit odd. Aside from that everything looks pretty cool. Although, I agree with the previous poster, I believe you could tune down the foliage a tad bit. Maybe it's the colored flowers or something, but it just looks like a bit much.

I agree with the roof. I actually dislike a lot of the original tiles. I'll see what I can do to make them look a tad bit better. :) Thanks for feedback.

That tile is bad in many ways it needs way more now its almost like a floor you put on the roof! I know the currwnt graphics team didnt make that! But yeah fix it

I dont like the mushrooms either

Also, wth is up with those flowers. The graphics for them are pretty bad and certainly need to be updated. I think that's why I dislike the foliage, those flowers are just blobs of color.

Really? I like the flowers

The trees don't fit the tileset....

I agree on this. The colours of the trees seem to bright and the leaves should probably be made more realistic, right now the trees look plastic-ish.

Looks nice, the holiday shop was my favourite part of the map purely because of the grass

Could you post some more pictures? I know you do not ona spoil to much but still fun to see;)

can we get a eta?

just curious when it will be done.

Overall if you look at Oasis as a whole with everything around it, the trees work fine. I've just showed you guys bits and pieces while I progressed with leveling it.

What, you don't like surprises?

My personal completion goal is Saturday, February 7th. Though, please don't expect it to be released then, there will still be polishing to do, but that won't take too long.

Will there be any new cowboy weapon shops?

I do like suprises just hyped

So no map expansion today then?