In-game description: Quiet, graceful, and elegant. Though not as attuned to nature as their purebred brothers, they are resourceful to the extreme and significantly more prolific. They tend towards positions as artists, exploreres, diplomats, and adventurers, only held back by a (deserved) reputation for being lushes.
Average male height: 5'7"(171 cm), pureblood: 5'4" (163 cm)
Average male weight: ~155 lbs (~70kg), pureblood: ~141 lbs (~64 kg)
NOTE: Although lowland elves are generally referred to as 'Elves' or 'Elfkin', it is important to note that most are - at most - 1/16th elf by birth, although few are actually able to trace their heritage back to any specific ancestor. More commonly, they are identified by their eyes. Pureblood elves are thought to be extinct.
Notable traits: Elven eyes, while typically human-looking, have irises which can expand to cover nearly the entire eye. As a result, they tend to have excellent night vision, with some being able to see even in absolute darkness. Their hair, skin, and eye colors tend to be similar to that of humans. They are generally thought to have a sort of unearthly beauty to them.
Physical traits: Elfkin tend to have slightly narrower shoulders and thinner arms than humans, although excellent muscle tone means that they are not lacking for strength. They tend to live slightly longer than humans, although their maximum lifespan still caps at a little over 100 years for the extremely venerable.
Society:
Elfkin tend to be socially versatile, fitting into almost any society with ease. Normally this could be attributed to the nature of being born between two societies, but there is no truly 'elven' society to speak of on Aven. Rather, as a sort of universal outsider, they integrate simply as a matter of necessity. In this regard they are much like humans, although while humans will form a sort of sub-society within a larger group, Elfkin will integrate fully. Although it can be difficult to accept them in some roles (an elfkin adopting the mindset of an Imperial warrior, for instance, suffers simply from being several heads shorter than their peers), their adaptability is commendable.
Culture:
Elfkin tend to have a reputation for being lushes, in part because they claim to have an superior sense of taste to other races (something the Highborn contest). They have an excellent eye for details, often picking up on body language or other visual cues that others might miss. These two tend to put Elfkin at the center of any society's culture, frequently turning them into major movers in arts and politics. However, since they readily adopt the traits of whatever society they come from, this generally only moves existing movements further forward, rather than creating new ones. The Elven specialty is refinement, rather than innovation.
2/07/2012
2/06/2012
Codex: Orc
In-game description: Close cousins of the Humans, Orcs differ primarily by philosophy. They are more reluctant to integrate societies and more certain of their superiority as a species. Though numerous, they are split into many warring tribes - fortunate, since their long natural lifespans and tendency toward multiple births would otherwise see them overwhelming the other nations purely by weight of numbers.
Average height: 6'3"(190 cm)
Average weight: ~200 lbs (~91 kg)
Notable traits: Red eyes are common among Orcs, and occur with about the same (if not higher) frequency than other eye colors. Rarely, the whites of their eyes will take a purple tint. They tend to have superior vision in the dark, and as a result, some races find Orcish buildings poorly lit. Common hair colors are blacks and browns, with darker greens also occurring frequently. Red hair is not unheard of, and natural white hair exists, but is exceptionally rare. Skin tones tend to be darker than human, generally ranging from light tan to rich brown, though whiter skin, as is common among humans, is not unheard of. Albinism is almost unheard of among Orcs, and attitudes towards albinos vary from reverence to fear.
Physical traits: Orcs tend to have upper bodies that are bulkier than human, but not necessarily stronger. Orc women have a greater tendency towards inverted nipples and slightly smaller breasts, while Orc men tend to have slightly longer (but narrower) cocks. Most Orcs are capable of living exceptionally long lives, upwards of 200 years, but frequent violence tends to keep the actual life expectancy under 60.
Society:
Orcs tend to prefer strict, rigid societal structures, preferring the simplicity of more authoritarian with a single ruler or a small set of rulers. This preference is generally keeps Orc societies small, although in rare cases, an exceptionally strong or charismatic leader will gather larger groups of Orcs into a single group. Orcish law and social mores tend to vary greatly, as they are a reflection of whichever individual leads the tribe. As a result of this, it is difficult to make many broad, sweeping comments Orcish society. Orcs are proud and warlike, but unlike the similarly minded Imperials, they hold little sense of general racial superiority, instead supplanted by familial or personal superiority
Culture:
Orc culture centers around violence. Children are taught to fight from as soon as they can walk. Instead of art or music, knife-fighting is a more common pass time, with 'show fights' (generally to the first blood) being a common form of entertainment. As a result, around half of all Orcs, male and female, will have at least three or four scars on their hands and arms before they're fifteen, with some veteran fighters accumulating dozens or even hundreds over their lives. A notable side effect of this is that Orcs are famed for their medical skills, particularly in the fields of pathology, pharmacology, orthopedics, and surgery. Their methods are surprisingly sophisticated when compared to other parts of their society. A common expression is that Dwarves treat metallurgy the same way Orcs treat medicine, although whether this reflects an exceptional care on part of Dwarves or a dispassionate pragmatism on the part of Orcs is debatable.
Average height: 6'3"(190 cm)
Average weight: ~200 lbs (~91 kg)
Notable traits: Red eyes are common among Orcs, and occur with about the same (if not higher) frequency than other eye colors. Rarely, the whites of their eyes will take a purple tint. They tend to have superior vision in the dark, and as a result, some races find Orcish buildings poorly lit. Common hair colors are blacks and browns, with darker greens also occurring frequently. Red hair is not unheard of, and natural white hair exists, but is exceptionally rare. Skin tones tend to be darker than human, generally ranging from light tan to rich brown, though whiter skin, as is common among humans, is not unheard of. Albinism is almost unheard of among Orcs, and attitudes towards albinos vary from reverence to fear.
Physical traits: Orcs tend to have upper bodies that are bulkier than human, but not necessarily stronger. Orc women have a greater tendency towards inverted nipples and slightly smaller breasts, while Orc men tend to have slightly longer (but narrower) cocks. Most Orcs are capable of living exceptionally long lives, upwards of 200 years, but frequent violence tends to keep the actual life expectancy under 60.
Society:
Orcs tend to prefer strict, rigid societal structures, preferring the simplicity of more authoritarian with a single ruler or a small set of rulers. This preference is generally keeps Orc societies small, although in rare cases, an exceptionally strong or charismatic leader will gather larger groups of Orcs into a single group. Orcish law and social mores tend to vary greatly, as they are a reflection of whichever individual leads the tribe. As a result of this, it is difficult to make many broad, sweeping comments Orcish society. Orcs are proud and warlike, but unlike the similarly minded Imperials, they hold little sense of general racial superiority, instead supplanted by familial or personal superiority
Culture:
Orc culture centers around violence. Children are taught to fight from as soon as they can walk. Instead of art or music, knife-fighting is a more common pass time, with 'show fights' (generally to the first blood) being a common form of entertainment. As a result, around half of all Orcs, male and female, will have at least three or four scars on their hands and arms before they're fifteen, with some veteran fighters accumulating dozens or even hundreds over their lives. A notable side effect of this is that Orcs are famed for their medical skills, particularly in the fields of pathology, pharmacology, orthopedics, and surgery. Their methods are surprisingly sophisticated when compared to other parts of their society. A common expression is that Dwarves treat metallurgy the same way Orcs treat medicine, although whether this reflects an exceptional care on part of Dwarves or a dispassionate pragmatism on the part of Orcs is debatable.
sort of progress
put up the groundwork for two new npcs: a human hunter, and an escaped leonid (or giantkin, if you have anthro content disabled) convict. i have a good idea on where i want to take the bounty hunter, but until i find a good way to include persistent world information, none of it will see daylight. i think i have a decent idea. basically - either create a giant array or a large stack-type structure filled with numbers, with each number corresponding to a specific 'state' of an event. so, if you haven't met the bounty hunter yet, the flag will be 0. once you've found out he's a hunter, it will be set to 0. etc. the obvious problem here is discovering complex information about npc's, but this can be solved just by using multiple flags for the same person (eg: one flag relates to how much you know about his past, another relates to how many times you've had sex with him and how comfortable he feels around you).
the convict, i'm not entirely decided on yet. i know how i want the two to interact but i'm not entirely set on the backstory he'll have yet - i want him to remain a consistent character that the npc can interact with, but i want to avoid making him a typical 'wrongfully accused' type. guilty, but repentant? guilty, unrepentant, alpha lonewolf (or lonelion, maybe) who is just so manly that no prison can hold him? still, i have time to decide. i figured airing out the idea might help me get some suggestions.
in gui news, still trying to learn. i figured out how to do more than just make a blank window, sort of, but i can't figure out how to get the code to work just yet. if someone who knows a bit more about the win32 api than me happens to read this, when i'm creating a child component for a window (a button, text label, etc) what do i pass for the last parameter of CreateWindowEx() or CreateWindow()? the official api at msdn.microsoft.com says:
Pointer to a value to be passed to the window through the CREATESTRUCT structure (lpCreateParams member) pointed to by the lParam param of the WM_CREATE message. This message is sent to the created window by this function before it returns.
If an application calls CreateWindow to create a MDI client window, lpParam should point to a CLIENTCREATESTRUCT structure. If an MDI client window calls CreateWindow to create an MDI child window, lpParam should point to a MDICREATESTRUCT structure. lpParam may be NULL if no additional data is needed.
i know what a pointer is (i had to learn in order to figure out how to pass multiple objects, like a location and a player, to a function and have it be able to modify both of them; eg. player takes an item from a location) and i know what mdi refers to (and i'm not doing anything with that... at least, i don't think i am), but i have no idea what the rest of the sentence means, nevermind that the person who wrote it refers to both 'a MDI' and 'an MDI' (i actually did a double take when i read that; this is a professional document, for crying out loud. do most programmers really have such trouble with the english language?)
i think what it means is that i need to create an [struct] object with CLIENTCREATESTRUCT and then pass a pointer to it as a part of CreateWindowEx(), but all of the tutorials i've been able to find thus far just pass NULL (which the official api actually lists as a valid option), but when i try to do this, it fails.
although, i am finding that visual c++ (while the code it creates looks absolutely nothing like any examples i've seen anywhere else) is at least useful for getting little scraps of information, like x/y coords from. it's starting to make a bit more sense now, at least.
and yes, i am aware of the irony of complaining that someone, somewhere, put 'a' instead of 'an' in front of a word that begins with a vowel sound when i don't capitalize anything in my own writing. the difference is, i am not professional: they are.
the convict, i'm not entirely decided on yet. i know how i want the two to interact but i'm not entirely set on the backstory he'll have yet - i want him to remain a consistent character that the npc can interact with, but i want to avoid making him a typical 'wrongfully accused' type. guilty, but repentant? guilty, unrepentant, alpha lonewolf (or lonelion, maybe) who is just so manly that no prison can hold him? still, i have time to decide. i figured airing out the idea might help me get some suggestions.
in gui news, still trying to learn. i figured out how to do more than just make a blank window, sort of, but i can't figure out how to get the code to work just yet. if someone who knows a bit more about the win32 api than me happens to read this, when i'm creating a child component for a window (a button, text label, etc) what do i pass for the last parameter of CreateWindowEx() or CreateWindow()? the official api at msdn.microsoft.com says:
Pointer to a value to be passed to the window through the CREATESTRUCT structure (lpCreateParams member) pointed to by the lParam param of the WM_CREATE message. This message is sent to the created window by this function before it returns.
If an application calls CreateWindow to create a MDI client window, lpParam should point to a CLIENTCREATESTRUCT structure. If an MDI client window calls CreateWindow to create an MDI child window, lpParam should point to a MDICREATESTRUCT structure. lpParam may be NULL if no additional data is needed.
i know what a pointer is (i had to learn in order to figure out how to pass multiple objects, like a location and a player, to a function and have it be able to modify both of them; eg. player takes an item from a location) and i know what mdi refers to (and i'm not doing anything with that... at least, i don't think i am), but i have no idea what the rest of the sentence means, nevermind that the person who wrote it refers to both 'a MDI' and 'an MDI' (i actually did a double take when i read that; this is a professional document, for crying out loud. do most programmers really have such trouble with the english language?)
i think what it means is that i need to create an [struct] object with CLIENTCREATESTRUCT and then pass a pointer to it as a part of CreateWindowEx(), but all of the tutorials i've been able to find thus far just pass NULL (which the official api actually lists as a valid option), but when i try to do this, it fails.
although, i am finding that visual c++ (while the code it creates looks absolutely nothing like any examples i've seen anywhere else) is at least useful for getting little scraps of information, like x/y coords from. it's starting to make a bit more sense now, at least.
and yes, i am aware of the irony of complaining that someone, somewhere, put 'a' instead of 'an' in front of a word that begins with a vowel sound when i don't capitalize anything in my own writing. the difference is, i am not professional: they are.
2/03/2012
opposite of progress
spent the evening mucking about with microsoft's visual c++, which is (supposed) to allow creation of windows in a visual format... which technically works, but since i don't have any of the underlying knowledge of the code or how it works, i don't know how to get anything to actually work beyond that. so, back to square one.
still, i think i'm making small amounts of progress. i'm learning bits and pieces, figuring out what i need to look for to find a better tutorial that teaches me the next small step i need to figure out how to get a functioning window. it's slow. i think doing this in the middle of writing content was a good move - i can write content when i get sick of learning how to make a window, and go back to learning how to make a window when i get sick of writing content.
still, i think i'm making small amounts of progress. i'm learning bits and pieces, figuring out what i need to look for to find a better tutorial that teaches me the next small step i need to figure out how to get a functioning window. it's slow. i think doing this in the middle of writing content was a good move - i can write content when i get sick of learning how to make a window, and go back to learning how to make a window when i get sick of writing content.
2/02/2012
progress?
wrote a few events, but spent most of the night trying to figure out how to build a gui.
i'm moving this to the top of the list for several reasons: first, until i get the gui built, the game will look like shit. no matter how good the writing or the code behind it is, the game will be shit because it looks like shit. very simple. second, and possibly more importantly, the text display needs to be integrated into the gui, which means i'm probably going to need to replace many lines of "cout <<" with something else. the sooner i turn the game into a gui format, the less busy work i'll have to do converting, rather than actually writing. third... i've been talking with the guy who first got into contact with me about programming a gui, and while he's dropped on that end, he is still working with me to create some really nice looking buttons. i have to say, i'm really please with what he's put out so far.
to check out his other projects, visit http://notagodcomplex.blogspot.com/
i'm moving this to the top of the list for several reasons: first, until i get the gui built, the game will look like shit. no matter how good the writing or the code behind it is, the game will be shit because it looks like shit. very simple. second, and possibly more importantly, the text display needs to be integrated into the gui, which means i'm probably going to need to replace many lines of "cout <<" with something else. the sooner i turn the game into a gui format, the less busy work i'll have to do converting, rather than actually writing. third... i've been talking with the guy who first got into contact with me about programming a gui, and while he's dropped on that end, he is still working with me to create some really nice looking buttons. i have to say, i'm really please with what he's put out so far.
to check out his other projects, visit http://notagodcomplex.blogspot.com/
2/01/2012
progress
still working on the content. finished about 15 of the new events. just as a taste of some of the things that are going to be in the update:
-elf maid, wat do
-dryad (stalled until persistent world data gets added, though)
-hitting on the guards outside doren (whether they're the horse anthro imperials, or giantkin)
-slutty nun (again, stalled until persistent world data gets added)
-an escaped leonid convict (and moral conflict!)
-actual tracking of which races you have and haven't met, so i won't have to include 'hacked' settings files anymore!
-political intrigue in doren!
-sand yeti!
-a fat dwarven nudist!
-placeholder events waiting for the combat system to be created!
-sarcastic npc's mocking your lack of an inventory!
-a cactus!
i should be able to put up a 'codex' entry (taking a cue from fenoxo) for the city of doren tomorrow. most of this is coming from scratch, so it'll probably take a while. i've also heard back from the person who had offered to build the gui; turns out he wasn't as comfortable with c++ as he thought, so i just ended up getting a bunch of really nice looking buttons from him for when i get around to coding it. still, they're nicer looking than what i had before, so it worked out.
-elf maid, wat do
-dryad (stalled until persistent world data gets added, though)
-hitting on the guards outside doren (whether they're the horse anthro imperials, or giantkin)
-slutty nun (again, stalled until persistent world data gets added)
-an escaped leonid convict (and moral conflict!)
-actual tracking of which races you have and haven't met, so i won't have to include 'hacked' settings files anymore!
-political intrigue in doren!
-sand yeti!
-a fat dwarven nudist!
-placeholder events waiting for the combat system to be created!
-sarcastic npc's mocking your lack of an inventory!
-a cactus!
i should be able to put up a 'codex' entry (taking a cue from fenoxo) for the city of doren tomorrow. most of this is coming from scratch, so it'll probably take a while. i've also heard back from the person who had offered to build the gui; turns out he wasn't as comfortable with c++ as he thought, so i just ended up getting a bunch of really nice looking buttons from him for when i get around to coding it. still, they're nicer looking than what i had before, so it worked out.
1/31/2012
progress
working on a content update, for a change of pace before working on the combat system. added 30-odd locations, bringing the count up to 44, and made sure each location had one combat and one noncombat encounter (though most have 3 and a few have more). i'll probably get 0.3.1 released by the end of the week, and since it's coming up so often, i'll probably introduce persistent world date - things like the game recognizing whether or not you've met a certain person before - after that.
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