Fenril - I do still have one big task which is nontechnical, and if you're willing to sit down and do it that would be awesome. What I need someone to do is to take the original game, plus probably the character editor (can be obtained from
www.darklands.net), and map out the parameter space of "day job" activities vs. skills vs. skill levels. This would involve making a set of characters and putting them to work, noting how much they stand to make and in which professions, and then tinkering with their skills (and possibly stats?) to see at what values of which skills they (a) make more money doing the same job, and (b) change to a different job, presumably making more money there.
I'm assuming the final algorithms will look something like this:
"...as a scribe" - makes 5pf/day with Read/Write 10-19; 6pf/day with R/W 20-29; 7pf/day with R/W 30+. With Int 20+, makes +1pf/day above these numbers.
That's an example; what I need is all the real numbers which would go into that formula.
It should probably only take an evening's intensive (and repetitive) work to map this out properly. If you do that for me within (say) the next couple of weeks, that's the earliest I can see releasing v0.2, and armed with that it'll be child's play for me to code the same functionality into the mod. Which will get you into the credits for sure.
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As for your other questions:
I plan to entirely finish implementing the stuff that was in the original game, first, before I add anything particularly new - except the companions and their associated plotlines, which will be fresh quest-content of a sort. Then I plan to add in a mix of completely new content, and also some very interesting content which is visible in the Darklands source but which was (as far as I can tell) never accessible in actual play. Presumably it wasn't ready for primetime by the time they said "enough! ship it!".
I will be using the same menu structure that was in the original, for the raubritten and everything else based on that. It puzzles me that people put so much priority on a siege system; it's just linked menus and setpiece fights, both of which I could at this point code almost in my sleep. They just grow naturally out of the Darklands engine, no more or less complicated than the witchwoman's hut or the like. So no, I won't be using the siege system you may have seen elsewhere; there's no need to do so.
At first, I had thought that I would use the "campsite" icons which - even in 0.1d - you will find periodically on the map (especially if you have high Perception and Woodwise in your party), as your only way to make camp. I think I'm going to allow camping also from party dialogue, it just won't be in a really good (defensible, hidden, well-provisioned) site, and as such there will be penalties to alchemy and healing, and a higher risk rate gain, compared to the use of the found "good campsite" icons. Paying for lodgings, even in a village, will be better yet, and cities are the best for these things.
If you play Storymod Ch1, you'll see an example of a dungeon-like map. They're quite possible, they're just tricky and a lot of work. Don't expect mines and the fortress monastery and so forth before about v0.4 or thereabouts. Reputation, on the other hand, is comparatively easy - the biggest challenge is simply that it has very pervasive effects, lots of other code needs tweaking to take your rep into account. That's probably a v0.3 release item.
Glad you're enjoying things so far!
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