[Brainstorming] Ideas for the first Ambermoon Mod

After the first release I would like to create a modification which can either be optionally activated in the options or selected as a Mod in the version selector.

This modification should improve the player's experience. So it might improve game balance, add helpful features, ease UI interaction, etc.

At this time I want to ask you all for your ideas. But to keep this clear please add only one answer! You can add your ideas as an enumeration (best with check boxes).

You can add these like this: - [ ] My first Idea - [ ] My second idea

If you change your mind or want to add more, just edit your answer. Don't create a new one.

We can gather cool ideas this way and add polls later to decide what should be implemented. And everybody can contribute.

The discussion about the ideas can be done later. This here is only for writing down ideas.

I'll start with my own ideas.

Balancing

• [ ] Improve hit chances in early game (increase start Attack skill values of Hero and Egil)
• [ ] Reduce available potions, lockpicks and spell scrolls in the beginning so that a healer and a thief are more valuable. And you have to use weaker spells longer. Moreover place powerful spell scrolls only in very late treasures or in hard to reach ones. I don't like that you only use Ice Shower from a given point of time.
• [ ] Make Leonaria and Targot more valuable. Maybe add some new Mystic spells as there are only very few. Valdyn and the hero should not be good enough in the spell schools to consider Leonaria and Targot as useless. Maybe add a restriction to the class on some powerful spells. This also adds to Sabine and Gryban then. Add powerful items only usable by those classes (alchemist, mystic, healer).

General improvements

• [ ] Increase amount of stuff you can carry (some points or a combination of the following)
  • [ ] Double inventory slot amount
  • [ ] Reduce weight of food and gold
  • [ ] Make more items stackable like armors or shoes etc
• [ ] When using the found Lyramion map, show an image in-game. With active map locator also your position could be shown on it.
• [ ] When having the found rune alphabet in inventory while reading runes, automatically show them as text (= auto de-rune)
• [ ] Make some spells and conditions more useful or fix them (artificial aging, increase stamina, exhaustion etc)
• [ ] Extend attributes and skills (use the search skill more often -> add some hidden treasures only seen with it, LP gain through stamina, DEX adds to long range attack damage, etc)
• [ ] Use elements for monsters and spells. And add bonuses (e.g. ice is strong against fire, fire is strong against earth, earth strong against wind, wind strong against ice, etc). Maybe also make the elemental spells all do the same damage so that they are all valuable in late game depending on monster type. Add more water element monsters too as the pond lizard is the only one.
• [ ] More story for some characters (Egil, Leonaria, Targot, etc). Maybe also different endings dependent on some more characters in the party. For example Selena.
• [ ] Remove random effect from wishing wells, pulsating lights etc. Everyone will save and load as long as they get max anyway. Instead use a fixed value so one can better plan the character stats. Maybe with clairvoyance you also get an insight what would happen and you can decide if you want it to happen.
• [ ] Add battle blind effects. Lower hit chance and/or disable ranged attacks.
• [ ] Limit battle-only conditions to a few rounds so that recasting is necessary. For example irritation, sleep, fear and paralyze (make paralyze battle only). Also make the damage spells a bit weaker or more expensive so that those other spells become more valuable. Fear may only lower morale or just stays for 1 or 2 rounds.
• [ ] Add some new places, treasures or enemies to the isles which are irrelevant to the original game. Maybe also to some parts of the moons as well.
• [ ] Add some events to the sea. Maybe just text events with Yes/No choices, dice rolls and dependent on that rewards or damage. Maybe related to the monsters pictured on the world map. The big vortex could even teleport to a new location or just place your ship at a random location on the sea.
• [ ] Overweight and exhaustion should allow movement but slow and hurt while moving.

UI

• [ ] Add tooltips to attributes (also stats like LP, SP, SLP, TP), skills, ailments and items. The examine button could toggle the item tooltips so once pressed you can hover all items and see their values.
• [ ] Double-click for default actions (equip/unequip item, buy/sell item, use item, open inventory on portrait, start conversation with 2D/3D NPC, etc)

To be continued ...

• [ ] Optional external music: If a filename with the track number exists, use that instead of the built-in.
• [ ] Eye of the Beholder step-by-step movement.
• [ ] The ability to disable/enable all non-original features.

• [ ] remove the N E T S R A K wand from the chest in grandfather's house (no cheat possible anymore)
• [ ] a modification that allows the characters they don't belong to the current party to level up as well (for example, if I decide to change character after the tasks on Lyramion, it is impossible to take Egil as a level 1 warrior)
• [ ] take all available characters to the party and adjust the balance (all 10 characters together should be as "strong" as 6 characters without mod)
• [ ] support for Game Controllers (Xbox, other)

okay, let's go

• [ ] Grimrock / Amberstar Block to Block Movement for more precise and faster movement through 3D Environments
• [ ] Option to flee a battle with the whole party at a certain cost (hit points, random equipment, broken equipment, ...)
• [ ] A lost battle (all die) can be fled at severe costs, instead of dying (and loading, so old-school .. ^_^)
• [ ] A hardcore mode. Meaning automatic saving of all actions in game - no loading. I think this is how Ambermoon should be played. Loading on dead or loading on failing to learn a spell is something that probably everyone does - this however undermines the games mechanic and idea.
• [ ] Limited respecialising. Meaning that points can be taken back for a cost (!) and being assigned anew to skills/abilites. This however is limited (amount of points and/or amount of points during a defined passing of in-game time).
• [ ] adding a quest log (although I admit it is part of the CHARM of old school games that they DON'T have one - use your brain)
• [ ] editors for everyone to add game content (maybe something for - much - later)
• [ ] Rebalancing of black mage spells. Some are way to powerful.
• [ ] Rebalancing of white mage / healer spells. Some are too powerful and make boss enemies a joke. (sleep and other)
• [ ] More meaningful spell resistance in monsters
• [ ] Agro System. Different monsters/enemies with different agro focuses (targeting mage, targeting front liners, reacting to black mage spells, ....)
• [ ] Fast travel points, activated once visited. Possibility to travel from travel point to travel point. (although this might also kill some of the game charm). Maybe Quick Travel through payments (gems or something).
• [ ] Risk of being attacked while sleeping
• [ ] Damage vs Armor algorythm work-over. It seems often too random or way off.
• [ ] Risk of spontaneous travel attacks
• [ ] Generic NPC wisdom about the Ambermoon world. Therefore it can be much more intersting to talk to different characters and they can hint at things.
• [ ] World wisdom improvement in NPCs. They can tell about things like ennemy weaknesses.
• [ ] Introduce a group inventory instead of moving things around. At the same time add group maximum carrying weight.
• [ ] Add more ennemy specific special skills to make fights more interesting and diverse.
• [ ] Defense rolls automaticly when being attacked! Otherwise defense is just useless in this game. If this makes the game to easy, rebalancing can be done (more damage or higher attack skills by ennemies)
• [ ] introduction of elements and specific resistances
• [ ] More (and carefully balanced) items for the different classes
• [ ] Unique abilites/skills per class (can be gained through leveling or learning from master throughout the world, I could come up with a list of ideas)
• [ ] Rebalancing so that mixed classes are more worthwhile to play and not bad at everything (especially magic is hardly used for a long time because not worth using)
• [ ] Rare items that grant special (battle) abilites
• [ ] Character text lines to make them comment on happenings, ennemies, quests, places. Gives the characters more CHARACTER.
• [ ] More animals that can be recruited and are awesome to have in the party.
• [ ] Nerf the loot at the witchmasters place (Nera or something?)! That one is a game killer - way to many scrolls that sell for insane amount of money or can be used to be overpowered in fights.
• [ ] Make trap disarm necessary to open the lock without setting it off (atm I think it is possible to just succeed in opening a chest, which makes the trap find and disarm skills meaningless)
• [ ] Changing the amount of HPs healed through healing poitons - lower level poitons heal like single points, which is a joke (is that actually a bug - original game data inbalance??)

Feel free to implement whatever you want and skip all the rest or not implement anything at all. I know it's a lot of ideas. I actually have more. ^_^

I wanted to add that I can take over tasks in enhancing Ambermoon such as rebalancing things or working out the details to (my) modding/update ideas.

• [ ] Faster animation speed/turn animations off.

• [ ] When the party has the world map item, looking at the item could open a full screen zoomable map generated in real time. Similar to these : http://www.larshaugseth.com/ambermoon/ Perhaps with localised place names that were on the painted Map included with the game http://thalion.exotica.org.uk/games/ambermoon/scans/hires_map.jpg
• [ ] 3D sections : support dynamic lighting. In 3D places that require a torch to provide light. It would be much more atmospheric if it only lit a small region around the party (and not everywhere in the dungeon).
• [ ] 3D sections : Press a button to go full screen on the 3D?
• [ ] Remixed Music : Ambermoon.net has inspired the original Musician Matthias Steinwachs to remaster the tracks using modern sequencers. He's not done every track yet but he might. https://www.gamecheck.guru/projekt-thalion-tracks
• [ ] Support the French data set and characters. The fan-made data files exist but I believe use new characters, not present in UK/DE are required (but I could be wrong) They were based on the UK data files and are likely to suffer from many of the more subtle bugs that have been since fixed in the UK/DE versions. Also the Intro/Extro I believe are still in English.
• [ ] Better clues for the maths riddle mouths? I never found these hard but it is the one thing I get asked time and time again.
• [ ] 2D sections, even in the Amiga original, are tedious to control with the mouse. If the character moved slower the closer to the mouse cursor is to the character, for more precise control, that might be much better? For key-control perhaps an acceleration function, the longer you hold the key the faster the character goes up-to maximum?
• [ ] Cross-overs. Everyone loves a cross over and there are one or two from Amberstar already in Ambermoon but there could be more if you're expanding the game. Find the tomb of Sir Marillion from Amberstar? (Perhaps that area is underwater now? Maybe it was moved ;-) )
• [ ] Record the Amiga Ambermoon intro using Amiga Emulation and make into a video that can play at the start of Ambermoon.net. No need to reverse engineer the intro animation engine when a video will do. It is such low resolution and such low framerate that it will compress well. Enhancing the experience while at the same time freeing you up to do other things.

General

• [ ] Expand Morag - the place seems like 80% of the population must live in the 7 palaces! And what do they eat, anyway?
• [ ] Make herbs and the water of life regrowable instead of infinite. Example: If you pick Swamplilies, you can pick 10 or so. Then they regrow by 2 every day to a maximum of 10.
• [ ] Instead of destroying a spell scroll (well.. or in addition) when learning fails, implement a kind of timeout before it can be attempted again. This could either be the passing of time or gaining a specific amount of XP, depending on the required SLP.

UI

• [ ] "Where did I leave ..." - search dialog for finding things that are in any chests you once opened. Could be a game function or a mystic spell. Could be used for shops, too.
• [ ] A way to set a spell or magic item as repeatable in battle. That way the antique object could be used as the laser gun it's probably supposed to be.

Thanks for all your ideas so far.

Ambermoon Advanced might use some of them, but only those which can be integrated without changing the original's code (or at max by minimal changes to it).

But the other ideas will be considered as well as Ambermoon.net will extend the Amiga-compatible Mod by specific features/modifications that can only be implemented in Ambermoon.net but not in the original version.

On top of my own ideas I will create some polls and/or discussions soon where the whole community can vote for or against specific features/suggestions or where we even could work on ideas so that the result will be satisfying for most players. ;)

QoL:

• [ ] Auto-Retarget on advance. When advancing in combat, ranged attacks and spells stay at their position
• [ ] Auto-Abort attack when enemy dies. When an enemy dies, only the attack of the character killing it is removed from the action list
• [ ] Auto-Retarget when an enemy moves
• [ ] Tooltips explaining the effect of conditions would be nice
• [ ] Tooltips explaining the benefit of the attributes would be nice
• [ ] A toggle button between two weapon sets could help to switch between melee and ranged attacks
• [ ] Add attacks per round to the character statistics
• [ ] Information on the nearest wind gate could help with navigating them on the island. Maybe a text below the wind perls when in proximity?
• [ ] Escape key to close the map would be nice
• [ ] Escape key to close the options menu would be nice
• [ ] Add an option to condense multiple attacks in a single attack. The animations for attacks can otherwise take a lot of time, especially in the later game - the warrior can get up to 10 attacks which increases to 20 with haste
• [ ] A recast button during combat allowing the character to cast the last spell cast by them - even across different combat instances
• [ ] Fix some keys on the forest moon which don't vanish when used (Kire's key, Ferrin's cellar key)

Additional Dungeons:

• [ ] As mentioned by a1exh, additional dungeons from the original game might be fun, especially in areas you do not need to visit at all (I'm looking at you, "Ebene von Thal", "Schwarzberge", "Seufzerwüste" and "Adlerhorst".)
• [ ] Maybe some of the optional quests could feature a choice as with the bandit's nest. Not that I think anyone would choose to kill the bandits during that quest, as losing the only critical hits trainer is a steep panalty for a glorified lock pick

Additional Items:

• [ ] I like the class specific items for the thief, paladin, etc. However, they at some point tend to be rather bad in comparison (e.g. the Dagger found at the start of the game pales in comparison to the magic throwing axe) or start so strong, you'll never have to discard them (Knights armor). I'd suggest being able to find superior class items later on in the game, for example as a quest reward in an additional dungeon
• [ ] Additional amulets might be nice, especially since there are so few of them overall in the game - and two of them can only be worn by women, while another two have no stats improvement
• [ ] Apart from the lich crown (and the cursed one) all helmets feel rather basic so this might be another interesting item slot for quest rewards

Balancing (General):

• [ ] Increase the effect of the more obscure attributes

Balancing (Characters):

• [ ] The thief seems to scale rather bad during the later game, especially since you can duplicate lock picks. Maybe more attacks or an even higher critical chance would be nice?
• [ ] The mystic doesn't have any spells which would justify adding him to the party. He has basically two spells (mystic map and identiy) which can as easily be used by Valdyn - and mystic map can simply be replaced by using alchemy + kay's amulett which allows casting mystic globus

Balancing (Items):

• [ ] A lot of low to mid tier items tend to be atrocious in comparison to similar items - why use a staff, when you can use a long sword, etc. They basically become obsolete before they ever get a chance to be used. Maybe they could gain some small benefit in another area (higher attack for starting items for example) to help them fill some kind of niche
• [ ] There is not much point in equipment the TARBOS amulet, as you can still activate the spells saved within when it isn't equiped. Some effects for the character wearing it might be nice, especially considering that it's feeling like a rather special item
• [ ] I'd suggest improving the "Schlangenhelm"'s defense, so you'd have a reason to equip it before identifying it.

Balancing (Magic):

• [ ] Black magic spells could use some rebalancing, as most spells are completely pointless later in the game, while other (ice shower) are the cure-all for advancing battles quickly. Some spells have a disproporionate effect when compared to their variants with a higher area, such as the ice-row which deals medium damage and targets a single row and the ice shower, dealing enormous damage with the whole combat area and only a slight increase in cost

Battle

• [ ] Colourize important information in the text box so that it's easier to see, especially when "fast battle mode" is enabled. For instance green numbers when an enemy is hit, orange numbers when a party member takes a hit, red text when a weapon breaks.
• [ ] Scroll the text box instead of clearing it between each piece of text. Add a scrollbar so you can go back and see what happened (or just scroll using mouse wheel like the inventory). Clearing the history between rounds is fine though, if memory use is a concern when backporting to original hardware.
• [ ] Option to merge multiple attacks into one: "Egil attacks spider 3 times with the longsword", "Egil did a total of 14 damage"

Conversation

• [ ] Add an option to grey out words in the dialogue list about which the other person don't have anything to say.
• [ ] Allow scrolling of long texts without having to click through page by page first.

UI

• [ ] Add optional keyboard shortcuts for the nine action buttons that work without needing a numerical keyboard (for instance Y,U,I, H,J,K, B,N,M) and regardless of which button set is being displayed (movement, actions).
• [ ] Option to reserve one save slot for "quick save", then add a keyboard shortcut to save to that slot with no further clicking (provided the name in that slot matches the one used for quick save, of course). A quick load shortcut is not really necessary, the game encourages load scumming enough as it is.

Miscellaneous

• [ ] Add more fast travel markers in dungeons, especially at entrances so that they can be exited quickly.
• [ ] At night in the outside world, have the light around the party fade gradually (only feasible using a dithered mask on original hardware.)
• [ ] Add an option to let the party member with highest charisma pay for items in shops no matter who is currently the active one.
• [ ] When examining scrolls, they should display the number of SLP needed to learn them. Perhaps that info as well as a description of what it does should become available if you pay the sage to identify them?

Hey,

It would be great when we could change the view of text. I mean this Font-style white text with grey shadows is hard to read over long texts on a modern led monitor. Maybe you can implement an option to switch off the shadows or make it more readable in another way... Hope you understand what i mean...

Greetz

Mankie

• [ ] Re-balancing of character progression. Despite of the slow start with lots of missing attacks and weapon breaking, I feel like the characters are generally progressing to fast. In my current playthrought I had the main stats (attack for hero, Egil and Valdyn, read/use magic for Nelvin and Sabine, disarm traps/pick locks for Selena) and most of the secondary stats almost maxed out after rescuing the people of Burnville and actually maxed out the main stats after a couple more quests (the beast on the ranger's island, witch master, gnome cave). From the guide I've checked, that's only about 50% of the game, so there will be no meaningful progression (except for swimming and searching) for the rest of the game.

This would probably also need a rebalancing of early and mid game encounters to match a slower progression.

• [ ] Make the Morag adventure more fun.

I hope one of your later Ambermoon Advanced episodes expands the content on Morag. Morag - as is also mentioned in the walkthrough that you ship with the game - feels really rushed and is the only disappointment of Ambermoon. It seems the devs ran out of ideas/time/money. While Ambermoon is fun throughout, the fun abruptly stops on Morag. The player is punished with several penalties (no more automap, no illusion/trap detection, no ice spells) and the game difficulty jumps up. Other signs that Morag was not finished is that all Morag-items use the same sprites as existing items (Morag dart, Morag robe, Morag sword, Morag shield). At the very least, these items should get a different color palette, and best they should look exotic and interesting.

Games should not try to stop you from finishing them, they should entertain you - also in the endgame. That's the case throughout the game, except on Morag. The Morag adventure feels like a drag, as if the devs wanted to prevent the player from finishing the game. I spend some time thinking why that is. I think it is because there is no sense of progression anymore, since you barely get any useful treasure. The monsters/riddles are hard, but there are no new weapons to gain to make these fights easier. You can buy a few extra Morag darts, and you can find a single Morag sword. The Morag darts cannot be used by Fighters/Paladins and the Morag robes can only be used by pure magic classes. If you have a party with Egil and Gryban, you don't benefit. Morag darts should be usable by every class.

• [ ] Add an optional quest that allows one to re-enable the automap on Morag
• [ ] Add an optional quest to gain some weapons which make fighting the enemies on Morag easier / or add more chests with rewards to the council towers. Providing chests with gems/gold is useless at this stage of the game, the player is swimming in gold already. The only useful rewards at this point are stronger weapons/armor, and the player is in dire need of that, since the enemies on Morag are hard and the most powerful destruction magic is removed. It would be really cool if you could find the best gear for each class on Morag. It does not have to be ridiculously strong such as the Morag sword, just a bit better, e.g. Attack of 35 instead of 30, for example. It would be also really cool if one could find more rings/amulets like the Nera's ring and Valdyn's amulet, that boost the Use Magic skill for adventurers, paladins, and rangers.

@HDembinski You are right. I already have some big plans for Morag. Beside your points I also dislike that the planet seems mostly empty. A few palaces and an almost empty town.

There will be much new things in episode 4. New quests, items, NPCs and places.

I also think they ran out of time or ideas there. They even reuse monsters from Lyramion. Maybe it was also a matter of disk space. Who knows.

@HDembinski While I totally agree that Morag (especially the town) needs more content, I don't think that it's too hard -- you just missed a few possibilities ;)

but there are no new weapons to gain to make these fights easier. You can buy a few extra Morag darts, and you can find a single Morag sword.

The Morag sword, along with the armor and shield, can be duplicated so you can have as many as you want.

As for the enemies, I think that the magical guards are the biggest problem - and you already faced those on Lyramion.

With the right party composition and spell use, even a group of 3 Morag dragons can be beaten before they do any damage (well... in original Ambermoon at least - it seems they have some magic resistance now, so it does not work every time). Everything else does too little damage to be a real threat IMO.

Actually, now that the Magic Defense isn't bugged anymore, I'd rather buff the mosters.

Add an optional quest that allows one to re-enable the automap on Morag

I like that idea :). While I think there are ways too make a disabled automap part of an interesting riddle, I don't think that applies to the 7 castles. Bet maybe the quest to re-enable it might have such a riddle. Btw: In the original, it was possible to circumvent that limitation with certain mystic spells...

The Morag sword, along with the armor and shield, can be duplicated so you can have as many as you want.

That's fair, I did not think of that, but also in Ambermoon Advanced, the Duplicate Item spell is very expensive to learn if you don't have a pure Alchemist in the group.

As for the enemies, I think that the magical guards are the biggest problem - and you already faced those on Lyramion.

True, my main complaint is the lack of a sense of progression. In an RPG you expect that enemies you have faced in the past become easy at some point, but the magical guards do not really become easier.

It probably would be less noticable if there was more interesting stuff happening on Morag, besides raiding the council towers.

A fitting way to add more story to Morag and to breath more life into the Moranian people would be a quest in which you need to find and contact a rebel group that opposes the evil council members. They initially do not trust you, but eventually help you to overthrow the concil members after you gained their trust with some errands.

It would also be cool if we could learn more on Morag about the forgotten race that inhabited the forest moon. It seems like the Moranians learned a trick or two from that ancient race about combining magic with technology.

I like the idea about the rebel group. Desperation will logically lead to such things so I guess it really is fitting. I think I will integrate the idea into the stuff I already have planned.

Cool :) Btw, can you technically add new sprites for weapons to the game? I saw that you managed to add new sprites for monsters, so I assume it is possible.

I volunteer to redesign the sprites for Morag weapons (dart, robe, sword, ...). My main skill is software development, but I do art/design as a hobby. I am not an expert in creating pixel art, but I am confident that I can make something decent.

If you played the advanced version you should already have seen a lot of new item sprites, even weapons. The Flamberge for example is a new one.

Sure you can give it a try and I will use it if it's decent.