Rideable Horses Run & Walk

[puny]

if this get implemented, i totally wishes for those roaming horses on BG to be mountable and stealable

[Swift]

they make it look real to the setting. right now we have a rather absurd setting with no mounts at all ever ever.

So? We have the absurd setting that I can sail all around the Moonshaes within 15 minutes or cover weeks of travel to Nashkel from BG in a half hour.

There are so many absurdities in our setting that it seems silly to pick this one out to fix design flaws.

I remain of the opinion that useable horses would be a bad fit as we simply do not have the landmass to make them worthwhile. Road to Nashkel boring? Let's make it not boring. TSM travel map boring? Things are in the works to try and make it less boring.

Make travel less boring and you won't need to be eager to skip over it at a higher speed.

[kid]

they make it look real to the setting. right now we have a rather absurd setting with no mounts at all ever ever.

So? We have the absurd setting that I can sail all around the Moonshaes within 15 minutes or cover weeks of travel to Nashkel from BG in a half hour.

There are so many absurdities in our setting that it seems silly to pick this one out to fix design flaws.

I remain of the opinion that useable horses would be a bad fit as we simply do not have the landmass to make them worthwhile. Road to Nashkel boring? Let's make it not boring. TSM travel map boring? Things are in the works to try and make it less boring.

Make travel less boring and you won't need to be eager to skip over it at a higher speed.

Point A has nothing to do with point B.
Horses are fun.
They dont break anything.
Put them in.

It's not fast travle/boring travle.
The point is fun RP and color.
So really... unless there's any reason it has some serious drawback to put them in... just do it.
The ones who want to will use them and the ones that dont dont.

[t-ice]

The point is fun RP and color.

This.

It'd be great if RP is added to our travel simply by informing the player how long the trip his PC just walked ICly (normally) takes. So just tell the player the distance between two areas when ATing in BG-like long, narrow roads setup (in days/hours of walking). Or measure the distance between OLM entry and exit points for TSM-esque travel map, and message the player after converting to time (let player factor in from the baseline if e.g. terrain is hard). Players can then RP in comic book time. And a horse reduces the comic book time. (light horse doubles overland movement compared to 30ft speed PC walking as per SRD). RPage and mounted strutting ensues!

"Mounted combat" could just be normal combat with PC figures that look like they're mounted. RPage ensues! Though lack of mounted attack animations is a shame, but eh, does it really matter if the PC looks to be just standing there while attacking from horseback? Since when did we deny sweet RP possibilities if we can't do the numerical advantage that should be there?

[Ithildur]

We could just RP having horses right now with coconut bearing squires in tow.

[t-ice]

We could just RP having horses right now with coconut bearing squires in tow.

Only if we had a "I am now riding" -flag above PC heads. And access to that needs IC buying a horse. A actual horse model is hugely cooler, though. And mounted combat animations would be again cooler. And mounted combat mechanics would cooler still. But there's not reason to not take step #2 on the coolness ladder because we can't go all the way to #4.

[Zelknolf]

I would restate Foam's line:

So yeah. Once we have someone willing to do all that work, we can have horses. Would love to see someone step up!

No one is saying not to produce-- we're saying that no one has started work because there seem to be no people willing to do this among the group of people who are excited about it. We remain utterly incapable of forcing anyone to produce the change, and generally make a policy to not haggle with our contributors to get them to work. So we must rely on the good spirits and charity of our members to see anything done. It just hasn't been there for horses.

[CloudDancing]

And that is what started a rather rollicking discussion on IRC during the full moon last night.

If we have people willing to make these things happen, we had better find ourselves negotiating with people who have considerable tech skills, building verbal contracts for allowable cooperative development via the Tech Admin, and simply finding consensus. Expecting the "lone wolf" to produce alone or acting as a "lone wolf" in a team needs to be bridged by good management of human resources, prioritization, and set goals.

When the next fun, great, and player exciting thing pops up, it is easy to post that list of prioritized goals up for the players and say, "We will add horses to number 12 of our list and you will see it happen when a) all these goals are met or b) when someone on the team takes it as project."

I am willing to wait for the tech team to catch up and deal with the change in management as well as see them or help them negotiate a reasonable set of expectations for conduct of their members BUT also a way to promote timely processing of their tech upgrades through various channels. Once again momentum cannot be stalled or paused in Alfa to a reasonable degree or as we all have seen, the energy of the contributors will dry up and blow away like leaves in the wind.

[Heero]

Good grief. All they are saying is that if you want it, make it happen. Thats fair.

[Castano]

Good grief. All they are saying is that if you want it, make it happen. Thats fair.

massively fair. i posted the video in part to address some comments in irc that the horse tech was impossible or tough to get done due to bad models etc. Seems one server has negotiated the technology and done a nice job of it. might be nice to reach out to them and see if we can borrow whatever they did?

[Galadorn]

This! ^^^

[Zelknolf]

massively fair. i posted the video in part to address some comments in irc that the horse tech was impossible or tough to get done due to bad models etc. Seems one server has negotiated the technology and done a nice job of it. might be nice to reach out to them and see if we can borrow whatever they did?

A terrible misquote. People who would typically do this kind of work are discouraged by low quality of the models and the missing content-- shortcomings that this example simply embraced. Obviously, it's not important to everyone, and that's plain to see from the various posts about it. Which is fine, I guess-- but surely you must see how "Do this thing because I said. You will get nothing from me if you do, and I currently provide nothing to you which could be disrupted by this thing's absence." is only effective when there is some other unlisted thing going on (e.g. the person doing the work finds intrinsic value in completing a project). The other stuff isn't there and ALFA makes a policy of providing no other things to be going on (obvious reasons, I hope), ergo someone else needs to take it up.

[Ronan]

Its worth repeating that most of the horse code from NWN1 could probably be re-used here, if anyone was keen on making the effort.