The swimming skill reminds me too much of games like Ultima and the Faery Tale Adventure . . . as much as I like those games . . . but I didn't much like drowning. Boats, however, yes! Boats!
Basilisk: Are there going to be any boats in Eschalon 2?
Water Travel
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Evnissyen
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Re: Water Travel
Certainty: a character-driven, literary, turn-based mini-CRPG in which Vasek, legendary "Wandering Philosopher", seeks certainties in a cryptically insular, organic, critically layered city.
Re: Water Travel
While things like swimming, boats and horses really add immersion to a game, I'm not sure what they add is worth the effort of coding them "properly" (i.e. changes to the game engine). Also, areas of water are a great way to limit the player's scope of movement without it feeling particularly unnatural - that can be a surprisingly difficult thing to achieve sometimes, in an open-ended world. It's of course possible to have different types of water, so the ocean can't be swum or sailed because it's too deep / rough / shark-infested, but this still precludes using water to restrict movement in, say, dungeons.
I spent some time creating content with the original Neverwinter Nights, and without a lot of modding that didn't support any of these things. However, we achieved some of the effect using scripting and specially-placed objects. For example, near an obvious crossing point in a river, there might be a clickable rock, which would enquire if the player wanted to swim across, and then perform the check. Failure meant a failure to cross and, if the roll was low enough, a small amount of damage. I also set up some custom locations for fast-moving water where failure meant the player was swept off further downstream, without the ability to swim back.
Similarly, we faked up sea travel by having a clickable boat object which warped the player to a special "boat" area, which used a custom tileset with lots of surrounding water. The player stayed there for perhaps 30 seconds, whereupon a timer went off and transported them to their destination. This caused some realism issues when multiple players travelled between different areas at once (there was only a single boat area), but this wouldn't be an issue in a single-player game. Also, even without the custom tileset, this could be as simple as an appropriately-shaped "pier" with a fence round it, if people were willing to use their imagination a little.
We had all sorts of ideas about a small chance of pirate attack on these trips, where pirates spawned in and had to be defeated before the journey could be completed, but we never quite got around to it. It wouldn't have been all that difficult.
These sorts of solutions have the advantage that they can often be scripted in the game's existing language, and also since the level designers control where they can be employed, they don't tend to open up any outrageous expoits, so the QA load isn't hugely increased. However, it can be an irritation to players if the level designer doesn't anticipate them wanting to use these skills in a particular location, and this can push up level design time.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
I spent some time creating content with the original Neverwinter Nights, and without a lot of modding that didn't support any of these things. However, we achieved some of the effect using scripting and specially-placed objects. For example, near an obvious crossing point in a river, there might be a clickable rock, which would enquire if the player wanted to swim across, and then perform the check. Failure meant a failure to cross and, if the roll was low enough, a small amount of damage. I also set up some custom locations for fast-moving water where failure meant the player was swept off further downstream, without the ability to swim back.
Similarly, we faked up sea travel by having a clickable boat object which warped the player to a special "boat" area, which used a custom tileset with lots of surrounding water. The player stayed there for perhaps 30 seconds, whereupon a timer went off and transported them to their destination. This caused some realism issues when multiple players travelled between different areas at once (there was only a single boat area), but this wouldn't be an issue in a single-player game. Also, even without the custom tileset, this could be as simple as an appropriately-shaped "pier" with a fence round it, if people were willing to use their imagination a little.
We had all sorts of ideas about a small chance of pirate attack on these trips, where pirates spawned in and had to be defeated before the journey could be completed, but we never quite got around to it. It wouldn't have been all that difficult.
These sorts of solutions have the advantage that they can often be scripted in the game's existing language, and also since the level designers control where they can be employed, they don't tend to open up any outrageous expoits, so the QA load isn't hugely increased. However, it can be an irritation to players if the level designer doesn't anticipate them wanting to use these skills in a particular location, and this can push up level design time.
Anyway, just some thoughts.