V.03 - Classes, Magic, Skills - Also Now Linux Compatible!

http://www.mediafire.com/?3343h04szqr6ibs

Summary of Changes:
-Added player skills
-Added class selection
-Added spells, MP, and magic system. Player will get spells at start if one of their major skills was a school of magic, besides mysticism.
-Abilities have cooldowns now
-You can select two classes! (No it's actually just a bug that I don't know how to fix yet)

In this release, I've added a number of things. First of all, I've put in skills for the player, which is going to lay the groundwork for a lot of stuff coming up. Second of all, I've added in class selection, so that some of these skills actually matter right off the bat. Third of all, I've added spells, MP, etc., with the player getting starter spells if one of their classes' major skills is a school of magic. (Besides mysticism, whose starter spell is going to take some coding to get implemented)

All of this new stuff has made the game even more unbalanced, of course. In preparation for the next update, I made it so that as the player is now, their attack power is determined by the formula for unarmed attacks. I either borked that formula or something else, so now almost everybody's starting power is 1. This makes the Warrior Birthsign (Who increases base attack power by 10), the Destruction school (Whose starter spell deals 10 damage), and the Conjuration school (Whose starter spell, "Bound Dagger", doesn't actually give you a dagger but does increase your attack power.) all incredibly powerful compared to everything else.

Of course, most skills don't actually do anything right now. The only ones that affect anything right now are hand-to-hand and dodging - The magic skills only affect things in-so-far as giving you starter spells if they are a major skill.

This should, however, change in the next planned update: Weapons, armor, and equipment.

Leveling is still XP based, but next version it will be traditionally Elder Scrolls - level up skills to level up your character.

Current list of Things That Don't Do Anything:

-Speed attribute. Will work it into helping you move faster eventually.
-All skills besides hand-to-hand and dodging. Will be used later, most of them next update.
-Shadow Birthsign. The code for invisibility will be a challenge, I imagine.
-Taking mysticism as a major skill. The code for detect life will also be a challenge.

Planned for next update:

-Putting equipment into the game
-Allowing the player to equip items
-Giving bandits some equipment which they can use and drop when they die

Still long-term plans:

-Balance this fucking game
-Introduce more enemies
-Bring in spellbooks for player to learn from (Shouldn't be too hard, might shove this in into v.04)
-Daedra/Nine Divines worship
-Mutations (Not lore friendly but I fucking love mutations)
-Expand dungeon to have more variation - Oblivion Realms as dungeon branches

A Word On My Design Philosophy, And Other Stuff:

I think about this a lot so it sometimes skips my mind that I should explain what my basic logic behind a lot of my decisions in making this game are. So I'll do that here, for anybody interested.

I basically want to keep as close to the original Elder Scrolls games in terms of formulas used, skills, races, classes, spells, etc. as possible - Later on, equipment, dungeon regions, etc.

I do, however, reserve the right to throw shit out where I think it's silly as fuck, or just won't fit in with the game. For example, this game won't have what skills you leveled determine bonuses in leveling up your attributes. Instead it'll be a flat 5 points for whatever attribute you choose. I also don't have mercantile or speechcraft in as skills, mainly because I don't have neutral or friendly NPCs in the game yet, and I really don't plan on having them until sometime in the far future. (Yes this does mean personality is a nigh useless attribute. I've considered removing it completely, but I think that might complicate things.)

I also don't like Bethesda being the prototype for DCSS-devs by removing a bunch of skills and equipment and things that didn't need to be removed. That's why I have spears, dodging, short/long-blade, and axe/blunt, etc. in as skills.

I also have pickpocket in... But I think it might be a useless skill, given that it's probably easier to just backstab and kill a monster than bother pickpocketing them for their loot. Does anybody have any opinions on this? I think I might remove it depending on how I feel about it come v.04.

That's all I can think of right now. If I have any other thoughts I'd like to share, I'll edit this post or post them with the v.04 release post.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or criticisms, feel free to leave them here, as always. I'm especially looking for bug reports (I have no doubt there's many of them) and balance suggestions. (If it's even possible to do so at this point.)

Enjoy the (horribly unbalanced) game!

EDIT: I will also attempt to put in racial active/passive abilities next version. This shouldn't be too hard, just a bit of sludge work.