As the title says, this month has been horrid where progress on IS has been concerned, and the lack of blog posts is just an indicator. I was sick for nearly two weeks, had to do taxes, and have a deadline for the work that pays. Not a good recipe for work on a part time project.

I did spend a little time thinking on the skill/level/xp area of the game, and have pretty much concluded that I’m going to try a mostly classless, skill based system. I really want the game to be more of a sandbox, do what you want when you want if you have the money and the skill, type game, rather than a “I’ve got to get 50000 more xp to get to the next level so I can use such and such equipment” type game.

In a nutshell, there will be several (or more) classes of skills. When ever you use a skill in a particular class, you will gain skill points that can be spent on acquiring other skills in that skill class. You will also receive some percentage of generic skill points that can be spent on skills of any class, which will allow the player to get a foothold in a skill class that they might not yet have any skills.

Each skill will have some number of levels that it can be raised (number to be determined, but likely 3 or 5), and some skills will require that you have other skills before you can learn them. You will also likely have to find a training disc or a trainer in order to learn the skills, and pay for their services with credits.

You will likely be able to select from several starting factions and professions that will provide you with a basic set of skills, depending of course, on the selections you make. Being able to train any skill will allow movement away from the initial starting point.

In order to keep players from becoming totally homogenized, I may have to put skill caps on the categories so you can’t learn every skill in every category, or perhaps, just a general, overall, skill cap.

Something to chew on, at least, until I get time to make more actual code progress.