# Veloren Design Document

# Overview

Veloren is an multiplayer RPG with singleplayer capability. Its most defining feature is the simulation of the world the players and NPCs inhabit, similarly to games like Dwarf Fortress. Over time, the world will grow and develop, various factions will rise and fall, and towns and kingdoms will grow, develop, trade with each other, form alliances, war with the various in-game factions, and die.

The role of the players in this world is to help influence the world as it develops. Players can choose to play any number of various roles, identically to any NPCs can be. They can choose to fight, hunt, bake, farm, fish, cook, trade, pilot, smith, and any number of other roles, thus becoming as much a part of the world as the NPCs initally inhabiting it.

The ultimate goal in Veloren, differing from other RPGs, is to create stories. Rather than being a protagonist, one that is inherently stronger and more influential than the world around them, the players will find themselves collaborating with NPCs and other players to make changes to the world around them. Anything an NPC can do, the players can also do, and vice versa. Bakers will negotiate with farmers to secure a supply, adventurers and hunters will buy food from bakers to take with them. In this way, the players of Veloren are each their own individual cogs that, together, form the story of the world around them.

# Combat

In most games, as the player fights, kills bosses, loots equipment, and levels up, they grow more powerful. By comparing their endgame stats to their earlygame ones, there is a clear progression of power. This is known as a "vertical" style of progression.

In Veloren, to prevent players from completely overwhelming the world around them, the aim is to eliminate this as much is as reasonable, instead aiming for a more "horizontal" style of progression. This means that instead of growing directly more powerful as the player progresses, the player will instead simply have more options available to them, and be able to use many different builds, of roughly the same relative power.

To facilitate this, Veloren's weapons have a wide array of possible stats. This allows weapon progression to focus on making trade-offs in what stats are focused on, rather than continually increasing the overall damage of your weapon over time. This is facilitated with the modular weapon system where weapons are composed of a series of parts and materials, each with their own stat distributions, allowing for specialization towards some particular playstyle.

Furthermore, each individual weapon type has its own distinct playstyle, and players must spend skill points to unlock further abilities, allowing even further customization.
> Each weapon having a characteristic playstyle and a large number of unlockable abilities is pending on the skill tree reworks for each weapon kind.

## Sword
> [Sam's sword rework will explain what kind of playstyle this is going for. what can the player do with a sword, what's the role of a sword main in a group?]

## Axe

## Hammer

## Bow

## Fire Staff

## Nature Sceptre

# Worldsim
Worldsim is the system which Veloren uses to simulate the world the player(s) live in.

> [ask the people who know what they're doing in this area what their plans are]
# Aesthetics
Veloren uses a voxel-based aesthetic. Programs like MagicaVoxel are preferred.
> [ask Gemu about overall aesthetic, what time period, what do each of the races have as their cultural aesthetic, and how much anachronism is preferred ]

# Music
> [Ask Lynx what type of music the game goes for. Explain how the game's music isn't focused on overarching themes, but each individual piece is more suited for a certain situation or biome/area.]
# Plugins
> [is this even worth having a section on at the moment?]