One of the biggest aspects of my RM is in how I want to allow a game-maker to be able to plug-in their own "rpg mechanics" system, so that they could develop their game with attributes, stats, and assorted roleplay mechanics as they are used to, in the same way as I discussed previously in Battle Systems. Myself, I am more familiar with the Alternity Science Fiction Roleplay Game System, so I would want to be able to create a game using something in that venue. A system that is more fantasy-inspired would not work for me; but if I can "generify" the core system to allow the creator of a game to specify their own system, then that should help somewhat for the more advanced game creators out there who want some more customizability.
System Timing and Calendars and Seasons, Oh My!
Another aspect I may not have specifically mentioned is, how to implement the in-game clock and calendar system? For games where the passage of time may have an importance (especially for tracking the progress of things not-controllable by the player), I am determined to figure out just how I should implement these things.
For one aspect of a game, you have a linear counting of second, minute, hour, day, weekday, month, season, year, and so on; for another aspect, seasons and times-of-the-day, you may have potential weather and climate effects. In this post on RMW, I mentioned some of my random thoughts on timing and weather effects. In that post, I suggested handling of climate effects such as rain or snow might not be so doable without note tags; but as I am designing the editor, I can provide support for editing these things in a sane manner (not having to resort to note tags, see below).
I've also stated in other posts that I find it odd that many calendar and clock scripts still use the same lengths as here on Earth, when it's obvious that these fantasy worlds created should be somewhat unique -- custom day-hour-minutes lengths, custom weekday and month names, perhaps even custom season names. This timing system I'd try to implement will allow for specifying as many time-period lengths and names as generally possible.
A Minor Rant On Note Tags.
Now, don't misunderstand, I don't dislike the uses for note tags; but I want a better non-generic way. I would rather an in-editor way of specifying attributes and things where note tags are typically used, without having to parse a block of text that could be mistyped by accident. I have always had the feeling that those notes were to be used for temporary solutions to problems that Enterbrain and company should take upon itself to implement for next-version features; however, that hasn't seemed the case in reality. Naturally, my way would mean a more complex editor interface and more data files; but in exchange, more specific customization of the engine and data is accomplished.
