Currency, currency, currency

[Domi]

Guys, I would like to introduce the copper, silver and gold currency in the small mod I am working on. What I am thinking of doing is the following:

 

Create infinetly stackable items for Copper, Silver and Gold Coins, and then have in a few areas 'money changers' that would change it to various amount of 'local gold' (effectively selling it), which then can be used to purchase stuff. The idea is to make characters 'poor' and 'rich', ie not allow a xzvart carry 10 gold on him, but 3 coppers.

 

However, before I go doing it in this cumbersome way, I was wondering, did IE ever had a provision for different currency?

[jester]

I like that idea. Many a monster's treasure was very peculiar anyways.

[Galactygon]

That would be really hard to implement, since the IE only has one type of currency. The other problem is you cannot have decimal values set in the item value field, meaning you cannot have one copper piece be worth one-hundredth of a gold piece.

 

You could try to handle currency by incrementing/decrementing a global variable based on the number of items you have in your inventory. Still, I don't think implementing currency would be worth all the trouble it will cause.

 

-Galactygon

[Domi]

Yes, I know about the decimal, so three ideas I had in mind were:

 

Lower currencies allways come in 'increments' ie:

 

1) 10 copper is the lowest denominator you can find and it is sold for 1 gold, silver comes in 5's each of them worth 1 gold.

 

2) Make a spell that as you suggested keeps converting the coins until it reaches the 'non-even' number

 

3) Make game's 'gold' into 'copper', make it the currency, inflate the prices compared to the 'gold' prices, and change 'silver' and 'gold' for new 'copper'

 

The latest, I think is what I would like to do

[Domi]

Uhm, now that I think about it, have do former 'gold' a 'universal weight' and then coinage of different countries, infinetly stackable, copper, gold and silver will be worth differently in different regions when you go to the changer to convert it (ie sell it). That should do it.

[Galactygon]

3) Make game's 'gold' into 'copper', make it the currency, inflate the prices compared to the 'gold' prices, and change 'silver' and 'gold' for new 'copper'

Yes, that will probabbly work. And it shouldn't be too hard inflating the values of every single item by a certain percent via mass patching.

 

Only don't forget to change the text labels, the .bam icons, as well as some of the GuI to say copper pieces or something.

 

Now that I thought about it more, it is an excellent idea.

 

-Galactygon

[Domi]

Yep, I think I managed to sell it to two of the WTP guys, so if DL is good with it too, we will be adopting it (keeping my fingers crossed). Refined it looks like this:

 

The mechaniques:

 

1) Former "gold" becomes the "Unit" (or a better name if one is found)

2) What you loot from the bodies are copper, silver and gold coins of various nations. They are infinetly stackable. Characters are equipped for free with the 'belt pouches'

3) You can only shop with 'units'

4) Merchants and Money Changers will convert your coins to 'units' (by simply buying it) at a different rates, depending on what nation's coins you carry and how they feel about you. Generally, a Money Changer will give you a better price than a Merchant.

5) Prices are of course much higher than we had had before, because multiple Units can buy one of the lowest currency (copper). Say, 20 arrows will now be worth 5 units. That's mean that they cost half-a-copper in a country where a copper=10 units - much more reasonable price. Obviously more expensive items such as armor, become MUCH less affordable.

6) It will not account for the fact that the country accepts its own currency, unfortunately.

[BigRob]

Sounds like a good idea... you do lose a tiny bit of the AD&D feeling with everything being in gold all the time. I think they were thinking about including at least silver coins in BG or BGII, because there is an inventory icon for silver coins and a ground icon for a pile of silver coins as well (basicaly recoloured from the gold icons). There's probably no code left behind for them though.

[Domi]

Oh, that's great actually. Less work. Thank you for mentioning it Rob

[jcompton]

you do lose a tiny bit of the AD&D feeling with everything being in gold all the time.

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Mostly the tiny bit that says, "We have far too much money to bother picking up silver and copper," just like the P&P game for any party over, oh, 1st level.

[hlidskialf]

JC has a point.

I looked into doing exactly this for my TC. Instead I decided to change the base currency to silver, and ignore copper. Too much of a bean-counting happens when copper are involved. In old PnP campaigns I'd changed the base currency to silver as well. It helps prevent the gluttonous bank accounts. Doing a direct change too you can just leave things at their original pricing, but the number's now in sp. I use the old values: 20sp = 2ep = 1gp with 1pp = 5gp. The silver icons already in game are a timesaver as well.

Good luck with it.