Hi Everyone! I took my dynamic spell idea I posted here ages ago and revised the hell out of it. Now I have a Brand New Idea (tm) that''s - get this - ''User Friendly''!!! First Lets start with the bases of the system, The Spell Objects. Now these can be anything the developer wants them to be, from cards to runes. For the hell of it I''m going to use glyphs in this example. Now, there are 6 different Classes of Glyphs, each of which cause a different effect. They are as follows: *Glyph of Effect (fire, ice, life, death,...) *Glyph of Form (sphere, lance, column,...) *Glyph of Intent (Hostile, Neutral, Benevolent) *Glyph of Power ( User Defined at casting time, low, med, ...) *Glyph of Target (self, other, nearest enemy, nearest friend,...) *Glyph of Size (I think you understand what goes here...) Say the user combined these glyphs: Fire, Lance, Hostile, Low, Other, small. The mage would get a low powered fire lance that flies toward the targeted person/beast Now lets try Fire, Sphere, Neutral, low, Self, small. Now they get a glowing ball of flame - or a magical torch Now one final example: Fire, sphere, benevolent, low, Nearest Friend, small. The target would get additional protection vs. fire damage. Basically, with this system, all the programmer would have to worry about (besides balancing) is what each effect does if the intent is hostile, neutral, or benevolent. So - what do you think?

Purdy sweet. What would be really awesome but somewhat difficult is to allow players to make their own subclasses under these basic glyph types. Not impossible for say, a mush. But graphics would be really hard.

Good luck then...

======
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
-Socrates

"Question everything. Especially Landfish."
-Matt

Yeah, that''s not a bad idea at all. Simple, yet versatile.


"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be --Pink Floyd
Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

That is a much better look at it. I will add it to the doc immediately

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

quote:Original post by Niphty
cast hostile mega huge fire lane at landfish

LOL! or:
cast hostile mega wimpy flaming goblin at landfish


-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

Yeah, I think that a few of us have played around with forms of that idea. I think I remember a post about ''drawing'' symbols with the mouse. Maybe? The glyphs could be anything. A deck of cards comes to mind. Or magic words, mantras. Arm/hand movements. Magical gems. Chips of wood marked with runes. Matbe the player would get a little frustrated selecting six different attributes for each spell. And how are the hostile, neutral and benevolent spells related to eachother? It depends on what type of spells you have. Elemental spells are easy to do hostile or neutral or benevolent. But what about healing spells (No, I realise that you can make a game without healing spells, even argue against them, but most game have them and players expect them.)? Or telepathy?
Maybe you could combine Size and Form.

Think outside the dodecahedron

Well, to me, a hostile version of a life spell is a death spell.

Like I stated earlier, the developer of the game must think through each aspect of the game, and select effects that are the best for the game. Also, A mage should be able to save premade spells in some fassion, so that they can have quick access to their previous well thoughtout spells.

As to Niphty''s question as to how a mage would holds six glyphs (lets assume they''re fist sized rocks with runes on em). Well, a mage should be able to levitate small objects without much effort, right? so why not have them float over his head, slowly spinning, in a circle (and of course have awsome animations of the effects combining into one)

Also, I should point out that not all Effects should have actions for each Intent. Make it so that when they try one of these, something random (but related to the Effect) happens. For example, A mage casts life with neutral intent - and a swirling vortex of vampyrisim (sucks targets life and drains to caster) appears, then the next time he casts the spell, his HP drops by about 75%.

One more thing - I believe that the higher the spell level (damage, size, element, etc.) from your mastery level (maybe have elemental masteries?) the greater the chance you have of one of your glyphs breaking. This feature will add reserve to the mage community, for who wants to risk the glyph that they retrieved from the 32nd level of wyrm caverns, and have to get it again?

Signing off,
Solthar

I like it. One idea though - maybe dispense with the power rune, and replace it with a charging up time. The longer you hold the spell, the more devastating it becomes. Hold it too long and.... who knows? Maybe your head explodes,or your glyphs shatter, or maybe the spell just fizzles. More powerful mages increase their spell power quicker, and are able to charge them up for longer.

You then have some interesting tactics - if a fighter attacks you, you may be able to kill him with one big spell, but he may get to you before you can get it off. Hit him with a little one first, and you might delay him enough to finish him off with a bigger follow up spell.

Alternatively you could use this approach to dispense with levels altogether - All mages have the same basic level of ability, but some have a better selection of runes than others (because they have explored the world and found them) and some players have more experience of playing around with different effects.

Edited by - Sandman on October 31, 2000 1:12:01 PM