I read thease posts yesteray and thought about it for a bit, then i devised my own system.
It took me about 2-3 hours unfortunatly i wrote it on another computer so i cant simply copy''n''paste it here....

Heres the basics:


Thre re 3 Main types of energy (well actually 4, no, 5 (ok, im making it sound crapnow but bear with me))
Positive energy (we''ll call it A)
Negative energy (B)
Neutral (or intenal) enery (C)

Then later in my article (which i named: ''Theories of magic science'' for a laff)
i mention another type of energy (which is basicaly a simple structure of excess or left over energy particles)
which i called the (V) structure (because the energy particles are arranged in aV shape)

Also theres one last energy Psych (P) which gives the elements force etc


I devised my own maths system for the energy:
what do you get if you add A+B?
A+A=2A, B+B=2B so far so good
A-A=0, B-B=0
A-2A=B, B-2B=A ok, one step harder but still simple
A+B=C
2A+B=C+A or C/1 umm, i say why in my article
also half way thrugh you learn about the structure of each and then find out about V
C=A+B(+V)
Why? Ok, heres the structure of A, B, C and V: *=energy particle
A:
* *
* *
*

B: Yes A is the same as B only turned at about 20 degress, but still

* * *
* *

C:
* *
* * *
* *

So of you add the A structure and the B structure you end up with a C structure
WITH 3 PARTICLES OVER-LAPPING:
V:
* *
*

I also tell about energy elements such as air, fire, earth, wind etc
which are all structures of energy: {A,B,C}
Water {0,3,0}
Air {1,3,0}
Earth {4,1,0}
or something like that
Those 3 were my BASE elements,all other elements are combinations of those BUT:
There are two more:
Heat {1,2,0}
Cold {-2,-1,0}
which are values you add or subtrac t make a new state: Ice = water + cold which is {-2,2,0}
There was also a structure which changes temperatur (cold+heat){-1,1,0}

Then there were unelemental nes which used C:
Time{0,0,3}
Movement{0,0,5}
Mind{1,0,4}
etc

so this way youcan create time travel (time+movement) and others.


Then i went on and explained why some spell casters brew potions or use wands (i explained how wands work)

Wands:
a wand is a aterial charge with excess V''s
So that when you wave it, some of the V''s getreleased.
There was more but that was the basic idea.

Next i explained the effects f different amount of V''s (life, force, etc)
Then i explained Psych, what it does and so on

And at the end i had a step by step guide to casting a spell.
Finally i had a refference for quick access to some of the formulas in the text.

Heres my description of magic in the text:
Magic s the artificial recreation/creation of energy elements or structures by directly rearanging energy particles
while externallizng internal particles.

Well, its something like that, i cant remember exacty.



Anyway, im still working on it and im working on an algoritm into which you feed the structure and psych etc and it casts the spell...

It is about 99% origional, 1% of it was borrowed from various places.





So, what do you think of my ideas? Would that work well or is it a bit.... ummm, i dunno.

Anyway, good luck!

ok, i made some mistakes but i guess its still understandable.
i wrote 20 degrees at one point(i meant 200 degrees)
also the structures of particles didnt show up right, there are meant to be more spaces in them


A:
_*_*
*_*
_*
B:
_____
*_*_*
_*_*
C:
_*_*_
*_*_*
_*_*_

V:
*_*
_*


Just take out the _''s

quote:
it is impossible to tell the difference between magic and a sufficiently advanced technology

Arthur C. Clarke said that.

Anyway, I too have thought about an algorithmic spell system. Basically, I''m really disappointed with spells as they have been in games so far, because you''re just given spells to use. You should be able to develop your own, to use spells no one else has, spells no one else has thought of. Since spell-casting is supposed to be a gift of the intelligent, intelligence should be more important for spell-casting.

So, it makes sense to program your own spells. The way I see it, you''d have a number of components, as others have said. For casting one type of fireball, you might do this:

#1 create fire on magic at casting_hand
#2 apply force on #1 direction (0,0,1)
#3 cast

Here is an explanation of each step:
#1: Fire must have something to burn, be it wood or coal or whatever. For a fireball, we just use magic to sustain the fire, so we cast it on "magic". We also need a location, so we cast it right at the hand doing the casting. To cast it anywhere else would require either another component (''distance'' or something) or just a skill that''s improved as you level up. Otherwise you could make things happen halfway across the map even at level 1. The damage the fire does would depend on how many points the caster put into ''fire''.

#2: We apply force on the fire to move it forwards (vector 0,0,1). Its actual speed would depend on how many points the caster put in ''force''. Gravity would still affect it though, as would wind if your game has it, so you''d have to aim upwards like throwing a ball.

#3: We now cast the spell. Basically, nothing really happens until the finished spell is cast, so if you get interrupted, you won''t have a fireball lying near your feet or whatever because step #1 was done but not step #2. For very long spells, this would be important.

Another version of the fireball might be this:

#1 create fire on magic at casting_hand
#2 set force on #1 direction (0,0,1)
#3 cast

This attempts to make the fireball go forwards and only forwards - not falling due to gravity or whatever. If you don''t have many points in ''force'', it may just resist gravity partly, and will also move forwards more slowly than the first fireball since some force is needed to resist gravity.

~CGameProgrammer( );

I think you''ve given another useful idea, CGameProgrammer..
But I do not think that if you create fireball, then you NEED to burn something down. You can simply heat up the water or burn a hole in a wood/stone( : ) )

Ok, so another law we going to use is vector in 3D, etc speed, acceleration.
I was thinking of the same thing as u did about initial location of object. Yes, we can use that. So, each object will have its initial location.
Next thing is that we can "put" energy or force to an object (as speed/accel) as a vector.
Ok, thats all basic laws that exist in real world. We can apply them, but we need something dissimilar to it, e.g some rules that aren''t the same as in real world...
Don''t know how to say, it, but give some crazy ideas about True Magic..
Cheers!

" Do we need us? "

Ionware Productions - Games and Game Tools Development

Actually, the quote is:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Clarke''s Third Law, from Profiles of the Future (1962)

In this sense, I believe (I might be wrong here; feel free to correct me) it was stated in the context of humanity discovering a race with technology much more advanced than our own. To us, their technology might seem like magic (unexplainable by what we know of science) -- like angels, or ghosts, or aliens!

Seems like semantics, but that''s not the same as what you said.

R.

You might want to try a simulation of sympathetic magic. The premise of sypmathetic magic is that like affects like (this was also one of the schools of magic in the Master of the Five Magics series, although I''m pretty sure it wasn''t named sympathetic magic). Right now the implementation of it isn''t much more than an idea in the back of my head. The general idea is that you cause a change in one object to effect the same change in another object that is somehow similar.

You can have several different categories of "likeness", such as substance (maybe using an animal, vegetable, or mineral breakdown), shape, color, smell, and parent-child (e.g., using a lock of hair to make a voodoo doll). The different categories should probably be weighted (I would place the parent-child and the substance categories as the most important), and the more categories in which the two objects match, the greater of an effect you can achieve. The spell-caster uses an incantation to form a link between his model object and the target object, and then can tranfer the desired attribute from his model to the target. Want to levitate? Transfer the mass of a feather to yourself (animal-to-animal). Want to crush the city walls? Build a small model of out of the same material (shape similarity and substance similarity) and knock it down. The expertise of the caster should determine the maximum model-to-target mass ratio he can work with.

I still need to refine this idea, but I think the concept has a lot of potential.

Sean

Well, in that case we will need just a HUGE list of properties of various objects. Just cound how many properties a tree has?

General - weight, bounding box, middle color, shape.
Others - sub parameters of leaves, skin, weight of various trees,
etc etc etc...
But my idea is to .. Read previous posts...
Cheers.!

" Do we need us? "

Ionware Productions - Games and Game Tools Development

Everyone,

Another approach to cost management: what if the more variables in the spell, the more complex and costly the spell?

Let''s say I want to create a practical combat spell: a gust of wind to push back opponents. Now I could simply vary the direction that the gust progresses in, and set the following as constants on spell creation: starting point of gust, distance gust travels, force of gust, width of affected area. But this would limit the gust to a certain range and I''d most likely want it to start at me or people could get inside its range. So I have a one-variable spell: angle of direction. The spell''s constant section can be incanted ahead of time; the single variable can then be incanted at casting time and the spell goes off fast.

Now let''s say I want to modify my gust spell for more flexibility. I''ll have the gust be able to push people in any direction, not just away from me. Now I need to indicate a starting point for the gust as well as a direction. That''s two more variables: distance and angle from me of starting point, and angle of direction. So I have a three variable spell. This three variable spell can''t be prepared to the extent the first one could, because more information must be entered at cast time. Thus it takes a while to activate as the remainder must be incanted on the spot.

Just a little thought.

---------------------------------------------------
-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".