Magic System-This Can Save You All Time

[DA-BOMB]

Ok, keep an open mind all you devs out there, because I KNOW your not lookign forward to writing hundreds of spells, and that if you do magic will become as routine as it is in runescape.

My Idea:

You would be able to mix the glyphs, and give each glyph as much power as you wanted as you were defining the spell. And mix as many glyphs as you want. Now the \"program\" would know EXACTLY how all the glyphs react with each other and what not. Say you put a \"ice\" glyoph at 30% of the spells power, \"weakness\" at 60%, and \"earth\" at 10%, it would know how they work together threw simple preset standars. And glyphs like cold would have special effects which could be counter acted by oppostie glyphs, or way, or however you want to look at it.

This is conceptually mind benind, like trying to picture a 4D cube. Read it over 2-3 times and start to imagine the code. Each glyph would have to give the spell attributes. I know short term this would be very stressing to do, but it would allow for much more creative maging, and you wouldn\'t have to write hundreds of spells.

This would also give leveling up in mage much more use because you would be able to give more power to more glyphs.

In the abstract event that you devs do this and it works, iy would allow for easyer and less tedious updating, and you would be able to say, make the way magic works change more effectivly, so one day one spell could be all powerfull, but the next it could blow up in your face (although that would be mean).

Also if it worked you could mold more iteams and glyphs into the mix easyer, buy simply adding code to say how the glpyhs will work with knew glyphs or objects and leaving the old \"reactions\" as they are.

And since devs like to have things the way the invision them in their heads, over and over, the upside is magic would still have all the same characteristics, just mroe creative.

Just an idea for those who dont want to code 5000 spells...

[Moogie]

So instead of having 5000 unique spells, we\'ll have 5000 spells all using the same few effects, just in different orders...? I\'m not entirely sure I understand what you\'re saying.

But anyways, Talad already knows exactly how glyphs are going to work. You combine different glyphs in certain orders to discover a spell. It need not be any more complicated than that.

[DA-BOMB]

Yes you re missing the point, as aposed to pre coding the 500 spells, have an unlimited number of spells based one the mages abilities. The game would knows the characteristics of each glpyh and how to combine them. It would make maging endless (until you get to the max mage level if there is such a thing) and save time coding in the long run.

[Moogie]

And how does this eliminate the need to code 5000 different spell \'effects\' for each of these? Or, how are effects chosen and displayed when the spell is cast? How does this not result in a bunch of spells using the same effects in differing orders? Explain.

[Azuros]

DA-Bomb is not completly wrong with his idea.... if we have just to find the good combinaisons, there is not a lot of challenge about finding new spells.

Combine glyphs is a very goooood startin\' way.  But what if we can customize this, as proposed by DA-bomb?

If not, there better be a loooot of glyph and more possibilites than 4 glyphs to be combined together, to raise challenge (wow up to 8 glyphes together? Some secret spells could take a month to find!).... or a lot of sub level of glyphs, as minor Cold, major Cold, ultimate Cold, .... to make differents versions of spells, asking a bigger knowledge for somes.

[Moogie]

Of course more glyphs types and Ways will be added in the future. But they need to have spell effects made for them first, which brings me back to my, yet unanswered, question.

[DA-BOMB]

Ok, you are just putting the effects in orders like you said moggle but is instead of having 5000 pre-set spells with the glyphs, you just have to know that fire and ice make bad in lame terms. So that every time you stick them in a spell together nothing good comes of it. If you set rules like this for every glyph the spells will \"make themselves\".

[zinder]

You seem to miss moogies point. How do you propose to create the  GRAPHIC effects for the spells? And i, dor example, prefer for especially designed graphic effects to a chaining of generic effects. Just as a pretty simple example a \"lift-and-smash\" spell combined from \"fly\" and \"legs-of-lead\". The designed look of the spell will be prettier. And for sure some effects wont look with chaining.

besides on the number of possible spells: even with only 10 glyph per way, no repetition and no use of opposite ways in the same spell there are more than four million possible four glyph combinations. With 15 per way you are already above 22 million possible combinations. Thats not counting any two or three glyph combinations. That would be again nearly 115 000 combinations for 10 glyph per way.
Also take into acount that nonspell combinations may explode in your face while testing for a spell.

[DA-BOMB]

I never said making individual spells wouldn\'t work, or that there wouldnt be enough of them, I just thought if everyone wanted to be different you could all try and make something new and inovative. As for graphics well I dont know, but im 101% sure that theres a way to get around it.

[phervers]

I\'m afraid that such a system is not a good idea. I\'d rather see 50 uniquely coded spells, rather than 5000 spells which difer only by some small details like type of damage. Besides that kind of system will create opportunity for abuses. When someone will find a combination to cast ultra armageddon soon every mage will start casting it. I really think that traditional spell book magic system, where mage has to learn new spells would work better in mmorpg. Other ideai would like to see is material spell components. So that some more powerful spells would not be overused.

[DA-BOMB]

If theres s pre-set armegendon spell, whats stoping everyone from casting it? In both versions youde have to be high magic to do it anyway.

[Diamondcite]

Bring back that old Super Famicom(SNES) game again since I am still obsessed with it\'s magic system. The game only had a limited number of grpahics, but the effectiveness and the efficiency varied based on how the spell was made. I could make a spell which looks just like aramgeddon, but it would take all my mana and barely do 10 damage, while a properly made armageddon can do hundreds of damage poitns while using relatively little mana, it\'s all in the way it was placed together.

The other thing I am wondering about... how are these combined spells supposed to be named? In Rudra\'s Treasure the names were in Katakana(japanese name dialect). Maybe all spells will be called the same if they have the same effect and only have different costs and somehow the game would either pick a pre-determined or a random one?

[Count]

I would like to propose a component system with the glyphs.

This should work in a way like this:
You have one basic component that determines the main effect (e.g. fire damage, invisibility, flying, whatever).
Using the basic component alone would make an effect only working with your character (a flame for light appearing above his/her head or fire damage for meelee attacks, character becomes invisible, character can fly and so on).
Then you can add additional (secondary) components like distance effect, area effect, stronger effect and things like that.
I don\'t know how complicated it would be to implement such a thing, but it\'s great in P&P-RPG. In most cases, I think, the graphical effect used on the character when casting a spell on himself could also be used when the spell is cast on a different target. For damage spells, I would like to propose using a particle system. So you could have a different particle colour (and perhaps even particle graphic/form) for each basic component and a small piece of code for each secondary component that determines how many particles are created, how long they last and in which way they are moving.

Hope this isn\'t too much work and doesn\'t lower performance too much.

[swift]

I would suggest that combining the graphic effects of spells would not even save time/coding

It would be much, much harder to write rules to combine graphic effects of glyphs than to write 500 different effects.  

It would also take more code.  

It would also not look anywhere near as nice.  

So I think that it is impractical to combine the graphical effects.

[Xordan]

Creating individual spells is very easy to do, and are easy to add into the game. The effort required to make say 500 spells isn\'t that great. Most of the work goes into creating the art for the spells. Having a system where you could just combine different glyphs and put different power into each would require alot more coding, and would take up much more time than just leaving it as it is.

The magic system is only in a basic stage atm. There is more planned for it, more spells will be added and more options with what you can do will also be added. I think that the idea of having to put different amounts of energy into each glyph to find a spell would be good, but once you\'ve found the combination and written it into your spell book, then it should continue as it currently is now.