Okay bringing the past post back to life since it\'s been nagging me since I saw this topic 5 months ago. [The search button helped but that took so long...]
There is a Super Famicom(SNES) game known as Rudras Treasure, it found it to have a very fun magic system ( I spent more time with the magic system then playing through the game since I couldn\'t read the story for the game at the time ). I guess it\'s similar to what people have posted thus far.
The only difference is that there was no limit to what you can or can\'t do, there was only a limit on how long it could be (SNES hardward limit probably). The spells which you come up with have varying sucess, strengths and costs, in this respect I mean that there can be a low level poorly made spell which takes twice as much mana as a very high level spell which was well optimized.
I greatly enjoyed being able to mindlessly key in random combinations and get effects. Maybe such an addition can be made to the system?
Possible implementation method:
1. Have a set of premade visual effects that can be combined in any way and possibly pallette shift capable.
2. Spell effect will be seperately calculated after a pattern is saved/completed this also applies for the cost.
In the game I reffered to all you could see when you initially created a spell was it\'s element. A failed spell will probably have an element of neutral, but you can\'t tell it\'s junk till you try to use it since there are actual neutral element spells in the game that can hurt rather badly.
