Jumpster,

It is in my view of this design, or any that approach from its viewpoint, that the user should be able to pre-design spells. Making spells during battle would not only be an inconvenience - it would be annoying; nevertheless, a player should still keep the ability to create spells during a battle, for the obvious cost of the time it takes to arrange the glyphs, since who knows what they need for every battle before hand?

Also, I just got struck with a new idea! Make every effect glyph have an opposite (life-death, fire-water, earth-wind,...) and have some sort of global balance going on - sort of like a ying-yang deal. When someone uses a fire spell, the all fire spells loose just a tad of power, while water gains, and vice-versa. Also make it so the more powerfull the spell the more drastic the balancing.


What do you think?

quote: Original post by Forneiq

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.

That one was my little pet

quote:
Maybe? The glyphs could be anything. A deck of cards comes to mind.

Your thinking of gambit... I like that idea. Maybe it could be just any object that you could magically charge yourself. This way, the player would have to choose how to charge certain objects when they had the choice, and order them in such a way as to not forget how they were charged... Could be interesting if there was no visual markings on an object to see how it was charged...

It is charged in a magical place, and so the player could just charge objects of the same type in the same way... Or they could mix and match

quote:
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.

I say, if it is difficult for the player to cast a spell using the system... Or it takes a little while to do it, then the spell must be of worth once cast. That means that quick-cast spell remain hotkeyed and designer spells are not.

quote:
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.

Telepathy is one of my favourites... Should never be forgotten

-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 Solthar

Jumpster,

It is in my view of this design, or any that approach from its viewpoint, that the user should be able to pre-design spells. Making spells during battle would not only be an inconvenience - it would be annoying; nevertheless, a player should still keep the ability to create spells during a battle, for the obvious cost of the time it takes to arrange the glyphs, since who knows what they need for every battle before hand?

Also, I just got struck with a new idea! Make every effect glyph have an opposite (life-death, fire-water, earth-wind,...) and have some sort of global balance going on - sort of like a ying-yang deal. When someone uses a fire spell, the all fire spells loose just a tad of power, while water gains, and vice-versa. Also make it so the more powerfull the spell the more drastic the balancing.


What do you think?

I think that this balancing is GREAT... We seem to have come to this conclusion in both this thread and the Candle Magic thread. Draining the power from the area around really fits in with my system. Too much unbalanced magic use really does wear down the effect as things get more ''resistant'' to that effect. About the balancing though, you would have to set an upper and a lower limit for each... because otherwise people would cast fireballs for hours, just to make the next water damage spell absolutely cain the boss...

I think that the player should have a visualisation of the balance for each element, so that they can choose what spell will be more effective... As for the baddies, they should also change to the more effective spells in battle. It would be really diverse if the balances kept shifting in different ways

-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
          

Think of it...


A game that is in constant flux, yet always striving for balance. I like it!

Try this link... It is a little program that I was tinkering around with last night when GDNet went down. It strives for balance... I am going to post a topic about it

True, it speeds up the whole process, but you can change it by changing the ''AUTO_BALANCE'' (I think it was) macro to have a different time (in seconds). Currently it starts its rebalance every 1 second for each element...

More explanation on it in the topic

-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