Also any comments or input..here is the summary: You play a mage class (necromancer, evoker etc...) depending upon what mage class u pick is what kind of spells you can cast. You cast spells via a Gesture system like black and white. You run ur mage around using something like wsad keys, and the left mousebutton fires a spell and the right one gets u into cast spell mode (where you do the gesture). The view is yet undetermined, its probably going to be either FPS (doubtful requires a lot more resources than i have). Third person view (like fps doubtoful). Top down sorta diablo view 2d (most likely with my current resources). The game play should be fast, like a death match (though the very nature of the casting of spells will slow it down some). You say a gesture system is flawed, and u can miss gestures...thats on purpose and by design, since the magic casting games i like to play have a fizzle chance or a wild magic chance, and the gesture system captures this element. the idea is you run and stafe as ur casting and then unleash the spell. I would like the game to allow players to join a server, pick their name their characters and enter the game (the server tracks then stats for a brag board sorta of different mages that enter and play in a server). Id like the players to have characters that level by gaining experience and perhaps can also up some statistics. Now keep in mind this is meant as more of an action game, so the leveling will have to be fast, and balanced.... There are some obvious design crossroads I am at with this little idea, i.e. the best view for the game...exactly how to gain experience, and keep the levels balanced (I mean u probably get levels by killing a mage, but then one mage keeps getting higher and higher and harder to kill and more powerful...perhaps a level cap or making harder higher level spells to cast longer to cast (more complex gestures thus leaving the mage open to die) a bounty idea was also suggested. Id like there to be many spells in the game for each mage, some are cast on the mage himsefl as a buff, some as area effect, some taht alter the level enviroment and some that actually do damage... So any ideas? additions? changes or anything, just tired of thinking in a box, want to tap out to see what other ideas are out there (any endevour is benefited by more brains working on this at once) look forward to hearing more! -Shane

I like the idea of making spell casting feel a bit more tactile. In most games, casting spells doesn''t feel much different than just shooting a gun. I actually wrote up a similar game (more abstract & turn based though). Instead of mouse gestures, I used the keypad. You had to type in the right sequence of numbers to cast spells. Higher level spells required you type type longer sequences faster.

Interesting idea. Although I am not sure how to implement gesture system, it have a potential to be a good game because of its originality.


" Do we need us? "

Ionware Productions - Games and Game Tools Development

Actually the gesture system is already implemented and just waiting for the game dev to get more underway to be used...and of course tested...

no other ideas comments sugggestions?

any artists lookin for a project *grin


Shane

I love replying to my own threads....

Anywho, how bout this as an idea...make the mages collect cards in a game, they start with so many cards and then collect more in an arena (the cards probably appear randomly during play) and if its a school of magic they can cast the card (think magic, ether lords, lost kingdoms) goes into their repretoir, perhaps there will be a max of cards a mage can have or what not, but each time before logging into the arena the mage can assemble their deck of spells to play with..

though this makes it less death match ish as the spells (weapons) wont be appearing on the map for instant use like in a quake ish game, it might become more of a tacticle game , is my assembled deck of cards good?

Plus this will add to a nice stat/brag page about a mage, showing off his used repretoire (sp?)


Any other questions ideas?

-Shane

One caveat about the gesture system, especially in a fast-paced game like this: It may end up being a bit clumsy in the interface if you''re not careful. Be sure that gesturing doesn''t preclude movement or any such silly thing.

Other than that, it sounds like an interesting idea- the biggest problem wtih what you''ve sketched out that I can see would be in controls... Shigeru Miyamoto once laid out the guideline that no action game should require you to keep track of more than two buttons in an action sequence, and I think that''s probably a good one. Having a keyboard full of hotkeys may become rapidly overwhelming... The solution to this is probably to trim down the controls as much as possible, and also make the pace of the game relativley slow (Mind you, I''m not saying that it should crawl, merely that it should probably be paced slower than, say, Unreal Tournament).

Anyhow, it sounds like an interesting idea- don''t let my nitpicking discourage you.

- HC

-- EMail: cloweh@rpi.edu
-- AIM: SeigfriedH

''Thanks for the reply.

Yes the gesture system would be clumsy and slow and that is by design...to make actually casting the spells mimick how it would really be in say D&D with the gesturing there and how spells can fizzle.

And hmmm I guess a lot of this would of course have to actually be play tested...and there are some other issues to resolve to not let the action become hotkey intensive, like how to assign spells (or cards depending upon the approach to go...) to hotkeys, or gestures automatically (i.e. they can have one card per gesture, each gesture is a level of spell..but that gets very limiting but surely removes the need for hotkeys)

Preclude movement? well if its a 2d game it would be easy to not make the gesture reclude it, FPS not so easy, but that could be by design to. When mages casts spells they should be supseptiable, this could be represented by u holding down the right mouse button, and it locks ur view straight ahead if FPS and then u can do the mouse gesture because moving the mouse wouldnt move ur view with the RMB down...then u let go and its casts (if the gesture was correct)...this means while casting all u can do is strafe....

This is also true with even a 2d game perhaps ...

Thanks for the critcism!
-Shane

I''d say go for the 2D, it will save you work on many different area''s and it can still be made fun.

It sounds like a fun thing to do, waving your mouse madly around to cast spells

I would advice you not to use ''fast levelling''. If I understand it correctly it would be relatively quick to get to full level. That would mean that only new players would have the disadvantage of not being full level. That would be misantropic of you

One if the most important parts is to try to get a good amount of spells that are truly different.

(frost ray & fire ray are not different if they deal different amounts of damage and are prevented by different types of resistance: they are different if the frost slows you down and the fire does good damage to point blank hit and some damage if it went close by, for example. If you are using resistances, then choosing a resistance woul actually mean something)

Also I''d explore what types of spells you want. Summoning, magic shields, maybe even deflect spells that have to be timed just before her attack.... etc.

healing spells, gradual damage spells, spend a lot of time thinking what you do and do not want for spells in this.

Good luck.

Thanks for the reply, awesome!

I like the 2d reinforcement, once again it would be easier for me to get "something" working on it, over 3d. Id still be in dire straights for an artists (because just seeing my own art makes me want to puke) but i could prototype something up im sure, with my own art even.

The spell lists i have in mind already are probably going to be good, I am aming to make a generic enough system (with many variable of spell types, not just school types) to allow for spells to be pretty dynamic, and in 2d hopefully i can represent what I really want to do: Let the player use spells in creative ways...like for instance a (very loose example) would be the flesh to stone spell, usually makes the person instant die sorta by turning a mage into stone statue, but you can then in some levels go around casting the same spell on statues in the level and turning them into minons to fight for you...(like a one attack then they die sort of thing) sorta could be a cool suprise chasing a mage into a room and he unleashes that...

An ice room, cast wall of fire or a fireball or somethinga nd it turns portions of the room to watery death traps...

These are general interpratations..

Plus if I go with the card system I sorta got this idea earlier:
Make a small single player game on the order of yoda''s adventures (i think that was the name) where it makes a random dungeon for u to fight through, and find cards through, and cards are found sorta in a way that some cards are rare, uncommon and common (Sorta the Magic: The gathering theme here) and you can build ur repretoir of spells this way, then before a multiplayer game select x many cards to play with...there is balancing issues here of course too...but I think the idea is a good start.

If I could make the magic spell system work really good, it would perhaps be cool to make downloadable "pathces" that would introduce new spells to be had in the game and put them up for download every so often...
(I have the Programming RPG in directX book i might turn to for agood way of doing this).

So any other ideas? these have been great so far.

Thanks!
Shane

Sorry to be a party-pooper, but this idea just won't fly as it stands: It's much too easy to cheat... in fact, there are existing tools that will record and playback mouse movements. The honorable players would be overrun by the cheaters ruining the game, and they'd feel obliged to use the hacks too.

You need to design more strategy into the game mechanics rather than the interface... don't design a game around an interface.

Quick edit: Don't get me wrong, I *do* like the idea... it would make for an interesting game among people who weren't cheating. It's just not workable on the Internet.

[edited by - Pyabo on February 2, 2003 9:48:23 PM]