bumpa

every person has a skill level in earth, air, fire, water.

as you cast spells in fire, your skill increases until you can finally cast that ultimate fire spell.

now here''s the trick... as your fire skill goes up, water skill goes down.

Hmm, thanks for your suggestion A.P. thats an awsome idea..

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
every person has a skill level in earth, air, fire, water.

as you cast spells in fire, your skill increases until you can finally cast that ultimate fire spell.

now here''s the trick... as your fire skill goes up, water skill goes down.

Don''t use AIR EARTH WATER FIRE. Its really the most cliche''d thing in RPGs.

You could try something more japanese, which is the WATER FIRE METAL WOOD EARTH cycle. Water kills Fire, water is killed by Earth. In terms of figuring out specialization in a magic caste, you could apply a degradation formula, for every X points in one category, you lose X*Y points in another, which Y would come from a table.

WATER
- Fire 100% (I.E. +3 Water = -3 Fire)
- Metal 50%
- Wood 50%
- Earth 100%

So, anyone good in Water would also be good in Metal and Wood.

Heres a link that might help.
http://www.tcmstudent.com/cs5elements.shtml

As for animating a WOOD magic spell, and figuring out where lighting would fit... well, I''ll let you use your imagination.

You need to tell us whether you want spells to be cheap like in Diablo II (you fire off spells at everything constantly) or expensive like in D&D (casting a spell takes time and you don''t have many).

Expensive spell systems give you more options. Here are ways to do it:

Casting Times: Casting time can increase for higher-level spells, with certain ways of decreasing it. For example, a formula like:

CastTime = SpellLevel / ln(Concentration)

For the record, ln, or natural log, works like this:

ln(10) = 2.3
ln(20) = 3.0
ln(30) = 3.4
ln(40) = 3.7
ln(50) = 3.9

Diminishing returns, in other words, but pumping up the Concentration score still makes a noticeably impact. I think Diablo II uses logs for many of its calculations.

Consumables: Instead of mana, spells can use up a supply of some item. For example you could be carrying 50lbs of brimstone and a fire bolt uses 0.25lbs of it, whereas an exploding fireball spell uses one pound per shot... but in particular, this is great for the economy. It allows people to collect herbs/minerals/etc., and sell them to others. This could even involve killing certain creatures to get the horns or whatever.

Saving Throws: D&D uses these of course, and it allows for powerful spells like slow, charm, or petrify, since it gives the target a chance to avoid the spell completely.

Quest Spells: Instead of automatically knowing spells, you need to do quests to gain them. So a quest that helps some trolls gives you a regeneration spell, or helping some fire spirits gives you a certain fire spell... this would be tricky to do right, and is really best off only for special rare spells, as quest rewards for particularly difficult quests.

~CGameProgrammer( );

quote: Original post by Inmate2993
Don''t use AIR EARTH WATER FIRE. Its really the most cliche''d thing in RPGs.

Yes, and that''s exactly why you *should* use it. It will sell better. Ever wonder why games have orcs and elves? Because games with Blargs and Blowmes would suck!

Yes mister Tolkien, I much enjoy middle earth so much that there should be nothing else!

I''m not saying that you have to be totally unique in everything you use, but please, refrain from making another Everquest game down to the last fine detail and just changing it''s name to Neveradventure. Unless some new ideas are pumped into a medium, it becomes stagnant and sales then suffer. The only thing that the platonic 4 elements provide is familiarity. If you want a magic system thats different in function, it often works to just change the number of elements availiable, or even just changing the insultation cycle, and then adjusting the gameplay to correspond, and you enjoy a big shot of new ideas.

Think about it, how has Grand Theft Auto changed the game industry, and think how many games came before it. And would you have even considered Stealth as a gameplay option if you didn''t see it work in Metal Gear Solid first?

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

quote: Original post by Inmate2993
Don''t use AIR EARTH WATER FIRE. Its really the most cliche''d thing in RPGs.

Yes, and that''s exactly why you *should* use it. It will sell better. Ever wonder why games have orcs and elves? Because games with Blargs and Blowmes would suck!

Yea, I really hate AP''s (well not all AP''s just ones who use AP to say stupid things, I am DESIGNING a game, I am NOT SELLING a game, besides cliches suck! I agree with Inmate

Hey I read someone else''s post about "finding your center" and I got this idea (doubt this is what he meant though).

You make a little ball in the corner, and in the ball is a little black dot that floats around. I dunno what the dot represents- your Chi, I guess- anyway..

The dot has momentum. If you let it sit for a while, it will eventually slow down and come to rest at the center. But when you cast a spell, the "chi" (the dot) gets disturbed and it starts moving- doing little elliptical orbits around the center. If you cast a couple spells in a row, the little dot will pick up a ton of speed, and move really erratically.

Here''s the interesting part- when you cast a spell, the power of the spell is based on how far away the dot is from the center of the ball, at the moment of casting. If you cast it when the dot is resting at the center, the spell will be most powerful. But often you''ll be in a battle situation, and you won''t have time to wait for that little thing to come to rest.

But there''s skill involved. Even if the dot is moving around, you might be able to time it right, and cast when the dot is moving across the center (which would make it just as powerful). Of course, the faster and more erratically the dot is moving, the harder this is to do.

And if there''s a really powerful spell that you want the player to spend a while recovering from, have that spell put the dot in a circular orbit around the center (as oppossed to elliptical), so that the dot never crosses the center, and the player just has to wait for it to settle before casting again.

So it kinda has the same effect as the recharging mana bar, it''s just more interesting.

How about making spell expandable, once a spell is cast its gone. By making the powerful and rare you could make spells a tool that can change the course of battle. A seemingly helpless enemy could unleash a powerful spell desimating your party.

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