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Original post by EricTrickster
Interesting - I stand corrected. Are there any games out today using this concept/technology that you can think of? I''d like to see them in action.

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Yes.

A modern text adventure (er um Interactive Fiction) by Emily Short called "Metamorphoses". It''s highly regarded in the i-f community. You use magical devices within the game to change the properties of objects--such as their size and material--in order to solve the puzzles in game. There are multiple pathes to solving the puzzles (as well as multiple endings to the game).

I suggest playing the game:
http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/metamorph.htm

then taking a look at the published portion of the source: http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/metaexam.inf.txt

Short''s got lots of cool ideas on game design. Check out the rest of her homepage as well: http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/

I don''t mean to be a downer, but power players will easily create websites that document the means to create the best of the best in the spells. Griefers in turn get ahold of this information and newbies have the most spell-unfriendly game there is.

A suggestion is to make the magic bound to their "soul"/"essense"/"mind"/whatever (via a player seed) so each player has to developer their own magic tree. Reward experimentation in whatever way best suits your game, because otherwise people will find a good fireball and find it''s just good enough.

The trick is make people very excited when they hit upon a good spell, because its *their* spell and its cool beans now. "Dude, check out this new fire/water combo spell I made!"

Also, while making a lot of particle systems is a hassle, use of blending effects can easily make this system very extensible. If the player can control "power" of the spell they could make something like fireworks if they experimented with making spells that had huge area effects but no damage potential.

Your method of experimentation is up to you, be it reagents, incantations, shapes (could be VERY interesting with shape recognition as we recently had posted), or any combination!

Have fun