K hears the game; post a spell consisting of a name, an element, a range, a style (appearance) and a status effect (if you want a status effect asides from damaging or healing). The rules are you have to have one of the following elements, one of the following ranges, any style (appearance), any status effect that effects one of the usual RPG stats such as Health, Mana, Offence, Defence etc and all spells must be said to either do damage or heal and you cant make a spell which heals and damages at the same time like healing-poison or something. Fire Water Wind Earth Ice Thunder Synthetic (Metal Mostly) Organic (Poison, Plant Based Attack Etc) Angelic (Holy) Devilic (Unholy) Demon (Death) Celestial (Meteor, Flare etc) Non-Elemental SSR - Yourself SOR - Just around and including yourself STR - A wide area around and including yourself OSR-SSR - Any single target OSR-SOR - Any single target and a short area around that target (spill effect) OSR-STR - Any single target and a wide around that target (extra spill effect) To start off ill do an example: Name: Searing Fireball Element: Fire Range: OSR-SSR (Any single target) style: Ball, Red Fire Effect: Damaging Status Effect: Burn, Lose a small amount of health for a duration of a few seconds If you think this game is stupid or just don’t want to play, please do not comment in this thread with such comments as you will be annoying people who do wish to play. If you wish to post a viable interesting comment then please do as well as your spell. This game is perfectly allowed in this forum in my personal opinion as it encourages design and ideas plus I have something else to write which is a topic. Do you believe a game which allows this kind of spell customization is firstly possible and secondly viable in an RPG computer game if the maths of such as system were constructed correctly and the correct limitations were put in place to stop (for lack of a better term) stupid spells from being made. My personal view on this is that yes, a system could be made with the correct limits for a PC game, either off or online for updating with new components to be made where players could make their own spells and maybe even skills such as steal with mods made to them. It would just require the correct meshes, colour samples and a database type system to handle the creation and recording of the spells, although I would think the maths behind their use would be a bitch to work out. Siolis

Name : Dazzle Shield
Element : Fire; Air(Wind)
Range : OSR-SOR
style : Whirlwind, Multicolored Sparks
Effect : Evade Buff
Status Effect : By heating the air of the whirlwind around the tagret, the spell creates heatwaves that deviate light around it, and make it appear hazy, thus lowering the possibilities for a ranged attack to land successfuly. Even at close quarters, the heat and wind make the attack difficult and painful for the attacker, thus enhancing the evade skill for as long as the spell is triggered on.

I've already made a spell class like this. Not that I'm a genius or anything, I stole it from Dungeon Master on NES.

My system involves a CSpell class that contains a linked list of SGlyph symbols. One thing I'd add to your system that I added to mine is to NOT prevent "stupid" spells from being made. If players want to make useless spells...just let them learn their lesson the hard way.

Additionally, I have several "libraries" of glyphs. For instance, druid magick deals with plants and animals, necromancer deals with zombies/death, geomancer deals with elementals, etc.

The fun comes when you combine symbols from different libraries..."Summon Flying Fire Zombie", here I come!

I think the Crystal Space-based MMORPG uses a similar system. (It's a free, open-source MMO...AWESOME!)

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Original post by templewulf I've already made a spell class like this. Not that I'm a genius or anything, I stole it from Dungeon Master on NES. My system involves a CSpell class that contains a linked list of SGlyph symbols. One thing I'd add to your system that I added to mine is to NOT prevent "stupid" spells from being made. If players want to make useless spells...just let them learn their lesson the hard way. Additionally, I have several "libraries" of glyphs. For instance, druid magick deals with plants and animals, necromancer deals with zombies/death, geomancer deals with elementals, etc. The fun comes when you combine symbols from different libraries..."Summon Flying Fire Zombie", here I come! I think the Crystal Space-based MMORPG uses a similar system. (It's a free, open-source MMO...AWESOME!)

What i ment by stupid spells was one which was named like "Look at my ausom spell, im a rl haxor!!!" type of thing, that iratates the crap out of me but you are right but for a different reason that players should be able to make useless spells, that way people can make useful ones and sell scrolls with them on and it makes it a challange to make useful spells for the cheepist cost of mana and crystal which in my game acts as a catalyst for mana (magical energy).

I like the idea of Glyph Magic Classes but as far as i can see, the elements i have above allready serve the purpose of segrating the different types of magic.

I take it the zombie element of the summoning spell would belong to the Glyph Magic Class of necromancery or something to that effect. Thats where my Demon or death element would apply becuase of the zombie being undead. If it was inhabited by a devil spirit then maybe it would combie Devilic and Demon but again, rather than using traditional mancery classes i could just use my elements for the behind the scenes or player designing stuff and then change it to necromancery to fit in with an RPG plot line.

In my book, Summoning is not a magic spell techniqually, its more of a magically ability which allthough i plan on designing a similer system for building DYI abilitys, again the elements i have above would cover it. If you wanted a Flying Fire Zombie you would, in my rules, need some sort of flying monster captured in a crystal, a zombie monster and some kind of mergeing system with fire elemental crystal or something of that effect. The ability to merge them magically however would be technological. Its the casting which would matter the most which would need a ability type spell and a crystal which would either make the ability generic (you can use the same ability to summon any monster as long as you have the crystal) or would make the ability specfic (you have to make a spell to summon the monster you have made during a mergeing process). The later followed by the former would probably be the way i would do it. Get the generic ability and mod it per monster for each indervidual summoning spell.

Ive seen spell construction only once and that was in the original Wild Arms where you made spells from light and dark elements onto Glyphs which were scattered around the game world. I liked the theme but didnt like the way they did it becuase it was too structured, plus wild arms is achient, so i designed my own with a bit more freedom. Maybe ill check out that MMO though now you mentioned it.

Thanks for posting but could ya make a spell too. ^_^

Siolis

Name: Tornado
Element: Wind
Range: OSR-STR (Any single target and a wide around that target (extra spill effect))
style: Cyclone
Effect: Damaging
Status Effect: Throw back; any target inside of the tornado is thrown back anywhere between half and double the distance out of the target area as they are inside it. If they hit a wall or other objects they will suffer more damage the further they are thrown as well as possible landing damage.

Just thought of something, the status effects and graphics would need to be extensive for the system to be any good but a grate list of different effects would make the system really fun to use and interesting during battle. Question is, how do you and should you make it so they all work correctly because its going to be very hard to match up all the different possible status effects with all the different styles, wont it?

I thought Summon Flying Fire Zombie would count [sad]

Well, how about...

Name: Lightning Rod
Element: Thunder
Range: SOR (you and area)
style: bolt, expanding ring
Effect: Damaging
Status Effect: None, but you'd better have lightning resist!

As far as summoning being a different ability:
I have all abilities as instances of the same CAbility class. So, a Zanmato Slash is essentially identical to a spell in terms of how the game views it. By extension, summoning would be the same. The only thing different is that you'd need (in my system) to draw a soul out of the netherworld and a corpse to put it into.

I haven't implemented it fully, but I'm trying to create a spell-maker GUI where you can balance the speed of casting against the amount of power you put into each glyph, and you get the mana cost as a result. That way you can have an instant-cast fireball, but your cast will be sloppy and you'll waste lots of mana. Or you could charge up for 10 minutes and cast a MEGA-NUKE on a whole town!

<EDIT>
Oops! I didn't even see your last question! Well, that's a problem I've struggled with for a while, because gfx are not my strong point. I envision creating a mesh for the type of spell (ball, bolt, ring, etc.) then applying a material to it based on the elements you included. Material is the word they use in blender, I'm not sure what other editors call it.
</EDIT>

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Original post by templewulf I thought Summon Flying Fire Zombie would count [sad] Well, how about... Name: Lightning Rod Element: Thunder Range: SOR (you and area) style: bolt, expanding ring Effect: Damaging Status Effect: None, but you'd better have lightning resist! As far as summoning being a different ability: I have all abilities as instances of the same CAbility class. So, a Zanmato Slash is essentially identical to a spell in terms of how the game views it. By extension, summoning would be the same. The only thing different is that you'd need (in my system) to draw a soul out of the netherworld and a corpse to put it into. I haven't implemented it fully, but I'm trying to create a spell-maker GUI where you can balance the speed of casting against the amount of power you put into each glyph, and you get the mana cost as a result. That way you can have an instant-cast fireball, but your cast will be sloppy and you'll waste lots of mana. Or you could charge up for 10 minutes and cast a MEGA-NUKE on a whole town! <EDIT> Oops! I didn't even see your last question! Well, that's a problem I've struggled with for a while, because gfx are not my strong point. I envision creating a mesh for the type of spell (ball, bolt, ring, etc.) then applying a material to it based on the elements you included. Material is the word they use in blender, I'm not sure what other editors call it. </EDIT>

Well in the grand scheme of things, it will but at the moment its best to keep it as two or more systems because if i designed a feature for one system i may end up not accounting for it not working in another. For example, feature X works just fine in a summoning spell but it doesn’t work with anything in a traditional spell. You say your game treats the two systems (spells and summons) as the same thing or same sort of thing, wont you run head on into this issue if you attempt to allow some kind of feature that spells/summons accept but the other dose not?

That’s the same thing which I’m trying to do, last time i wasn’t fully versed on spread sheets and i couldn’t do it because i lacked stuff like IF and Count IF asides from other design issues with the system.

Personally i was trying to make it so if you employed more or less Mana you could do more or less effect depending on your needs e.g. if you were lv40 and wanted a low and high potency spell for low and high level enemies you can have both by simply lowering or raising the damage cost and there by the Mana cost of a spell. Also you may want an uber strong or fast spell for a well defended or quick enemy. Also spells could be cheaper or more expensive if you added or removed status effects and you could also add more than one status effect so as well as doing damage you could poison AND slow your enemy at once but it would cost you Mana wise for the convenience of being able to do all three in one attack, plus you would need some extra accuracy on that spell cus you do not wanna miss your target because of the cost. The biggest issue is, making it all economical so the player doesn’t go wasting his or her Mana reserves in a single potent spell and then get annoyed. The trick i guess would be to make single effect spells for multiple cast efficiency and some uber spells for bosses or uber strong or defended enemies.

See, now that’s what i thought, which works just fine in my game engine cus I’ve tried it, but you have the issue of impact. When my tornado spell hits it will throw back an enemy with some kind of cool windiness around the target but if i used Tsunami for example which has the same effect as throw back, just in one direction, you have not only the graphics of it all (a different looking throw back with a water effect) but also the matter of two versions of throw back, one doing a 360 effect range around the target area and the other doing it only in the direction of the Tsunamis path. One spell mod wouldn’t be the same for two different set ups of the spell with a different element and style in graphical terms if you catch my drift (pun intended)...plus thinking about it, a Tsunami would also be a moving spell wouldn’t it, another range mod asides from the earlier six.

Siolis

Name: Tsunami
Element: Water
Range: OSR-STR with moving spell mod
style: Land Wave (Like a wave going on land as you can get Air Waves like plasma waves for example)
Effect: Damaging
Status Effect: Throw back in one direction for as long as the wave keeps moving.

Ps: My range system is from my game engine called Cube Space. Its basically a 3d isometric game engine without center tags which means the 3d objects in the world don’t sit in the middle of tiles but rather move around on a moving grid. Hard to explain, anyway the point is that SSR means Square Self Range, SOR means Square One Range and STR means Square Two Range and each basically match the descriptions i gave above.

That's essentially the idea I had in mind, except my game is an Active Time Battle, so I'm not even going to pretend to create spells during battle.

As far as the abilities all being the same:
I haven't fixed it yet! Lots of combinations have undefined results. I'm refining the rules system code, but it's slow-going. My idea is that if the system doesn't know what to do with a particular symbol, it will put it at the end of the symbol/glyph list. That way, if a symbol later on provides a context for it to be interpreted, it will!

Then, if the CSpellReader class doesn't pick up any new relevant symbols, it just omits them from the spell.

I just have to keep refining the rules, I suppose.

So, if you have a stab ability (ignores defense) with fire, it adds fire damage. If you have a stab ability with heal...well, it just ignores heal, because stab was the first symbol, and those two are incompatible.

What kinds of non-combat spells do you have? (I'm trying to make magick useful outside of battle, like in Magic: The Gathering, or Eternal Darkness)

Sorry, I'm not taking part (time's limited)... I just had to comment on that glyph-based spell creation idea. It made me think of an interesting scenario. =)

Let's say that the magic user only has so much mana that he can tap into. Any spell can be cast as long as the mana is present in the caster (of course). A single spell is comprised of any number or combination of glyphs. However, what if we had compound spells? What's interesting is that this could have a similar effect to the dreaded "infinite loop" in programming (spell 1 contains spell 2 which contains spell 1) but with more dire consequences. Perhaps the caster could experience some sort of burn-out if using too much mana too fast. However, in the case of the infinitely looping spell, the burnout would happen so fast that it results in somewhat of a mana explosion. This could seriously affect the caster, of course, but save the party. The intent of the original spell may even amplify. The caster may be eradicated but replaced by a pretty nasty demon. Too over-the-top?

Quote:

Too over-the-top?

Not at all. It sounds like you might want to do it intentionally in desperate circumstances.

I just don't understand what you mean by "compound" spells. I envision glyphs being analagous to letters, and spells analogous to words. In this sense, words cannot contain other words recursively. (let's just ignore abbreviations for now.)

Perhaps, more concretely, we should think of glyphs as lego blocks, and spells as whatever you build out of lego blocks. (evil robots, anyone?)

@Siolis:
I obviously don't know what the context of your game is, but I don't understand the difference between "demonic" and "devilic". Are they going to be two different races? If so, why are demons connected with death, yet separate from unholy?

spell

Name: Dark Photon Cannon
Element: Light / Dark
Range: OSR-SSR (Any single target)
style: Spear
Effect: Damaging
Status Effect: Blind & Pierce; it doesn't dissipate on context, but continues blasting through in a straight line.

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Original post by templewulf Name: Dark Photon Cannon Element: Light / Dark Range: OSR-SSR (Any single target) style: Spear Effect: Damaging Status Effect: Blind & Pierce; it doesn't dissipate on context, but continues blasting through in a straight line.

Sounds like Balefire (Eye of the World by Robert Jordan)

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Original post by templewulf Not at all. It sounds like you might want to do it intentionally in desperate circumstances. I just don't understand what you mean by "compound" spells. I envision glyphs being analagous to letters, and spells analogous to words. In this sense, words cannot contain other words recursively. (let's just ignore abbreviations for now.) Perhaps, more concretely, we should think of glyphs as lego blocks, and spells as whatever you build out of lego blocks. (evil robots, anyone?)

I'm thinking of glyphs as describing properties of a spell while "compound spells" combine two ready-made spells during combat. For example:

Name: Flight
Element: Wind
Range: OSR-SSR (Any single target)
style: N/A
Effect: Manipulation
Status Effect: Grants target control of the surrounding air to allow unlimited direction and greater speed.

Name: Summon Demon
Element: Demon
Range: N/A
style: N/A
Effect: Summon
Status Effect: Summons land creature.

In this case, we have a Flight spell and a Summon Demon spell. Each spell may only have one element, in this case, Wind and Demon. However, let's say that we can't get to the enemy without flying. There's only one flight spell but we don't want to send one of our important characters in alone. With a compound spell, we could cast Summon Demon->Flight.

Having a single element per spell seems to be a bad limitation. Compound spells would overcome this. On the other hand, I think it would be cool if each glyph had its own element. Perhaps, each could draw from a different type of mana. (Now, I'm just ripping off Magic: The Gathering. =b)