Hi, I have been working on an alternative spell selection system for my game Arcane Duelist and I thought you all might have some comments or suggestions pertaining to the idea. In any case feedback is much appreaciated and if you are interested enough feel free to take a gander at my help wanted thread. The original idea was to simply allow players to choose a selection of spells at the start of the game and use those spells in the duels (1 on 1 fights) that followed. A player would stick with these spells for the duration of play with that character and would need to choose spells carefully. There would be some pool of spells to choose from and the player would choose a smaller set from this pool. All players would have access to the same pool but their chosen spells would essentially cutomize their characters playstyle and abilities. The new idea I am growing fond of is a limited spell creation idea. Characters would enter the game and be able to create spells on the fly while in the duel. The spells would be combinations of elements into a limited number of slots. Say for example you had 3 slots and 3 elements. Any element could go into any slot, order would count, and elements could be reused in multiple slots. This would result in 27 combinations and therefore 27 spells that could be created during the fight. Since this occurs in real time the method of creating a spell would have to be simple to not detract from the tactical action oriented game play. The questions are: What do you think of this idea? Is it more interesting than the original? Is it too complicated? Which system would you enjoy more? Do you see any flaws in my logic? etc. I just want to hear what you all think. There are a lot of "new" concepts going into this game and I thought the old spell system was simply lacking in originality. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions and your feedback is much appreciated.

While spell creation is a nice idea, I've been unable to think of a good implementation. Any implementation I come up with personally either isn't playable (like putting 50 runes into a spellbook for 1 spell) or is extremely bland (3-4 runes).

Anyways, it sounds like what you plan on doing is creating 27 spells manually, and then letting the player pick which one they want using a rune system. Why not just have a 3*9 grid of buttons the player can click (or 4*7 or 5*6 or whatever)? Does the rune system really add anything besides just being different? Personally, it sounds like a really hard system to use, unless it's the only thing you're doing the whole time. I don't think a game that required movement and rune selection and anything else would be very playable.

Basicly the game would involve moving and casting the spells, there are other things to take into account but your actions are limited to those 2 things. (Like a first person shooter. You are right about simply having 27 spells with a rune system though. What I think it would add to the game is a bit more flexability for the players to choose which spells they want to use and a bit more focus on learning spell combinations. With a "simple" system such as 3 slots and 3 elements (runes) I think one could easily remember some good combinations and still be able to stumble upon new useful combinations. The goal of the interface in this game is to be completely devoid of representational GUI indicators. All the statitics about your character will be represented through in game events. The grid wouldn't work in that case, but with only 3 slots and 3 elements it would not be too hard for someone to select a spell. You could simply tie 1 button to each element and once three elements are selected the spell becomes ready for use. The game is aimed at constant action so the use of long or complicated spells would detract from that I think. In a game between 2 players that is fast paced I'm not sure that 27 different options for actions would actually be bland, but I agree too many more than that would be extreamly cumbersome.

In any case thanks for the input :-)

I was mulling over a somewhat similar idea, not too long ago.

The solution I'd come to for this probably was the ability to scribe spells down into a spell book, thus allowing for the ability to use predefined spells while also retaining the ability to introduce new ones.

Although, I do like the idea of binding runes to keys. It allows for a slight possibility of fumbling the spell by accidentally pressing the wrong key in combat. Depending on how you're doing your system, accidentally casting "Shrink (Local)" seems like an interesting problem. [smile]

Intresting thoughts here.
My question is are you going to make combo creation a strategy in and of itself or just random configurations yield certain spells?

What I mean is there are basic categories of effects (range, bolt vs aoe, duration, cast time, damage type - fire, ice etc., ) that have to be addressed.

You have at least 2 options:

1) make a slot for each category and each rune would have a value for THAT category. E.g. Ice in the range slot would mean 15' range, whereas fire would mean 25'

2) hide the categories from players and each random combination of elements to slot produce a unique spell.

Another question becomes, once players learn what combination yields which effect, wont this functionally be the same as just giving them an icon for that spell? Im not downgrading your idea; it still works if you want players to a) have to learn at the beginning b) take the time to move the parts for some gameplay reason.

Always good to see someone trying to innovate and improve upon the old. Keep it up!

tychon: Yeah, the fumble is certainly something that would add an extra dimension to spell casting. While I did not imagine people casting negative effects on themselves I did imagine people casting the wrong spell for interesting results.

EDIT: tychon: Some sort of mino scribing system might work here. perhaps another set of keys (number keys 4 - 9 for example) could be used to store combinations that could be quickly cast. Certianly an interesting idea . :-)

Vanquish: An interesting idea, about adding the strategy to the spells creation. My idea was was like your second scenario. Both ways result in that same number of unique spells but in one I think the creation of the spell is more strategic while in the second the choice of the spell is the strategic focus.

The problem I have with the first way stems from the problem you mentioned about there essentialyl being a limited amount of combinations which in turn would be similar to just have that many spells available. The problem with the attributes is that it limits the variety of spells you can have. You still have the same number of spells but their actual function becomes more limited I think.

The benefit of the first system is that the system is easy to learn. A player can understand the process of creating a spell easily and will never need to memeorize which combinations do what since all they have to do is consult the attributes of each rune for each slot.

The second scenario fits my idea better because of the extreamly varied types of spells I have, it would be difficult to make a solid system like system 1. Not all the spells I have deal damage, many deal with manipulating the environment or confusing the enemy to take a tactical advantage. However I have used the system 1 idea to some respect but in a much more vague manner. The elements (runes) used correspond to the function of the spell but not in a 1 to 1 manner, the relationship is more abstract.

As for the problem of the 27 combinations being like a book of 27 spells... I agree. It is similar but there are some differences, of which you mentioned 2 already. The additional difference I can see are: fumbling and casting the wrong spell, combinations require less keys (3 or 6) as opposed to 27 distinct spells, if I have a GUI that shows the spells on the screen for easy access I am stepping on the toes of another game feature I mentioned (the clean UI).

Aside from those that I have already mentioned I think the fact that the spells are not listed somewhere on the screeen will make remembering important spells or spells that get a lot of use easy, and the more technical spells that are used less often will require more thought and careful application. Remembering 27 spells during the melee of combat should be difficult and knowing how to use combinations to get desired effects will reward those players who can think on their toes and have a more complete grasp of the spells available. (I hope)

One more thing: The elements used in the spell as well as their order do have connection with the final resulting spell that makes sense to some degree. It is not meant to go as far as system 1 but it is meant to help players learn the spells and to give the feeling that the elements are dictating the effects of the actual spell.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback :-) More is always welcome.

I realise this is a completely different system to the one you envision, but Freedom Force has a decent spell system (Well, powers because it's a superhero game). You select the type of spell, melee/ranged/etc, then it's damage/kickback/etc, then any extra attributes like fire/ice/etc. Then it works out the 'cost' of the power and you can buy the powers you create for your characters. I guess to adapt this to be realtime you could have it so you spend points you've won in the game or you could have it so instead of point cost, a time taken to cast the spell.

And to comment on your original system of runes, you could have it so the position of the rune affects what spell is cast (although in that case, there's far more combinations for you to code).

[Earth] + [Fire] + [Wind] = Fireball
[Wind] + [Earth] + [Fire] = Meteor strike
[Earth] + [Wind] + [Fire] = Angry fire-wielding man (Sorry, bad joke)
[Earth] + [Fire] + [Wind] + [Water] + [Heart] = Captain Planet (Sorry, another bad joke, I should stop this..)
/etc

I apologise if this has been mentioned elsewhere, I may have sorta skimmed over the post...

If I understand your idea of positions correctly then I would say that my system already takes that into account. A very limited number of "runes" and limited number of runes allowed per spell still gives a large number of combinations. Since you can use any rune in any position in the order. I'll see if I can check out Freedom Force though, thanks for the feedback :-)