I've been working on a sort of SimCity meet settlers, meet some dungeon crawler. The goal is going to be multiplayer, but not massive (I might look into trying to keep the server designed in such a way that it can be split up easily, and not limit the number of users logged in too much, so if I wanted to I could setup more servers and have thousands playing, but for now the goal is really just 2-5 players or so, just me and a few friends) The design is going to be sort of an oldschool MUD, but graphical interface, 2.5D overhead view. I'm thinking keeping it to tiles, and non scrolling rooms. Now combat is mostly going to be simple, similar to how it is done in most D&D on computer, but with my own ruleset. Part of that ruleset is going to include a wider range of weapons, all of which can be customised. So the weapons themselves, all will be handled similarly, but I'm working with swords as the base for this, other weapons will derive from the sword blade concept. To 'smith' a weapon you start by defining the length of the weapon between 2 and 40 units. (each unit being about 2 inchs, but that doesn't really matter) and then define the weight of each of those units from the tip to the tang, as well as the edge type and point (narrow tip/wide tip, single/double edge/tang) From there their base smithing skill (and metal used) will affect how close to the weight of each length unit is to what the user selected. After that the user chooses how he wants to temper the blade (how stiff/flexible it is) this will affect the edge, how sharp it can be, and how long it holds the edge, as well as affecting how 'strong' the blade is, that is how likely it is to break. A harder blade means a better edge, but greatly increased chance of the blade breaking when used, more so on longer weapons. After the blade is finished, you apply a hilt that must be the length of the tang, and can be of different designs. From simple, guardless handles, to full basket hilts. Each style will give pros and cons. The basket hilt giving better defence to the hands, but limited to 1 hand, crossguards allow two hands while giving some defence. Guardless simply being easier to produce or something. Once the hilt is applied the game calaculates the total blanace and weight of the weapon. 'base damage' of a weapon comes from the weapon's Mass, Edge type, Edge quality, and a small part is the length. The balance and speed of the weapon affects your chance to actually hit the target (and small damage modifer). Balance and mass affects the speed of the weapon. All numbers would be then modified by the character's stats and skills. other notes about the hilts, for one hand (except for small knife) the hilt must be 2 units long (or maybe 3) and atleast 5 (or 7) for two hands. Since there will only be humans carrying swords they can't have more than two hands. So, now I'm still working on balancing the math (and working out just what stats I want) to make sure that players can't make some small 1 unit of blade with a long hilt for two hands, and be superpowerful. However the length of the weapon past the hilt will affect the reach of the weapon which in turn will also affect damage and your defense. So, any thoughts on the idea?

*gasp~*

That is very complex for a weapon design. Honestly, I think a reason why most games don't use so many details, is the hardcore level of programming needed to calculate and store each factor and component of that dang weapon.

Other than the programming job ahead of you, I'd say it's a very appealing concept for weapon creation. Personally, it sounds great to have all those specific strategic aspects to consider. Perhaps this will expand to things like armor smithing? (mass, thickness, and design components for strength/agility benefits).

[wishfull thinking]
If I ever made a game, this level of detail would make me mighty proud.
[/wishful thinking]

You've obviously thought this out (and know a thing or two about swords). This is good material.

It sounds like an interesting, but complex system. You could simplify it and still retain the functionallity that you want, because all the complexity is in the conversion from the lenght, weight, edge, eta and then converted into game stats.

If you just let the player operate on the game stats directly (set a "base damage", breaking resistance, etc) then you can drop the unnessesary complexity and still have the same result. All the forging stuff you mentioned, just boils down to "chrome" (flavour/background features) that just help create a setting.

By just focusing on the gameplay element first you will be able to get a balance, and then from that you can add on the chrome features latter if needed, or requiered. Don't get essential gameplay features mixed up with the chrome as it will create unnessesary complexity and you will spend too much of the time dealing with parts of your program that are not nessesary and you won't spend enough time on the parts that make your game good.

Getting the nonessential features and the gameplay mixed up will cause delays and you will loose a sense of acomplishment, feeling that the development is just getting bogged dowm. From my own experence, this is what can cause most hobby/independant/noncomercial games (or even some comercial games) to be abandoned. Because the team (even if it is just 1 person) looses the sense that they are makign progress the game will be abandoned. It takes a lot of determination to keep going if it feels that for every step forward you take, you take 2 steps back.

If you focus on the gore game play features first, then you will be able to get this sense of acomplishment as you will see the features that make up the game become completed. Once the whole thing is completed you can then add the polish.

Well, the point of this smithing system is to get away from "all long swords are 2d6" and after the player leaves the item creation screen much of the extra data will just be tossed aside, creating an item with the following:
Length
Blade Tip
Blade edge (Simply the creation part, user picks options for the 4 or so choices for edge and tips)
Weight
Balance point

Reason why I'm working on this part right now is that I have much of the rest of the game design finished, except for a combat system. I wanted to come up with something new. I will give options for a player to simply dial in the weapon they want at an NPC smith, but it will cost a LOT, and the smith might still fail.

I will play with it for a bit before I decide if I want to keep the way I'm defining the blades now (bit by bit, which also leads itself to nicely generating models based on rules if I expand it to 3D later, would let players make swords with thicker/thiner parts where they want them) or strip it down to the user defining their weight and balance of the blade, and the balance point is offset a little by your skill level's random chance. However I think I will keep the blade smithing, and the tempering part as different steps and two skills, should I move onto a slightly more MMO style. Letting player A train to become great at shaping the metal, and player B great at tempering is always a nice option.

It seems to me that you are very knowledgable!
I think that you've got your work cut out for you, But I'll try to help.

First, it is importatn how the weapon is to be used. THe first question I would ask is this: how hard will it hit the enemy?

inertia: to find the power of the swing, multiply strenth by mass

if it is to be thrusted, you can just take the mass of the thing and multiply by the speed that the player can thrust it at. if it's heavy enough, the mass doesn't matter, because the amount of kinetic energy the characters muscles can output is a constant. ALternativly, you can somehow compare strength and the mass of the thing to find out how hard it is thrust.

If it is a swinging weapon, You must determine where the weapon will be swung from. if it's a greatsword, it'll probably be swung with the entire body, in which case the pivot point will be between the shoulders or hips. for a light weapon, you only use small movements, so you use a close pivot, like the character's wrist. Use the mass of the weapon to determine where they swing it from. Now you know th location of the pivot point.

Once you have a pivot point, you can calculate moment of inertia. Multiply the mass of each unit by the distance form the pivot point, and add them all up to get that. Then apply a torque at the hilt of the weapon equal to the strength of the charachter. If your not familiar with torque, just assume they are pushing the sword a right angle and the formula is (radius)*(force)=(torque). Now, you know the torque on the sword.

Next you must figure out what arc they swing it through. The actual length of the weapon doesn't matter. Just find the angle that the sword is pointing from the pivot point after the swing(barring unusual circumstances this should be a little off from straight out in front) and find the difference between that and the initail position of the weapon, before the swing. if you did that step in degrees, convert to radians by dividing by 57. THis particualr step is a huige opportunity for a diceroll. it's very easy in a fight to screw up and get a bad swing on a weapon, so this is a place for a roll of the die. Now you know the arc it was swung through.

multiply the arc by the arc by the torque to get the kinetic energy of the weapon on impact(how hard it hits). use the kinetic energy on impact and the blade type(blunt, dull, medium, sharp, vorpal, etc.) to determine damage.

To determine how easy it is to evade/block, you have to know how fast it is moving. take the torque, and divide by the moment of inertia, to get acceleration, or how quickly you can get it moving. if that number is higher, it is harder to block. A block might only suceed partially if the mass is high, because the high inertia of the weapon allows it to overpower a block. If acceleration is lower, it is easier to evade or block.For a higher acceleration, Dexterity is more important. it allows you to make critical strikes more easiely with a weapon you can move quickly.

I hope I've helped you! YOu should think seriously about how long all this will take to code in, and whether it's feasible befroe you start. Nothing sucks worse than to get halfway through a feature and get discouraged!

Thanks to everyone that has posted so far. I've been playing with numbers for the weapons base, and fleshing out actual character stats, and now moving onto the actual combat equations.

Hopefully I'll get a full prototype up and running tomorrow. The question is, do I still remember how to code after doing nothing but paper work for so long,...

Oh, and as for getting dishearted, no worries. I actually like playing with designs more than finishing games anyway, so if I get bored actually programing this one, on to a new design.

I would like to add some "bad" news to your design.

Actually, the pummel (I hope the spelling is right, I only know the word in french, so far. I should check it out, anyway.) can actually act as a counterweight, moving the interia moment application point to whatever length of the blade you want to it to be.

Example. If you want a long cavalry sabre blade, you need to have a very light (if existing at all) pummel, to move the moment of inertia as far as possible along the blade, and allow for more damaging slashes.

On the other hand, a fencing sword will have its inertia moment application point at the "balance point", which means it will be just below the guard. Very useful for stabbing and moving the blade very fast in any direction for parrying, but completely useless in slashes.

The reason why the axes have a heavy blade and a long and light, although pretty resistant, handle is because it needs to have a very high momentum, and an application point as far as possible from the hand, and from the spinning point, which should be both your shoulder and your wrist, in some way.

And you can see two-handed Claymores with very long blades, and a pummel quite heavy by itself, just to limit the inertia moment application point to one foot inside the blade, so that the very large swipes actually have an effect other than tearing the blade from the swinger's hands. Moreover, these blades don't need to be very sharp, since there is practically no penetration needs. It is all blunt damage. No edge can resist the sheer force applied to it when it meets the other bloke's armor anyway. Or bones, when it comes to that. The edge would frown, and prove irremovable from the other bloke, since it would have curled INSIDE the other bloke's bones.

In a general way, you can design your weapons to look like anything you want, and do whatever damage you want them to. SO, my recommandation, as Edtharan said, would be to simply limit the design to stats creation, and overall design, if you REALLY need to have graphics of them, and then, let the background creation to fantasy, because it takesquite a while to learn how to balance weapons to do exactly what you want. I am still learning, and I've been using that anvil and forge for more than three years, for knives only. Don't bother with the "chrome" and glittery stuff. Just go for efficiency and pretend everything happened the right way.

I would, in fact, have the player "reverse-engineer" his weapon to match his needs, like "I want a weapon which can deal THAT amount of BLUNT damage, and all I have is THAT amount of STRENGTH and SPEED, So, I need a weapon THAT long, with a tip THAT heavy, and THAT much of a blade. Maybe have the reverse engineering happen in the shape of a helping NPC, and let the player merely express his desires. A player, or an adventurer isn't a master-smith, and I only know of master sqmiths who can tell a person what he needs, when he hears what they want.

As for the fighting system, I could give you a complete fighting system which wouldn't use that much of dice roll and is more focused on the level of simulation you want to apply to your weapon creation in less than a week, probably, if you want it.

Quote:

Reason why I'm working on this part right now is that I have much of the rest of the game design finished, except for a combat system.

This will cause you problems and it will create situations where the player can find exploits. The combat system is what you should have designed first.

With the way you are designing this you will need to create a combat system to match you smithing design. This will create an unbalanced system full of loop holes and exploits. If you then fix these, you will most likely have to then go back and remake your smithing system, then you will have to go back and make changes to your combat system, and so on. This is what will bog you down and stall your project. It sounds like a good idea, and I would like to see something like this see the light of day.

Well, I have the design for the game world down, and I could put just about any character stats and combat system in that game now and call it finished. however I'm playing with different combat systems. Kinda hard to start fighting if you don't have weapons.

Also the current system allows for pommels/pummels, either as something to add to the sword after, or simply adding extra weight to the back end of the tang.

The main goal of this system is to allow the PLAYER to smith weapons, unlike most other games where item creation is you going around to get the supplies for it, take it to an NPC or open up a crafting window put things there and hit "build" and you get something that is always the same with the same items for 'crafting'. The whole goal of the system is that the player can build skill over time to build better weapons (I'll include some sort of anti-grinding system in the skill gain I think) but if they don't understand balance and that, even if they have the skills to get 100% dead on what they selected for weight, the weapon will still be shit. however with the proper balance, even if the weights are often off by a fair bit from what they were going for with their low smithing skills, they can still get a fairly useable weapon.

I'm also not overly worried if I have to start over again with the weapon and combat system, I don't plan to finish this game for atleast a year or so, simply a toy project I work on in my spare time, one of many I pick away at.

Quote:

Original post by Talroth To 'smith' a weapon you start by defining the length of the weapon between 2 and 40 units. (each unit being about 2 inchs, but that doesn't really matter) and then define the weight of each of those units from the tip to the tang, as well as the edge type and point (narrow tip/wide tip, single/double edge/tang)

Isn't 6 foot 8 inches an excessive length for a weapon used in dungeon crawling?