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Original post by Wysardry 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?

little under 6'7", but close enough. I never said people would USE the full 40 units.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweih%C3%A4nder

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Original post by Wysardry 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?

It isn't for a pike.

I know that large weapons were used. My point was that large two-handed swords, polearms etc. were intended for use on the battlefield, not in narrow corridors.

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Original post by Wysardry I know that large weapons were used. My point was that large two-handed swords, polearms etc. were intended for use on the battlefield, not in narrow corridors.

oh thanks, you reminded me of a few ideas I had in another notebook!

I almost forgot about putting in limits on how you can use long weapons. Not sure if I'll limit WHERE you can use them, but all weapons will have their 'main' range and while you are fighting you can stay out of their range while still in your range (pike vs long sword, two hand sword vs short sword) or if you are good your character can 'advance' under the weapon (a risky thing to try) and use a much shorter weapon. All weapons with a good amount of range (larger than knives/short swords) will have a secondary attack skill. Swords you can pummal bash, pikes you can use as a staff (bash with the pole of it) but these wouldn't be as effective.

So, combat is going to sort of like old school MUDs, your character doesn't really move around, they stay in their squares, and must 'roll' a withdrawl before moving (or kill the person, or have the other person try to withdraw too). So far I am looking at round based combat, don't know which way I'll go for who gets the first move, maybe higher agility and "awe" rating. (Awe being bascially how 'cool' or deadly your character looks. and gives a minor bonus to things if who you are dealing with has much lower 'awe' rating)

To combat, you would set your action for the next 'round', default being a 'balanced attack' which gives no bonus to attack or defence. I was going to use a very complex system for this, but most of those break down at the fringes, too open to exploits, so I'm scaling it back to something much more simple. (Experiment in complexity is failing,... but oh well, it's all fun) So, you get a set number of attacks based on your stats, skills, and weapon. A chance to 'roll' for a bonus attack.

Now for the weapon's range, you can use one of your rounds to advance, where you do not attack (and cannot attack if you are too 'far' away from them to use your weapon at all) but to advance past your opponent's weapon you must 'roll' a defense round. As your character gains skills, they will have options for new attack styles. (Such as rapid attacks that give you 1.5x as many attacks in a round with a damage mod, but must 'rest' the next round. or Aggressive Parry, giving you a large bonus to defense, while still doing near nomal damage/attack)

well, enough of a minddump here now, off to run more tests before moving onto working balanced defense and hit forumals

Possibly you should have "how you fight with the weapon" be a parameter of how the weapon works.

For example, a foil is not a slashing weapon. There is no real edge. It does however have a sharp tip.

Some weapons will have sharp tips, some weapons will have sharp edges all the way down, some weapons will have heads with sharp edges (axes), and some weapons are just heavy shashing weapons (hammers).

Armor can behave differently to swinging/thrusting/piercing/slashing/crushing damage. Shields will behave differently. Parrying and dodging will behave differently. Etc.

While this level of customizability is a decent goal, in all honesty i think you're putting the fine details into the wrong section [swords]. If you give your players this much availability with creation of something like a primary weapon [something that has a generally consistant value of good or bad, with a few details thrown in for certain character builds], you're going to end up with players doing exactly what you are doing right now to attempt to balance it, and that is just hitting your design over the head with a calculator until they find the optimum models. There are going to be a few points along your creation, the 'best' sword type for those who want jus straight out brute damage., the 'best' sword type for a given situation, regardless of exactly what that situation is, and the 'best' sword for a given player build. While your system would leave room for literally thousands of combinations, anybody with a decent calculator and math skills, and a free afternoon, is going to be able to find the optimized statistics in your system, and there is likely to be FAR fewer of these optimized points than there are actual weapon combinations. You'll find a huge amount of your efforts being dropped by the wayside, as everyone in your entire game is using one of about six or seven of the several thousand weapon variants possible, which is exactly why game designers tend to just take that out of player hands, and give them the optimized models only.

If you make it, it will be interesting, especially for those who like to play around with little neat things [ like myself ], but a power gamer of some kind will come along, and it's just a matter of time before he just sits down and selects out only the best of the best of the options, and other players will follow suit, once they have been informed of what the optimized models are. Same kind of people who figure out that monster 'A' gives you more experience per minute/expense than monster 'C', suddenly you find places where monster 'A' shows up to be filled to the brim with players just rapidly hacking down every 'A' they can find, and nobody cares if monster 'C' is even still in the game :P [not the best example, but we've all been in games where we completely ignore entire sections of the game world because certain things there are a bigger pain than they are worth]

I really should stop enjoying the feel of writing on real paper when I'm being 'creative'. Wastes WAY too many trees. So, combat equations aren't going well so far, making them complex ended with them just being a mess that had too great of spreads, where as cutting them back to something simple just made it worse. Time to start over! again.

Oh, and when you are writing a program to output raw data, don't do what I did and check just HOW much data your simple program will spit out AFTER you let it run for 10 minutes. ending up with 20GB in a single text file isn't fun if you don't look at its size before opening.

Now, I'm stepping back, and revamping the health system (which had been just going to be a standard HP for some reason. But seeing as how much complexity I'm adding to the rest of the game, doesn't make much sense to keep such a simple solution to health) Character health will now depend on how many Wounds they actually have (natural or magical) rather than simply how much damage they've taken. Wounds would be made up of Blunt Force Trauma, and Bleeding (and another option I can hold for magic damage, maybe burns, guess I should include broken bones, but that can be tied into BFT I guess), different armours would protect againsts crushing and cutting attacks differently. (Maille while good againts cuttings, wouldn't help nearly as much against BFT)


Oh and if people would like to know more about the game world, the game will hopefully be about 99% generated, and not scripted. (I might make much of the map to start with, or seed it) the AI is going to be fairly simple, each character in the world will either be a player, or an element of a larger character Set, one of maybe 50, which are linked to a block of buildings (sometimes overlapping between Sets) and have different waypoints, ('home' 'work' 'market' that they use) and a set will generate X number of different types of NPCs to wander around and look like they're actually going about a city life. Each Set of characters would belong to a Faction, which is made up of a large number of Sets. Each Faction is then allied/netural/at war with different Factions, and these can change and shift over time (possibly affected by the players, who each hold Standings with the different factions. Get a Standing too low, and you might find members of that faction and allied factions attacking you in the streets, or sending assassians at you)

So, you'll have a Set, which when a user is in an area, the server checks for what sets should be active in the area, and what ones are generated. If one is found and needs to be generated, it looks at a Set template. What range of skills and jobs they do, and how many of what type. (Type being things like: child, just wanders around a set area, doesn't do much, might pick your pocket if from a thief set. Worker does a task, appears to generate goods/serives. Shipper would move items around, like going to Stores to buy food and taking them back to their homes. All Types would return to their 'home' to sleep during their off cycle. Thieves would more likely to have an off cycle in the day, as would Night guards)

Factions are where the action really happens, the generated events (person X from Set Y of Faction Z was robbed of items ABC, but no one knows who did it. Person X from Set Y of Faction Z was murdered by Set A of Faction B, etc. Shifts interfaction Relations)

(I might add a level above Factions to handle mass relations, as I want pesants, royality, guards, townsmen, etc, to have their own faction, save a few on relations as there will be. How many Sets I can have (which will have about 10-100 characters each) will depend on just how much data I need for each set, but 1000 factions, each with 10-50 sets or so shouldn't be too hard. Yes, that is an RPG populated by about 2.5-5 MILLION characters.)

Items for the most part would be randomly generated only when a player actually examins them and they'll stay in memory for awhile, till the player moves out of the 'region', or simply times out. Before a player actually examins the item, it would be a general item, that will generate a weapon/tool/whatever with stats within a given range.

Players can start their own Set, recruit new people to join it, eventually being able to start another Set, forming a Faction of their own, and even founding a small village, hideout, or just having their followers in an existing city.

As to what you actually do in the world? follow a story line to save the kingdom? Nope, you go and do mostly what you want. You can try to become King, found your own kingdom, kill the king, make the king your puppet. Maybe you want to be a trader, you can do that too, or maybe you want to be a thief. (not sure how I'll work thief code, stealth isn't something I've actually thought of yet) Or just be a farmer. Might even try to allow you to become some sort of a prophet, founding your own cult. :P

*edit* as for finding the 'perfect' combos for weapons. Don't forget that while you might find the perfect stats for max damage and that, but actually GETTING a weapon with those stats isn't going to be easy. You'll have to pay out the nose for a Grand master smith to make the weapon with the nubmers you want, or get your skill insanely high to have any chance of getting very close to the numbers you choose in the game, or you'll have to make a LOT of weapons to get the random factors in Smithing and Tempering to come out all in your favor. (which I might include checks to keep it from happening at really low skills. Low skill would mean that 99% of the time 'Something' will go wrong in one factor