@DarkHorizon:

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Rather than trying to apply a whimsical "do anything" system with your magic, instead try to think of the magic system in terms of features of a game that enable magic-wielding players to alter the physical properties of objects (with the added flash for visual effect).

I don't see it as 'whimsical'. I started this idea, and I'm still working on it, with the only purpose of finding a way to represent, roughly, a very large number of concepts, which could define the most common and normal spells. Such an idea could be possibly be adapted for a game, but if I had to design, from scratch, a magic system for a game I certainly wouldn't try to be such overly complicated, and I would focus more on the actual powers I believe the player needs in the game scenario.

Also, it is not as if this project is impossible. The only problem right now is to keep things intuitive and understandable ( and good looking ); if I just wanted to create a 'do anything' system I would have already created it, but it would be incredibly messy and complicated.

@Edtharan:

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Yes, any magic system in a game is ultimately limited by what can be effected in that game world.

Anything in any world is ultimately limited by what can be affected by it in that particular world. I can't see your point.

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So far, all I have seen in this magic system that can be effected is Shape, Damage type and Damage strength. That is not much really.

I'm sorry you've seen only that. Also, I have never mentioned Damage type runes and Damage strength runes. What I did mention, however, where Shape, Element and Effect runes, which describe what does a particular spell create, in which form, and where. I also did mention that my spells have different levels of power, but isn't it common in spells?

@theOcelot:

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I would try to come up with a more descriptive mechanism, that can describe various combinations of curved and straight-edged shapes, as well as simple ones. Make it so that, with a large enough complex of symbols, I could describe the shape of a plant, or a person

Wow, I'd love to be able to create something like that, but being able to describe completely a plant or person outline, I think it's beyond my grasp. And remember that it should be also intuitive, you should be able to understand what the outline represents - and making symbols like 'the shape here is turning right', 'the shape here is straight' just doesn't seem the right way ^_^". Even if, instead of symbols to be less complicated, you'd draw the real outline, not all the people would be able to do the same.
An idea less complicated, which also helps distinguish 2d from 3d? ^_^

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Original post by Svalorzen @theOcelot: Quote: I would try to come up with a more descriptive mechanism, that can describe various combinations of curved and straight-edged shapes, as well as simple ones. Make it so that, with a large enough complex of symbols, I could describe the shape of a plant, or a person Wow, I'd love to be able to create something like that, but being able to describe completely a plant or person outline, I think it's beyond my grasp. And remember that it should be also intuitive, you should be able to understand what the outline represents...

I don't think you can have a system that is both richly descriptive and truly intuitive. Your symbols will have to be largely arbitrary, which cuts down on intuitiveness. This is especially applicable to things besides the shape system, where visual representations are less help.

Part of what I like about this idea, however, is that the symbols may not need to be quite so arbitrary as in most languages. It is possible to have the meaning be more visually apparent in the pattern of the rune than in a typical written language. However, what various visual patterns mean will still have to be learned, and they will still be arbitrary. The symbols themselves can still be evocative of their meaning, but that's as good as it gets.

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... and making symbols like 'the shape here is turning right', 'the shape here is straight' just doesn't seem the right way ^_^". Even if, instead of symbols to be less complicated, you'd draw the real outline, not all the people would be able to do the same.

No, don't do it that way! You want symbols that define general shapes, and when combined with other shape symbols and other symbols that define how they fit together, define a whole shape. For example, to describe a plant: start with a symbol representing a long, thin round shape, corresponding to the stem. This is modified by a symbol that describes how this object is not perfectly straight, but curves and tapers towards its end. The rune would then describe several other shapes that stick off of the central one, and have flat things on the end. Notice that it need not specify the exact shape of each one, or even how many there are, just that there are "some" or "several". A more detailed description might have more information about the exact way that the component shapes of the plant deviate from the base shapes, such as whether the stem bends sharply at each branch, the exact shape of each leaf, etc.

The symbols are as likely to correspond as closely to mathematical functions or fractal patterns as to simple shapes. They represent patterns, not instructions for drawing something. Hopefully now you see how the distinction between 2d and 3d objects would be made.

I admit that at this point I am straying far from a useful design into the realm of mental chew toys. This idea of a totally visual language fascinates me. There is far more potential here than just an in-game spell-casting system. A simpler version could still work in a game.

You're example has more convinced me that it's impossible, rather than the opposite.
The number of symbols to create such a visual language would be in the order of thousands, if not more ( and that's a problem, at least for me ), and also, being so vague, it would be impossible to understand what the symbols are talking about.

If I'd tell you to imagine a long, thin round shape whith flat things on the end you'd imagine a plant? I think not, and not only you, everyone. It could be anything. Not to imagine more complex and involuted shapes.

If creating such a pattern would be so easy, I think we wouldn't have so many problems with shape-recognition AIs.

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I don't think you can have a system that is both richly descriptive and truly intuitive.

And you are right. But I'm going more for some intuition, than richly descriptive. It's fare more natural to associate an human with a cilinder, than with hundreds of round shapes and thousands of thin long things.

Also, I do NOT want to be able to describe an human being at such low level. I don't really need that. As I said, all the details of the spell are, in fact, left to the caster.
This means that if I create a spell to summon a medium-sized humanoid, I'd still have to specify which race of medium-sized humanoids I want every time I cast the spell.
It does not take away any power from me, it just semplify the part I have to write down.

Well the way Id imagine it working is you'd have 1 property rune for every different property an object can have. and then depending on how much choice you want to provide the player you can provide a number of varying runes. I.e. Damage would be a property rune, and then you could have a rune that represents low,mid and high damage.

Then you could have a shape property rune, and in that you could have different runes for different shapes in the world, cube,sphere, human-male,human-female.

This could also be expanded into sub properties, so shape property has 2 other properties associated with it, physical-shape and physical-constitution. etc...

anyway my point is that you could start off with a simple structure, of a few property runes, and a few runes that belong to them and you can expand these as you see fit.

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Original post by Svalorzen I also did mention that my spells have different levels of power, but isn't it common in spells?

depends on the type of game. But id see adding level spells to this system would only complicate the matter even more. Unless you automated it.

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Original post by Svalorzen You're example has more convinced me that it's impossible, rather than the opposite. The number of symbols to create such a visual language would be in the order of thousands, if not more ( and that's a problem, at least for me ), and also, being so vague, it would be impossible to understand what the symbols are talking about.

Like I said, I was starting to move away from a genuinely useful system [smile]. However, the plant example might come down to about to about 8 symbols. It takes a lot longer to describe in text than it would to represent symbolically. Using symbols that represent mathematical transformations and patterns allows you to highly compress shape descriptions, providing a much richer and more succint shape description system than exists pretty much anywhere, short of raw mathematical descriptions. You're right though, that this is total overkill for your purposes. A highly simplified version, perhaps based simply on merging primitive shapes, might still be useful to you.

As for word count, yes, any richly descriptive language needs to have a lot of words. How many words does English have? And I don't think that so many primitive shapes and modifiers would be required as you think.

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If I'd tell you to imagine a long, thin round shape whith flat things on the end you'd imagine a plant? I think not, and not only you, everyone. It could be anything. Not to imagine more complex and involuted shapes.

Not in so many words. But think of what the shape of a plant actually is. There would be enough supplemental information in the additional symbols besides "round thin thing" and "flat things" that when you put it together, it would pretty clearly be a plant, at least a simplified, stylized one. You would recognize it.

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If creating such a pattern would be so easy, I think we wouldn't have so many problems with shape-recognition AIs.

I don't see where that comes in. Getting a computer to generate shapes is a lot easier than getting it to recognize them.

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Quote: I don't think you can have a system that is both richly descriptive and truly intuitive. And you are right. But I'm going more for some intuition, than richly descriptive. It's fare more natural to associate an human with a cilinder, than with hundreds of round shapes and thousands of thin long things.

Fair enough. But it need not be that detailed. Just think of the most basic description of a human (torso with arms, legs and head), and the most succinct way of describing that symbolically.

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Also, I do NOT want to be able to describe an human being at such low level. I don't really need that. As I said, all the details of the spell are, in fact, left to the caster. This means that if I create a spell to summon a medium-sized humanoid, I'd still have to specify which race of medium-sized humanoids I want every time I cast the spell. It does not take away any power from me, it just semplify the part I have to write down.

Right, our ideas are going in two different directions. And we're getting way too caught up in this shape thing when it's not that important. I'm looking at how to make a complete language, and you just need to outline spells. Just take my ideas as another perspective, that may help make your system a little more flexible.

Let's get out of this rabbit hole and back to the real questions. You have three different basic spell types. I would have three different starting/root symbols, each of which represents a spell type. I would make them large symbols, and visually distinct, so that the instant you look at a spell you can tell what general class it falls into. These different symbols have pre-defined connection points, to which you add symbols describing the various information needed to finish the spell. The basic idea is for a symbol to represent an idea, entity, or action, and for its "child" runes to further specify and modify it.

Let's go with the fireball example, as far as I understand it. You want to invoke the element of fire, summon some and shape it into a sphere, and throw it at the target, which will be defined by the spoken part of the spell. I would have a root Invocation symbol which is indicated to be invoking Fire (does this necessarily involve creating/summoning some, or can it just manipulate pre-existing objects?) by a child rune. The Shape rune would be another immediate child of the root, and would specify a sphere, which with either of our shape systems is likely to be a single symbol. Then the Effect part branches off the root, and describes what is to be done with the summoned elements, namely to fling it at the targeted enemy. You will probably want to include placeholder symbols that refer to entities that will be filled in by the spoken part of the spell. In this case, you would use as the object of the throwing action (that is, a child rune) a rune that means something like "spoken target".

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Original post by theOcelot Let's go with the fireball example, as far as I understand it. You want to invoke the element of fire, summon some and shape it into a sphere, and throw it at the target, which will be defined by the spoken part of the spell. I would have a root Invocation symbol which is indicated to be invoking Fire (does this necessarily involve creating/summoning some, or can it just manipulate pre-existing objects?) by a child rune. The Shape rune would be another immediate child of the root, and would specify a sphere, which with either of our shape systems is likely to be a single symbol. Then the Effect part branches off the root, and describes what is to be done with the summoned elements, namely to fling it at the targeted enemy. You will probably want to include placeholder symbols that refer to entities that will be filled in by the spoken part of the spell. In this case, you would use as the object of the throwing action (that is, a child rune) a rune that means something like "spoken target".

Hmh sounds ok but I would do it differently because linking the type of effect to the invokation strongly restricts your possibilities to combine several elements. Like it would be impossible to create a meteor like lava/rock projectile because you can't combine earth with fire.

Take a root/energy rune to define the start and the amount of energy the spell may use at most. To this you should stick a symbol (or combination of symbols) that represents a sphere. I would do this as a primitiv, so only one symbol. And then you need components defining the direction (asuming the energy rune is the position of the player, a straight line from there over the sphere shape to the direction rune could be interpreted as casting it straight ahead) and fire. For fire you should attach one or more fire runes / complexes to your sphere.

Now this spell should be a simple fireball with lots of possible modifications. Using a larger energy componend would result in a strong but more mana intensiv spell while adding more fire-shapes to your sphere could make the spell stronger at the cost of making it more difficult to research and cast (need higher skill level). Also adding more / different directional runes could make it travel faster.
So with this setup a small fire bolt like projectile could be very similar to a large fireball.

But to make this work in this way you either need to be able to change the amount of links every rune provides or create linkage runes that change one link into many (and runes possibly runes that close an open link without having an effect - maybe using up some energy) Additionally you either need to be able to scale the power of some basic runes like shapes and the energy or have several runes with similar effects to choose from. If you lack those you could create a system where using several runes of the same type increase the effect, but it could become very complex to just double the amount of energy or the size of the sphere because you still need to link everything.

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Original post by Leartes Quote: Original post by theOcelot Let's go with the fireball example, as far as I understand it. You want to invoke the element of fire, summon some and shape it into a sphere, and throw it at the target, which will be defined by the spoken part of the spell. I would have a root Invocation symbol which is indicated to be invoking Fire (does this necessarily involve creating/summoning some, or can it just manipulate pre-existing objects?) by a child rune. The Shape rune would be another immediate child of the root, and would specify a sphere, which with either of our shape systems is likely to be a single symbol. Then the Effect part branches off the root, and describes what is to be done with the summoned elements, namely to fling it at the targeted enemy. You will probably want to include placeholder symbols that refer to entities that will be filled in by the spoken part of the spell. In this case, you would use as the object of the throwing action (that is, a child rune) a rune that means something like "spoken target". Hmh sounds ok but I would do it differently because linking the type of effect to the invokation strongly restricts your possibilities to combine several elements. Like it would be impossible to create a meteor like lava/rock projectile because you can't combine earth with fire.

So would I, but I was trying to work with the system as outlined by Svalorzen. I figured I had dragged the conversation far enough off course before that I shouldn't go into my crazy ideas on how magic should work [smile]. Anyway, it wouldn't be that hard to just add multiple element runes onto the root Invocation rune, possibly connected to some compounding rune, like so:

      Invocation          |(compound element symbol)     /        \   Fire     Earth

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Take a root/energy rune to define the start and the amount of energy the spell may use at most. To this you should stick a symbol (or combination of symbols) that represents a sphere. I would do this as a primitiv, so only one symbol. And then you need components defining the direction (asuming the energy rune is the position of the player, a straight line from there over the sphere shape to the direction rune could be interpreted as casting it straight ahead) and fire. For fire you should attach one or more fire runes / complexes to your sphere.

But you haven't mentioned in the spell exactly what's going on, that it's an Invocation. IMHO, the power level of the spell should be more or less inherent in the nature of the spell, not artificially specified at the root. The seeming exception is in cases like when you need to specify how large a fireball is, which obviously requires more power, or how strong a telekinetic force is, but those are still part of the nature of the spell.

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Now this spell should be a simple fireball with lots of possible modifications. Using a larger energy componend would result in a strong but more mana intensiv spell while adding more fire-shapes to your sphere could make the spell stronger at the cost of making it more difficult to research and cast (need higher skill level). Also adding more / different directional runes could make it travel faster. So with this setup a small fire bolt like projectile could be very similar to a large fireball.

Right, and it would be fairly clear on a quick examination where and what the differences were.

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But to make this work in this way you either need to be able to change the amount of links every rune provides or create linkage runes that change one link into many (and runes possibly runes that close an open link without having an effect - maybe using up some energy)

Like the compound elements rune I used above. That's no problem. However, any runes used to cover open links should not drain power; it's ridiculous for the spell to waste power just to satisfy grammatical constraints.

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Additionally you either need to be able to scale the power of some basic runes like shapes and the energy or have several runes with similar effects to choose from. If you lack those you could create a system where using several runes of the same type increase the effect, but it could become very complex to just double the amount of energy or the size of the sphere because you still need to link everything.

This is where the power-level runes come in. You can (perhaps optionally) attach a power-level rune to an action rune, determining how much power it has or is allocated (A distinction must be made between action runes and others, analogous to the distinction between verbs and nouns). There is a similar need for scaling the size of shapes, and you may even be able to use the same symbols, since their meaning will be determined by the context.

[Edited by - theOcelot on July 6, 2009 8:48:35 PM]

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You're example has more convinced me that it's impossible, rather than the opposite. The number of symbols to create such a visual language would be in the order of thousands, if not more ( and that's a problem, at least for me ), and also, being so vague, it would be impossible to understand what the symbols are talking about.

Actually what you want here is called an L-System (Lindenmayer System) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system .

These are formal languages that can be expressed symbolically. But these formal systems can be expanded to describe many types of object, shapes and other things.

Technically programming languages area type of L-System, and you can see that programming languages can describe many different things - Just look at all the programs that are out there today (and we haven't even touched on the total possibility).

Your attempt at making this spell system is an attempt at making an L-System without knowing what they are. There has been around 40 years of development on these ideas, so I would recomend learning about them so you don't have to take 40 years to come up with it yourself.

The ideas of L-Systems is that you have a set of low level "Words" that can be put together in patterns to describe more complex "Words". These complex Words can then be combined to make even more complex Words.

Before my reply, I want to thank you all because you are being helpful alot. I'm not really good at putting ideas down, and often I get overwhelmed and can't go on due to a lack of clarity in the whole.
Again, thanks! ^_^

@Edtharan:

Wow, the L-system is amazing. It reminds me of the game of Life, in which a few rules can create a lot of complex structures.
And yes, I was probably trying to reconstruct something similar, but now that I see it I'm not really sure that I could do that xD

@theOcelot:

Ok, now I'll try to get into more detail in your description of a fireball spell, as I'm imagining it right now ( that is, it can still change based on your feedback ).

At the root, we have the large Start rune. It is always the same, in every spell, so it is even more easy to find. This rune has three possible connections. In one of these connections is attached the Invocation rune. In the other two, there are the Shape rune and the Element rune ( each one with 3 slots ), in no particular order. This runes just say "the runes below me are the ones which specify what I say".

Below the Shape rune, there would only be the Sphere rune, since we only need that. The Element rune is a little more complicated.

I was thinking that Heat should be more of an Invocation spell, and that fire should be a combination of Heat and Air. Does that make sense? ( if it doesn't, the description works anyway )
So we want Heat and Air. Those are two, so below the Element rune we put a Connection symbol with 3 slots, one is for the Element rune, one will be for Heat and one for Air.

Heat is simple to do, we put the Heat symbol in the right slot and we are done. Since a Fireball is usually a medium-level spell, the Heat symbol will be medium sized, and attached to him it will have its supply of power.

Air is, however, an Evocation element ( Air is real ). So we create a child Evocation spell, which will suply us with that element. A child spell is smaller and has a more straight design, since it usually only supply an Element.
We create a small Start rune, with 2 connections. To one of them we put the Evocation rune, in the other the Element rune. If we wanted to specify other components of the child spell, we'd use a Connection rune with the necessary slots attached to the small Start rune.
So, as the Element rune has 3 slots and one is gone, to one we attach the Air rune, and the other attaches directly to the Connection rune of the main spell, where Heat is attached.

Then the Effect part. We don't need an Effect rune because this is the last part and it is obvious that it has to be the Effect, so we put a Throw To rune and connect it to the Shape and Element runes for one side, and to the Target rune on the other.
Stuff around a lot of very small energy runes to make it look good.
End of the spell.

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Original post by Svalorzen Before my reply, I want to thank you all because you are being helpful alot. I'm not really good at putting ideas down, and often I get overwhelmed and can't go on due to a lack of clarity in the whole. Again, thanks! ^_^ @Edtharan: Wow, the L-system is amazing. It reminds me of the game of Life, in which a few rules can create a lot of complex structures. And yes, I was probably trying to reconstruct something similar, but now that I see it I'm not really sure that I could do that xD @theOcelot: Ok, now I'll try to get into more detail in your description of a fireball spell, as I'm imagining it right now ( that is, it can still change based on your feedback ). At the root, we have the large Start rune. It is always the same, in every spell, so it is even more easy to find. This rune has three possible connections. In one of these connections is attached the Invocation rune.

No, the Invocation rune is the start rune. Anything that is the same for every spell is just redundant noise. Other than that, while it's not exactly what I imagined, you have the basic idea. I didn't even think of child spells. Maybe in the effect portion of child spells, you would have an indicator that the effects should be passed on to an outer spell. Just one more point...

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In the other two, there are the Shape rune and the Element rune ( each one with 3 slots ), in no particular order. This runes just say "the runes below me are the ones which specify what I say". Below the Shape rune, there would only be the Sphere rune, since we only need that. The Element rune is a little more complicated. I was thinking that Heat should be more of an Invocation spell, and that fire should be a combination of Heat and Air. Does that make sense? ( if it doesn't, the description works anyway ) So we want Heat and Air. Those are two, so below the Element rune we put a Connection symbol with 3 slots, one is for the Element rune, one will be for Heat and one for Air. Heat is simple to do, we put the Heat symbol in the right slot and we are done. Since a Fireball is usually a medium-level spell, the Heat symbol will be medium sized, and attached to him it will have its supply of power. Air is, however, an Evocation element ( Air is real ). So we create a child Evocation spell, which will suply us with that element. A child spell is smaller and has a more straight design, since it usually only supply an Element. We create a small Start rune, with 2 connections. To one of them we put the Evocation rune, in the other the Element rune. If we wanted to specify other components of the child spell, we'd use a Connection rune with the necessary slots attached to the small Start rune. So, as the Element rune has 3 slots and one is gone, to one we attach the Air rune, and the other attaches directly to the Connection rune of the main spell, where Heat is attached. Then the Effect part. We don't need an Effect rune because this is the last part and it is obvious that it has to be the Effect, so we put a Throw To rune and connect it to the Shape and Element runes for one side, and to the Target rune on the other. Stuff around a lot of very small energy runes to make it look good. End of the spell.

Actually, you don't need an element rune either, or probably even a shape rune, at least not in the way you mentioned above. The roles of these rune complexes are determined by their location on the start rune. You could say that the top of the Invocation rune is always where the Elements go, so there's no need to add another rune indicating that "here are elements"; it's implied in the definition of the Invocation rune. Any extra runes that don't add new meaning are just noise, and will cut down on readability.

Actually, I would recommend a more general system than just having a "Shape" rune. Rather, use a more general "Summoning Details" or something more exciting-sounding, that allows casters to say other things about how to summon the element than what kind of shape to put it in. In this area of the spell, one might describe how they are going to grab some existing water instead of summoning some on their own.