Gesture-based spell system

Tristam MacDonald · 2012-04-18T17:00:04

I am currently building a gesture-based spellcasting interface, for the iPhone's touchscreen. The idea is that the game will provide online matchmaking, and connect two players together for a duel. A player draws one of more symbols on the touch screen to compose a spell, and then casts it with a two-fingered swipe across the screen. Preliminary gesture detection is complete, and the program can interpret a wide variety of symbols with some success (circle, pentangle, arrow, lightning, square, ...). My question is to do with designing the spell system - an area in which I have extremely limitted (read: zero) experience. The concept floating around in my head runs something like this: Quote: - Each player starts with a fixed amount of health - Players can cast defensive spells (which remain in play for some duration), or - Offensive spells, which have an immediate effect - Spells are stacked symbols, each of which has some effect - Elemental symbols are aligned (something like Magick the Gathering colours) to define relative strength (Earth, Water, Fire, Lightning, Wind, ...) - Defensive spells increase in duration and durability by the dificulty of drawing (circle, pentangle, stacked circle and pentangle, ...) - Bonuses stack Some examples: - Player1 draws a circle, and fire 5 seconds of basic defence, +50% efficacy against water - Player2 draws a pentangle, water and lightning 8 seconds of medium defense, +65% efficacy against fire or earth - Player1 draws an arrow, and fire basic damage, +50% damage against waterHowever, I don't really have a sense of how to scale this concept up into a full duel. In particular, I don't want to make the symbols too numerous or complex, as this makes both recognition and player education dificult. Any suggestions are very welcome! I know that spell design is a large topic with tabletop games, so I would also be greatful if you can point me to any resources in this area [smile]

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by swiftcoder July 04, 2009 04:40 PM

11 comments, last by supageek 12 years, 9 months ago

Stormynature

5,198

April 17, 2012 11:26 AM

Well at least the corpse might still be mushy -- 3 years aint too old to necro a thread

Note: if this is a second post by me in this, it is because I am at the end of the universe using a tin can and string for a connection