tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post8057274788842217991..comments2024-03-08T19:47:41.485+11:00Comments on Ascii Dreams: Designing a Magic System - Part Nine (Shapes and Behaviours)Andrew Doullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11099404183952971291noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-50223607036272013352008-09-19T23:24:00.000+10:002008-09-19T23:24:00.000+10:00> rotate them from the vertical to the horizont...> rotate them from the vertical to the horizontal plane<BR/><BR/>Wow. That would be wonderful. OTOH, I'm afraid some of these would encourage camping, which in roguelikes is even more boring than in FPS. I was so bored in Vanilla Angband just standing around a corner and tapping a strong ranged attack macro turn after turn. AI would need to help make it interesting, e.g. monsters wouldn't be lured ahead seeing their comrades killed in one or two shot without a chance to strike back.Mikolajhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01280729045107273819noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-75786827131122036132008-09-19T23:21:00.000+10:002008-09-19T23:21:00.000+10:00(Ice spells could have snowflake shaped target are...(Ice spells could have snowflake shaped target areas, necro spells could have skull shaped target areas, and so on and so forth...)Antoinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08678696394287463118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-12373968479955755632008-09-19T23:20:00.000+10:002008-09-19T23:20:00.000+10:00I'd love to see a roguelike where you have a varie...I'd love to see a roguelike where you have a variety of shaped attack spells, so<BR/><BR/>X.X.X<BR/>.X.X.<BR/>XXXXX<BR/>.X.X.<BR/>X.X.X<BR/><BR/>or so<BR/><BR/>..X...X..X.XXX.X..X...X<BR/><BR/>or so<BR/><BR/>...X...<BR/>...X...<BR/>...X...<BR/>XXXXXXX<BR/>...X...<BR/>...X...<BR/>...X...<BR/><BR/>and so on and so on.<BR/><BR/>A.Antoinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08678696394287463118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-70438603939821382222008-09-18T10:48:00.000+10:002008-09-18T10:48:00.000+10:00James: You are, of course, correct - I was simplif...James: You are, of course, correct - I was simplifying - mostly to encourage people to develop a hierachy. The reasoning for this comes later - perhaps I should have left the hierachy concept until then.<BR/><BR/>I referenced dungeon layout in a later paragraph, and Craig Perko's article on layout and level design interacting with damage sumarises the field (I linked to this in part six - here it is again: http://projectperko.blogspot.com/2008/07/landscapes-and-level-designs-boring.html ).<BR/><BR/>I should really emphasise it more here, as it really is key, as you point out.Andrew Doullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11099404183952971291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-84615236797741049982008-09-18T04:19:00.000+10:002008-09-18T04:19:00.000+10:00It is possible with shapes to come up with a hiera...<I>It is possible with shapes to come up with a hierarchy of less to more effective shapes. </I><BR/><BR/>I think this is more dependent on the situation than you are allowing for. (Or, you are simplifying further than is a good idea, to look at it another way.) <BR/><BR/>For example, in fairly open terrain where speed and rate of attack are high compared to movement, simply out-ranging the opponent can be more effective than any tricky ability to shoot around corners. Even in the simplified terrain of a roguelike, if a map generator tends to generate straight sections of hallway comparable to or greater than effective attack range, outranging becomes effective. <BR/><BR/>In a 3-D, third-person environment, being confined to the corridors and rooms of a building, or the passages of a cave, can effectively reduce the perspective to not much better than first person as far as perception and targeting of effect areas go. This may actually be a desired effect under some circumstances, if you want a logical reason to have a different feel for "indoor" and "outdoor" combat. <BR/><BR/>In chaotic battle conditions, attacks that simply emit from the player with a keypress may be more effective in practice than attacks that require complicated targeting of an arbitrary point at range. This can be seen in City of Heroes, where there are some high-end attacks (e.g. Archery's Rain of Arrows) which require selecting the center point of the effect area in (limited) 3-space with the mouse. Most other comparable attacks either emit from the player with a single keystroke, or launch toward the currently designated target with a single keystroke. In situations where the player has time and attention, the ability to fire around corners, conduct time-on-target attacks, etc. with RoA is quite useful, increasing the effectiveness compared to the numerical stats. In pitched combat where even being able to find the pointer and direct the effect is tricky amongst all the other effects going off, the extra time and attention require reduce the effectiveness considerably compared to the numerical stats. <BR/><BR/>Turn-based games reduce this somewhat, but player ease remains a balancing factor of sorts. Consider an attack that allows specifying any three adjacent squares at range, but which requires the player to manually scroll a targeting cursor to and select each of the three squares every time. The tactical advantages are considerable, but it may not be used as often or be considered as useful as one would expect from a numerical perspective.<BR/><BR/>As for asymmetric view and fire, ideally this either doesn't happen (line of view and line of fire coincide, and are symmetrical in each direction), or it is deliberately handled to allow interesting tactical complexity. <BR/><BR/>One approach I've been musing about is to take established maneuver and terrain concepts such as "defilade", "military crest", "hull down", and "reverse slope defense"; and rotate them from the vertical to the horizontal plane. This formalizes such fuzzy concepts as "I want to be near enough to the corner that I can see around it, but not really be shot at" (turret down); "I want to be leaning around the corner to shoot / swing / etc., but still keep most of my body shielded by the corner" (hull down); "I need to advance just far enough into the cave to be able to fire on anything trying to close in by sneaking along the walls" (military crest); "I want to be far enough back in the passageway leading to this cave to significantly reduce my exposure to cross-fire from multiple potential occupants, but still be able to fire into the room somewhat" (reverse slope defense).jdunsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08181555529038735373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2208890564265615027.post-70550338793478738602008-09-17T06:56:00.000+10:002008-09-17T06:56:00.000+10:00> What is worse, that some times a grid may app...> What is worse, that some times a grid may appear to be untargettable when aiming directly at it,<BR/>> but by aiming at a nearby or further away grid, the projectile algorithm may determine that it moves through the targetted grid as a part of the projection.<BR/><BR/>That's what happens in NPP, where they enchanced the LOS and targetting code from Vanilla. I'm not sure about other Angband variants.Mikolajhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01280729045107273819noreply@blogger.com