Personally, I think magic is awesome, and it has the potential to be used in some creative ways (whether magic of magic items), especially in online games. Unfortunately, I can't think of many examples of magic being used in a good way.
Hmm... Normally, you only ever see two types of mages in games. The typical "black mage" who has about 20 variations of fireball (or "deals x amount of damage") and the "white mage", who is the happy healer. Sometimes you might see things like summoners and mages that learn abilities from enemies or something like that, but even then, they have a list of really generic spell effects.
This sort of thing really, really annoys me. Why can't mages have some spells with effects that aren't very common in games? Magic gets really boring when it's only effect is to deal so much damage to an enemy, especially when you have the same spell in 100 variations.
So... How about making up some unique magic effects? These can apply to things like spells, items or equipment.
Examples might be turning an enemies blood into acid. As a generic effect it would hurt them, probably a bit each turn. But if that blood leaves their body it still acidic, it might damage anything it splashes on, whether it is you, other enemies or maybe even equipment (so it could work like a double sided sword). Hell, you could even incorperate this into another spell. Make the enemy die a horrible death by exploding into pieces... But wait! They have acidic blood which will obviously splash all over the place when they explode, causing damage to everything close to the enemy when they explode.
How about another spell that calls upon divine intervention? When the spell is cast you can set a rule and a punishment for breaking that rule. The rule could be anything, from no attacking (using certain elements/attributes) to no defending or no using items. If that rule is broken then the punishment is enforced on whoever broken it, again the punishment could be anything, from dealing damage, weakening enemies or whatever. An example might be if you're fighting an enemy who only knows fire based attack, you could cast the spell and set up the following condition "No using fire attacks or you will shrink in size" (shrinking in size would reduce physical stats).
Or maybe you have a spell that drains water from an enemies body. It would cause dehydration, weakening the enemy, and further castings would dehydrate the enemy more and more until they finally died of dehydration. Hell! You could even reverse the spell, put water into their body and kill them by water intoxication, or just flood their lungs with water, effectively drowning them.
Haha, in the game I am currently making there is one spell called "Fantastic Show". It's effects are when casted it will make a bright light show where the user is standing and say a single phrase entered by the caster every so often (such as "The Magic Man is awesome!" or something)... Why is there a spell like this and what purpose does it have... Hahaha, who knows? But it is pretty awesome if you ask me!
The same applies to equipment too. Most games I play weapons have generic "inflict damage" effects, armor has "resist damage" and most equipment can provide status bonuses.
But how about... A ring that when worn will cast a single spell when the wearer of it dies (provided the caster knows the spell). "Haha, kill me if you want, but don't blame me when you get fireballed in the face."
Or how about a suit or armor that isn't particularly magic, but whoevers wearing it looks like some hell demon and is terrifying to even look at. So while you're wearing it chances are all but the bravest of enemies will even confront you, let alone attack you.
Or maybe you could have an intelligent weapon that has a will of it's own. You might be able to talk to it and get advise off of it, and it might grant you generic special bonuses. But since it has a will of it's own which if you follow will provide bonuses. Maybe the sword was made to kill demons, so if you're fighting with a demon it will always try to target those demons, regardless of your will. So if you don't target the demon maybe it will on it's own, or maybe you'll just be wrestling with the sword, meaning you might not attack or will do less damage, but if you attack the demon, which the sword wants to do... You'll probably fly towards the demon so fast it wont know what hit it.
Or maybe you've got a shield, that when activated duplicates it's self and builds a fortress of shields around you and your allies. Effectively making you and anyone inside the fortress immune to attacks from the outside, but at the same time making it impossible for you and anyone inside the fortress to attack anyone on the outside (which could be used to trap a single enemy inside of the fortress, so you and your allies can easily kill it without any other enemies getting in the way).
These are the sorts of things I'd love to see in games, as opposed too...
Fireball: Deals damage
Big Fireball: Deals more damage
Massive Fireball: Deals even more damage
And...
Sword: Deals damage
Power Sword: Deals power damage!
Ultimate God Sword: Deals the most damage (one hit kills you seven times)!
So yeah. In short, talk about magic and magical items/equipment, what sort of things you do with them and the sort of things you'd like seen done with magic.
ID:265771
 Sep 9 2007, 4:26 pm
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First of all, I liked to read about the way you think magic should work and your ideas.
I'm a big fan of anyone who thinks out of the ordinairy, and for someone in the BYOND comunity you jus did that. Second, I totally agree with Jtgibson, how to put the spells into your game is often hard, maybe doesnt look like that at first but at some point you'll face a dilemma. I think that it's always best to write down your game before making it, explaning every single spell so you know what to code in order for your game to support all the spells you want to put in. Example, if you want exploding bodies to harm people when the dead person is under effect of some sort of spell you need to code this in such a way that it supports a wide variaty of stuff, leaving room for future spells. Maybe you'll need to add vars to each spell so it automatically does what it needs to do when someone explodes. Not coding this in to begin with will give you a headache for sure later on when you want to add it to your game and have to re-think everything. I'm looking forward to seeing the things you talk about fully functional in a game. - Fint | |
True enough, implamenting spells like that in a game is pretty hard, especially if it is a 2D game. And in general implamenting magical effects that are more than just "deals x damage" or whatever takes a lot more effort. But it's not impossible.
The example you gave is probably one of the harder spells to implament in a game, but effects similar to the examples I gave are rarely used in games, and they're not too hard to implament in a way that works. I've already implamented effects that are more than just dealing damage. One spell for example links together two targets, anything that happens to one of the happens to another (damage, healing, status effects and even death). Another example is an item (in the shape of a hand) that can be equipped with a single ring, the effects of the ring are given to whoever is holding the hand, effectively letting them equip one more accessory. If I can do things like this, then I don't really see why other people can't. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
If I can do things like this, then I don't really see why other people can't. Because BYOND has very few people who actualy bother learning how to code and also continue learning once they reach the point were they can make a game of crap-rip-quality. That's why if you keep going for your original idea, and work it out in a proffesional and user friendly way, you'll have a really nice and popular game in the end. | |
The main reason that most unique spells don't make their way into games is due to the big issue that many developers have yet to master: user interfaces. For instance, take the Wall of Stone spell from a Dungeons and Dragons sourcebook of your choice. This spell can be cast to produce a given cubic volume of solid stone according to the caster's wishes. How does the player specify the size and shape of the Wall of Stone using the mouse and keyboard? In a pen-and-paper roleplaying game, the player just says "I want the Wall of Stone to span across the chasm, attached to the sides, with the top side flat so we can walk across." (Assumption: the chasm tapers slightly.) In a computer roleplaying game, that becomes non-trivial.