<-- Archived --> (Battle Engine and Combat)

[DarkTl]

Attacks calculating is something I'm not sure about. There are so many possibilities as well...

- in Dis armor works in percentages. 90 armor means that only 10% of damage will be inflicted, and armor cannot be more than 95 no matter what.
- in NWN attack compared with defence, and both have significant random factor included, basically both have +dice(20). Armor>attack means miss. Critical hits (when dice is 20) cannot be avoided no matter what. "Bad" hits (when dice is 1) always miss. Damage depends on weapon only.
- in Diablo games the difference between attack and defense defines chance to hit (from 5 to 95%), damage depends on weapon only too.

I kinda like the idea when weapon defines damage, at least mostly. There is no need to have millions of damage and armor.

[Xela]

Attacks calculating is something I'm not sure about. There are so many possibilities as well...

- in Dis armor works in percentages. 90 armor means that only 10% of damage will be inflicted, and armor cannot be more than 95 no matter what.
- in NWN attack compared with defence, and both have significant random factor included, basically both have +dice(20). Armor>attack means miss. Critical hits (when dice is 20) cannot be avoided no matter what. "Bad" hits (when dice is 1) always miss. Damage depends on weapon only.
- in Diablo games the difference between attack and defense defines chance to hit (from 5 to 95%), damage depends on weapon only too.

I kinda like the idea when weapon defines damage, at least mostly. There is no need to have millions of damage and armor.

I guess we'll have to figure this out as we go. For now I've just ported whatever the heck we used in Jake's BE.

[DarkTl]

Maybe... This is interesting but it could be a very decent feature to be introduced in a future release. By your logic a fire mage, using a fire staff does not get added advantage? That's how it would work with Jake's BE...

There are two types of magic staffs in games.
- Just sticks that give bonuses to casting skills in some way or another, example: magic+5, fire damage+5%. It could be a decent feature for items system, I mean increasing spells output via items.
- Elemental ranged weapons that actually shoot fire/lightning/whatever. Sometimes they don't even have attack checks and thus never miss.
While I do want elemental weapons, I'm not sure that we should use only staffs for that, or even make them ranged.

The multiplier you see in this code bit, is different and was added by me. It starts at 0 and than is changed by alignments (magic) or critical strike (for melee weapons). Just to settle all the alignments in the game and possibility of the Critical Strike, 100 lines of code are needed...

Speaking of critical strike, in nwn the damge you can inflict with it depends on weapon too. It basically has modificators right in the description, like x2, x3, etc.
It will help a lot with creating more various weapons.

- Items and their effects.

Possible options:
- restoring items, for health and mp at very least, and removing debuffs like poison.
- effects, like regeneration or mp regeneration. In theory, it's possible to even use items for that, like some rare armor that restores hp over time (maybe in battle only, maybe not, it doesn't matter much).
These effects could use a parameter that sets their power, like "regeneration 1" or "poison 1" means +1 or -1 hp per turn.
- disposable and expensive offensive items, powerful enough to be useful in many cases when you are in trouble. Example: a Pandora's box that inflictes 100 damage to all enemies no matter their affinities, defense and evasion.
- I don't want items for buffing. People tend to ignore them (or even sell). Spells will do it if needed.

In terms of attacks, large or small weapons don't really matter.

You can't do the same things with greatsword and dagger.

[Xela]

There are two types of magic staffs in games.
- Just sticks that give bonuses to casting skills in some way or another, example: magic+5, fire damage+5%. It could be a decent feature for items system, I mean increasing spells output via items.
- Elemental ranged weapons that actually shoot fire/lightning/whatever. Sometimes they don't even have attack checks and thus never miss.
While I do want elemental weapons, I'm not sure that we should use only staffs for that, or even make them ranged.

I know that you wanted that so I've coded the new BE with that in mind. The trouble at the moments is that elemental weapons make magic almost obsolete. They have damage of their own + possibility for a critical strike + elemental modifiers. I am not deep enough into testing new BE now my guess is that this completely frecks up the system.

Speaking of critical strike, in nwn the damge you can inflict with it depends on weapon too. It basically has modificators right in the description, like x2, x3, etc.
It will help a lot with creating more various weapons.

We can always add new field to items (there will be a couple of new once no matter what we do...). But I have plans to add weapons damage in any case, new Be makes adding code like that seem like a walk in the park.

Possible options:
- restoring items, for health and mp at very least, and removing debuffs like poison.
- effects, like regeneration or mp regeneration. In theory, it's possible to even use items for that, like some rare armor that restores hp over time (maybe in battle only, maybe not, it doesn't matter much).
These effects could use a parameter that sets their power, like "regeneration 1" or "poison 1" means +1 or -1 hp per turn.
- disposable and expensive offensive items, powerful enough to be useful in many cases when you are in trouble. Example: a Pandora's box that inflictes 100 damage to all enemies no matter their affinities, defense and evasion.
- I don't want items for buffing. People tend to ignore them (or even sell). Spells will do it if needed.

All of this is possible and easily added. The trouble is that I atm have not even added 1 line of code that would allow using items on the battlefield or any sort of logic to filter out the items that can be used on the battlefield.

You can't do the same things with greatsword and dagger.

Errr.... we could debate that forever. Rusty Old GreatSword vs Enhanced dagger that adds Scorched Earth Skill (I have plans for that as well ) is not a very good bet. It will be a matter of skills and weapon damage in the end.
===========================

Bit of an update on the BE (Since you guys seem to be tagging your asses off, I don't want to fall behind )

- Positioning is more or less ready (just few more lines of code, it's always just a few more lines... (to get it purrfect) ).
- Battlelog in a viewport Dark requested is ready (we'll need to come up with abbreviations for everything because full sentences I am using now look off-base).
- Base damage is ready.
- Graphical effects are ready.
- 90% of skills we had in Jake's BE are ported with perfect aiming (100% will be ported by tomorrow). Note @CW: Whatever you did with sprites is obsolete. It is never a good idea to try and offset something with empty space in an image with in an engine like Ren'Py where you have positioning, anchoring, alignments and offset at your disposal for every displayable in the game (save one or two absolutely unique exceptions out of thousands of cases none of which is relevant to the BE). With new system you can practically chose if you want to hit a heart or a head *(obviously we're still talking offsets cause I would not have an idea on how to analyze the content of sprites. But at the very least you can now target the dead center or center top or center bottom of the sprite with the new setup with allows almost pinpoint precision for the attacks. Your fire/ice arrows are now almost flawless and look really good.)
- UI uses default themed Ren'Py elements and will have to be improved (several times) (I managed to pick the worse theme somehow...).
- Everything to do with rows is working really well (imo).
- Targeting seems perfect for both single and multiple targets. (this was not as easy due to rows as I've imagined )
- Death is working (still trouble with MC dieing (ends the entire game) but I will fix that soon).

[DarkTl]

I know that you wanted that so I've coded the new BE with that in mind. The trouble at the moments is that elemental weapons make magic almost obsolete. They have damage of their own + possibility for a critical strike + elemental modifiers. I am not deep enough into testing new BE now my guess is that this completely frecks up the system.

Well, spells usually always hit, while weapons could miss.
Also there should be magic defense in addition to usual one. Depending on enemy, weapons or spells could have the best effect.

Rusty Old GreatSword vs Enhanced dagger that adds Scorched Earth Skill (I have plans for that as well ) is not a very good bet.

Oh, I don't mean damage. Dagger is a quick and light but short weapon, and vice versa. In terms of skills your dagger skill won't help you much when you wield a greatsword.
That's why it might make sense to have separate skills for big and small weapons.

[Xela]

I forget to mention that surprisingly your Other Light skill now looks like one (or the) best effects in the game. Since we now have precision targeting, I've rigged it to start at the top of the enemy and kinda eat (engulf) him/her up. Especially when the enemy dies, it looks like him/her were dissolved. I am planning to add zoom effect because atm it look a just 10% too small...

[CherryWood]

Note @CW: Whatever you did with sprites is obsolete. It is never a good idea to try and offset something with empty space in an image with in an engine like Ren'Py where you have positioning, anchoring, alignments and offset at your disposal for every displayable in the game (save one or two absolutely unique exceptions out of thousands of cases none of which is relevant to the BE).

I did it mostly because editing image like that takes just a few seconds and no brainwork at all, which I can't really say about the prospect of calculating and writing offset values somewhere  ¨


But it's just a few images per girls, so it doesn't really matter to me how you want to do that... compared to the whole tagging and such, this is nothing in any case.

[Xela]

There is no reason to leave any empty space in any of the images. It's obviously a requirement for animations that consist out of multiple image but not really for anything else, or anything else you may come into contact with.

+ Some of your sprites do not have such an offset!

Just two spells left and then I am done with porting!

[CherryWood]

yeah, yeah, just explain it to me how to do it in your way for arena and girl sprites when you're done with other stuff

[DarkTl]

I always thought that the game will ignore empty space if needed, using only non-empty pixels for positioning 
Some engines can do it.
 

[Xela]

Maybe there is a way or one can be coded in... I never looked into it.

Ren'Py can obviously tell the difference between since we have focus mask for buttons. But empty space just increaes the filesize and makes our work harder. Lets just not use it in the future.  Like you've said, sprites can be fixed easiely.

[Xela]

BE is almost ready to provide everything out old design supplied us with. Last things to take care of are finishing the spells to work perfectly and getting some (simple) GUI together. Everything else seems to be working just fine.

[DarkTl]

Yeah, too bad we are still backgroundless, so to speak     
It's possible that you have to redone positioning for some neutral, multipurpose background.

[Xela]

Yeah, too bad we are still backgroundless, so to speak     

That's a problem only you seem to see.

It's possible that you have to redone positioning for some neutral, multipurpose background.

Yeap, you can create dicts with positioning as you see fit.

[DarkTl]

This is because I did searched them long enough. For example, it's simple to find something for beach, but very challenging for forest.