General Discussion

[DarkTl]

is weird... I'll try to track it down.

The thing is, we never had items which can be unequipped and give skills/spells when equipped. We only had scrolls as consumables, and they work with gui as intended.

But when a few days ago I added the very first weapon with skill for testing, turned out gui doesn't support this stuff.

[Xela]

I've made a list of stuff that needs to get checks, cannot focus on code with some many things at play...

Add new field to all skills so they can be sorted by them instead of isinstance().

Attack Ability:
-   Rows
-   Resources (MP/VP)

Attack Power:
-   Stats
-   Trait Modifiers?
-   Items Field Modifiers (Weapons)
-   Rows
-   BE Event Mods
-   Elemental

Defense Power:
-   Stats
-   Traits Modifiers?
-   Items Field Modifiers (Armor)
-   Rows
-   BE Event Mods
-   Elemental

Special Mods:
-   Absorption
-   Resistance
-   Critical
-   BE Events Mods
-   Inevitable
-   Missed
-   Status

Types:
-   Melee
-   Ranged
-   Magic

[DarkTl]

-   Rows.
The current rows system works like:
Melee can only attack the first row while being in the first row. Ranged can only attack the first row no mater its own row. Piercing can attack any row while being in the first row. Ranged+Piercing can attack any row no matter its own row. True Piercing ignores all row penalties if they exist, but does nothing else.
I think it should stay like that.

-   Resources (MP/VP/Health)


Attack Power:
-   Trait Modifiers? - if you mean stuff like damage = damage * 1.1 for warrior class trait, then yeah, it's an interesting idea.
-   Rows -   It might be a good idea to add attack power penalty for the second row in addition to reduced damage, to balance things.

Special Mods:
-   Resistance <- We have Magic Immunity trait. It's supposed to provide immunity to all existing atm elements. I created an item which adds this trait, equipped it and attacked the character with magic. She died. Meaning your resistance does not work as intended!

Now, my part:

- Multielemental attacks:
For testing I created a spell with both air and ice attributes. It ignores ice keyword completely, so I can say for sure that atm the system doesn't support such things at all.

We can live without magic+magic+magic... attacks right now, but at very least we need physic+magic for beta. Where physical part can be critical, magic part is affected by all target elemental defenses and weaknesses, and the attack can miss, dealing no damage at all in result. It also will require a unique attack power formula which includes both attack and magic parts.

- Gui cannot support items which add skills/spells when equipped. It just ignores this stuff, while it should show everything, simply because there are places in gui created exactly to show skills changes.

- Characters should have basic attack provided by equipped weapon, provided by "attacks" item field. And no other basic attacks.
Meaning after equipping a sword to unarmed character you'll lose fistsattack and gain swordattack, and vice versa. Since there are two weapons, character may have two basic attacks, yeah.
It also should support multielemental basic attacks. I mean, if you equip some fire sword, you'll get not a simple swordattack, but (currently not existing) fire_sword_attack which has both physical and fire attributes.

- We have add_be_spells field which adds spells. But we don't have a field for adding skills. While we do have "attacks", its purpose is to add basic attacks, not skills.

[Xela]

-   Rows.
The current rows system works like:
Melee can only attack the first row while being in the first row. Ranged can only attack the first row no mater its own row. Piercing can attack any row while being in the first row. Ranged+Piercing can attack any row no matter its own row. True Piercing ignores all row penalties if they exist, but does nothing else.
I think it should stay like that.

Factually correct, technically not exactly but it doesn't matter.

-   Resources (MP/VP/Health)

Yeah, it is a good idea to add all these basics to the default check method. It can be overwritten for special attacks.

Attack Power:
-   Trait Modifiers? - if you mean stuff like damage = damage * 1.1 for warrior class trait, then yeah, it's an interesting idea.
-   Rows -   It might be a good idea to add attack power penalty for the second row in addition to reduced damage, to balance things.

Not just that, at one point we could add damage modifiers for weapons types through traits, like Warrior would get 20% damage in BE using a sword. I am trying to make a future safe system, while we haven't used one line of Jake's BE code, I modeled some code structure from it. We want more and more and more with every upgrade and it is becoming more and more difficult to code it in.

I am not sure about attack penalty, seems like a horrible idea, plain damage reduction feels like a perfect solution.

Special Mods:
-   Resistance <- We have Magic Immunity trait. It's supposed to provide immunity to all existing atm elements. I created an item which adds this trait, equipped it and attacked the character with magic. She died. Meaning your resistance does not work as intended!

I'll keep that in mind, there is a lot in play there... that's why I cannot write code for BE without a plan anymore

- Multielemental attacks:
For testing I created a spell with both air and ice attributes. It ignores ice keyword completely, so I can say for sure that atm the system doesn't support such things at all.

I didn't really want it to... was kind of hoping we could avoid that. I thought that there was code to account for it regardless but maybe there isn't... Even GUI will get fucked up We don't have a slot for ME attacks atm....

We can live without magic+magic+magic... attacks right now, but at very least we need physic+magic for beta. Where physical part can be critical, magic part is affected by all target elemental defenses and weaknesses, and the attack can miss, dealing no damage at all in result. It also will require a unique attack power formula which includes both attack and magic parts.

I'll do this, maybe even without unique formula if possible.

- Gui cannot support items which add skills/spells when equipped. It just ignores this stuff, while it should show everything, simply because there are places in gui created exactly to show skills changes.

I don't have a slightest clue why and don't fully understand what you mean here, I'll take a look anyway but prolly after BE update.

- Characters should have basic attack provided by equipped weapon, provided by "attacks" item field. And no other basic attacks.
Meaning after equipping a sword to unarmed character you'll lose fistsattack and gain swordattack, and vice versa. Since there are two weapons, character may have two basic attacks, yeah.
It also should support multielemental basic attacks. I mean, if you equip some fire sword, you'll get not a simple swordattack, but (currently not existing) fire_sword_attack which has both physical and fire attributes.

I am thinking a new "be" field which would be a dict, we may want a lot more than attack in the future. But we can also simply add fields as well... The thing is... feels (again) stupid and confusing, we're just doubling down on plain attack stat for which we have a cool mechanic in play that took weeks to design. It's like with your new two evasion stats

System is quickly becoming not just humongous but fucked up in a way where we breed stat after stats and bonus after bonus that do more or less the same thing. I'd really like to get rid of the new stats and add stuff like extra evasion mods just for BE through classes and items, calculating ability to evade based of agility.

- We have add_be_spells field which adds spells. But we don't have a field for adding skills. While we do have "attacks", its purpose is to add basic attacks, not skills.

I thought that it would work for both, gonna have to track down why it doesn't.

[DarkTl]

Yeah, it is a good idea to add all these basics to the default check method. It can be overwritten for special attacks.

Just keep my algorithm intact, when non integer resources mean %, ie 0.5 vitality means 50% of max character vitality.

Btw do mobs even have vitality and mp, or they are unlimited like in many games?

I didn't really want it to... was kind of hoping we could avoid that.

We have many absolutely amazing animations made from multiple elements. We don't need it for beta at all, but we do need it for the release. So it might be a good idea to prepare ME code now instead of rewriting everything later.

I don't have a slightest clue why and don't fully understand what you mean here, I'll take a look anyway but prolly after BE update.

Ah shit, I got it. I tested it with characters which have all attacks in the game due to being used in BE testing mode. In this case the system of showing skills just goes nuts. For normal characters it works fine 

I am thinking a new "be" field which would be a dict, we may want a lot more than attack in the future. But we can also simply add fields as well... The thing is... feels (again) stupid and confusing, we're just doubling down on plain attack stat for which we have a cool mechanic in play that took weeks to design.

Well, to be honest I don't like the system of double weapon -> double basic attack.
How about moving all weapons capable to attack to the main hand, and all others like shields and stuff to another one? No more issues with double attacks.

It's like with your new two evasion stats

System is quickly becoming not just humongous but fucked up in a way where we breed stat after stats and bonus after bonus that do more or less the same thing. I'd really like to get rid of the new stats and add stuff like extra evasion mods just for BE through classes and items, calculating ability to evade based of agility.

Aha. It used to be based on differences in agility and levels. Do you know what was going on in BE testing mode? Goblins coudn't do a thing without magic.

[Xela]

Just keep my algorithm intact, when non integer resources mean %, ie 0.5 vitality means 50% of max character vitality.

Btw do mobs even have vitality and mp, or they are unlimited like in many games?

- Noted.
- Mobs have the same limitations as any other char. You know this, you wrote their classes

We have many absolutely amazing animations made from multiple elements. We don't need it for beta at all, but we do need it for the release. So it might be a good idea to prepare ME code now instead of rewriting everything later.

I'll take a look...

Ah shit, I got it. I tested it with characters which have all attacks in the game due to being used in BE testing mode. In this case the system of showing skills just goes nuts. For normal characters it works fine 

Testing overwrites often bypass blocks used by normal operations.

Well, to be honest I don't like the system of double weapon -> double basic attack.
How about moving all weapons capable to attack to the main hand, and all others like shields and stuff to another one? No more issues with double attacks.

It's mostly an items design thing, we can also just mass rename the slot if required. It's a good idea on many levels...

Aha. It used to be based on differences in agility and levels. Do you know what was going on in BE testing mode? Goblins coudn't do a thing without magic.

So? It a matter of balancing classes, not adding more stats to solve a simple issue.

We can live without magic+magic+magic... attacks right now, but at very least we need physic+magic for beta. Where physical part can be critical, magic part is affected by all target elemental defenses and weaknesses, and the attack can miss, dealing no damage at all in result. It also will require a unique attack power formula which includes both attack and magic parts.

I don't understand this, we're prolly on a different page on these concepts:

- Weapons ("melee", "ranged")
- Magic ("magic")

Are mediums to carry over/produce damage (from stats like attack, magic, intelligence, agility, luck and etc.). Weapon damage vs Magic damage. I can understand Weapons carry over Elemental Damage just like magic does, but what the heck is the point in mixing those up? I mean, what is added to the game by adding a new formula except more work for us? How is "melee" + "magic" + "fire" any different from "melee" + "fire" other that creating more core code and confusion? You basically want new special class of weapons, owners of which could benefit from attack and magic stats combined... but that is confusing as sh!t and further complicates a concept that is already difficult to grasp. Do we really want to go there?

[Xela]

If we're going to add "attack" of some kind to items, effect field is pointless for non-magical attacks as they would do the exact same thing, so it should be removed.

[Xela]

I need answers to these issues before I start coding...

[Xela]

We don't force lowercase letters with code so your Magic Immunity prolly doesn't work properly cause most elements are capitalized:

Code: [Select]

    {
    "id": "Magic Immunity",
    "desc": "No damage from any magic.",
    "resist": ["ice", "Water", "Fire", "Air", "Earth", "Electricity", "Light", "Darkness", "Healing"]
    },
Also, this is more like elemental resistance, magical resistance might look something like:

Code: [Select]

    {
    "id": "Magic Immunity",
    "desc": "No damage from any magic.",
    "resist": ["magic"]
    },
Also, "Healing" might not belong there cause it can be status oriented, without involving magic (technically speaking), like some chars use faith based healing or tech based healing that might not be magical in nature. Healing doesn't belong here...

Edit: There should not be items in the game to allow this other than for testing purposes... this is so overpowering that it's game breaking. Could be a nice for Mobs though...

[DarkTl]

- Mobs have the same limitations as any other char. You know this, you wrote their classes

BE may ignore limitations for the enemy team, it actually does so in many games. That's why in jrpgs enemies never run out of mp, or in shooters with limited ammo enemies have unlimited ammo. Because often there is no way for them to replenish it, unlike the player.

It's mostly an items design thing, we can also just mass rename the slot if required. It's a good idea on many levels...

Ok, I'll do that.
There is another issue thought, with default attack type. If a character has a weapon on the battle sprite, then her basic attack should not be default fists, but the weapon she has. Therefore we need a field for basic attack (without weapon equipped) in character data files, which by default will be fists.

So? It a matter of balancing classes, not adding more stats to solve a simple issue.

That's not about classes. Agility increases infinitely for any class, given time and/or levels
Let's say you have met a high level mob with superior agility. The battle will be irritating due to high chance of evasion, or even unwinnable without magic if the chance of evasion will not be capped.

And if you want to replace resistance with intelligence, then we already have tons of magic related things tied to intelligence due to lack of magic defense stat.

It also give me an option to make some items and traits better or worse by adding bonuses and penalties to the new stats. While giving bonus to intelligence pretty much increases everything about magic, bonus to resistance only increases resistance.

How is "melee" + "magic" + "fire" any different from "melee" + "fire" other that creating more core code and confusion?

Hm? There is no "melee" + "magic" + "fire", such combination is impossible. I can't even imagine how to use one if it will be added 

Look,
Step 1) check for crit hit and evasion for non magical attacks, and resistance for magic. And change starting multipliers according to checks if needed.
Step 2) calculating attack for attacker and defense for target. They both already calculate differently for magic and non magic skills.
Step 3) take into account elemental bonuses and penalties for elements, including resistance and absorption.
Step 4) deal the damage or avoid it

At the moment at step 2 we check if this is a spell or a weapon attack, and depending on this check attacking and defending powers calculated completely differently. It uses the "melee" and "ranged" keywords, and without them it sees the attack as a magical one.
So basically let's say I add there a new keyword, like "magic_weapon", which will lead to some another formula of attack and defense calculation, making magic a bit more useful for some (not all) skills. Because otherwise magic is pretty useless for pure warriors. That's the plan at least 

 I'm not insisting on it, but it's nothing special really, literally a few lines of code which I can add on my own.
 

[Xela]

BE may ignore limitations for the enemy team, it actually does so in many games. That's why in jrpgs enemies never run out of mp, or in shooters with limited ammo enemies have unlimited ammo. Because often there is no way for them to replenish it, unlike the player.

We don't have that but it's not hard to arrange...

There is another issue thought, with default attack type. If a character has a weapon on the battle sprite, then her basic attack should not be default fists, but the weapon she has. Therefore we need a field for basic attack (without weapon equipped) in character data files, which by default will be fists.

We should already have that.

That's not about classes. Agility increases infinitely for any class, given time and/or levels

No, base classes can stop that, slow it down or increase the rate it's gained on level-ups.

And if you want to replace resistance with intelligence, then we already have tons of magic related things tied to intelligence due to lack of magic defense stat.

But is it not how you make the battle engine interesting. Weird enemy that cannot kill your party while endlessly evading it would be very unique, we could cap the the amount of max turns for BE, with battle resulting in a draw or something. Unique stuff is allowed to be annoying. We can also add running away option.

And if you want to replace resistance with intelligence, then we already have tons of magic related things tied to intelligence due to lack of magic defense stat.

I don't think that would be a bad thing. Not mentioning that I've already told you that I consider the whole magic resistance thing a bad idea, twice that much if done through a new stat.

My approach would have been a new status skill that partly shields from magical damage for x number of turns. I like and understand evasion from weapon attacks. I like resistance to elements, maybe to magic itself. But I don't get random reduction of damage based of a stat/health. I liked older system way better, it was more intuitive and could have been great just with better balancing.

It also give me an option to make some items and traits better or worse by adding bonuses and penalties to the new stats. While giving bonus to intelligence pretty much increases everything about magic, bonus to resistance only increases resistance.

Yeah, and that is exactly what I meant with new item "be" field. We can add stuff there effecting BE only. I mean, the thing that hurts me the most is that I've spent many month trying to develop a system that could create chars/mobs that would feel different from one another in the game/BE and you've basically said: Fuck That Shit! We're gonna add new stats that do not change and your Chars will have the same evasion at level 250 as they had at level 1. Not learning how to dodge anything in between.

Some spells can be dodged, depending usually on animation but that will be close to impossible to balance properly cause we don't draw animations ourselves... but:

Code: [Select]

defense = round(target.magic*0.2 + target.defence*0.6 + target.intelligence*0.2)
This seems like a reasonable magical defense setup, why do we need more? The whole resistance thing feels like really off We already have elemental resistance, damage reduction, base traits controlling development of all of these stats and will soon have item mods... maybe more trait mods in the future. The more I think about these two static evasion stats, the more I hate them 

Hm? There is no "melee" + "magic" + "fire", such combination is impossible. I can't even imagine how to use one if it will be added 

I thought that was what you were asking me to add

So basically let's say I add there a new keyword, like "magic_weapon", which will lead to some another formula of attack and defense calculation, making magic a bit more useful for some (not all) skills. Because otherwise magic is pretty useless for pure warriors. That's the plan at least 

But that was the whole point! Magic not being useful for pure warriors other than defending against it a little bit. That's how we differentiate between different case classes.

I just checked with traits_class file. You mutilated my Battle Mage class

The idea behind it was a class that would have moderate increases to mp/hp/magic/attack/defense. Kind of a jack of all (combat) traits (except agility) but kind of none. While Warrior would completely suck at mp/magic, mage would have shitty defence and attack but really high mp/magic, archer would have very high agility, moderate attack and very slow magic/mp and etc.

===>>
 I don't like magic weapon either.... I don't really like anything that would combine magic and attack into a singe damage formula. It kinda completely erases difference between magic and non magic combatants.

[Xela]

I am removing stuff like "elemental" damage from reports in BE. We may restore them later, we'll stick with just damage/defence bonuses, code will be a lot cleaner that way.

[DarkTl]

We should already have that.

But equipping a different weapon does not remove this default skill if it's not fists. And we already decided to get rid of double base attacks, up to the point of moving all weapons to the main hand.

No, base classes can stop that, slow it down or increase the rate it's gained on level-ups.

1) Base class won't help much with 100-200 levels of difference.
2) Too many factors involved for agility based evasion. Base class(es), equipment, relative bonuses to stats. It's impossible to predict the chance of evasion in particular case. While damage can be overcomed by high health, healing spells, defense and constitution, only agility can beat agility. I'm afraid it will lead to catastrophically unbalanced combat when the difference in levels is high enough.

My approach would have been a new status skill that partly shields from magical damage for x number of turns. I like and understand evasion from weapon attacks. I like resistance to elements, maybe to magic itself. But I don't get random reduction of damage based of a stat/health. I liked older system way better, it was more intuitive and could have been great just with better balancing.

Then we have a deal. Add a class for spells which shield party from either all magic or some element if you don't want resistance stat 
Perhaps it could be limited by the amount of absorbed damage, not just number of times.

Yeah, and that is exactly what I meant with new item "be" field. We can add stuff there effecting BE only.

If you don't want evasion and resistance stats, then what possibly could be affected? We don't have much options to control in BE, attack = attack, health = health, magic = magic, etc.

This seems like a reasonable magical defense setup, why do we need more?

Resistance is supposed to balance evasion. Evasion is a good way to avoid damage. When there is no way at all to avoid spells damage, it makes spells much better than normal attacks. Up to the point of not using normal attacks and only using warriors as tanks while mages do all damage.

I don't like magic weapon either.... I don't really like anything that would combine magic and attack into a singe damage formula. It kinda completely erases difference between magic and non magic combatants.

It's not my decision. I'm tied by available icons, and there are plenty of high quality magical weapons like burning swords.

[Xela]

But equipping a different weapon does not remove this default skill if it's not fists. And we already decided to get rid of double base attacks, up to the point of moving all weapons to the main hand.

Wow... I didn't expect that Wonder how I written that code, prolly just had it adding the fist skill directly...

1) Base class won't help much with 100-200 levels of difference.
2) Too many factors involved for agility based evasion. Base class(es), equipment, relative bonuses to stats. It's impossible to predict the chance of evasion in particular case. While damage can be overcomed by high health, healing spells, defense and constitution, only agility can beat agility. I'm afraid it will lead to catastrophically unbalanced combat when the difference in levels is high enough.

WHY?

First, if the difference between levels is in hundreds, the party should get fucking wasted... that's the whole point of picking the right battles, nothing should be of much help there! Some battles cannot be won, there will always be a point where you're not going to come back from the battle.

Two: Actually, magic would still hit... Critical Strikes override dodging too. We can maybe offset it somehow based off levels but I don't see a problem with level 200 archer with high agility wasting 3 level 20 dumbass warriors without ever getting hit once! Not just in Games, for example, Legolas wasted scores of melee highers in LOTR and movies are a lot harder to make.

You keep saying that it's a bad thing that a much higher characters dodges a lot vs some nub, while it is NOT!

Then we have a deal. Add a class for spells which shield party from either all magic or some element if you don't want resistance stat 
Perhaps it could be limited by the amount of absorbed damage, not just number of times.

It will look a lot like poison... I'll add one soon.

If you don't want evasion and resistance stats, then what possibly could be affected? We don't have much options to control in BE, attack = attack, health = health, magic = magic, etc.

In almost all games which I played with turn based BE, evasion chance and magical resistance were effected directly. Like boots that plainly add 10% chance to evade an attack. Or a ring that reduces magic damage by 10%. No stat is directly effected and description explains what the item does. Such items often don't have any other effects at all.

Magical Defense stat is common but we have Magic and Defence already and base class controls. I've never seen a game that has f*cking AGILITY STAT which was not used to evade in favor of a static evasion stat. Although it's been a while since I played RPGs.

Resistance is supposed to balance evasion. Evasion is a good way to avoid damage. When there is no way at all to avoid spells damage, it makes spells much better than normal attacks. Up to the point of not using normal attacks and only using warriors as tanks while mages do all damage.

I don't understand this... Not every character is good at evasion! I've played excellent games where it was almost impossible to kill a ninja class using a warrior class without using evasion chance lowering item or having a spellcaster to do the same thing. All the attacks would be dodged. It's just a difference between classes and levels of characters. And mages rule behind a tank but our spells consume waaaay to little MP at the moment and that should be balanced out as well.

But the thing is that it's not really solved by new stats. Just made plain, simple and boring. Normal attacks do not consume anything, I don't even like that they consume VP. And the way they were coded initially, they dished out very good amount of damage. There was balance... there can be again.

It's not my decision. I'm tied by available icons, and there are plenty of high quality magical weapons like burning swords.

You still haven't explained why:

"melee", "fire"

is not good enough? Idea behind magical weapons is usually so non magical characters can do elemental damage.

[Xela]

I forgot who came up with desc for elements but we need to change that... they're weird.