General Discussion

[DarkTl]

The magic dodges look absolutely ridiculous, I wish you'd remove them They pretty much all will require some sort of interventions with code and time controls.

Let's say I remove magic evasion. Or even better, replace it with resistance, when character manifests protecting barrier instead of dodging, I bet it will look much better than dodging spells.

Magic skills in terms of code are not different from weapon skills. Should evasion not work against weapon skills too? If so, then what's the point of it? It will be nearly useless if it'll work only against normal attacks which are already weak to begin with.

this can quickly become another 500 lines of if/else code and weeks of dev time cause magic is always bound to a character while weapons can be changed with a click of a mouse

I don't know about 500 lines, but if you want arrows attacks to be available for sword users, it will be a disaster. I don't even mean coded attacks, I'm talking about unique animations from dropbox. Some of them clearly have arrows or bullets, some look like a sword or an axe. We have no choice but to bind at least some skills to specific weapons types, or dozens high quality animations will be useless to us, and this is a huge waste. And if it is supported, we might as well use it for some coded animations too.

What do you think extra attacks should be bound to? Level? Experience? Classes? Weapons as they are now (like some weapons allow a single attack, some allow two or three and etc)??

I'm thinking about adding either weapon skills (skills like oral, I mean) or leveled traits (aka WM EX) to support specific weapons. Pretty much like Slave Maker 3 has a skill for every weapon type. So if a character good with swords will have high level of sword skill and certain BE swords skills will be unlocked for swords.

[Xela]

Let's say I remove magic evasion. Or even better, replace it with resistance, when character manifests protecting barrier instead of dodging, I bet it will look much better than dodging spells.

Or at the very least not do the backward animation when magic is dodged... I guess that in my mind magic cannot be dodged like weapon attacks, difference between chars can be so great that magic doesn't do any (or a very limited) damage, but missing is not something that can occur. When a huge ass high level spell "misses" the target, it look especially dumb.

In either case, game is not really combat centered, we're making too much effort here.

Magic skills in terms of code are not different from weapon skills. Should evasion not work against weapon skills too? If so, then what's the point of it? It will be nearly useless if it'll work only against normal attacks which are already weak to begin with.

It's a lot of work... fireball you can dodge, cataclysm or tornado, not bloody likely. Dodging simple weapon attacks by quickly moving the sprite backwards at constant timing is simple, every spell on the other hand may require it's own data, some should not be possible to dodge and etc.

Once again, not a combat oriented game Stuff like this, if we want it done right, will require more and more effort, all I wanted to say is that presently "dodging" spells looks pathetic and out of place. BE (imo), felt better without it. If there are better solutions that will not require insane amount of effort or if you're willing to go spell by spell and make sure timings are ok everywhere or animations are appropriate. I don't mind (although I don't remember if we can actually control dodging outside of core code atm, but I can prolly add moar code making that possible).

I don't know about 500 lines, but if you want arrows attacks to be available for sword users, it will be a disaster. I don't even mean coded attacks, I'm talking about unique animations from dropbox. Some of them clearly have arrows or bullets, some look like a sword or an axe. We have no choice but to bind at least some skills to specific weapons types, or dozens high quality animations will be useless to us, and this is a huge waste. And if it is supported, we might as well use it for some coded animations too.

No, I don't want to mix attacks, although bow as a large weapon and knife as a small weapon is a mix already...

I'm thinking about adding either weapon skills (skills like oral, I mean) or leveled traits (aka WM EX) to support specific weapons. Pretty much like Slave Maker 3 has a skill for every weapon type. So if a character good with swords will have high level of sword skill and certain BE swords skills will be unlocked for swords.

It's a huge mess of skills but we can also use: ranged, hand-to-hand, edged and etc. So basically you are saying:

- Default Attack skills that are enabled based of a skill "stat" value as a specific weapon is equipped.
- Special Attack skills that are weapon bound (Ice/Fire Sword/Axe/Bow/Gun and etc. animations we have in db).

That will require a controlled system to add/remove the skills of some sort, I need to make sure we have checks on skill changes (or maybe just level changes cause checks on skill changes will slow down the game). We'll have to do (yet another) evaluation every time a weapon is equipped. We'll have to make sure that skills are gained as weapons are used in BE. We'll have to make sure weapon skills can be learned in schools as well.

So another huge move towards the combat oriented game, with moar skills, checks and code oriented around combat I don't really have a better idea, just pointing out the obvious... in either case, I am going to work on that double/triple attacks now

[DarkTl]

For spells let's replace evasion animation with resistance, when we show a barrier animation around the character as long as the spell lasts, and lowers the damage instead of avoiding it. I believe it's easier than timing dodge, and we have dozens barriers animations in db to choose from.

In fact, you can do it right now, I mean add the animation support for resistance instead of dodging spells, for example with this one. And even more barrier animations in the maple folder. I'll change formulas then.

In either case, game is not really combat centered, we're making too much effort here.

I dunno, we have simulated battles everywhere. Brothels fights, SE, possibly arena.

- Default Attack skills that are enabled based of a skill "stat" value as a specific weapon is equipped.
- Special Attack skills that are weapon bound (Ice/Fire Sword/Axe/Bow/Gun and etc. animations we have in db).

Yeap. For basic attacks it's stuff like double attack or powerful attack, any weapon can do it if the character is a capable fighter. It can be tied to character level and base class if you don't want to bother with skills, not a big deal.

And special attacks should be learned just like spells, via teachers or scrolls.

That will require a controlled system to add/remove the skills of some sort, I need to make sure we have checks on skill changes

A part of issue 170... Atm characters have all existing weapons attacks no matter what they equip, it's not how BE should work, even if we don't use advanced weapon skills at all.

So another huge move towards the combat oriented game, with moar skills, checks and code oriented around combat

I propose an alternative then. Special animations, like energy swords that can be used only with a sword, we tie to specific weapons only. Ie a rare sword for a sword based animation. I believe items system should support it already, at least to some extent.

And for Special Attacks we use only generally looking animations that can be used with any weapon. Although, we probably have no choice but to separate melee and ranged skills even in this case.

[Xela]

And special attacks should be learned just like spells, via teachers or scrolls.

That's the thing, they can't... because spells are character bound, not weapon bound. I haven't addressed that yet in code but it sounds like a complex add-on to an already over-complicated system.

We need a plan on how to resolve this issue in terms of code and content.

In most games that come to mind, it's done on forced basis, like you have a class that can carry only one (or a small amount) of really similar weapon types. Like knifes/daggers for Thieves, Bows for Archers, Swords for Champions and that kind of crap.

Skills quickly become a lot harder to handle in a system where "anything goes", I may be able to do something with "type" fields that items have... but it still sounds a bit messy + I'd like to discuss what we want to do here before committing to a system as those are really, really hard to work out of a complex code setup that coding them in.

[DarkTl]

Like I said, we can avoid tying skills to weapons if we never use too specific animations. This way we don't care what kind of weapon character has, s/he simply uses all skills s/he knows. Well, except melee/ranged issue, but we can't possibly merge them into one, they are very different already due to rows system.

And specific animations we'll use for skills added only by weapons. I recall there is already a system in place which can add a battle skill if you equip an item and remove it if it's unequipped.

[Xela]

Like I said, we can avoid tying skills to weapons if we never use too specific animations. This way we don't care what kind of weapon character has, s/he simply uses all skills s/he knows. Well, except melee/ranged issue, but we can't possibly merge them into one, they are very different already due to rows system.

And specific animations we'll use for skills added only by weapons. I recall there is already a system in place which can add a battle skill if you equip an item and remove it if it's unequipped.

Ghm... ok, so you add all possible skills to every weapon that can do them in item JSONs? And we (right away or in future development) limit the actual skills that can be used by "stat" skills, level or some other character property? That way we can make better weapons more relevant as well.

It's prolly a simpler approach... we can recalculate these skills once per day during next day to be sure to enable new once as they become available. I guess we can add some sort of extra field to skills so we can check if a character can handle them.

[DarkTl]

Yeap. A matter of 2 minutes and excellent control over skills list with minimal coding, with more powerful, let's say, bows having wider list of bows skills.

I never tested it before though, I mean the system which adds and removes skills when you equip and uneqiup something. I know that scrolls work, but they give spells permanently.

[Xela]

Yeap. A matter of 2 minutes and excellent control over skills list with minimal coding, with more powerful, let's say, bows having wider list of bows skills.

I never tested it before though, I mean the system which adds and removes skills when you equip and uneqiup something. I know that scrolls work, but they give spells permanently.

It should... as I've said, it may have forced limitations but I'll remove them if not done so already.

[DarkTl]

Well, it doesn't cancel out generic code based skills. Although we might use the same system for them too.

[Xela]

Well, it doesn't cancel out generic code based skills. Although we might use the same system for them too.

It should remove generic once, like with both weapons equipped, fists should be gone.

[DarkTl]

I mean, we still need stuff like double attack and so on, if it will look decent enough if course.

[Xela]

I can't figure out a way to chain sounds in BE Something is messing up default timers, gonna try a custom class and if that fails, just push what I got

[Xela]

Oki, I pushed double attack, one for ranged and one for melee (same Python class). It looks perfectly ok so this we can use. Gonna test it with three hits tomorrow...

[Xela]

Triple attack seems to be working well too. If you ok this, I'll prolly rewrite it as a UDD for better gfx/sound handling... it will also be possible to specify the number of hits, for sword, 3 is ok but for melee/range weapon (like gun) 6 - 10 could be options for 3rd level attacks.

This is it for tonight.

[DarkTl]

Looks very good. Sounds however not so good without multiple sounds.

I pushed possible animation for resist. That stuff should surround the target when s/he resists a spell instead of dodging it via dodging animation. I can replace formulas and possibly add resistance stat to items, but not show this animation around a target inside BE