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[belgariad87]

There are still a few questions on how it will actually come together but they mostly depend on how large of a semantic component I build in based on what the player controls for combat turn out to be like.

For item and body augmentation, things are more well understood though subject to change.

The idea is that the magic component generates a field or can tap into an existing field of the "object" to draw energy from or add energy to it.  For general objects, this field might be based on static electricity and require electric power to maintain.  For living things, it could tap right into their life force aura.

So the field generation circuit is the simplest in these types of components.  It's likely that it's just a crystal attuned to the particular type of field... though if the "magic physics" develops far enough that I can turn it into a player built component then I will.  Multiple crystals/components might be brought into play to be able to control specific parts of an object's field.

Anyway, once the field is tapped into then it becomes more like an electric circuit.  Assuming the crystal-based approach because it's easiest to talk about, energy can be pumped into the crystal to enhance the field and/or drawn out of it to dampen external energy applied to the field.

So, if you wanted to create a field that resisted fire attacks and were using electrostatic fields then you might pump a lot of electric energy into the crystal whose frequency was attuned to be compatible with heat energy.  If there is no additional circuitry to draw that energy back out then it ends up hurting the player... but if you draw the energy out of the crystal and give it a place to go (either a battery or pumped back into your own life energy, etc.) then you can resist attacks of that type of heat energy.  The strength of the field would control how much damage it could absorb and every hit would sap more electric energy to maintain the field.

The formulas and losses will be such that even if you built a battery into your circuit to power the electric field and then fed converted heat energy back into that battery, you still end up with a net loss.  The energy required to maintain a field is always less than the energy you are able to draw out of it.

Furthermore, energy output is exponential to energy absorbed.  So while a field of strength "1" (whatever that means) might stop 1 point of fire damage, it would take a field of strength "4" to stop two points of damage.

These are simple energy flow and conversion circuits and hopefully are easy to imagine laid out on a block-like grid circuit.  Where it really gets interesting is when you start to combine logic gates and other switches to control what's going on.  Add to that the ability to beam energy from one component to another through spirit crystals and you can imagine some interesting configurations.

For example, you can imagine armor that absorbs fire energy as above and sends some of its excess heat energy over to heat energy battery in a wand.  This wand could have a crystal that lights up once the battery is charge to a certain point.  So once you've been shot with enough heat energy then you could shoot some of it back at the guy throwing it at you.  Or your wand could have converted it (at a small loss) to some other type of energy and shoot out lighting bolts or magic missiles or whatever.

Wands are tricky to discuss because they require complex field manipulation and I'm not sure whether this applied to all energies or if they are piggy backed onto shaped gravitational energy.  A beam is easy, similar to a laser.  You have some component or components that turns the beam annular.  Things like magic missile are more difficult to describe as they involve creating one field within another, filling that field with energy, and punching it off.  A minimum of three fields are in effect and only one is a beam.  In Mythruna magic, "magic missile" will not be a trivial thing to make.


I will also add this.  Regardless of how "spells" take shape, there will be no "mana" in the standard RPG sense.  Your life energy is your mana and some subset of that energy is used to maintain your hit points.  So you have excess life energy beyond your physical "life".  If you draw out enough of this for magic then it will start to affect your hit points and how rapidly you recover from fatigue, etc..  Maybe you have some spell that will nearly kill you but it still might be that crucial battle-winner used just at the right time.

And tying "mana" to "life" makes so much sense to me that I'm surprised more games haven't done it.  A really old game Betrayal at Krondor was the first I'd played that did it and it was a really excellent bit of added depth in magic battles.

i'd like to know if the ideas for magic have evolved at all from this post you made in february, Paul. i'd been thinking about what i know of the magic you want to do in mythruna recently and i wasn't totally sure. do you still want to do all this? will it also be something that can be enhanced (as you plan on doing for physical activities like smithing, fletching, etc.)?

Also, can there be very rare NPCs that can give you very powerful and special training (for any skill) that requires late-mid or end game money/items as payment?

[pspeed]

i'd like to know if the ideas for magic have evolved at all from this post you made in february, Paul. i'd been thinking about what i know of the magic you want to do in mythruna recently and i wasn't totally sure. do you still want to do all this? will it also be something that can be enhanced (as you plan on doing for physical activities like smithing, fletching, etc.)?

Also, can there be very rare NPCs that can give you very powerful and special training (for any skill) that requires late-mid or end game money/items as payment?

My thoughts on magic haven't really changed.  I think the craft levels will be in things like gem cutting and stuff.  I also want there to be different levels of packaging and reverse engineering.  So if you buy some cool component you can't just open it up and see what it does without the proper skill to do so without breaking it.  Also, re: packaging, I think higher levels or different sections of the skill tree will control how many components you can fit on a wafer and whether you can stack wafers and stuff.

And yeah, high level skills I think will always be fairly rare to find and the NPC's requirements may vary.

[belgariad87]

i'd like to know if the ideas for magic have evolved at all from this post you made in february, Paul. i'd been thinking about what i know of the magic you want to do in mythruna recently and i wasn't totally sure. do you still want to do all this? will it also be something that can be enhanced (as you plan on doing for physical activities like smithing, fletching, etc.)?

Also, can there be very rare NPCs that can give you very powerful and special training (for any skill) that requires late-mid or end game money/items as payment?

My thoughts on magic haven't really changed.  I think the craft levels will be in things like gem cutting and stuff.  I also want there to be different levels of packaging and reverse engineering.  So if you buy some cool component you can't just open it up and see what it does without the proper skill to do so without breaking it.  Also, re: packaging, I think higher levels or different sections of the skill tree will control how many components you can fit on a wafer and whether you can stack wafers and stuff.

And yeah, high level skills I think will always be fairly rare to find and the NPC's requirements may vary.

Ok, i'd REALLY like there to be many types of gems (i collect gems so the fact that your doing this is like a dream come true) and what exactly do you mean when you say "packaging and reverse engineering?"

[pspeed]

Ok, i'd REALLY like there to be many types of gems (i collect gems so the fact that your doing this is like a dream come true) and what exactly do you mean when you say "packaging and reverse engineering?"

Magic will be like crystal circuits but you have to be able to make the wafers that the circuits are embedded onto.  That's packaging.  Simple packaging skill may only let you make circuits of a certain complexity (small grid).  Advanced packaging may let you make tinier components and stack wafers or whatever.

Reverse engineering is the ability to take apart a pre-existing wafer without destroying it... or being able to pull a magic component from an item without destroying it, etc..

Gems should have different sizes, cuts, and types.  The sizes and cuts all factor into some type of skill.

Unless you just find a place to buy your materials.

[Moonkey]

So, if I cut a gem into a square gem, and cut another gem into a wider square. Would the wider square have a significant difference, or just a slight difference?

[pspeed]

So, if I cut a gem into a square gem, and cut another gem into a wider square. Would the wider square have a significant difference, or just a slight difference?

I suppose it might depend on the purity of the gem and how much power you were trying to run through it.

For things like oval cut diamonds used for storage, size would make a difference on how much you could store in them.

[belgariad87]

Ok, i'd REALLY like there to be many types of gems (i collect gems so the fact that your doing this is like a dream come true) and what exactly do you mean when you say "packaging and reverse engineering?"

Magic will be like crystal circuits but you have to be able to make the wafers that the circuits are embedded onto.  That's packaging.  Simple packaging skill may only let you make circuits of a certain complexity (small grid).  Advanced packaging may let you make tinier components and stack wafers or whatever.

Reverse engineering is the ability to take apart a pre-existing wafer without destroying it... or being able to pull a magic component from an item without destroying it, etc..

Gems should have different sizes, cuts, and types.  The sizes and cuts all factor into some type of skill.

Unless you just find a place to buy your materials.

so we will be making our own circuits in our equipment? sounds kinda complex, i'll probly understand it more once you actually know what you can put in and i can see it. do crystals have to always use up power? also  were you planning on making crystals have like a list of properties to see their size, purity etc?

[pspeed]

so we will be making our own circuits in our equipment? sounds kinda complex, i'll probly understand it more once you actually know what you can put in and i can see it. do crystals have to always use up power? also  were you planning on making crystals have like a list of properties to see their size, purity etc?

You don't have to make your own circuits... you can always buy them or find them as loot.  Somewhere there is a thread where a user called Sunjammer tried to consolidate everything that had been written about magic up to that point.

Yeah, gems will have properties.  I don't yet know how they will be displayed.  Being able to detect all of the properties of a gem is probably a set of skills on its own... otherwise, a player would have to use trial and error and hope they didn't blow something up by accident.

[Iggyjeckel]

in the table of contents i added the "magic" link....it has sunJammers

[belgariad87]

so we will be making our own circuits in our equipment? sounds kinda complex, i'll probly understand it more once you actually know what you can put in and i can see it. do crystals have to always use up power? also  were you planning on making crystals have like a list of properties to see their size, purity etc?

You don't have to make your own circuits... you can always buy them or find them as loot.  Somewhere there is a thread where a user called Sunjammer tried to consolidate everything that had been written about magic up to that point.

Yeah, gems will have properties.  I don't yet know how they will be displayed.  Being able to detect all of the properties of a gem is probably a set of skills on its own... otherwise, a player would have to use trial and error and hope they didn't blow something up by accident.

yes that is where i got the quote in the initial post from, you posted to the thread made by Sunjammer. I read through it before and i could have sworn you didn't go into detail about the circuits...

geez Paul, you want to make everything a skill, you better make the skill system easy to code  i think having skills for most things is good, i just hope you let us help you with them before release so there isn't a bunch of thorough and realistic skills but then theres an obvious skill missing. On second thought, just talk to us about everything!

[pspeed]

yes that is where i got the quote in the initial post from, you posted to the thread made by Sunjammer. I read through it before and i could have sworn you didn't go into detail about the circuits...

geez Paul, you want to make everything a skill, you better make the skill system easy to code  i think having skills for most things is good, i just hope you let us help you with them before release so there isn't a bunch of thorough and realistic skills but then theres an obvious skill missing. On second thought, just talk to us about everything!

I don't remember where I've talked about magic circuits... but I remember even hypothesizing somewhere what the shapes might signify.

Sometimes the skills will just be an on/off feature... ie: they control a "can I do something" check.

Other times, a skill will let you use a tool or object in a new way, ie: it will add a new action to that tool or object.

Skills will not be hard to define, really.  Just a few attributes and a list of prerequisites.  It's the things that use the skill information that could get trickier... like a special crafting bench or whatever.
Skill:
-name
-description
-help screens
-prequisites: Skill[]
-difficulty
-value/worth/cost... some indicator in a game mechanics sense of how rare it should be, etc.

And I decided earlier today that the skills will not be a classic tree, probably.  A single skill will fit into a general category but its prerequisites may span categories.  So you won't necessarily just be able to just expand some "bow making" tree to see what might be available next since any of those children could be depending on other skills, too.  Besides, it becomes difficult to show additions to the tree that way.  So like anything else, you have to seek out the skills or you won't know about them.  From there you can potentially mark something as "desired" and then keep track of the prereqs list a little easier or something.  So the tree is kind of upside down from that perspective.  Hard to explain but it will make more sense in practice.

The category tree just servers for organization at that point... so you can view your skills in a logical break out.

[belgariad87]

I don't remember where I've talked about magic circuits... but I remember even hypothesizing somewhere what the shapes might signify.

Sometimes the skills will just be an on/off feature... ie: they control a "can I do something" check.

Other times, a skill will let you use a tool or object in a new way, ie: it will add a new action to that tool or object.

Skills will not be hard to define, really.  Just a few attributes and a list of prerequisites.  It's the things that use the skill information that could get trickier... like a special crafting bench or whatever.
Skill:
-name
-description
-help screens
-prequisites: Skill[]
-difficulty
-value/worth/cost... some indicator in a game mechanics sense of how rare it should be, etc.

And I decided earlier today that the skills will not be a classic tree, probably.  A single skill will fit into a general category but its prerequisites may span categories.  So you won't necessarily just be able to just expand some "bow making" tree to see what might be available next since any of those children could be depending on other skills, too.  Besides, it becomes difficult to show additions to the tree that way.  So like anything else, you have to seek out the skills or you won't know about them.  From there you can potentially mark something as "desired" and then keep track of the prereqs list a little easier or something.  So the tree is kind of upside down from that perspective.  Hard to explain but it will make more sense in practice.

The category tree just servers for organization at that point... so you can view your skills in a logical break out.

Sounds about right. I wouldn't want just a huge unorganized list of text, but i also wouldn't necessarily want a skyrim "constellation skill tree". just simple categories and a description of each skill would be nice, as far as a skill screen would be concerned. I definitely like the bringing together of skills as a prerequisite. it just gives off a very broad feel to how the skills fit in the game world.

When you say "difficulty" and "value/worth/cost", what exactly is the difference in these? you say the the value is the variable for rarity, i understand, but then what will difficulty represent?

[pspeed]

When you say "difficulty" and "value/worth/cost", what exactly is the difference in these? you say the the value is the variable for rarity, i understand, but then what will difficulty represent?

A general relative skill level.  I think mostly this will be used for training levels but may have other uses.  Perhaps there is also a primary/secondary stat requirement that is affected by skill level.  So no matter how much training you have you can never be a "insert dexterity requiring skill here" if you have a super low dexterity.  Or something like that.

The difficulty of a skill is different than how rare it is to find a trainer.

[belgariad87]

When you say "difficulty" and "value/worth/cost", what exactly is the difference in these? you say the the value is the variable for rarity, i understand, but then what will difficulty represent?

A general relative skill level.  I think mostly this will be used for training levels but may have other uses.  Perhaps there is also a primary/secondary stat requirement that is affected by skill level.  So no matter how much training you have you can never be a "insert dexterity requiring skill here" if you have a super low dexterity.  Or something like that.

The difficulty of a skill is different than how rare it is to find a trainer.

so there won't be any stat requirements, but there will be stats?

[pspeed]

When you say "difficulty" and "value/worth/cost", what exactly is the difference in these? you say the the value is the variable for rarity, i understand, but then what will difficulty represent?

A general relative skill level.  I think mostly this will be used for training levels but may have other uses.  Perhaps there is also a primary/secondary stat requirement that is affected by skill level.  So no matter how much training you have you can never be a "insert dexterity requiring skill here" if you have a super low dexterity.  Or something like that.

The difficulty of a skill is different than how rare it is to find a trainer.

so there won't be any stat requirements, but there will be stats?

There will be stats.  They may be requirements... or they may just control how affective the skill is or something.  There will definitely be stats, though.