Monday, 13th June 2011, 13:28 by Stormfox
Going back to the quantum mechanical roguelike concept, I did an unhealthy amount of thinking about this over the weekend, and it would put an interesting viewpoint (almost wrote "spin" there, but that's one of your attributes as a subatomic particle ;) ) on some traditional roguelike mechanics.
As a particle, you have rest mass, which represents your experience level, or some other "base" level from which certain combat attributes are derived.
You also have speed. At zero speed, you're fully at rest...but you also have no potential to do anything, and so you're effectively dead. So your life is directly tied to your speed. (And that's speed, not velocity or momentum...let's not get the vector math in here yet.) This means that you can't just "stop" and rest or wait for things to come toward you.
Collisions with other particles influence the energy of both colliding particles, dependent on their mass and speed (therefore momentum). There's the bump-attack model right there. If the combined energy of the collision isn't enough to overcome any repulsive forces that are in play, the particles bounce off of each other. Otherwise they combine into something bigger. If you think slime creatures combining are bad, imagine the shock and horror when you see three little quarks coming your way and they suddenly merge into a proton or neutron that is a lot bigger than you.
That's where the real potential for interesting play mechanics comes in. This neatly ties up the issue of a strong actor (player or monster) being able to be nibbled to death by popcorn opponents -- small particles would have to pick up a LOT of energy from somewhere to have a hope of influencing the speed of a big particle. It also makes it more difficult for higher level actors to heal once they've taken some damage and lost energy -- more massive particles need more energy to be accelerated to a given speed. In the absence of environmental energy sources, the best way to gain energy is to bounce off of things that are a little bigger than you or a little faster than you, but not too much. So unlike conventional roguelikes (except the Angband family), your best opponents are things that are slightly beyond your level.
Ranged attacks would involve sacrificing some energy to emit photons, or sacrificing mass to emit particles. Either cast from your hit points, or cast from your base attributes.
You REALLY want to stay out in the open, unlike most roguelikes where walls are your best friends. Collisions with walls drain energy for no gain. At least when you hit another particle, you might absorb it, or (if it's slightly above your level) you'll actually come out ahead in the energy department, albeit going in a completely different direction.
That's all that I'm remembering right now...
You fall off the wall. You have a feeling of ineptitude.
- For this message the author Stormfox has received thanks:
- Grimm
) on some traditional roguelike mechanics.