Sunday, 4th March 2018, 01:49 by jeremygurr
Concerning the spell system changes I mentioned in the "crazy future ideas" doc: This is the most extreme change I've considered yet. For the moment, it's likely to just be a crazy change that only I will care about and experiment with, and most others would not want to play with that option on. But I'd love to figure out a way to make it fun for others too.
The basic idea is that spells have a "low level" form. Instead of just pressing z+{Spell letter} to cast a spell, you would press Z+{long stream of complex commands to alter the fabric of the magical space-time continuum around the player}. Of course, you could assign complex spell sequences to a single "spell" or even just use a macro to put it in for you, which would function very similarly to the current system. For example, say you wanted a spell that randomly teleported one enemy in your LOS to a random safe spot adjacent to you. You could invoke this spell like this:
Z // to start a low level spell
t // to choose the translocation school of magic, which is essentially the "base spell" of moving some set of things from somewhere to somewhere else
s // alter how the spell chooses it's source (default is a random subject adjacent to the player)
r // boost range of source choice from adjacent to player to a radius of 3 centered on the player
r // boost range of source choice from radius of 3 to full LOS
s // exclude self from random source choice
f // exclude friendly creatures from random source choice
i // exclude items from random source choice
{enter} // end source choice modification
t // alter where the spell teleports it's subject (default is random location 1 space away from where it was)
cs // change center of teleportation target to self
{enter} // end target location modification
s // alter the spell core attributes (cost, difficulty, loudness, duration etc.)
pp // increase the power level twice, making it much harder to resist (but also harder and more expensive to cast)
{enter} // end spell core modification
{enter} // finish spell definition, and cast spell
Complex? Absolutely. Will anyone want to seriously use it other than me? Who knows. I'm trying to capture what it would feel like to be a "real" wizard, having to consider all kinds of tradoffs and available options in the world of magic as each spell is being cast. And of course give the player the possibility of creating new complex spells that no other player has ever thought of before, in a way far beyond what games like Morrowind, with their very narrow set of spell parameters that you could adjust, have done.
The interface would need to provide excellent feedback so the player knows where they are at in the spell casting process, and how much that spell currently costs. The player will be able to press backspace to undo the last part of the spell if it ends up costing a bit too much, or if they mistyped.
But it would be cool if there was a way for it to seamlessly integrate with the current system, allowing players more power if they want to pay the price in complexity, or to just use the premade spells that currently exist, or look up "recipes" online that others have found particularly effective. All existing spells would need to be rewritten in terms of this lower level spell language. Of course it's probably impractical for any system like this to perfectly match the premade spells, so some concessions will likely need to be made on both sides. But i think we could end up with something that fits about 90-95% of the spell quite closely.
I think an advanced player using this would have spell "preambles" set up in macros that would put in the common conditions that they would often put together for a wide variety of spells. Then the player would only need to activate the preamble, and then put in the specific details that remain, and the spell is done.
Multiple spell schools can be combined of course to provide more complex effects, like setting an "inner flame" on an enemy, and then teleporting them to a location where there are many other enemies, and then setting up a translocation vortex that keeps those enemies teleporting back to that same location repeatedly, until the inner flame creature explodes.
Of course, each alteration woven into a spell increases it's cost and difficulty level, making the more complex forms unreachable to all but the most powerful of mages. A sufficiently advanced mage could greatly reduce the time it takes to cast a spell, reduce the amount of body motion required to cast it (thus reducing armor penalties), reduce the sound made by casting the spell to nothing (enabling the spell to be cast even when silenced), etc.