Ok I'm going to throw this question out there because I've been considering
and trying various things but haven't come up with anything really useful.
It's not specific to experienced coders, or even to the Circle codebase, but
because I run a Circle derivative and you are all my favourite people (ahem)
I put this to you:
Has anyone contrived (|| seen || conceived) a completely new and
innovative system to imitate physical combat?
The following do not count: roundless combat, limb-based damage, a system
which requires a player to enter a command for each strike, or other
"common" implementations.
Ideally, a few things should be considered: 1. does player (as in the
real-life person) skill/experience affect the outcome? 2. do character (the
in-game virtual person) stats/skills/equipment affect the outcome?
(hopefully, to a lesser extent than you will find now) 3. to what extent
can lag affect the outcome? (the less, the better)
To strike a balance between lag and a player's skill in manipulating
his/her character in combat is a difficult thing to do, since the terms
"reflexes" and "skill" seem to go conceptually (loosely) hand in hand, but
RPGs (and MUDs in particular) are generally not the place for "reflexes",
and instead rely on a player's knowledge of the game's mechanic and
optimization of certain variables prior to initiating combat. I am curious
to know whether it is possible to stray slightly from this traditional
system to something more "fast-paced" (and no, super-fast scroll does not
count hehe), if you will, which requires a player's full attention to be
successful or stay alive. To put it a bit differently -- how to dispose of
"AFK fighting". Whether or not this is feasible on a text-based game I am
not totally sure of, but I thought I'd get some ideas people might have come
up with.
--
Btw, I read some emails from the list a couple days ago about classless
systems, but haven't had net access to respond promptly. Anyway, I've
implemented something similar to what Patrick had in mind about skill
trees/spheres, so if anyone who is looking at implementing something like
that or is interested, you're welcome to drop by: 24.113.153.23 4000
(...subtle attempt at advertising? No way! *hum*)
Rooks
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