> 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.
>
First and foremost, I have never seen a text-based system where
lag didn't intrude. Whhen using programs with custom clients, I'm sure
there's a better way than sending out packets of quite the same size +
shape of circlemud w/ telnet. That's why there's not alot of games like
tekken or mortal combat that work over the internet. That's why games
that involve lots of information, like Quake or Unreal, rely nearly
entirely on net speed. Try playing someone logged in via a modem while
you're running the server.
So, lets just realize that there's NO way to do real time control
of a text based combat system. People have trouble enough already trying
to enter in a new command between each 2 second pulse, much less reacting
to 6-12 lines of text and typing out a series of commands to cause any
sort of reaction.
So, if you need to make something unique, there's 2 wayhs, right
out, to do it;
1. Percentages
This is how I'm doing simple mob activities, just a list
of skills, and a percentage of how often they'll fire off. For players,
maybe add hhthe ability to defeine skill/spells based on healthh, like
strong, normal, weak. Pretty easy.
2. Script syhstem
Make up yhour own scripting system so you can respond to
every event ever made. This would also make things like zmud and the sort
even out vs. telnet-only players. Of course, you'd have even MORE
examination about skills/spells/abilities because _everything_ would
depend on that timing. On the neat side though, it'd make it so you could
.. for example, use different techniques against strong, fire spell using,
warrior based mobs than you would against clerical-based pc's with
powerful weapons and not very much armor, while you're very weak but hhigh
on mana, and close to leveling. Etc. I think this is overkill for a mud,
and too difficult to learn in time for new people to enjoy the game too
much.
Personally, I like hthe event syhstem bit, where you 'enter' a
command every _x_ seconds, weapon, skill, ability type all make
differences in speed, etc.
Anyway, you may want to look at the AvP (aliens vs. Predator) mud
which has an interesting combat syhstem, though sorta futuristic.
PhjD
ps - sorry about the extra 'h's, my keyboard is screwed up, and since I
type faster than it appears on the screen, I didn't bother to fix it.
I'll fix the keyboard later. It's easier than retyping text.
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