On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, David Cole wrote:
> Many thanks for the info on st_cmp and the prompt situation :)
Also, George pointed out that I'm a moron. CircleMUD does include a
function for string abbreviation matches: is_abbrev(). Curse you, o'
failing memory.
> Agility is basicly, in a, sense going to take dex's place, minus the
> movement point section. Dex will mainly be used to get the players
> movement points at creation and bonus movement points during level's.
Consider renaming Dexterity to Endurance/Stamina. Dexterity means speed
and skill in handling things, which matches fairly closely with the
definition of Agility and not at all with your application of it.
Re Design Questions: You should always write two answers to your design
questions; once as the creator, when the idea is exiciting, novel, and,
most importantly, yours, and again as the devil's advocate ("player").
Your players are some or all of the following at any given moment within
the game: dumb, jaded, cynical, antagonistic, mean, confused, lost,
illiterate, blind, single-minded.[1] All of your ideas should take a good
pummeling from this, lose some of the fat, etc. If you have an idea that
is apparently so good a player could not possibly exploit it or dislike
it, dismiss it out of hand. An idea that bright is obviously blinding you
from its ugliness.
Re Stat Systems: A design I'm interested in is as follows. There are Two
Main Categories of statistics, the Physical and the Mental. Each is
broken up into four stats:
Speed (Raw speed, for unskilled actions.)
Dexterity (Skilled speed.)
Power ("Strength".)
Constitution (Health/Endurance/etc.)
You can basically see how everything works from this. Each stat has a
specific, but useful application in the game that is immediate and
obvious. For instance,
Mental Speed (e.g., Simple casting, recognition.)
Mental Dexterity (e.g., Complex casting, learning/wisdom.)
Mental Power (e.g., Spell power, intelligence.)
Mental Constitution (e.g., Spirit, Drive, Willpower, Mana.)
Physical Speed (e.g., Quickness, dodge, run.)
Physical Dexterity (e.g., Adroitness, lock-picking, martial arts.)
Physical Power (e.g., Strength.)
Physical Constitution (e.g., Health, endurance, stamina.)
This system is easy for players to understand and grasp. Many higher
level quantities will need to be derived from the lower-level ones. The
effectiveness of practicing, for instance, might be a combination of all
four mental attributes (or you may prefer just using Mental Dexterity [MD]
directly). Charisma might be a combination of MD, MC, and PC (i.e., we
define charisma as a function of wisdom, willpower, fitness)... so forth.
> [... snip pfile stuff ...]
Are you not writing them, then? If not, that's certainly your problem.
If so, ensure that you're writing them correctly. I don't know anything
about the specific format expected in the ASCII pfiles, so I'll remain
vague rather than mislead you (further).
> Any ideas?
Whoever dates Nicole Kidman after Tom Cruise sure does have some small
shoes to fill...
-dak: Or maybe that's not the kind of idea you were looking for?
[1] Not to say that every player is this all the time. Just that most are
at one time or another, although they usually are not (unless you're
attracting that sort for some unfortunate reason).
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