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[Demon]

It seems to me that having your skin pierced in any way causes death no matter what.  I was doing some tests yersteday and at one point I was hit in the foot with a short sword.  I had skin, muscle, toe skin, toe muscle, and toe bone damage.  I used the travel interface to escape right away, and switched to real time and left the room.  When I came back a few minuites later, my character had gone into shock.  Every time I had any injury that was slashing it was fatal.

I'd really like some scenerios to be added along with the next release, would that take too long??  Basically I want to choose two species to have a battle.  Twenty or so would statr in a rough line some distance away from each other, and you would pick a side to be on.  Then you and your forces would charge each other and fight until no one was left.

When are you adding skills like first aid??  It'd be awfuly nice to be able to give/recieve aid to a person in shock...

How is magic gonna work?  Are you just going to cast spells without ilmit, whenever you want?  I know that you wouldnt stoop to a magic point system, but there is oging to be some limit, right?  I was thinking that the more you cast the more you get stunned and/ or sleepy.  If you cast too much you could loose blood, have little wounds open all over your body, pass out/ go into shock, get hungry, etc.  What are your current plans on that?

[Toady One]

I think it might be that bleeding is too extreme now, and it won't tell you about it unless you are really spraying.  A character will only go into shock if they have suffered blood loss (something like 25% of their blood).  The problem is either that regular wounds bleed too much, or arteries are hit too often.  At least this is a balance issue instead of an outright bug, so far as I know.

The only difficulty with scenarios is making sure my code to load/save creatures from their entities won't interfere.  If creatures without entities are just placed on the map, there might be difficulties trying to shelve them if you move away.  That should be negligible though...  the only other problem would be that any time spent on scenarios would be wasted in some sense, since they will definitely be deleted later when the game progresses.  I'll see what I can do after I finish the core elements going into this release.  I mean, it would be cool to have some armies attack each other...  I'd also have to work on the AI a bit -- right now I think it just works like:
a) Your species -- follow you
b) Not your species -- attack you
They don't think about other creatures.  I have to do that anyway, though.

First aid isn't in the plan?  I must have missed it...  it was there before.  Whoops.  I'll find some place to put that in.  It was supposed to be added with natural healing (which is in)...  okay, I'll put it in under corpse processing perhaps.  Since they are roughly equivalent...

I think I went into most or all of these magic questions in the supernatural section of the future pages.  The plans are fairly detailed already.  Like anything else, there won't be one set way of paying for magic.  A magical art will be much like the weapon/unarmed styles we have now, in the sense that they have access to certain effects (like techniques).  Spells are set up like mini-programs, and each effect is paid for by some cost which is specificied by the art.  For instance, a necromancer might be able to summon spirits with his/her own blood, while his/her death spells might cannibalize his/her own limbs...  when the game constructs the arts, it will try as best it can to make sure things are balanced, by assigning different values to cost, effects, side effects, etc. etc.  In the end, there will probably be some abuse though.  For example, if you can regrow lost limbs with one spell (that consumes a reagent say), and kill creatures by eating up your limbs, then the spell cost for a death spell would be the regrow reagent rather than the limb (casting the spells in succession).

[ February 01, 2002: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Demon]

Yeah, I read that before in the magic section, but I was thinking it might be outdated...   :roll:

Anyhow!  Is clothing basically going to be another few layers of tissue in the correct places, or is it more complex than that?  I would think that if you put in some simple dimensions to test how it fits and then made some artificial body levels (-1 through -15?) then it would be fairly easy to code...  Am I not grasping the complexity or are you doing something different?

[Toady One]

I guess the only time the future section will get outdated is right before the thing is about to be added...  but magic in particular is basically planned out.  I just need to make a list of stock spells that I'd like to have, and see if they are covered by my list of effects.  If not, then I need to expand the list, and so on.  In general, magic needs to be as versatile is possibility.  In a perfect implementation, I'd like anything to be able to be a cost, and anything to be an effect.  Certainly something way beyond just mana or stamina points...  and magic runes/syllables...  and books...

Clothing is an item like any other -- that is the underlying structure.  I'm hoping the same function I currently use to damage sword blades can be used on armor.  Clothing won't act exactly like tissue -- it will absorb some of the force, and change damage types i.e. if you don't penetrate the armor, you can still transmit bludgeoning damage.  That way, somebody wearing a helmet can still get their skull smashed by a sword, even if the helmet just dents but doesn't break entirely from the strike.  I already have programmed (from a previous clothing incarnation) clothing layers, so that it keeps track which clothing item is on top (for each body part -- that way you can tuck shirts in, etc. -- I could even have cultures that give positive/negative reactions to a player that is nicely tucked in...  he he he...).  In fact, a lot of the clothing groundwork is already in, but clothing objects were removed a while ago due to some complications.

How clothes fit is kind of annoying actually...  one way I guess would be to make dimensions as you say and test vs. size...  there's also the problem of connections.  For example, in a glove, you want each finger to go into the appropriate hole, and the hand to occupy the base position, and possibly part of the lower arm...  that's harder to test for.  In addition, I might contemplate something I've been calling "cling"...  think along the lines of a medusa-style hybrid with a fat snake like body.  This creature could wear a loose belt, simply because it can't fall off over the fatter snake body.  This is overzealous complicated maybe, but there are some more basic instances where it comes up...  bracelets/anklets and necklaces come to mind.  Then there are things like cloaks...  and capes...  and quivers/baldrics...  the random creature bodies also add a messy element.

Clothing is a nightmare.  I have a number of planning pages with some other complications, but I have to dig them up...  uck... I'll deal with it when I get there.

[Demon]

If you could shove in a blood-o-meter in with the next release I would be forever grateful!  Right next to the air/water/etc/ could be your blood in your body, along with bleeding rates (say, a darker color for how much blood you'll be missing in 1 min).  If you could take the bleeding rates down a notch, that'd be preferable too!      
When you said earlier that maybe arteries are hit too often:  I dont think thats the problem.  When an artery is hit it is shown in the wounds chart as "vena cova" and others, right?  Because I hardly ever had injuries like that and I still always bled to death.

So, when the next realease is out we'll finally have skulls??

[Toady One]

I can set up a blood meter where the thirst meter is for now, for debugging -- but in the end I'm not sure I should have one.  I mean, we can't tell how much blood is in our bodies, we just feel dizzy and get paler.  But it is annoying not to know...  maybe a dizziness indicator will be sufficient in the end.

The aorta/vena cova are just the largest blood vessels in the creature bodies -- so large that they are their own body parts.  Other arties are just treated like regular critical hits that make the wound bleed more, but exist in all appendages (so if a wound is "bleeding" in the status screen, it might be trickling, or spraying arterial blood -- it doesn't tell you the difference yet).

Yes, there will without a shadow of a doubt be skulls in the next release.  And ribs!  Then it will be lower body wounds that start getting on peoples' nerves.  Right now damage to the lower body entrails kills a creature fairly quickly -- that will be slowed down later when I add infections.  Maybe in time to get magical healing...  without it you'll probably go septic and die, but over a few hours or days.  I had something like this in DragSlay, where wounds would get infected and start oozing pus, and then the player would begin to catch diseases.  In any case, dragons won't be as susceptible to death-by-Norwegian-rat as they are now.  Because the game doesn't take into account the fact that the dragon's head is most often out of reach of a rat's jaws, there will still be blinding-by-Norwegian-rat.  At least that is more forgiveable than the current braining.

I should know by Sunday what weird form the humans will take.  As I said in the update, I just need to set up a few more parameters, and then prepare creature descriptions.  There will probably be a few bugs to fix, too, but the next release isn't far away now.  I'm also planning to add random races (that are different with each world), so that we can test the full variety of descriptions (and not just the same few monsters over and over again).

[Captain_Action]

I don't know how much you are into Roleplayings games such as D&D, Toady. But the realativly new system known as Hackmaster uses a rather interesting critical hit system to pick where the critical lands. It allows ANY body part to be hit but keeps the size differences between attacker and defender noticible. It does this by change the # of dice rolled to shift the bell curve up or down the chart.

An example to make this more clearer (hopefully)  

Assume you have a hit chart with 100 places. with 100 being the top of the head and 1 being the tip of the toe.

Human attacker vs Human defender
1d100

Oger attacker vs Human defender
(1d20 + 1d20 + 1d20 + 1d20 + 1d20 + 1d4) -5

It's easy to see for the Oger to hit a toe it would have to roll a 1 on all 6 dice! But is very likely to roll around the 40s-60s some where on the chest and shoulders.

I'm sure you can come up with a better system than this.  

[Toady One]

I used to be into Roleplaying games, but I don't have much time these days, and my old group is scattered across the country, unfortunately...

Right now my attack placements are Very simple-minded.  It just adds up the sizes of the parts, and rolls a die that has that many sides.  So if you had say a head (size 100) and a body size (1000) and two legs (size 500 each), then the game would roll a 2100 sided die, as follows:

1-100 = head
101-1100 = body
1101-1600 = first leg
1601-2100 = second leg.

Once it hits a body part, it then checks for "extra" body part hits (fingers, eyes, etc.) and assesses in the same way whether you actually only hit a finger or the whole hand, etc.

There are a number of modifications I was thinking of...  first of all, if you have as in your example an ogre vs. a human, and the ogre attacks by biting, then its head should be more accessible for the human attacker if it has just biten or is in the process of biting.  In the game, this would just add a multiplier to the apparent size of the ogre's head, at least relative to attack rolls by the ogre's bite targets.  For size differences in general, there are some complications with the creature bodies -- since they aren't all humanoid, and they also have stances (if they stand on their hands for instance, then hands should be like feet in attack placement rolls!).  Hmmm...  unless a titan/giant is stupid, its head should never be accessible to a human attacker...  biting dragons are a different matter.

I don't know.  As you can see, I still have to codify these things, but I'd at least like to account for stances as well as size differences.  That would be enough for a while.  In the end it will be set up almost exactly as you describe, with the body parts arranged in a list from top to bottom (depending on the stance), and then weightings given to each part depending on its size and the size difference of the attacker and defender.  I guess that means the only complicated things now are making the top-to-bottom list from the stance, and determining size differences (a giant slithering serpent is still low to the ground, so humans should be able to strike it on the head regularly, but if it lifts its upper body up it might be able to bite a giant's head).  Hmmm...  interesting problem, anyway...  maybe I'll insert this into the plan after I redo the movement options screen (when I re-add stances).

[Captain_Action]

LOL, I knew you had a great system already, I just misidentified the the problem. (Stances)

Maybe an height varible for each body part can be used? That way a hit-chart can be built "on the fly" based on the stances being used by both creatures in combat.

This would also make certain weapons VERY useful in hunting giants. Like a pike for example. The pike would give enough reach to poke the giant in the head instead of poking it/him/her in the guts with a long sword. a ranged weapon if fired with percision would VERY nasty!

BTW, the human-on-his-hands-attack-with-his-legs would be perfect for an evil jester!

[Toady One]

Ranged weapons will be very nasty -- reading Tolkien I remember that half of the good heroes died getting shot in the eye by arrows crossing rivers and so on.  It probably won't be much different here.  Missile deflection magic might be popular where it is available.

Hmmm...  strangely it seems that holding the tallest posture would give you an advantage under this system, since large creatures can hit all of your parts anyway, and holding yourself as tall as possible might save your head from attack -- this runs counter to most of what I know about fight stances, since lower stances are more stable, and holding a lower stance than your opponent allows you to more easily compromise their balance.  I think I might implement something like this -- you can hold a stance that stretches out your top-to-bottom hit tables, but you give yourself a greater chance of being toppled over.  That seems sensible enough.  So fighting human to human it would be advantageous to assume a low "fighting" posture, whereas fighting a kobold would force a decision about stance, high, middle or low.