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[Angle]

Well, for combination materials its all one material, so it either burns or doesn't. I also have a class called CompositeItem, which is for items made of other items. So if you have a sword with a wooden handle, the wooden handle might get burnt off, leaving only the sword behind. I' leaving most of the CompositeItem functionality for later, and just implementing the SimpleItem right now.

[Xantalos]

Holy crap PTW.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I have a quick question: How is the spellcasting UI going to work?
On a similar note, how will you learn the words? Will you have a book listing all the words like the original, or will you have a journal with a couple dozen random ones and you'll need to discover the rest, or will you need to assemble the whole Perplexicon from scratch?

[Angle]

The spellcasting UI will work by opening a text prompt and letting you type out the words. Later, I'll let you add actions like pointing, r visualizing, or willing, etc. You can save spells, so that you don't have to type the whole thing out each time.

You'll have a journal with a few dozen random ones, and you get the others by killing the other characters and taking theirs, or by discovering them in the arena.

[Gamerlord]

PTW FOREVER.

[Angle]

I need a good system to use for the measurements of stats in my code, by which I mean density, mass, volume, etc. I'm thinking of using the metric system, probably in milli for most things. Any thoughts?

[flabort]

  Milli might be good, but it might also result in lots of large numbers representing small things - ever try measuring a bus in millimeters?
Centi is bigger, but still plenty small enough to allow for small things - and if you really need to measure in millimeters or something (summon a glass mosquito), there's always decimal points.

But then, I know code gets finicky when you try to introduce decimal points.

[GalenEvil]

For a sample of maximum volumes, since those tend to increase the most rapidly:
* using a 32-bit integer value
  - Milli scale : max Volume = 4.295 m^3 -- a 1.6255 m per dimension cube
  - Centi scale : max Volume = 4294.967 m^3 -- a 16.255 m per dimension cube
* using a 64-bit integer value
  - Milli scale : max Volume = 18446744073.710 m^3 -- a 2642.246 m per dimension cube (bigger than you'll probably ever need)

If you don't plan to have anything larger than the 32-bit Centi scale, but no smaller than 1 centi unit / dimension, then I'd say go with 32-bit Centi since it will give you a good range without having to muck about with decimals too much. If you need high accuracy for large values then you may need to use the 64-bit Milli value.

Density is pretty easy, with the densest known element is Osmium at 22.570 kg/m^3 (Wiki Source). Converting from kg->mg, to keep with the Milli scale, would stay within the maximum value for 64-bit integers by a wide margin.

I'm being a little lazy and not doing the full conversion thing for each of the scales, but the results should come up similar. For any solid volume, up to the maximum volumes specified above, that is made up of known elements or materials you should be fine. If accuracy is your goal and you don't care about dealing with very large numbers and a larger memory footprint then I'll throw my vote at a 64-bit Milli scale model for everything

Hope that wasn't too long-winded, and is accurate. Running on a little too little sleep right now :S

[Angle]

I've gotten the stats of items programmed, now I want to start moving the definitions and such into raw text files, in order to reduce clutter in my main program, and to make testing them easier. Do you guys have any advice for encoding styles? I was figuring something along the lines of:

Code: [Select]

ItemDefinition: "Sword", '/' {
"Volume: 5.0";
"Mass: Volume * Density";
}

Where ItemDefinition tells the reader that this will describe the definition of an Item, "Sword" is the name, '/' is the character for the item, and all the stuff between the {} are it's stats. the first one is a simple NumericStat, which is just a number. The second is more complicated, it's a DerivedStat, which is equal to the stated formula. My main question here is: Is this encoding a clear, simple style, with minimal possibility for confusion on the hand of either the user or the reader? and of course, any other input you have is welcomed.

[Parisbre56]

I'd recommend something like this:

Code: [Select]

ItemDefinition:{
[NAME|"Sword"|"Swords"|"Swordy"] %Comment: Swordy for a beam made out of swords.
[SYMBOL|'/']
[VOLUME |5.0]
[MASS|volume * density]
[COMBO_NAME|other_name + "blade"] %For example: gauntlet+sword="Gauntletblade"
}
I'm guessing it doesn't matter whether or not the letters are capital outside of strings, right?
I used [ ] instead of " " because the first allows you to nest them and the second is usually associated with strings.

[Angle]

Name and symbol are stored differently from the other stats: they have their own variables, while the rest end up in a HashMap. Do you think I should give them their own syntax?

[Parisbre56]

Name and symbol are stored differently from the other stats: they have their own variables, while the rest end up in a HashMap. Do you think I should give them their own syntax?

Yeah, the way you have them makes sense now, since every item should have them. I just did it like that for looks, so that all variables have the same style.

This is a design choice really more than anything. As long as you can clearly state what you need to state, there shouldn't really be a problem and you shouldn't dwell too much on it. I just suggested using [ ] instead of " " because there's less room for ambiguity and they work better in text editors in my opinion.

Just out of curiosity, are you going to use one symbol for each item (or group of items)? And then have a color be picked based on material?

[Angle]

So something like this, then:

Code: [Select]

ItemDefinition: ["Sword"|"Swords"|"Sword"] ['/'] {
["Volume" : 5.0]
["Mass" : "Volume" * "Density"]
}

//note: I like sword as an adjective and a piece of a compound name better.

Though maybe I should add back in the [NAME: ] and [SYMBOL: ] declarations, just to make reading it clearer. And maybe cut out the { and }? They don't really serve a purpose here.

Just out of curiosity, are you going to use one symbol for each item (or group of items)? And then have a color be picked based on material?

Yep, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

[mastahcheese]

This. Looks. Amazing.

Will it be turn based or real time?

Also will it have multi-player?

[Angle]

It will be turn based. I'd kinda like to make it multi-player at some point in the future, though it'd be real awkward multi-player- you'd end up taking like ten seconds a turn, and in a Roguelike, that means it'll take forever to get anywhere interesting. In addition, games'll probably run real long, which makes getting people together for a full run real interesting. Eh, I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.