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[darkpaladin109]

ptw, definitely very interested! Is this previously just a forum game or is there anything else? I'm very intrigued and apparently I cant find anything else.

Yep, just a very, very fun forum game that came to an end due to the number of people playing (there was no waitlist). You should read it, if you have the time, if only for the absurdity and awesomeness it contains (Beam of Explosive Blackholes was a spell you could do for example).

I think piecewise published a more "official" perplexicon rulebook a while back that describes, enhances and offers variations to the original perplexicon system (search for Perpublicon). There are also several games based on the system (search for Toaster's "The pit of magic").

There0s also the currently running Tribulations in Magic, so you could join that if you're interested.

[Angle]

Does anyone know of a good scripting language for use with java? I've heard lua is good.

[Angle]

I've gone ahead and used Groovy, which works quite well. I can dynamically load scripts which use the java code I've already written.

Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to do combat and damage. I don't just want to use HP, not even just for different limbs, because I want being stabbed in the leg to be meaningfully different from having a huge burn on the leg, but I don't want things to be too complicated. And I want to have it dynamically figure out the properties of weapons, such that if you make Giant Lightweight Steel Sword, tie it to the end of a pole, and use the whole things as a halberd, it can figure out how that works.

So things are moving slow, but once I get past this hill, things should be much easier.

[flabort]

Borrow some code from Toady?
Your desired damage system sounds much like DF's damage system. At least on the receiving end...
The delivery end is much different, of course.

[Angle]

Yeah, that sounds like good advice. I'll try it out.

[Angle]

Alright, so for the moment I'm thinking the relevant variables for melee weapons are Contact Area, Penetration, Mechanical Advantage, and Sharpness. Does this sound about right?

[Parisbre56]

Alright, so for the moment I'm thinking the relevant variables for melee weapons are Contact Area, Penetration, Mechanical Advantage, and Sharpness. Does this sound about right?

What is mechanical advantage? Chainsaws?
What's the difference between sharpness and penetration?

[Arx]

Mechanical advantage is how much leverage you have, I'd guess, although chainsaws are an interesting spin on it.
Sharpness is how sharp something is, penetration is how deeply you can stab.

Those sound fine to me.

[Angle]

Arx got it right- Mechanical Advantage is indeed how much leverage you can exert, or how much the weapon multiples the natural force of your muscles, sharpness determines how easily something cuts, and penetration determines how deep something can cut (or stab).

[flabort]

So if an attack were Contact area 0.1, Sharpness 0.5, Mechanical Advantage 20, Penetration 5, where an unarmed punch with average stats is 1 0 1 1...

[Angle]

Mechanical Advantage 20 means you can hit about twenty times as hard, while the tiny contact area means you encounter very little resistance. The sharpness is relatively low, but with so much force and so little area, that probably doesn't make much difference. It might mean that instead of penetrating an object, you shatter it- or your weapon. Penetration 5 means the distance you can penetrate is relatively low, so the low sharpness might be in your favor- makes it more likely you'll shatter things. That'd be good against large brittle targets, or against small squishy ones. Non-brittle Non-Squishy ones would be a problem. If you ran itno a Rubber Blob, or something, that you couldn't cut or shatter, it'd be a real pain.

The exact calculations depend on the defensive stats of the materials, of course. I'm not sure what to do for defensive properties. I considered just making off with the ones Toady uses, but the ones involving edge protection don't quite make sense to me. The only thing I can think of to track there is "How easy something is to cut", but there are three values.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Blunt Protection

• Impact yield: how easily things are bent
• Impact fracture: how easily things are shattered
• Impact strain at yield: How much things bend when they are bent

Edge Protection

• Shear yield
• Shear fracture
• Shear strain at yield

I might also want additional values? I'm not sure yet.

[Lost in Nowhere]

I can see what you mean about the edge protection values - they clearly have to do with how easily it tears, but the difference between shear yield and shear fracture (or, for that matter, what they are to begin with) is very ambiguous.

[Angle]

Tearing! I didn't think of that. Though yeah, what difference in conditions does it take to tear something as opposed to shattering or cutting it?

I should also go ahead and start filling in the placeholder values with actual data. I think I'm going to go ahead and take GalenEvils advice and use 32 bit integers on the Centi scale, at least for the moment. If they prove inadequate, I can switch over to 64 bit milli.

[Angle]

Do you guys think I'm making things too complicated here? I think I might be. I dunno.

[Parisbre56]

Do you guys think I'm making things too complicated here? I think I might be. I dunno.

I don't think there's a problem. It all depends on how versatile and how in depth you want your system to be and how much you are willing to work for it.
I mean, if you wanted, you could just use HP and have the weapon type/material simply modify things like damage, crit chance and the ability to induce various status effects. But the more complicated the system the closer it can stick to the original and the more versatile it can become.