I tried slither.io today and got up to rank two. Used name Eater of Stars.
Spread that quality ER propaganda
In any case, I've been thinking of tags for body part legos. Obviously not final, just current thoughts.
[Grasp]Designates that the body part in question can hold things. A type of function tag, anything with this tag is considered a functional part. Hands, tentacles, prehensile tails, even mouths get this tag. Some will require that the part is at the end of a limb to work, others will not. Replacing your limbs with howitzers is fun and all but good luck getting up that ladder or holding a key or something. Yah can't hug your children with nuclear arms, man.
[End]This one designates that this part has to be at the end of a branch. Which seems limiting at first glance but actually isn't as limiting as you'd expect once you get your head around how I visualize body plans. For instance, when we look at a normal human body, I see a central bit with 4 limbs and two ends. The ends are the head, and what we call the "Gut" but it would really encompass anything from about the diaphragm down. This gut part is an end bit with two new branches splitting off it. Like this:
HEAD
|
HAND-
LOWER ARM-
UPPER ARM-
CHEST-
UPPER ARM-
LOWER ARM-
HAND |
FOOT-
LOWER LEG-
UPPER LEG-
GUT-
UPPER LEG-
LOWER LEG-
FOOTLooking at it like this, you can see that the Head, Chest and Gut make up a single line, a single part with the head and gut both being end parts. The head is an end part with no branching, but the Gut has two side branches, the legs. The gut is still the End of the body, it just has two bits coming off it. Like how we differentiate between the branches and trunk of a tree. The Gut part, however, does not have an [End] Tag, it just happens to be at the end, so you can build more body sections onto it to increase the length of the body, or you can add another branching section.
But lets look at an example of parts that do have end tags. The Hand has an [end] tag because the [grasp] function it has wouldn't work if it were embedded in your arm somewhere. So I can't stick a gun part onto a hand like this
HEAD
|
HAND-
LOWER ARM-
UPPER ARM-
CHEST-
UPPER ARM-
LOWER ARM-
HAND-
GUN |
FOOT-
LOWER LEG-
UPPER LEG-
GUT-
UPPER LEG-
LOWER LEG-
FOOTBecause that would be like me gluing your hand onto the gun. You might be able to fire the gun, but you couldn't use the hand for anything. I should point out at this point that you CAN do this, but doing so removes the functionality of the End part you're building on. So you can have a gun as your upper arm, it just won't fire and provides no nice structural benefits. What I could do, however, is this:
HEAD GUN
| |
HAND-
LOWER ARM-
UPPER ARM-
CHEST-
UPPER ARM-
LOWER ARM-
HAND |
FOOT-
LOWER LEG-
UPPER LEG-
GUT-
UPPER LEG-
LOWER LEG-
FOOTIn this case, the gun becomes a side branch of the hand. The Hand remains functional, as does the gun. Imagine it like the gun growing out of the back of the hand or maybe on the wrist. In this way, multiple [end] parts can be connected, either independently or in a slave/master relationship. There's a branching maximum of 4 branches from any single part though, so no building a 20 gun bracelet around your hand.
[Weapon]Designates a functional part as a weapon. This one is a bit iffy to me in how it should work. For instance, a gun is obviously a weapon. As is a chainsaw. But what about a hand? Does a normal human hand count as a weapon? Well I can punch people with it so surely it does to some degree. But then what about my forearm? Throwing an elbow into someone's face can really ruin their day, perhaps even moreso than the fist. Head butts, knee strikes, body slams, all these things should really designate any part of the body as a weapon, if used right.
However, in this case I think the most reasonable way to go about this is to look at it from a purely game mechanics standpoint. The [Weapon] tag is used for designating that a part needs a dedicated damage number, where as the other things can probably either just use the strength stat to determine damage, or just have some sort of baked in standard hand to hand damage. This also helps distinguish between the function of functional parts.
[Utility]Functional parts that have some kind of active use, but aren't weapons. Like a mouth that vomits a sticky glue to slow enemies down. Or a crystal that produces light. Anything that could be considered a "Tool" of sorts.
[Modifier]Parts that modify other parts or add different stats or abilities. These are parts that are GENERALLY useless on their own. A lump of flesh that produces maggots or electricity is fine and all, but not very useful on its own. Slave it to something or attach it to a larger group of parts and it can be very useful.
[Alive]Designates the part as having a life and intelligence of its own. Parts slaved to it can be used by this living part independently of the main body. Allows for things like additional attacks or actions during a turn. These would still drain from your humanity though.