Landson June 6-12

Planeshift Weekly Report #2

This week I think I have finally really connected with how the Planeshift server system works. I have discovered some systems that already achieve much of what I was aiming for.

First there is the progression script system. This gives the ability to do a huge chunk of my combat system without any need for extra coding. One of the Prominent pieces of the combat system I have planned is the ability to add special effects, for instance: a poison DOT effect. This exactly is something that is already in progression scripts and it shouldn’t be hard to add more. So instead of creating a scripting system solely for attack special effects I can use progression scripts which will free up a lot of time I can spend working on other parts.

Another important thing I noticed when I was exploring progression scripts is that the spell system is extremely robust. Admittedly I hadn’t really considered magic at all when I was designing the combat system, but magic really is an important part of combat. One thing I realized though was the currently spell system has a lot of the features I want the combat system as a whole to have, but at the same time it don’t have the same constraints, other than cast times. So there are 2 things I can pull from this information. First is that attacks can be structured much like spells, that is how it is done in other game’s, there really is no differentiation between melee, range, and spells other than the mechanics. So why not make them similar, it would also make point 2 easier. I feel that combat magic should have the same constraints as any other combat type, also the same benefits. If your wearing wizard robes and a staff your spell’s could probably work better, therefore maybe have a power boost. just as one example. I feel non offensive magic could work exactly as it does today, but offensive spells should be more closely integrated with the combat system today. I don’t have this part designed beyond concept yet but I’m testing a few things and should have a basic technical design on the wiki next week.

So, the main thing that I’ve gotten out of this week is that my old design was severely lacking and that I was looking at it from a completely straight forward and wrong angle. This means a lot of changes which I’m working on now.

There has been a lot that I have got done though:

• I’ve completed a large portion of an attack prototype(due to the fact it is a prototype and incomplete, it is not on the svn yet.)
• I’ve integrated my old attack requirement script into the quest prerequisite script, so now instead of two scripts that do the same thing there is one general purpose script that can be used by anything that needs it.(I also have plans to clean this up even more though)
• And I have begun to integrate my attack class into combat manager and testing how things would work for design purposes. Also not on the svn for obvious reasons.