[Scrymud] Change idears?

[Justin Piper]

Well, it seems to me that we shouldn't have to pick one or the other.  
If we do things right, we ought to be able to inject life into the game 
without ruining it for the people who're having fun already.

I've brought this up with a few people over tell/aim/whatever, but 
here's my suggestions for the combat system, recorded for posterity.

First off, I think the automatic melee combat has /got/ to go.  It's 
cheesy.  Nobody can attack with a sword at the same time they're 
bodyslamming their opponent.  I think instead of the current system, we 
should try a "semi-automatic" one.  Rather than having automatic melee 
every quarter of a second and whatever special attacks you can get in, 
extend each round out to a maximum of around 2 seconds.  In that time, 
you enter whatever action you want to take at the end of that round. 
Once everyone's decided what they want to do (or the timer runs out, in 
which case the game does something sensible on your behalf), everyone's 
actions go off, quickest first.  Both the speed of the combatant and 
the speed of the action being taken are taken into account when 
determining who attacks first.  Some attacks would be able to interrupt 
others, allowing you to counter one move with another.

In addition to the inherent speed of an attack, each attack would have 
both a set of valid starting poses and an ending pose, which are used 
to chain attacks so they can be performed quicker.  If your last attack 
left you in a pose that your next attack can start in, you can smoothly 
move into your next attack without any delay.  If you need to assume a 
different pose to begin the next attack you've chosen, that negatively 
affects the speed of your attack.

The first-come, first-serve tank system would be replaced by a two row 
formation for each side.  Combatants can stand in either the front or 
the rear line.  It takes an additional round to attack a target in the 
rear line (during this round your intentions are made obvious to the 
other fighters, which allows guards to rescue their charges before the 
attack), unless there are no combatants in your opposition's front 
line.  If you are in the front line, but are not being attacked by an 
opponent, you may flank one of your opponents.  You must be in the 
flank position to execute certain attacks, such as backstab or critical 
strike.

Other things I'm toying with, but haven't really though out very well:
* micro-actions which don't take up an entire round, but would hint at 
your ultimate intentions for that round.
* making spellcasting a matter of executing several small steps in 
preparation, followed by the spell effect.  This would take advantage 
of the aforementioned micro-actions.  At this point I'm thinking either 
magic incantations, or runes carved onto stones in advance.  Maybe we 
could offer both, but make them mutually exclusive.

This would make combat slower, since every round is drawn out out up to 
eight times as long, and you deal less damage each round.  I do think 
it would make for more interesting gameplay, and it would have the side 
effect of reducing the amount of lag suffered by our poor modem-users.

Let me know what you think.

On 2002.02.10 13:59 Noah Gibbs wrote:
>   You're in good company.  That's why Dikuesque MUDs
> are so popular.
>   It's not really my thing, but I'm about 90% explorer
> by Bartle group.  I think a disproportionate number of
> MUD designers are.
>   The biggest reason I loved Scry was the massive,
> sprawling geography and lovely characterization of
> settings.  It took me 'til level 8 or 9 before I
> stopped routinely running out of stamina just walking
> around and looking at stuff :-)
> 
> --- Brian <minishamu at wanfear.com> wrote:
> > Well, at the risk of getting laughed at, I
> > personally like beating the hell out
> > of things over and over.  :)
> 
> 
> =====
> -------------------------------------------------------
> noah_gibbs at yahoo.com              noah_gibbs at palm.com
> 
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