[DGD]Melville

[Mikael Lind]

Quoting Darius AMJ from 15:13, July 30, 2000:

> [...]
> 
> P.S.  has anyone actually hand coded a good combat
> system (player vs player or player vs monster) on
> DGD before?  If it's unresonable, let me know.
> In the meanwhile, I'll be hacking. :)

I haven't completed such a thing but I have started on a couple of
combat systems earlier and am now working on one that seems
promising. The concepts explained below aren't all implemented yet
and are thus likely to be tweaked as I see how they work out. Several
parts are still missing.

I'm aiming for a semi-complex combat system with a few strong base
concepts.

[A monster is an active being that may be player-controlled.]

  - Damage types. Every attack is of a certain damage type, including
    slash, crush, sting, heat, cold, shock and so on. Different
    armours are good for absorbing different damage types. Monsters
    may be invulnerable to certain types of damage.

  - Equipment slots. Monsters have a set of equipment slots of
    different sizes (tiny, small, medium, large or huge). For
    instance, a centaur would have this set of slots:

      NAME           AMOUNT  SIZE
      weapon              1  medium
      shield              1  medium
      amulet              1  medium
      bracelet            2  medium
      ring               10  medium
      helmet              1  medium
      neck-guard          1  medium
      armor               1  medium
      gloves              1  medium
      bracers             1  medium
      horse blanket       1  large
      horse leggings      1  large
      horse shoes         1  large

      Equipment pieces (weapons, armour pieces and jewels) also
    define slots and will occupy the monster's equipment slots as
    the pieces are equipped. For instance, a two-handed weapon would
    occupy the weapon slot and shield slot; a pair of gauntlets would
    occupy the gloves slot and the bracers slot. Sizes must match.
      (I don't consider the equipment slot system to be a major 
    improvement compared to 2.4.5's armor slots.)

  - Time slots. Most actions take time to perform. (Movement does
    not.) This is handled in the following way: If a monster takes an
    action and it has finished its previous action, then the new
    one takes place immediately. The time span required for the
    action is reserved after the point in time of the action.
    Additional actions are queued up and each take place as the time
    span of the previous action ends.
      If all actions are finished and the monster is in combat, it
    will automatically do a combat action. (Usually taking a swing at 
    its opponent.) Yes, this means that sweeping that healing potion
    will cause you to miss 1.3 attacks or something like that.
      Time spans are affected by the monster's speed, which for 
    instance means that monsters will attack with different time
    intervals.

I did a test implementation of the time slot system and it seemed to
work out fine. Oh, you need a version of DGD that allows call-outs
with millisecond precision. (Actually, what you really need is about
0.1 second precision. Whole seconds are just too rough.)

// Mikael (Elemel)


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