[MUD-Dev] Combat Systems

[Patrick Dughi]

From: Ben <bjchambers at phoenixdsl.com>

> [cut section dealing with queuing of commands and a decrementer, queue
> priorty based on summed weapon/skill/player speed]
> 
>     Has anyone documented a combat system similar to this?  Anyone have any
> ideas about ways to improve this?  Any thoughts about whether this is
> actually possible?
> 
	I believe that aside from the threaded model you describe, this
has been performed many times.  Usually, things are thrown into a simple
event queue (which usually takes the form of a linked list, though it
doesn't matter).  Things are then pulled from the event queue and either
discarded or evaluated and then executed or discarded.

	Because of a previous overzealous attempt to curry player favor on
one particular round-based MUD, there were many attacks possible in a
given round.  Characters with 15 attacks were not altogether uncommon.
The players enjoyed the concept, but not the implementation, as each
battle round had 15 lines of attack messages, plus any created by the
victim. 

	I wanted to move to an event based system.  The problem was that
for battles to move quickly enough to keep attention, and for this scale
of info to be returned, it would be painful for a character to keep up.
What I did was an event queue which was dequeued at the same time as the
previous round (players did not notice any difference in the battles).
The actions in the queue however, were dequeued according to the correct
event-based model.  If you cast a spell right before a new round dequeued,
it would end up towards the end of the cycle, etc.
	
	Here's where I fixed that problem.

	Because I had all the events dequeued in one burst, I could create
battle message summaries.  Instead of 15 "you hit the dragon for 12
points", I could print up "You hit the dragon 15 times for 180 points."
This was great for the players, as there were no spammy messages, and
great for me, because it was hidden under an event based model.  I didn't
disrupt the players who were familiar with the round-based combat, though
in fact, adept players noticed a change when using smaller weapons in
which they were proficient.  


						PjD





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