Re: [Adonthell-devel] On combinations

[Kai Sterker]

On Monday 04 February 2002 11:49, you wrote:
> oooh I like your ideas on mixing!
>
> Thing is we'd need a few rules on what sort of thigs can be mixed..
[...]

Yep, makes sense.

> Anyway, if we allow the above kind of combinations then all
> weapons/spells/potions... need earth, fire, water and air values.
>
> I think the goal of mixing stuff should be to try to purify one or two
> of the elements. Like, if a sword ends up 70% fire and 10% each for the
> other elements then it's a fire sword! We could take this concept into
> other areas of the game too, so different enemies might be more or less
> suceptable to different elements - an orc might be immune to fire but
> scared of water. So your fire sword won't do much damage to him but an
> ice spell will.

Yeah, that's what I thought as well. At least the really good combinations 
should have one of the elements well above 50%. However, the current formulas 
make that really difficult. But maybe I just didn't find the right 
combinations. After all, it should not be that easy!

I want to automate that 'good combination' finding, but had no time to code 
something up yet. Besides, it might take some time to test all possible 
combinations ;).

> Also since we have 4 main races each could have an element associated
> with it - humans might be fire, dwarves earth, elves water and
> half-elves air. So bearing that in mind a human might be able to handle
> a fire sword better than an elf. Or an air based healing spell will work
> best on a half-elf etc. etc.

Good idea.
>
>
> The only difficulty I can see regarding spells and potions is avoiding
> just having a fairly small selection of types of spell/potion. By this I
> mean using the mixing approach you can create almost infinite amounts of
> new potions all with slightly different characteristics but you might
> end up not having any unique, memorable spells. If all are just healing
> or attack with slightly different combinations of the elements you miss
> out on other random types of spell, like, I dunno, changing enemies into
> bunny rabbits and stff like that.

I imagined that we would define a set number of spells/potions/etc. Then we 
would assign them to certain ranges of combinations.

Like simple Fireball spell comes out if 
- Fire 35-45
- Air  25-35
- Earth < 20
- Water < 20

The mightier the spell, the smaller the ranges, and the higher the primary 
attribute needs to be.

Like the Meteor Shower:
- Earth 60-70
- Air   20-30
- Fire  10-20
- Water < 5


Of course that would be the 'finished spells' variant. If I understand Mike 
correctly (and your idea of combining spells goes into the same direction), 
we would have more basic foci, that need to be combined to form a great spell.

That way, a simple minor fire focus, could lead to a simple Fireball, whereas 
the Meteor shower might be made up of 'Rain', 'Stone' and 'Area'.

However, in that case I am wondering whether the foci should be the basic 
elements. I mean, using reagents to create a focus, and several foci to get a 
useable spell seems to be rather a lot of work. Not that I'd have anything 
against it. Besides, you would be able to aquire foci by other means to. 
(Reward, treasure, buying, etc.)

> Perhaps spells and items can have an 'unchangeable' attribute which
> means no matter what you try to combine with them they don't change.
> This too can be extended - you might have 'additive' ones which keep all
> of their characteristic but absorb anything that's mixed with them - so
> essentially they'd have two parts once they've been mixed once - the bit
> that was mixed in which when new things are thrown into the mix behaves
> as if it was on it's own and then you have the 'unchangeble' rest which
> is always present.
> There can also be 'volatile' things which get destroyed as soon as any
> attempt is made to combine them with something.

Well, we have to distinguish two different things:

* Creating foci, potions and the like
* Enhancing, entchanting weapons and armour

In the first case, you'd take a number of reagents, mix everything together 
and out comes the finished product. In the attempt, the reagents are 
consumed, no matter whether anything comes out or not. That means you cannot 
combine two reagents for later use.

However, in the latter case, were stuff is mixed, you could have unchangeable 
attributes and all the rest.

Kai