Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Relee]

quote:Core15, MAGIC, (Future): There are no specific decisions nailed down yet, although we've thought about it a lot. It's probably best to go for a very general system here, as in the first Armok attempt. Then the world generator and entities can decide what they want to use from what's available. Early efforts might be to make dwarven artifacts more interesting and to increase the power and variability of enemy leaders, rather than focusing on traditional spell-casting adventurers.  

I see that the eventual magic system hasn't been fleshed out yet. I'd love to make some design suggestions regarding that. One of my dream video games would be very much like Dwarf Fortress, but I'd be playing the role of a wizard with a dungeon full of monsters, researching magic and keeping nosy adventurers and thieves out of my tower/dungeon complex. ^.^

The first thing I'd like to suggest in regards to a magic system would be a global 'magical weather' system. Since you're already tracking temperature, weather, and climate, why not track the flows of magical energy through the world?

One common belief regarding magic, both irl and in fantasy, is that magical energy flows through the world in different amounts in different places. In some places it's like a breeze, in others like a river, in others like a tornado. So my suggestion here would be to track magical flows the way you track pressure systems and weather. When it comes to magical climate I've got a couple ideas. One idea would be to make the magical flows react to the Good and Evil areas, so that perhaps magic would carry a sort of 'charge' where it goes from a good area to an evil area, then looks for another good area. Another idea I have is to base magical flows on the geological strata. Materials like gold would cause magical flows to increase, while materials like iron-bearing rock would slow them. Deaths might cause a sudden 'burst' of magic into the environment, which is why some evil wizards and priests sacrifice victims. Likewise a battlefield might end up being a rich source of magical power.

What all this would do is make magic into another resource. You would want a fortress with a lot of magic in order to make magic artifacts, the way you would want a fortress with other terrain features.

The other thing it could do is create magical effects in areas where the power pools together. This could do things like raising undead armies or opening portals for demons to enter the world, and maybe even create magical biomes like a forest of sentient trees or a mountain-face that is alive and can talk to visitors.

Wizard NPCs would build towers at points of major magical importance, someplace where the magic is either moving really fast or pooling like a lake. The more magic is there the more powerful of magic items you can make, and likewise the more power a wizard has. Temples and healing shrines would also be built in locations with a lot of magic, because the priests and healers would use the magical powers to heal the sick and injured.

From an adventurer point of view, you would have a pool of magical energy you could store in your body, and expend some of it to manifest a magical spell like a fireball, magical flying, or healing magic. The more magic in the area, the faster you can replenish that pool. You'd likely have a base amount of regeneration at all times, and be able to dramatically increase it by meditating to gather ambient magic. If you visit someplace with enough magical power, you might be able to do something special, like fill your magical reserves beyond their normal maximum, or cast a spell that requires more magical power than you personally have, by drawing on local energy. Opening a portal to another dimension for example, might only be possible in a place where there is a lot of ambient magic, because nobody individually has a large enough pool of mana to do that. If every creature has a pool of mana, that pool might be what is released when the creature dies.

Another idea for spells would be to have some magical effects create a sort of 'creature' which feeds on magic; it will go about the area enacting the 'effect' as long as there is magic for it to 'eat'; as such if a wizard casts a spell recklessly, it might have a stronger effect than he can control. If he tries to raise undead, and the raise undead spell has plenty of energy to eat, it might make more undead than the would-be necromancer can control, causing them to eat him and go on a rampage. In an extreme example, it might be possible that the undead kill people, releasing their mana, which the spell eats to make more undead out of the dead people, entering a zombie apocalypse scenario. When this happens, the NPC civilizations might band together to form a great army and try to stop the end of the world.

Anyways these are just some ideas I'm having. What do you think?

[Torak]

Great. More flows.

[Relee]

Hee hee, flows might be tough on the processor but you can't argue with the awesomeness. Or can you?

[Torak]

quote:Originally posted by Relee:
<STRONG>Hee hee, flows might be tough on the processor but you can't argue with the awesomeness. Or can you?</STRONG>

Having magic take fatigue would be good enough for most people's wants of magic and un-wants of MP. The flows dynamic would be far too complicated to create and ever-flowing source of Magicka (which is the proper name for it) which would and wouldnt determine an event and how powerful a mage is in a certain situation.

If I was an Adventurer Storm Ripper, I would not like to press "D"(istinguish magicka) every time I wanted to make a lightning bolt in hopes of being able to cast another one with knowledge that I wont run out of power in a cave, forest, or whatever due to some randomized flow.

[Hague]

It might be interesting if the way magic worked depended on an invisible flow around the players. The flow would be a relative amount of magical energy (mana, chi, heka, whatever.) like water it would permeate the entire area. The energy could be collected inside all sorts of objects as a task by some type of job class. This means that a fortress' magical power is limited to how well it takes care of its magical energy resources.

Of course, having a massive global flow such as that would be quite a resource hog...

[Align]

quote:Originally posted by Torak:
<STRONG>Great. More flows.</STRONG>

OP made me think more of a global constant for each area that moved up and down, rather than flows like water, so if some gazelles died out in the wilderness to an enraged elephant your magidwarf would be able to cast more powerful spells(or "bigger" spells anyway), for a few days at least.

[jonnym]

I like the idea that magic flows and that we could pool magic to give our items special abilities.

but lets just hope a wizard never makes a !!wooden sword of flames!! and then tantrums and slices your military dwarfs to fiery hell..

[Relee]

Yeah there are different levels of simulation you could use for the magical flows. You could do constant tile-by-tile tracking, though that would be very intensive on your processor, you could pre-determine the magical flows and leave them constant or only change them once a year or something depending on terrain. I could come up with other ways too. When it comes to implementation, that's up to the Bay12 guys to decide.

Also I kinda figured that a lack of magic wouldn't be a big concern. At the lowest rate of mana intake, you'd still be able to use magic for your adventuring. It's just that you would want to use high-magic places for resource-gathering or treasure-locations.

[Sowelu]

Magic flows couldn't possibly take up that much in the way of resources.  I kinda guessed that they would move at about the same speed and scale as weather, which isn't so bad.

I like the idea for its story implications (putting your wizard tower in a place that always has high power), but I'm worried that it would make fortress mode harder--your dwarf fortress can't pick up and move, and I don't think Baba Yaga's hut was really large enough to qualify as a 'wizard tower'.

Magic weather could be a lot of fun as long as it was somewhat predictable...or possible to settle in a predictable spot at least.

[Fieari]

Or Toady could research Lorenz curves...

[Armok]

quote:Originally posted by Sowelu:
<STRONG>I don't think Baba Yaga's hut was really large enough to qualify as a 'wizard tower'.</STRONG>

I remember that movie.  

As far as magic is concerned I would want EVERYTHING IMAGINABLE as worldgen parameters, as you just imagined it it is imaginable and thus I want this as a worldgen parameter. If I personally would enable it is another mater but I would probably test it in at least some world.

[mutant mell]

I like the idea of magic "flows," but I don't think they should be actual flows, instead just paths that magic makes, and them being relatively stable over time, so instead of magic storms moving over the area, instead make the paths not change very much at all.  I also like the idea of the source being in "evil" areas, and flowing to "good" areas, but that affects the game in many ways, especially when evil areas can be purified by killing an evil idol or something later.  However, I think that if we used magic like this, then settlements/towns/outposts also need to be sources of magic.  So, if you have a small town nowhere near any "natural" magic sources, it won't provide much magic, but once you get a roaring population of over 200 dwarfs (I know, still a small number realistically, but still), there should be a large flow of magic coming out of the area.  It would also be cool for it to attract a wizard to your settlement, as the area would then be a good place for magic.

[Kashyyk]

i have always had a belief that using magic to do something (like move that huge boulder out of the way of the door) uses all the energy that you would need to do it manually, in one go. But the bonus is it is instant. If you try to cast the spell mentioned above and you didnt have enough energy you would die.

[Align]

Or perhaps like in the Discworld series, your brain would be moved with an equal and opposite force.

[mutant mell]

So, inspired by the TC's idea for a magic system, I decided to come up with my own system.  I came up with this one to specifically be as flexible as possible, yet still maintain a magical feel.

The primary source of magic is life, so any living creature will provide a little bit of magic, some more than others.  Plants have a special magic as well, with trees having much larger amounts per specie than lesser plants (which provides an explanation as to why the Elves get so pissed off when you cut down too many; it kills off some of the magic as well).  Humanoids are stronger sources of magic than most other creatures (one exception being (semi) Mega Beasts).  So, a large civilization will have a constant flow of strong magic flowing out of it (to where, I'll get to in a minute).  Because of this strong source of magic, it would possibly attract wizards (lots of magic = more powerful spells for the wizard), necromancers, Megabeasts, spirits, zombies/skeletons (perhaps only if in the vicinity of an evil area), etc. etc.  Having the wizard be a noble would be interesting, and the noble could teach magic to promising children.  Gods and Spirits let out huge amounts of magic (Which is why Elves would worship Spirits, they are sources of magic as well).

Not all dwarfs produce the same amount of magic, but its not entirely random either, just a normal distribution.  Perhaps only dwarves that are ~2 SD above the mean have potential for magic, and not all of those would even want to learn.  Anyways, because its a normal distribution, the game wouldn't need to calculate the magic for every dwarf in world generation, it would just need to take an average of the population.

I like the magic flows idea presented in the previous topic, but some stated it best when they said "Great.  More flows."  So, instead of a flow, I think there should be streaks of magic flowing across the world, at very stable levels.  The streaks wouldn't be visible, but they would be fairly predictable.  Magic would starts at densely populated areas, and try and flow towards the north and south of the map, but would get diverted by the evil and good areas.  Evil and good areas both are magical in nature, but they use the magic differently.  

Good areas gather magic, but they compound it, slowly increasing how much magic is in the area.  Thats why plants grow quickly, and there are special plants there; a special magic is in the air, making things more lively and joyous.  Also, part of how it increases the magic is by increasing the amount of plants in the area.

Evil areas, however, consume magic, and will strip it for its malign purposes.  I propose that this is one way that skeletons are created; skeletons are animals that lived for too long in an evil area, and had their natural magic consumed.  They are so aggresive because they want their natural magic back, and attack anything that has this natural magic, like everyone's favorite race, the dwarves.  However, the major civilizations are much more resilient to said magic, as their natural magic is more plentiful.

If anyone has read the Belgariad, they will know what I'm going for in the magic system.  In order to do something magically, one has to thoroughly know  (either intrinsically or through study) what they are trying to accomplish.  If you point at a rock and tell it to become a bird, if you don't know what a bird looks like, what its general bone structure is, etc. etc., then it will be nearly impossible to do.  So, magic is more about knowledge and less about magical incantations and more about knowledge.  No Harry Potter magic here.

So, to put it all into place, places like old forests and jungles would have fair amounts of magic, deserts and mountain tops wouldn't have much magic (unless a stream is passing over it), and civilizations would have the most, with Elves producing the most, then dwarves, then goblins, the humans, then kobolds.  Some humanoids have enough intrinsic magic to manipulate it, almost all greater beings are guaranteed to be able to.  There would be more elven wizards than human wizards, because Elves are more intrinsically magical.  Good areas would have lots of magic to play around with, evil areas less, because you have to compete with the "source of the evil" for magic.  The areas between the streams would have quite a bit of magic to play around with.  As an outpost grows, the fact that its more magical would draw the attention of various megabeasts and other civilizations.