Added an initial brainstorm for a more fully-featured tutorial multiplayer game "Battle for Evennia". The idea is to use this as a basis for a series of tutorials on building a relatively complete game in Evennia. The details will probably change, so putting it up for comments from the community.

contrib/battle_for_evennia/README

@@ -0,0 +1,139 @@
+
+Battle for Evennia
+------------------
+
+Evennia contrib - Griatch 2012 (WORK IN PROGRESS)
+
+This is the beginnings of what will be a tutorial for building a
+simple yet still reasonably playable and not-quite-bog-standard
+starting game in Evennia. The tutorial text itself will eventually be
+found from the Dev blog and from the wiki.
+
+Ideas & Initial Brainstorm
+---------------------------
+
+This is to be a hack&slash game. Characters fight mobiles and each
+other for random loot and better weapons. The highscore is based on
+most accumulated gold. They can sell loot to NPC merchants for gold,
+and also buy stuff others sold there (spending gold). Characters get
+better in the skills they use (no levels). They automatically collect
+loot when they kill things, and they cannot drop it (but they can give
+it away and, most importantly sell it). Death sends the player back to
+a starting position, but gives all but their weakest gear to their
+nemesis (they keep all their gold though).
+
+Inventory of code we need:
+- Loot/Equipment lists of Weapons, Armour, Potions and Spells - maybe partly randomly generated.
+- Way to spawn in-game objects based on the loot lists
+- Character creation module (choose skills, attributes, assigns starting gear)
+- 3 Attributes, about 10 skills (some magic?)
+- Experience -> skill increase code
+- Skill success code - same between PCs as between NPC and PC
+- Combat code (twitch-based? Turn-based? Turn based seems easier to balance. Same for NPC vs PC and PC vs PC)
+- Mobile code (same for NPCs and enemies)
+- 'Give' mechanism (should require consent by receiver)
+- No quests, for simplicity. Use gold as a highscore.
+- Death respawn mechanism
+
+Elaboration based on Brainstorm
+-------------------------------
+
+ * Loot/Equipment lists and spawn - These could be global-level
+   dictionaries in a module. Each dictionary gives info such as name,
+   description and typeclass. Attributes could be set or
+   randomized. The loot-spawner (probably a handler tied to a dead
+   mob, treasure chest etc) would use utils.variable_from_module to
+   extract a random item-template.
+
+ * Characters have 3 attributes: Wile, Strength and Agility. At
+   creation, they distribute points between them. Wile is used for
+   bartering with merchants, and using Magic. Strength determines
+   hand-weapon damage and how heavy armour can be worn. Agility
+   determines ability to dodge, initiative and using lighter weapons.
+   Health is based on an average of all three attributes (i.e. all
+   chars start with the same health).
+
+ * Skills are as follows (may change):
+     - Long blades (str) ability to hit with swords and also axes.
+     - Blunt (str) usage of blunt weapons like clubs. Good on armoured foes.
+     - Spears (agi) usage of spears and hillebards. Bonus on first attack, minus on initiative.
+     - Daggers (agi) usage of daggers and short blades. Bonus on initiative, bad on armour
+     - Unarmoured (agi) usage of your fists and feet. Very fast. Bad on armour.
+     - Dodge (agi) avoiding blows by swift footwork
+     - Feint (agi) faign attacks to keep the enemy guessing
+     - Shield (str) absorbing hits with a shielf
+     - Platemail (str) utilizing heavy armour
+     - Chainmail (max(str, agi)) utilizing medium armour
+     - Leather (agi) utilizing light armour
+     - Barter (wil) barter with merchants for a good price
+     - Magic (wil) use of single-use magical scrolls to achieve various effects
+     - Potions (wil) making the best of potions with various effects
+     - Heal (wil) fixing yourself (or a friend) up between combat. Also judge opponent's wounds.
+
+ * Experience simply rises upon kills and is distributed between the
+   skills used in the battle (so we need to log this). After N amount of
+   XP in a skill, that skill automatically goes up one
+   point. Increasing skills at least N points in 3+ different skills
+   of a certain type (str, agi, wil) will increase the most trained
+   Attribute by one point.
+
+ * Skill success is a comparison between the value of a random.gauss
+   centered around the attacker's skill value vs the result of a
+   random.gauss centered on the defender's skill. Certain
+   weapons/defense combinations might be especially effective against
+   one another (or not). The difference is the base damage, then
+   adjusted by weapon and armour. In the case of bartering, skill
+   challenge is between barter skill of both sides; difference
+   influences the discount/higher price offered for selling/buying.
+
+ * Attacking another player or NPC will start a combat queue.
+   Combat happens in turns. Each turn each player may do two actions,
+   picking among the following:
+     - attack
+     - parry (with weapon)
+     - shield
+     - feint
+     - dodge
+     - flee <direction>
+     - block (anti-flee)
+   Emoting is free in each round, but movement is forbidden unless one
+   tries to flee (agi challenge, or cancelled by block action).  All
+   combattants involved in a fight submits their actions, then combat
+   is resolved simultaneously by the code. Order of the two actions
+   matter, so for example if both attack, neither is trying to parry,
+   but may hit each other simultaneously. If both parry, shield or
+   dodge, it means both are dancing about each other. If one feints
+   and the other parries or dodges, they will have a disadvantage on
+   the next defensive movement. A successful parry will give the
+   parried attacker a disadvantage on their next attack. And so on.
+   Another player may "join the queue" at any time by attacking one of
+   the combatting PCs. They get to insert their actions together with
+   the rest on the next round.  A round should probably have a timeout
+   to avoid a Character clogging the queue.
+
+ * Mobiles will use "a global ticker system" where they
+   subscribe. They act the same way as PCs in combat, except with a
+   semi- random selection of actions they take (they will probably be
+   more predictable than PCs). Adding aggressive and passive mobiles
+   should be straightforward, as well as un-killable ones (merchants).
+
+ * The inventory of a defeated enemy is automatically transferred to
+   the winner's inventory. If there are many alternative pieces of
+   equipment, they get to keep the weakest one, otherwise it's all
+   transferred. There are no limits to carrying except the fear of
+   losing gear. This should hopefully prevent hoarding of good items.
+   One can give item(s) to another player - that player must then
+   conceed to receiving it (use Y/N module in contrib.menusystem).
+   There is no way of dropping items on the ground; one must either
+   give them away or sell them for gold to a merchant.
+
+ * Gold is used for buying items from merchants, but is also the
+   highscore. Whereas sell prices are fixed, buy prices are not fixed
+   but is based on a percentage of the gold carried, adjusted by the
+   barter skill (this should defeat inflation quite effectively). Items
+   sold to merchants are made available for other players to buy.
+
+ * Death means loosing inventory (except weakest item, as mentioned),
+   but no loss of gold. Otherwise death is cheap - one respawns at a
+   random starting position (probably needing special-aliased rooms to
+   use for this - maybe with one-way exits).