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 enter two actions, picking among the following: - attack - parry (with weapon) - shield - feint - dodge - flee - block (anti-flee) - switch 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). Rough plan for order of implementation -------------------------------------- 1) Conflict resolution system - work out how basic challenges should work, what format ingoing Skills should have and how generic bonuses from attributes and equipment affect things. Make a generic API for it. Try to list all supported plus/minues equipment may offer. 2) Using skills - create XP and automatic skill improvement code 3) Define new Character typeclass that stores skills/attributes in a way that the conflict system understands. Chars should also have the ability to "wear" things, so some sort of slot system is needed. Gold needs to be stored in a separate variable. 4) Create "sell/buy" command stump, for testing the Skill resolution code with fixed on-character values. 5) Create Combat queue code for turn-taking combat. Reiterate so that it works with the generic form of Skills and conflict resolution. 6) Create all included skills and their associated commands. 7) Test commands manually with two PC characters in the Combat queue and in other challenge situations. 8) Create loot-creation mechanism based on equipment lists, for spawning semi-random items and gear. 9) Create Death-respawn mechanism, including loss of equipment and transfer of same to the winner. 10) Create NPC/mobile object runner Script. Use a copy of Character typeclass for mobiles, except some automation hooks and AI states. Tie loot creation to the death of NPCs. 11) Test PC vs NPC combat and other challenges. 12) Create merchants as interactive, immortal NPCs with the "barter" skill. 13) Create Character creation module, for assigning attributes/skills when first starting. Add appropriate commands to ooccmdset. 14) Add "give" command to command set. Remove unused commands like "drop" (or make it admin-only). Possibly expand "look" command to allow to look across exits into the next room. Also add "highscore" command for viewing game statistics. 15)