How difficult could it be for a mmorpg to have scripting for magic?

the rat said:
You think that I think modern games are good?

Watch those scripts get hyper optimised by the few people who were even willing to use the scripting system in the first place since writing scripts isn't fun (unless you're deeply autistic).
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there's literally a game where you build houses while shooting at people and it sold like gangbusters. A scripting game would probably be fine
 
  • Disagree
Reactions: Mr.Miyagi
In your example, how would you make the fireball fly faster, have more range, bigger/smaller radius, etc?
 
It would be ridiculously easy to grief by designing spells to act in the way that is the least efficient for the CPU, but most efficient for its in-game resources.
 
Otis Mallebrok said:
In your example, how would you make the fireball fly faster, have more range, bigger/smaller radius, etc?
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I would like to avoid physical fluid dynamics calculations, but that could be something that considers calculations related to accuracy and agility where faster attacks have a higher chance of missing, slower attacks have a higher chance of being dodged, attack power reduces over range unless highly focused, which also increases the accuracy needed.

If such a game is made, it will probably be necessary to make at least the first literation a turn-based game with an isometric movement grid. Might make the game more attractive to the people winning to play it and reduce development times and costs

Cnidarian said:
It would be ridiculously easy to grief by designing spells to act in the way that is the least efficient for the CPU, but most efficient for its in-game resources.
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I would definitely want to put some sort of limiter in place for memory usage and cpu cycles. Levelling up could increase those limits, but they would be a consumable resource so that highly inefficient code would deplete the players points and if those run out then it depletes their HP until it hits zero.
 
Not difficult because MMO spells are already scripted. But letting players do the scripting is just never going to feel good, you are either going to end up with one over powered script everyone uses, the system being irrelevant because everything is balanced to the point it doesn't matter, or somewhere between the two (one script that everyone uses because it's like 1% better then doing whatever). Will just always feel terrible. And fuck PVP in a spellmaker game.

The only game I've ever played that actually nailed this is Noita's wands and it works not because it's well balanced but because you can't just do whatever you want because you are limited to whatever you have on hand because muh roguelike.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Whatevermancer
What about a cursing system? Where you could enact a curse on someone where they get harmed or blocked if they attempt certain actions or will do something instead or get a penalty of they don't do an action? There could be a system where the curse gets stronger the more you sacrifice for it, such as levels and experience.

Granted that is even less fleshed out, but you could have a system where you could make a rule like "if victim does not spin around in a circle three times before entering buildings, he can only move like a knight chess piece until he leaves the building.

Undoing the curse would require figuring out the conditions and/or paying for a holy blessing or something. Removing strong curses could require appealing to a higher authority (the mods), and the curse contains a comment as to why the person was cursed so the mod could choose to require completing a task to remove the curse.
 
Tibia had the absolute baseline aka specific chat messages you had to send in order for the spells to work. I think you could also customize them to some extent for extra utility. It fucking sucked.
 
Betonhaus said:
I would like to avoid physical fluid dynamics calculations, but that could be something that considers calculations related to accuracy and agility where faster attacks have a higher chance of missing, slower attacks have a higher chance of being dodged, attack power reduces over range unless highly focused, which also increases the accuracy needed.
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Yes, but that doesn't really answer the question, though? In your above example, how do you change the script to achieve a different effect?
 
how many things would you be willing to make influenced by magic? time, space, matter and energy, the mind and bodies of players and npcs, summoning.

it sounds like the more complex you make it, the more interesting it could be, but also less playable
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Cnidarian
It would not work at all in a multiplayer game, for multiple reasons:
- everyone would just copy-paste the same spells from an online guide
- spells would be boring because of balance and preventing griefing
- creating vs using spells are two completely different activities, and multiplayer games do not like that
So you could either get something like Magicka, where the spell customization system is simple, limited, but manageable, or you can give players the full power, but let them use it in their own dedicated instances so they can't impact people without their consent.
And in the latter case, it leads directly to furry sex. Yes, I was talking about Second Life.

There are also programmable strategy games like Screeps, but I don't think that's what would feel like a spellcasting game.

Scriptable magic could work in a single-player game. A semi-sandboxy puzzle game, to be more exact, perhaps with RPG elements. The closest I can think of is Baba Is You, a puzzle game about manipulating the rules of reality. But it would be better if you could do this kind of complex magic in a more complex game, like Baldur's Gate.

And everyone remembers which spell put BG3 in the headlines. Yes, the bear thing. Every magic leads to furry sex.
 
  • Dumb
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Diesel Boogaloo said:
It would not work at all in a multiplayer game, for multiple reasons:
- everyone would just copy-paste the same spells from an online guide
- spells would be boring because of balance and preventing griefing
- creating vs using spells are two completely different activities, and multiplayer games do not like that
So you could either get something like Magicka, where the spell customization system is simple, limited, but manageable, or you can give players the full power, but let them use it in their own dedicated instances so they can't impact people without their consent.
And in the latter case, it leads directly to furry sex. Yes, I was talking about Second Life.

There are also programmable strategy games like Screeps, but I don't think that's what would feel like a spellcasting game.

Scriptable magic could work in a single-player game. A semi-sandboxy puzzle game, to be more exact, perhaps with RPG elements. The closest I can think of is Baba Is You, a puzzle game about manipulating the rules of reality. But it would be better if you could do this kind of complex magic in a more complex game, like Baldur's Gate.

And everyone remembers which spell put BG3 in the headlines. Yes, the bear thing. Every magic leads to furry sex.
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Admittedly there would be so much work involved just in building the magic system that the first literation of the game pretty much has to be a 2D single player game. I would need to design it so that every object and action has weighting, strengths, and weaknesses assigned to it, so that the power needed to enact a change in an object would need the correct amount of mana. What I really want to focus on is a realistic concept for how magic would function if it is real. If there was a way to draw ambient magic into the spell, like using fire or animal sacrifices, that's something else that would be interesting to implement. So moving a table would use a lot of mana but attacking it with fire needs little, and moving a pot uses little mana but attacking it with fire needs a lot.

If there was a multiplayer game I would want to encourage exploring different type of licensing. Some devs could sell published grimoires where the source code cannot be read (published grimoires will read like a man page and explain what each spell does and how it functions). The game could also have some form of Github integration where people could collaborate on open source grimoires. I would think that when a grimore is "published" it can be used but no longer be edited, and if you want to use an updated spell you would have to buy or acquire an updated grimoire. Extremely powerful players could become patrons or gods, and allow access to their spells and mana pools in exchange for a price
 
Just copy Treasures of the Rudras with syllables and the like that affect the cost as well.

Also unlike Treasure of the Rudras which does allow you a guide to cheat and use all the words immediately make the magic user class actually have to actively “discover” the words or win them as appropriate from fiendish foes. This will atleast provide further engagement for players as needed to obtain the strongest magic.
 
You really think an MMORPG-scale audience could be maintained with something as helplessly fussy as coded spells?
 
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