#62 - Kinds of Fighting

[mikedsc]

I don't have much to say in response to the article, but I felt it needed saying that you're doing a great series, one that I find personally very helpful.

Graphical games completely aside (though I suspect it'd be only marginally easier with them), the hardest part of using the environment as a part of the combat system is that it's a huge overload on the computer. It means an accounting of every single relevant object in the room.

Take the "swinging from a chandelier" example. First thing we have to do is let the character JUMP. Then we have to check his aim. Then the durability of the thingy holding up the chandelier (not to mention the roof!). Then there's the issue of a swinging chandelier, which means attacks by everyone involved have to factor in the chandelier's momentum. And furthermore, the swinger will occasionally be out of reach, and occasionally within reach. And what about stuff falling out of his pockets in the meantime? And of course, he needs to release and land sometime.

That's hard. Impossibly hard, to factor everything in. And for such a small part of the game, (how often are you going to have rapier-wielding swashbucklers hanging from chandeliers?) it's a heavy load to program. Most people would say it's simply not worth the trouble.

[Foxcub15]

A relatively simple way to do it would be to put in some kind of generic in-combat climb/jump command, and another one to analyse an object, even out of combat. Set the chandelier to accept the climb/jump command, run an ability check, and have failure and sucess messages. Then just have it add a bunch of modifiers to all interactions with that character, like restricting movements, affecting attack sucess chances. Analysing the chandelier would give a brief rundown on what the object can be used for in combat.

If you wanted to get more complicated, have the chandelier have a maximum weight, and have it break if it's too heavy. Have it do an ability check every period of time to see if the character falls. The same can apply to standing on a table while fighting, which may be not much different from swinging around from a game mechanics standpoint, just different variables and display messages.

For more complexity, you can add the character being out of range some of the time, or make it so that less skilled characters are especially bad at fighting while swinging from chandeliers.

And for a true swashbuckling scene, have stances and postions the characters can be in relative to eachother, and be able to prevent others from moving into a position they'd like if they fail a competitive ability check. Then make it so that jumping onto a table or swinging from a chandelier and then vaulting back down into a stance you'd like might be easier, but dangerous as jumping to a chandelier might drastically open up your defences and weaken your abilities greatly while you recover and get ready to drop into your new stance, or take up a lot of energy, or some other cost for using such a manuver. And of course, failing to land properly as you try to do some complex manuver would drop you into a terribly vulnerable stance, now wouldn't it?

[mikedsc]

You know, I just had the disturbing vision of people practicing the Chandelier Manuever(TM). *grin*

Now, here's another painful oddity that makes graphical games relatively better than text-based ones, because it allows a kind of fighting unavailable in text-based:

Spatial Representation.

The idea of a shieldwall, by way of an example, is impossible in most text-based combat systems because, while you might have ten characters with big shields in the room, no one knows what direction they're facing, and their actual position in the room is completely unknown.

What would you say to that? A lot of these manuevers revolve around the ability to know where (x,y,z) the character is at a certain time (t). You can't, for example, lead the bandits in a merry chase around the room when all they have to do is APPROACH you and all you can do is RETREAT. It's wholly linear. You can't be jumping over tables, tossing bottles over your shoulder, jumping onto the chandelier and leaping from there onto the staircase, where you rudely barge into a random room and leap out the window.

Well, you can. :p But my example is terrible. I find it amusing, so I'll leave it there. But a better example might be two combatants, say a Thief and a Guard are running around a table and the Guard is trying to get at the Thief, but he can't do it without climbing over the table.

[ChristopherA]

Originally posted by mikedsc
You know, I just had the disturbing vision of people practicingNow, here's another painful oddity that makes graphical games relatively better than text-based ones, because it allows a kind of fighting unavailable in text-based:

Spatial Representation.Castle Marrach, and some of the upcoming prose games, have something called "proximity" see ProximitySystem (http://www.skotos.net/articles/proximitysystem.html) for a somewhat out of date description of what this is all about.

So it is possible to have "James is behind the boulder. John is next to James."

At this point none of the combat systems that we have specifically take advantage of proxes, but there is no reason why they couldn't.

-- Christopher Allen

[Nanakii]

As a simple suggestion for improvisational fighting, it should be possible to make all liftable objects throwable (like in TEC?), and most throwable objects capable of doing damage proportionate to their mass or weight. This may rely on system independant of regular missle weapons (such as arrows, darts and daggers) as the damage these unconventional items would do when tossed would be much less severe and probably nonleathal. So, when the 'good thief' needs to quickly knock out a guard, he could just pick up a sizable object and throw it at him with a small chance of inflicting a KO.

[mikedsc]

Systems always sound easy and good when you first begin to think about them, but in my (very, very small amount of) experience, they always start to spiral out of control when you try to knock out a good design and some code from them.

I mean, typical projectile weapons are /meant/ to be aimed and sent flying at a target. Other liftable items typically aren't. So their flight path would be clumsy, wobbly, and the launch would be bad anyways. Granted, that's not a univeral case. Aerodynamics plays a large role.

But once again, it requires a complete accounting of everything in the room. If you throw 30 bottles of beer at your aggressor, there are 69 bottles left on the wall.

And I, for one, feel pain when I think of the work the computer is going to be doing.

Christopher - That was an AMAZING piece. If I might ask, have any of those issues at the bottom been resolved? It took me a while to find all the other "Tech Papers", but I notice that some of them mention systems that haven't been written about.

[Nanakii]

Systems always sound easy and good when you first begin to think about them, but in my (very, very small amount of) experience, they always start to spiral out of control when you try to knock out a good design and some code from them.

I didn't mean to imply that it would be simple to implement, only that my idea was simplistic.

[FogLeg]

In an ordinary bar fight, where everything could be liftable and so throwable and same time each player can use hanging objects (Chandelier Manuever, TM) to swing around and any other object to stand on (tables, chairs, doorsteps, barrels etc), it might get quite complicated.

"JOHN jumps on barrel of GOOD BEER and SWINGS his sword"
"PETER lifts barrel of GOOD BEER with JOHN up and throws to the wall"
"While flying onto wall, JOHN grabs CHANDELIER (TM) hanging from ceiling, SWINGS back and picks up BOTTLE OF WHISKEY from TABLE"
"PETER lifts ARMCHAIR and JUMPS on TABLE"
"JOHN hits PETER with BOTTLE OF WHISKEY"
"PETER blocks hit with ARMCHAIR, BOTTLE OF WHISKEY breaks and covers PETER with WHISKEY"
"CHANDELIER (TM) breaks and JOHN falls to the floor breaking his LEFT LEG"
"PETER swings ARMCHAIR to JOHN, but looses balance and FALLS from TABLE"
"JOHN lights up MATCH"
"PETER struggles under ARMCHAIR"
"JOHN throws burning MATCH onto PETER"
....

[mikedsc]

ROFL. Nice.

If only we could actually do that?

[Nom]

If you're only interested in describing, you can. There are quite a few people in Marrach who consider the duelling system an impediment rather than enhancement to interesting duels.

The problem comes when you want the system to alter the game mechanics based on your activities. At this point, you need a very simplistic model, and any attempts to upgrade the model will invariably create 'sweet spots' that can be mechanically exploited.