I see we have discussions of magic and skills, but how exactly is combat going to be? Will it be the classic method of you enter an area, and you see an enemy, and if you engage, you select a command and both commands from you and the enemy are executed(whoever goes first depending on some value like agility or w/e), or will it be some other method?[/code]

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If we are going for a proper MUD, I think we need some form of time-based combat... I think most use a form of agility to work out a recharge between commands (normally a second or 2 due to having to type in each command) and you can attack as fast as you can (with enemies doing the same).

If we are single player only then yes, I think a turn based system would work slightly better

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I'm tempted to get stupidly intricate with combat, but I think simple is better.

How about:

Ranged combat - player or monsters can initiate based on who sees who first. After that, order is determined by dex with random roll between same values.
Melee combat - order determined by average of dex and agi since melee combat isn't just who can swing faster. During the player's turn he can opt for one of several things:

Attack - possibly with things like called shots, parry, riposte
Move and attack - slight deduction to chance to hit
Retreat - bonus for attacker
etc.

Line of sight would be used for ranged attacks where a party member is between the archer and mob. Either the melee party member would have to move or the archer would in order to get a clean shot. This would mean the possibility of AI that knows he could be under ranged fire and might move to keep the melee party member between him and the archer.

Magic would not be able to be used if the entity is engaged in melee combat of course.

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you're talking about ranged combat and melee combat differently, so can you draw up like a quasi-combat script ie:

supaG enters battle against Thor the Mighty.
supaG uses omnislash on Thor the Mighty..etc...

Since this is all text based, I thought it was just you move from area to area, and each area has w/e people in it, and possible enemies to fight. If you dont want to fight the enemy, you can try to escape (some sort of roll) and if you dont succeed in running, the enemy gets a turn against you...then once again you can choose to fight or run etc...

How would you track 'moving' when you're in an area?

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It's not, it's graphical. Check the Design section of the wiki page.

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If the combat system is to be turned based, I would recommend that a timer be put into place to limit the amount of tie a player has to take their action. Otherwise if one player falls a sleep at their keyboard then the rest of the party is left waiting for that player to wake up to take their action.

If a player is given some reasonable amount of time to take their action (Say 30 seconds) then when player x decides to take a little nap the rest of the party isnt sitting around with their fingures up their noses.

I think with the idea Machaira had where its more "real time" where you have like a delay between your actions that your situation wouldn't occur.

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TBH, it doesn't really matter if it's turn based for real-time... you simply have the turn take a fixed amount of time (say 3 seconds) and your actions get queued up in 3 second allotments (internally). Add on the feature to have certain actions (like attacks) repeat until changed and you have a real-time combat system. This is what things like Neverwinter Nights, KotOR and Baldurs Gate did to translate the turn-based DnD mechanics very nicely to a real-time system.

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I was thinking this would be done. If the player doesn't make a decision a default action will be taken.

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Castle of the Winds did it with via turns, right? I've always liked the way it handled combat. It's simple, but you need to think. Of course, CotW is more of a rogue-like, I think.

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I'd never heard of that game so I looked it up. The wikipedia page screenshot is kinda what I'm thinking of as far as how the dungeon would be laid out (minus the diagonal hallways). I'm not sure what all the white areas that aren't connected to anything are though.

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Ok. I expect the white is the dungeon envelope.(Instead of a simple rectangle, you build it into a + shape or a circle.) Between the corridors it looks like dead space that has been created where there is no need for wall tiles. (Notice this is using full-tile-type walls.)

What kind of duration is combat going to be, in terms of typical damage vs hitpoints. The ratio of these two figures will estimate the duration of combat, and the feel of the game.

Those games which require 1-3 hits for a kill (diablo) are too low in my opinion. I think it totally undermines tactical gameplay (micro) and makes a bland grinding game because it only rewards fast reactions. Character stats and special abilities become unimportant.

I think more like 15-25 hits for a kill would be more like it. As it's long enough for all combatants to work a few spells, or sacrifice one or two hits to do some pulling, unit repositioning, etc.

If it goes upto 40-50 hits per kill, then combat gets too long, each each unit feels weak and the gameplay too uninteresting.

So, at level 1, maybe typical damage = 20, typical hitpoints = 300-500.

Your thoughts on that?

Starting at level 1 you want progression to be fairly quick. The typical damage and hitpoints you posted would not lead to quick progression at the beginning. 2-4 hits should take care of mobs at lower levels. It shouldn't take more than maybe 15 minutes to get through the dungeon on the first couple of levels. Add maybe 5 minutes every 5 levels or so.

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So 15 minutes +1 minute per level

We can use this to guide dungeon design. Assuming the ratio of exploring and combat is the same at all levels, and if combat time is measured in hits, then:

number of hits in level X = A * (15 + X)

number of hits = (total hitpoints of creeps) / (typical damage of the team of adventurers)

= (number of creeps) * (average hitpoints of one creep) / (typical damage of team of adveturers)


We could use these equations to estimate the number of creeps in the dungeon at each level.

Let B = (average hitpoints of one creep) / (typical damage of one adventurer)

This B is the 2-4 or 15-25 we talked about above, generally increasing as X increases, but can foreseeably be expressed as a function of X.

Let M = number of adventures.

So,

(number of creeps in a dungeon at level X) = A * (15+X) * M / B

The constant factor A here is the average number of hits per minute from one adventurer. This would be determined by trial and error, as it involves the ratio of combat to exploring, and the duration each turn takes in seconds.

How does this look?

This is with M=1; ie 1 adventurer.

A=5; ie, an dungeon average of 5 hits per minute, per adventurer.

B = a guessed function. This can be changed, but is based loosely on what we talked about above.

rooms = function similar to what we decided last time. This one actually works better I think, else the room in the early levels are crammed full of critters.

The other figures are derivative.

The mobs per room should stay about the same, say an average of 2/room or so. Some rooms would be empty, some have more than the average.

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That's a derived figure, you'll have to sacrifice control over one at least of the others in order to unlock it. Take your pick...

-- B would be messy to give up control of because it's tied to the creature stats. It should be an increasing function; or at least, never decreasing.

-- Number of rooms is ok to give up control of, but later dungeons would be smaller, early dungeons bigger than listed here. eg, level 1 = 12 rooms. level 100 = 10 rooms.

-- minutes per level can be given up, but level 1 would be 5 minutes, level 100 would be 4 hours

Some combination of the above is possible, but run the risk of making every level having much the same size and much the same distribution of creeps. The main factor determining level time would then be B:

level 1 -- 15 minutes -- B=3
level 10 -- 25 minutes -- B=5
level 100 -- 115 minutes -- B= 20-something

personally I'd think those B's are too low.

Also, remember this is for one adventurer. What happens with 2 adventurers? Do we have twice the number of creeps as we should in order to preserve level time?

What about having certain actions take more "time" than others? For example, D&D has stuff like free actions, half-round actions, and full-round actions. So, lighting a flashlight for example would take 1 second, say, and you could do something else almost instantly in the queue.

To take it a step further, weapon/armor types could factor into this... a dagger takes less time to use than a giant's hammer... and you can move more spaces in X time with a scaled shirt than with wearing a silver full plate mail.

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Have you played gunbound? Each player has a spot in the queue and gets slotted back in further down after each action, depending on how long that action would take.

I'm not sure but I think how far they move during their action also factors into the new delay (players have a maximum move allowance during their turn).

I guess you could also factor in how long you spend taking your action - i.e. you have 20 seconds to act. If you spend 19 of them thinking before your action you'd be dropped further down the action tree than if you'd spent 2 seconds and taken the same action.