I think it is time now to begin thinking about the relative strengths of different level monsters / characters.

We will need this for assessing player team strength, and populating the dungeon with appropriate monsters.

I've jotted down a few random ideas here which may be meaningless at a first glance. But within these scrawlings is actually a stats system


Biological contribution to primary character stats retains relative proportions of these figures:



Average secondary character stats per level



Armor offers damage reduction:


AF = Armor needed for 50% Damage reduction. Depends entirely on the level (attack skill?) of attacker. (attack skill /weapon skill will usually be highly correlated with level, and will be set that way for monsters)


eg, AF=128 (level 50 attacker)


Armor is less effective defence against attacks from higher level opponents. AF increases with opponent level.



eg, Lvl 50 player attacked by Lvl 100 monster
typical armor at lvl 50 = 128
AF=512 @ lvl 100,
DP = 1/(1+128/512) = 80%


Gear and skills and primary/secondary stats are calibrated for give the following shares, for a typically equipped character:

HitCh (Hit chance) is a function like that demonstrated in the sample program I sent to Machiara last week, which creates a complex outcome roll to each attempted strike at an opponent. This is devised for melee attacks, but could easily be adapted for ranged and magic also.

The figures given for HitCh in the table in the previous post, and in the sample program is the mean proportion of wielded damage passed on to an opponent in an attempted strike at that opponent. (No they're not calibrated the same, but it's illustrating a principle.) And in the case of the table in the above post, that is HitCh with a Lvl 1 attacker.

To generalise this, use level difference (or the attack skill - defense skill difference which will be highly correlated with that.)

eg,




That means, if my attack is for 40 damage and...
I miss, my opponent takes 0 damage.
If opponent makes a shield block, they will get 8 damage.
If I make a glancing blow, opponent gets 20 damage.
If I make a normal blow, opponent gets the full 40 damage.
If I manage a critical blow, opponent gets a double damage of 80 .

So for example, if the players skill levels relate to this hit chance table:



Then the average proportion of damage passed through hit chance is the dot product of these two vectors

= 0.0*0.1 + 0.2*0.25 + 0.5*0.25 + 1.0*0.3 + 2.0*0.1
= 0.0 + 0.05 + 0.125 + 0.3 + 0.2
= 0.63 DP
= an average of 63%

(= the abstract figure I'm calling HitCh)


(with my 40 damage example, this is an average of 25.2 damage delivered per attempted strike)

Armor then reduces this as shown in the previous post.

Notes:

(i) It would be unfair to match level 1 characters against level 1 monsters because the conflict would be too testing for early level characters. Introduce a new level 0, for any monsters with strengths notably lower than level 1.

The first few levels of the game may be mostly level 0 monsters, until the level difference X - 1 is high enough for level 1 opponents to be challenging but not difficult to a level X player.

This is less significant for teams with 2 or more players, because there will always be the advantage of outnumbering an opponent.

Level 0 could be mix in with level 1.




(ii) These notes may be added to.

Not sure how much random-number generating you're planning to have in this game, but here is an article about making a "more random random" from a guy who is working on his own rogue-like ...

http://ilovevb.net/Web/blogs/heroicadve ... andom.aspx

Hope it's helpful,
-Bryk

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Armor components

For gear derived armor, contributions of the typical armor value should be from the sum of various armor pieces. Which armor pieces do we want? And how much armor does each piece typically contribute to the whole?




what about...


eg, at level 25, we typically have 64 armor, so typical armor pieces available at that level might be:



Some items may carry stat bonuses at the cost of some of the armor value. eg,





Armor classes
We were considering an armor type vs damage type table for pair matching weapon and armor types to specific monsters. (Prefer to use Normal damage weapons vs Light armor. Prefer Piercing damage weapons vs Heavy armor)

Suppose the table is a function:


which returns an armor multiplier for this combination of damage type and armor type.

eg, AWBias(Light_Armor, Normal_Damage) = 0.5

... meaning that light armor only has 50% effectiveness vs normal damage, so 18 light armor contributes 9 armor vs normal damage.



If armor gear is of mixed type, then how do we resolve this?

Suppose attacking weapon is of damage type DT

Ah = Heavy Armor value
An = Normal Armor value
Al = Light Armor value

A = Ah+An+Al = Total Armor value


(Pre-Step) Hit chances apply to modify the original attacker damage:



(Step 1) Calculate effectiveness of the current armor combination.



(Step 2) Resolve Damage with armor AEff .



(Step 3) AMD is then subtracted from the defender's HP.




If damage is also of mixed type (12 damage; 8 piercing, 4 normal) , then how do we resolve this?

Dp = Piercing Damage value
Dn = Normal Damage value
Ds = Slash Damage value
...
D = Dp + Dn + Ds + ... = Total Damage

(alternate step 1)

While I appreciate the effort that's gone into this, it should not be necessary to do all this to populate a dungeon. The level attribute alone should be sufficient. Something simple should be able to be used to figure this out - say, the total level of all mobs in a dungeon = 10 * the total party level with no mob being more than +- 1/2 levels higher or lower than the average level of the party.

If each room has no more than +- 1/2 levels of the total party level of mobs that should make distributing them fairly easy.

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No it isn't specifically for the dungeon, I'm migrating to game mechanics. But I'm guessing you don't want a system like I've developed here



If populating a dungeon is going to be as simple as you've described here, then my job on the map generator is all but done.

I can't insert monsters because I have nowhere to insert them into, and no monster types to select from. I could simply output monster positions to a list, and include random power levels, but that really would be arbitrary. I'd be creating and saving a list of random numbers.

Those random numbers would be better calculated in the routine which loads and initialises the map, where specific creatures will be created in response to those random numbers.

So at most, really, are monster positions, and a start location for the team. I'll get on that later tonight.

I already had an idea for most of this. I thought I'd mentioned it before. I haven't had a chance to update the wiki.



I think part of the generation of the map is placing mobs, albeit a separate part. Once mob types are fleshed out a bit more, along with items, skills, stats, etc ( ) the placement can be done. How were you thinking mob positions would be calculated? Assume you have the total party level and average party member level values available.

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random selection of locations in rooms, and ensuring...
(1) that any two monsters are positioned at least three squares apart,
(2) that no one room can have more than 3 monsters.
(3) that the team start position is not close to any monsters.

Each of these points can be treated as a 'camp' if needs be, packing monsters around it.

How many maps could conceivably be loaded at one time?

One

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So if you leave an area and come back all the enemies respawn?

No, if you exit a dungeon you don't go back to it. You start a new one.

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Don't dungeons consist of multiple areas?

I take it there is no portaling back to town like Diablo?

Yes, but they'll all be in the same level. Have you see what Jasmine's put together?


No.

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