On Thu, 20 Jan 2022 at 14:56, James Paige <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jan 19, 2022 at 6:49 PM Ralph Versteegen <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> >> >> On Wed, 19 Jan 2022 at 13:49, James Paige <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> So I do have a few other changes related to this one planned. >>> * An option to make heroes controlled by (random) AI >>> * A concept of "traitor" which will affect targeting classes when an >>> attacker is targeting >>> * A concept of "turncoat" which will affect targetting classes when an >>> target is being targeted >>> * Attacks that can turn these effects on and off or set-to-default >>> >>> So an enemy with all 3 of Controllable, Traitor, and Turncoat would >>> function as a hero for that one battle. >>> >>> To simulate a classic "Confuse" status, you would have an attack that >>> turns Controllable off, and traitor on, but don't touch turncoat. Then to >>> end that status, use an attack that sets Controllable and Turncoat back to >>> default. >>> >> >> I was hoping this meant you were going down this direction :) >> >> I'm not sure whether "Traitor" is proposed to swap foes and allies of a >> target, or just makes everyone count as a foe. Those are two different ways >> that you might want a Confused status to work, and it seems that these bits >> would only allow one or the other. >> >> What I was thinking was to give each combatant a team (default 1 for >> heroes, 2 for enemies) and an "acting" team. A target is considered an ally >> by an attacker if their team is the same as the attacker's acting team, >> else they're a foe. Also team 0 could mean "independent", with no allies. >> You probably wouldn't use more than a third team, for "Nature", say when a >> clan of hyenas opportunistically attack while you're fighting someone >> else). >> >> So Confuse to make someone attack anyone indiscriminately would change >> their acting team to 0 (so two confused targets still hit each other), and >> to swap sides you'd change their acting team (although now I realise that >> means the attack would need to be specific to use by heroes or enemies, >> unless there was an attack bit like "swap target's acting team" that just >> set it to the attacker's). >> >> Maybe I've overcomplicated it again, while still not adding all that much >> utility/flexibility (really should work on allowing script hooks for things >> like this) vs just adding a third Independent bit. >> > > Yeah, I think teams will overcomplicate it for now-- and yes, having > scripting hooks so people can customize this behavior will be the best way > to get advanced fancy effects > > I do kinda like the idea of being able to make a confused enemy target > all, rather than only the opposite side, but I'll have to think if there is > a nice simple way to do that. > Going down the route of bitsets then I don't really see another option but adding another bitset to make everyone an enemy. Now, I'm not pushing for the team IDs idea, but I just wanted to write something about complexity. Say you add a third bit, or even a fourth ("Foe to all"). I think that arguably two integer-valued settings are simpler than 3 bits, because 3 bits is 8 possible combinations, a lot to think about. And even an 8-way setting could be simpler to reason about than 3 bits if you don't have to think about any interactions. Complexity of implementation is usually also secondary. But in fact after looking at the new version of get_valid_targs I realised team IDs would actually have been simpler in implementation too. The bitsets are more complex... in fact I see some mistakes in the code, which I'll fix: "Dead-ally (hero only)" and "Dead foe (enemy only)" were meant to be informative only, to warn that those settings didn't make sense for enemies/heroes, but not to intentionally restrict the targets. > > >> >>> >>> Or a classic Berzerk could be implemented with Controllable=Off and >>> could end with controllable set to default (this would work for heroes, but >>> wouldn't do anything meaningful on an enemy) >>> >>> This should allow a lot of possibilities, and is all pretty easy to >>> implement. >>> >>> And yes, someone could totally fake 5 or 6 heroes in the party with >>> this, by using an instead-of-battle script, and adding hero enemies to the >>> formation with a script before the battle starts. Definitely not ideal, but >>> fine if people want to try it. >>> >>> Actually increasing the size of the active party > 4 and increasing the >>> number of enemies in a formation > 8 is something I definite;ly want to do, >>> but it will require lots and lots of cleanup, which is outside of the scope >>> of what I am trying to do right now. In particular, there are tons of >>> places where the ID range within the bslot() array defines what a >>> BattleSprite Instance does, so the first step of that cleanup will probably >>> be to convert all access to bslot() to a set of accessor functions for >>> heroes, enemies, attack sprites, and weapon sprites. Then those different >>> ranges can be split apart into different arrays, which can be dynamically >>> sized when you load a battle formation with 15 enemies in it, or something >>> like that. But that is for later. I want to keep the scope of what I am >>> working on broken down into bite-sized baby-steps to mix a metaphor :D >>> >> >> I don't think we would want to split bslot() into separate arrays for >> heroes and enemies: being able to index across all of them with a bslot() >> index is very useful and widely used (eg. targeting) so it would be a lot >> of work to remove that. Why not just add is_hero and is_enemy attributes. >> There's a lot of lines of code to change, but each would then be an easy >> change. Could also start using polymorphism. >> > > Yes, you are right. is_hero and is_enemy attributes are much better than > what I was thinking of with the accessor functions for bslot. Glad you said > it :) > > > >> On the other hand, I do want to remove attacks and weapons from bslot() >> and was considering doing it soonish. Almost all of the BattleSprite data >> is irrelevant for them, and nearly all of the advantages of having them in >> bslot are (or will be) gone now that battles are converted to slices. >> > > Ah, right! Those only get used in animations, so the slice is all that > really matters :) > > >> >> >>> Fortunately I think the current features I am adding will not make any >>> of that later work harder, and might even lead to a little helpful cleanup. >>> >>> --- >>> James >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Tue, Jan 18, 2022 at 8:22 AM Ralph Versteegen <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Wow! That's not a feature I was expecting to see for a long time. A >>>> nice surprise! >>>> >>>> I suppose this is particularly useful for giving the player extra >>>> actions they can perform in battle. People are going to inevitable think to >>>> use it to get around the 4 hero limit, but it seems really problematic for >>>> that. Or is time to add team numbers to battles, so you can define which >>>> combatants are "foe" or "ally"? >>>> >>>> On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 at 14:01, <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>>> james >>>>> 2022-01-16 17:01:32 -0800 (Sun, 16 Jan 2022) >>>>> 39 >>>>> New enemy bitset "Controlled by Player" >>>>> --- >>>>> U wip/bmodsubs.bas >>>>> U wip/enemyedit.bas >>>>> U wip/loading.rbas >>>>> U wip/udts.bi >>>>> U wip/whatsnew.txt >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> Ohrrpgce mailing list >>>>> [email protected] >>>>> http://lists.motherhamster.org/listinfo.cgi/ohrrpgce-motherhamster.org >>>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Ohrrpgce mailing list >>>> [email protected] >>>> http://lists.motherhamster.org/listinfo.cgi/ohrrpgce-motherhamster.org >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Ohrrpgce mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://lists.motherhamster.org/listinfo.cgi/ohrrpgce-motherhamster.org >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> Ohrrpgce mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.motherhamster.org/listinfo.cgi/ohrrpgce-motherhamster.org >> > _______________________________________________ > Ohrrpgce mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.motherhamster.org/listinfo.cgi/ohrrpgce-motherhamster.org >
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