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Expansion of 'Steal' feature

 
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Chronoas




Joined: 18 Sep 2008
Posts: 37

PostPosted: Fri Aug 08, 2014 9:54 am    Post subject: Expansion of 'Steal' feature Reply with quote

Yep, Chronoas is back with yet another feature request! Oookay...

One of the things I've been trying to do as I work on my game is milk every feature OHR has available for all they are worth, especially when it comes to making attacks. One such situation is that, besides the 'rogue' character, I also have an inventor character, and one of his attacks, Salvotage, is a steal attack, but only works on Machine-type enemies. (I also have a 'hunter' who can 'steal' from Wild-type enemies, but that's irrelevant to the feature request) In addition, it has a small chance to 'Steal a critical component' and insta-kill the target. Which brings me to my feature request:

I was thinking it would be nice to get a bitset that allows an attack to only attempt to steal a rare stealable. Thus, I could make the 1% chance Do-this-attack-instead insta-kill move only attempt to take the rare item. In addition, could make a bitset that only attempts to steal the common item and ignores the rare, for an inferior theft move (or whatever else one could come up with using it for).
EDIT: Was pondering what would happen if you had Steal, Steal only Rare, and Steal only Common bitsets on at same time, and realized it would make more sense to instead take "Steal" bitset, and split it into "Attempt Rare Steal" and "Attempt Common Steal". Having both on would make it function as Steal currently does. Having Attempt Rare Steal only would skip the common check and go straight to rare check, having Attempt Common Steal only would attempt to steal the common item and skip the rare check if it fails. Backwards-Compatibility would simply make any game with "Steal" on their attacks have both bitsets on to act as normal.

This line of thought also got me to thinking about a 'steal table'. Instead of having an item and a percentage, my thought was having a table, with 'Nothing - 100%' as the default option. You could then add items to the table, setting a percentage for each, and have it 'roll' on the table for the item you'd receive. For example, you start with:

Nothing - 100%

You then put a potion on the list, and set it to 50%. It updates the table thus:

Nothing - 50%
Potion - 50%

Then we add a Dagger at 25%.

Nothing - 25%
Potion - 50%
Dagger - 25%

Then we add a Sword at 30%. Unfortunately, this would add up to more than 100, so it takes the 25% out of Nothing, then the additional 5% out of the next item on the list, so Potion.

Nothing - 0%
Potion - 45%
Dagger - 25%
Sword - 30%

This list would otherwise work like the normal item and rare item, so if it rolls the 'Nothing' option, it would proceed to the rare (table), allowing this to remain back compatible. We could then have a separate Rare Steal table, and even use the same principle for having a victory item reward table. Could also have an option for how many times it 'rolls' on the victory table, allowing an enemy to give multiple items as a reward.

Alternatively (and my personal preferred method), use weights on items instead of percentages, or use both. Thus, it would instead default to:

Nothing - 1 (100%)

With potion at 50%:

Nothing - 1 (50%)
Potion - 1 (50%)

If I were to add Dagger at 1:

Nothing - 1 (34%)
Potion - 1 (33%)
Dagger - 1 (33%)

Change Potion to 2:

Nothing - 1 (25%)
Potion - 2 (50%)
Dagger - 1 (25%)

I'm sure you get the idea. Weights would be a little more complex for the user, but it would provide far more flexibility. I imagine it would be possible to include both Percentages and Weights and have changing one update the other, it would just require a bit more programming.

So, to summarize:

-Attack Bitset to steal only Rare.
-Attack Bitest to steal only Normal.
-Normal and Rare Steal item tables.
-Likewise, Victory Reward item tables, with option of multiple 'rolls' on the table.

EDIT: Thinking about this some more, I was thinking that one could even make these item tables separate from the enemies themselves, so that one could reuse these tables on multiple foes, or use a steal table as a victory rewards table. I noticed that this is kind of similar to how Battle Formations and Formation sets worked, and realized it might be a cool idea to apply the weight/percentage idea of the item tables to formation sets as well, giving weights to certain battle formations in the set over others, opposed to just dropping 3 of a formation on the set to make it more likely to pop-up. Simply setting each of the formations to a weight of 1 would also make it work like default, providing easy back-compatibility. In summary:

-Potentially make Item Tables separate from enemies, and set which table the enemy will use? This may be difficult to make back-compatible, however.
-Apply the weight/percentage concept to battle formations on formation sets, allowing one to set certain formations as coming up more often.

I'm beginning to think, with the rate I keep suggesting new features, I should start looking into the programming language and pitch in on development. Ha ha ha! I've said it before, but thanks for all the work you guys do.


Last edited by Chronoas on Fri Aug 08, 2014 10:18 am; edited 2 times in total
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Bob the Hamster
OHRRPGCE Developer




Joined: 22 Feb 2003
Posts: 2526
Location: Hamster Republic (Southern California Enclave)

PostPosted: Fri Aug 08, 2014 10:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not a bad idea.

I had been thinking that after enemy data is migrated into a more flexible storage format, that it would be nice to give enemies the option of a longer list of stealable items and items they can drop on death. I had been thinking of organizing it as an "Enemy Inventory".

I like your ideas about how to express the chances of getting an item from the enemy.

I'll remember this when I get around to working on this (although no promises as to when that will be!)
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Chronoas




Joined: 18 Sep 2008
Posts: 37

PostPosted: Fri Aug 08, 2014 10:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bob the Hamster wrote:
Not a bad idea.

I had been thinking that after enemy data is migrated into a more flexible storage format, that it would be nice to give enemies the option of a longer list of stealable items and items they can drop on death. I had been thinking of organizing it as an "Enemy Inventory".

I like your ideas about how to express the chances of getting an item from the enemy.

I'll remember this when I get around to working on this (although no promises as to when that will be!)


Thanks! As a D&D player as well, I do also like the idea simply having an enemy 'inventory'. My idea was mostly just a product of thinking on how to expand the current steal system.

As for the 'when', no worries, haha. According to the (completely unenforcable) copyright I put on the title screen of my first OHR game, I've been using it since at least 2001. I'm a patient man. Wink
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