Re: [Adonthell-devel] New combat / damage thoughts

[Kai Sterker]

On Sun, 27 Apr 2003 19:07:00 +0200 Nils Fohrbeck wrote:

> I really like your ideas. There is just one thing I would like to add.
> What if we leave away the character type and just say that a character
> has the weapon 'fist' (or jaw, rams whatever) equipped, when no other
> weapon is equipped. That should make things easier (well does it? I do
> not really know). 

I believe it would mean more work. When having the character type, the
"exception" unarmed combat is taken care of by the damage_chain (as seen
in the pseudo code). All character classes need a damage range to be
used in case of unarmed combat, and a physical damage object (plus,
optionally others. Like a venomous serpent would have an additional
poison damage object).

With your suggestion, the unarmed combat would probably be taken care of
in the same place. Each character would further need a "default" weapon
(fist, claw, etc.) with attributes matching its class. That is: a dragon
would have claws that deal more damage than those of a bear for example.
Each such weapon will then need a physical damage object plus optionally
others (serpent).


Up to here, both implementations are practically equal. However, the
pseudo weapon will have to be removed after battle (so it is not in the
way when equipping real weapons). You may argue that this will be never
the case unless the player character itself has to fight unarmed. But
even if the character using the pseudo weapon is dead, we will have to
make sure that the pseudo weapon vanishes. Otherwise it might be
possible to pick it up. Picking up parts of animals might be still okay,
but using them as weapons wouldn't.

So we had to add a differentiation between real and pseudo weapons. And
that is where this solution would require more work.

OTOH, we'll need a flag to tell real items, spells and feats apart. (As
the last two will be implemented as items, but have to be handled
differently.) So we could as well differ between real and pseudo items.

(Implementation thought: pseudo items would be immutable, therefore kept
in the item storage. So when they occupy an item slot and somebody wants
to add a real item, they can be overridden without causing memleaks. All
we further have to do is making sure that they remain invisble to the
player (but not to the engine)).


Well, I have to say that I begin to favour this solution. But I still
have to think some more about it. It will complicate the code of the
slot class, and possibly of future GUIs.

I'll probably wait until feats and spells are implemented. Then it's
easier to decide whether there is room for another item category.

Kai