[dak246]

Ok this is the magic system ive come up with for my rpg. It is based on the almighty materia system from FF7, but IMO its alot diffrent.

Magic exists in crystals.
Magic weapons ( wands and the like ) and certain accessories( rings, amulets ) have slots for crystals.
Slots exist in "sets" of at least 2 slots per set, and each weapon can have any number of sets.
Each set produces one spell.
A spell is the combined effect of 2 or more crystals linked in a set.
Heres the good part......no is going to tell you what combinations make what spells....and it wont be self explanatory...i.e. you wont find a "fire" crystal...theyll have names like galamite, alamite, kromullens fabled gem..
There will tons of gems...and endless combinations.
The effects of a certain combinations will be decided by a function i wrote that basically calculates based on the combined properties of the gems, the weapon being used to cast the spell, the players stats etc.
There will be only 15 diffrent animations for spells...but depending on combinations it will have varying random colors( like 16million to choose to from ), and random particle effects added to the animation, so theyll all look unique.
By the way....combat is action oriented, and takes place in real time.
Spells are cast by using the number keys 1-9
1-6 are reserved for weapon spells, and 7-9 are for accessory spells
All of this is set to how you want it in the in-game-menu, so you can change stuff around whenever you want.
Regular weapons and armor will not have magic slots...after all....why should they??
combinations can be found in diffrent places, maybe an npc will tell you a smple one, the library at the magic guild will have tons of spell books for you to access, for a huge fee of course, advanced spell combinations would have to be either invented by the player, or found in spell books, which are very rare items that take either tons of money, or quests, to get your hands on.
The more sets and slots a magic weapon has, the more advanced and rare it is, also these weapons will enhance certain stats, i.e. inteligence, dexterity etc.
....so...feedback???

[Rainer Deyke]

Sounds good in theory. Of course there's a lot of opportunity to mess up in the specifics. For example:

• Can the gems be taken out of the items? If no, then experimentation is going to be fairly expensive, and people are likely to look for spoiler sheets. If no, then experimentation is going to take a lot of time, and the player is again likely to look for spoiler sheets.
  
• How big of a variation of effects are we talking? If there are only 15 different animations, then probably not all that much. A system like that is overkill if you only have direct damage spells. If all spells are fairly similar, there's not much point in experimenting. If spells vary wildly in power, then players will only use the most powerful spells, assuming that they can discover them.
  
• How much logic is there to the way gems combine? Is there a pattern, or is it random? I strongly prefer the former over the latter, but it does mean that it could be fairly easy to discover the most powerful spells.
  
• You could reduce the usefulness of spoiler sheets by randomizing the effects each time a new game is started. This has the disadvantage of making it impossible to discover a pattern to the way gems combine to form spells.
  

[Ironshanks]

Well it would still be possible to figure out the system though, once you had that you could work through fairly logically. Like, you figure out that one gem seems to magnify power or range, and that another makes it an ice attack or what have you.

Random combinations would be kind of frustrating. It would basically mean that the gems are just filler until someone tells you what to do with them. Or if you like taking chances.
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That's not a broken link, it's a PICTURE of a broken link. It's really very conceptual.

[dak246]

Well there only 15 diffrent animations made for the spells...but no two spells will look similar.... as each spell is cast and the animation is played, a random particle effect for that spell plays on top of it.....also the colors of the animations and particle effects are limitless, its just the styles thatwould be the same.

I was thinking that certain gems have a specific type of power, but by itself its useless. When linked with another gem that has been found to compliment it, it would create an effect specific to the two gems, but not neccessarily specific to any one of the gems. Think of it like chemistry. You can mix oxygen with carbon and get one thing, or mix oxygen with hydrogen and get another. Neither result is going to be tipped off by anyone compnent ( unless you study chemistry etc. ). Basically when 2 or more gems are comined, its like creating an entirely new gem whos properties are derived from the gems that make it up, but not the specifc properties of those gems. Lets say we have two gems, A and B. Mix them together and we get a fire based spell with certain other properties ( maybe its more effective against a certain armor material ). Now we take that same combination, and add C to it, C being some other gem. Now maybe we have an ice based spell. So what im trying to say is that figuring out a pattern and being able to conquer the magic system isnt gunna happen to early in the game. I can easily implement support for several hundred unique gems. Gems that are key for the best spells would obviously be the hardest to find and would occur later in the game, as would the weapons with the large enough sets of slots to suppport the spell, as would the spell book containing the combination itself.

Yes gems can be taken out of and put back into the magic weapons at anytime. Experimenting would be time consuming, but its not vital to the game. The player doesnt HAVE to experiment, so they arent being forced into somthing they may find boring.

I actually have alot of this system done already...like the menu system for changing the gems in weapons, and all the magic attack stuff. What im doing now is writing the code for creating spells out of the combined gems.

[BigManJones]

If your just going to give the player x number of ways to blast stuff that would be okay, but what would be really cool would be if the player could cast spells to become invisible, confuse an enemy, teleport, bind an enemy, stuff like that. Of course this type of thing would increase the complexity of the game quiet alot and would require some type of scripting system if you don't already have one.

[dak246]

Thats a really good idea.....the one thing i thought of that is along those lines was to have a spell ( one of the far more powerful ones ) that would just deal 9999 damage to every living thing ( except yourself ) within such a radius of where you cast the spell. But anyywayyy....

I agree....just having so many diffrent ways to deal damage will get boring. I can definatly add some of those suggestions in there. Teleport definatly, and not only yourself, but why not teleport enemies? Various self healing spells. Maybe a spell that transforms thing??? Turn monsters into small harmless creatures...transform npcs etc. Invisibility would be the hardest, but its an idea.

[Bjorn]

Sorry to put this in this thread, but I'm hoping BigManJones will read it. BigManJones, there has been a private message in your inbox from me to you since 10th of August. It's about you need to update your email address.

Now, please, you may continue... :-)

[Rainer Deyke]

[potato]

sounds like stolen idea combined from FF7 and Lunar 2's crests

[The Anarchist]

If its random you'd get fed up very quickly, because nothing has any specific meaning, it would just be nice looking particle effects and random colours.

I do like the idea though. You could make it so that items with lots of slots were hard to come by, so that making complicated and powerful spells would be restricted to the higher level player.

A more simple, and more rewarding (for the player) way to do this might be to start off with a simple system where you can cast a spell, and each crystal has a different effect on the spell (some positive, some negative). For example, a long range crystal combined with a fire crystal might increase the range, but reduce the damage. However, that might be rectified with a strength crystal added to them both. Then you could play around with having certain combinations have unforseen benefits, such as summoning a large creature to inflict larger amounts of damage.
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Some may know me as MidnightDreamer... time for a namechange.
blackgc.f2g.net

[Ironshanks]

Yeah, that's what I would suggest. I couldn't put it into words though. I like the idea of a logical system of trade-offs...let the player set up his own spell lineup.
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That's not a broken link, it's a PICTURE of a broken link. It's really very conceptual.

[dak246]

By random i dont mean a diffrent look for the same spell every time, i mean theres a unique look for each diffrent spell. I definatly gave the wrong idea there. Also the effects of each gem is pre-defined and constant, but the spells it creates will differ if mixed with diffrent gems. This system will be comparable to chocobos in FF7. You kind of needed the chocobo to get around faster in the beginning before you had any vehicles, but it wasnt NEEDED. Also, you never really had to race chocobos, but if you found it fun, you could spend alot of time breeding and racing chocobos just to make new breeds etc. Although this wasnt neccesary, it was fun and useful. Same thing goes for my magic system. You could focus more on being a "swordsman", and just stick with magic you find in books, and the gems you come across more easily, while someone focusing on being a mage of sorts might focus heavily on magic, going out of their way to find special spell books and rare gems etc. One thing i want is for the magic system as well as the whole combat system to tie into the game world almost 100%, which is somthing along the lines of a post pumpkin head made in the combat system thread, and somthing i agree with entirely.