Saturday, June 23, 2012

On the intricacies of ranged combat (so far)

I'm right now finishing up assassins and the final bits of ranged combat implementation (more elaborations will be added during the 0.3.x development line). While doing so I marveled about the many details that influence ranged combat.

Among them are
  • the influence  of weapon types and weapon skills
  • combining ammunition types with missile weapons (e.g. hunting arrows on a short bow work differently than war arrows on a composite long bow)
  • the many influences of material on missiles and missile weapons (a treantwood long bow is quite different from a blackwood short bow)
  • different maximum ranges for all the missiles and missile weapons
  • different range bands for missiles and missiles weapons (and combinations), a range band defining the number of tiles of distance after which your attack roll gets reduced
  • the influence of attributes (strength, dexterity and perception all factor into precision and/or damage)
  • the difference between muscle powered and mechanical weapons
  • the differences between thrown and propelled weapons
  • the intricacies of shooting past intermediate features
  • the speed of missile flight differs with the missile used
  • the many factors influencing maximum range
  • and quite a bit more that I probably already have forgotten.
But it feels more than complete enough for me for a quasi realistic simulation (the goal never has been to be completely realistic and I personally do not believe that said goal has any merit in itself for games).

So onwards with finishing this stuff. Next in the line before the next release are
  • implementing archers
  • integrating Oneiros' wonderful musical compositions (he sent me a title score I quite enjoy),
  • integrating Krys' marvelous images (I love the new logo, he had a fantastic idea concerning the new splash screens and is now working on the new main screen for the game)
  • getting the new installer finished (reducing Java Web Start to the "if nothing else works" alternative; Jochen already played around with it and it seems to be very good).
Then it's time for the next release and then again "release early, release a lot more often for the 0.3.x line".

Read ya!

6 comments:

  1. Great! Can't wait for the 0.3.0 release! :)

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  2. AWSOME cant wait for ranged combat, was my favorite from ADOM 1

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  3. Will Oneiros' work on the music be an ongoing thing as the development continues? Based on the excellent sample from before, and the game's projected growth, I envision a tremendous amount of further content that'll only be enhanced by a quality musical score and sound in general.

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    1. As you read this, I'm working on some more soundtracks and situational short tunes. And yes, as long as Thomas (and fans) consider my work worthy, I'll keep working on it. Not only because I intend to do this for a living one day (scores for games, that is), but also because it's not every day that you get the chance to work with a real gaming genius. Let's hope it fits as well in ADOM II as we think it will! ^^

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    2. Excellent.

      Somewhat related, what is the "plan" per se in terms of musical delivery/integration for ADOM II? I'd guess ahead of time .OGG files of a solid quality with perhaps some sort of enormous maximum quality FLAC suite Official Score intended for standalone sale digitally or otherwise?

      If I'm on the mark, might I suggest the ability to incorporate said max quality renditions to the ingame score itself via a copy/paste or some such so you can get the absolute best ingame quality when applied and keep the base package filesize down. Granted, I'm not actually aware of any other game allowing for such a feature offhand, but it seems like a good way along the "optional enhancement" path that ADOM II Deluxe's outline pretty well takes on especially if, as I'd imagine in such a pack, there'd stand to be remixes, alternate versions, etc.

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  4. "While doing so I marveled about the many details that influence ranged combat." -- The devil is in the detail :)

    With so many variables affecting ranged combat, we ought to have some spreadsheet where one would input values for different the factors to determine the effect! :)

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