Dynamic Requirements can still be improved!

[nippe]

Hi again,

I'm back after sort of a hiatus. It's always nice to see progress with the engine and I'm still confident in developing a game with the Intersect Engine. I'm having a lot of fun working with it.

I have been in love with this way of making games since the Mirage days! Currently I have sort of recreated my old Playerworlds-world.

 

But let's face it. The Intersect Engine is a lot better than the Playerworlds engine was back in 2000's, so I'm going to hold it to a higher standard.

 

In a previous post I suggested a way to improve requirements for items and spells. I'm glad my feedback was heard. Dynamic Requirements is a great feature that should have been in from the beginning.

 

With that said. We're still lacking easily implemented, basic condition checking (This also applies to the Conditional Branch in Events) such as:

 

• Get Player HP/MP (Shouldn't be much different than comparing player stats/level)
• Is Item Equipped and/or Is Item Slot used ("Has Item" is already implemented, but checking wheter an item is equipped could also be useful)
• Player has Buff (Check whether the player is under the effect of a certain condition or not)

 

Adding these three condition checks would allow spells to be balanced around having specific items equipped (e.g. Shield Bash), situational use (Last Stand) or during a transformation.

These things are basically mandatory for RPGs/MOBAs to have these days, as it just makes each spell more unique and interesting. Which in turn leads to a more interesting combat system.

 

Examples:

• Shield Bash being a spell available only to players who choose a more defensive playstyle, wearing a shield instead of a two hander. It allows for more options and choices for the player rather than just picking what item has the highest damage output.
• Last Stand, only useable while HP is low, would be a reactive way for players to survive a little bit longer. It could give them time to turn the battle in their favour.
• While I'm under the effects of my Werewolf Transformation, I could use my Bite and Claw spells. Something that wouldn't make sense for me to be able to use in my human form.

 

The above mentioned condition checks should be easy to implement.

 

BUT... Combat in Intersect (using spells) could still be a lot more fun. Why are we limited to running condition checks on the Caster of the spell? Wouldn't it also be fun to run conditional checks on the Target?

 

If it was possible to check the target's HP, we could have Execution spells. Spells that only affect heavily wounded targets, meant to instantly finish them off with big damage.

Is the target under the effect of my Poison DOT? Then I could use my follow-up Explunge spell.

 

This would allow a more reactive playstyle with combos and counterplay. I feel like these features are necessary for a fun combat environment in both PVE and PVP.

 

It could be done with the source, I know. But why wouldn't features that every other ORPG on the market have, not be available in Intersect from the get go?

 

On another note, why are spells limited to having one effect? I think the spell editor should be more like the Event editor rather than the Item editor.

I want my spell to run an Event AND deal damage. Simple stuff like a life-stealing ability isn't even possible at the moment. (Deals damage to target while also healing the caster)

Advanced usage could be conditional checking (Is the target Burning? Then deal additional damage. If not, then apply Burn etc.)

[Kibbelz]

I personally would like the equipment one for myself since I have thought it would come in useful, especially in Nightmare. When Intersect is open source all of you guys will be able to submit source code into the main branch via github (being regulated by myself and @jcsnider and @panda in order to prevent buggy code and features we believe does not fit inside of the goal of intersect: A simple modern engine that features are not game specific. Aka no clutterfuck engines as we liked to call them back at eclipse. I'm currently in exam period in my final university year so unless you're willing to pay me I'm not touching the code until then xD. (only a week left don't worry guys  )

[Aesthetic]

While I agree with a lot of these points there are a few things that have to be considered as well.

 

1) Intersect is to be shipped as a Vanilla ORPG engine, meaning they want it to have very generic base features and a simple to understand interface in order to welcome new users as well as create a stable source base to work from, each one of those features means more bugs, more code clutter, and not every game will need/want those features, again adding unnecessary clutter.

 

 

2) Intersect is developed by 3 people. These 3 people also have school, jobs, social lives, ect. Not everything will be perfect and not everything will be implemented, I prefer to think of Intersect as more of a gift than a product, they don't have to put in this much work, and they aren't paid for it, so anything extra being added is 100% the good will of JC, Kibz, and Panda.

 

 

3) These are extremely easy edits that even I, someone with almost no programming skill could implement to some degree. The source is not far off, if you've followed for awhile you'll know development cycles between hiatus and massive development spikes sometimes resulting in up to 4 or 5 entire release updates in a month. Beta 5 is the last beta version before the source is released so we aren't far off at all. I'd much rather let them focus on making it stable than abundant. Those features are nice, yes but at the moment Intersect is completely incapable of hosting any game due to the sheer amount of bugs, server crashes ect which is what the team is focusing on now.

 

Don't lose hope though, JC often comes in clutch and adds little QoL changes for the forum members however I wouldn't look forward to it. Instead, for now, grow the base from which to build your game; mapping, design structure, lore, ect.