Rule system being used?

[xahodo]

Looking around I found no sign of a rule system. This is a bad thing, because this way there is no logical and consistent way to create a fitting engine.

This contradicts an earlier post in another thread, but I believe some thought about the rule system and to what extent it should be hard-coded (as opposed to scripted) can be very helpful.

Just some food for thought (not complete by a long shot):

• What should be the hit-point range, what has hit points (I suggest everything except floor, lava and water tiles)?
• Mana? How do creatures, items, rooms and the dungeon keeper generate it?
• Stamina (if any)? How does it influence the creature/room (yes, there might be rooms with stamina... think living rooms)/traps?
• Are there hit locations? How are they handled (options here are more then you might think)?
• How does the "test" work? Is it just a comparison of absolute values, is it completely random or somewhere in between?
• Moving forward versus rotation, some creatures/traps might not need to rotate or move.
• How about blindsiging? Handedness? Darkness? Does that provide an (dis)advantage in combat?
• How is experience handled? Are there even levels or does advancement of attributes/skills cost skill points? The options for this are myriad and all have different effects on gameplay.
• Do creatures have attributes? What are they? What do these attributes influence?

A sample list of effects which might be considered for tiles:
Darkness, bright light, vapour, poisonous, extreme heat, extreme cold, draining, regenerating, liquid (in combination with extreme heat it can become magma), generating (mana/money), teleport (to another location on the map), blank, flow (wind, for example; direction and force are needed here)), solid (granite, for example).

In most cases a value in order to denote the severity could be added and effects could be combined.

By the way: is the map in 3D (does it have multiple floors, complicating matters) or 2D (just like the original DK and DK2 or extended 2D (height differences on the map, but no overlap)? 3D might complicate matters (especially for the UI), but could make for very interesting maps.

Just a bunch of thoughts I had. Lets see what comes out of this.

[paul424]

Hmm I have something similar in mind, only those rules would be controlled by the Director, which would read-in the rules during Map Load.
It's hard to say anything concrete until the events system is implemented.

[svenskmand]

The game map consists of a set of layers, where each layer is a 2D maps as in DK. You can move between the layers using tunnels placed around the 2D map that leads to the layers above and or below.

Regarding game logic, I think the best is to have it scriptable. But as Paul points out, we need some hardcoded structure ontop of the scripting. The Event system sounds like a good solution, so gam logic should be taken into account while designing the Event system.

[oln]

The game map consists of a set of layers, where each layer is a 2D maps as in DK. You can move between the layers using tunnels placed around the 2D map that leads to the layers above and or below.

Currently it's just a 2D map, and probably will be for quite a while.

[xahodo]

Well, hit locations and body part purposes (for relevant objects like turrets, doors and creatures) need to be defined in my opinion, but to what degree? Do you want to have each creature able to apply different color (with potential effects) to his/her nails (if any) or are the hit locations more general. What are the options (to the script authors) to figure out which hit location is hit (if any), or is that left to collision detection?

How about sub-sprites? picking up items (weapons, armor, tools) or even creatures consisting of combinations of other creatures.

The more you dump in scripts, the more resource intensive the game will become. Better to have thought out well what needs to be scripted and what needs to be happen in the engine.