MTG Salvation

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/blog.php?b=7384
http://www.squidi.net/three/index.php

Where we left off:
I had discussed Tiny Crawl and #146. I had said I would discuss #151, #140, #107, #081/082, and #038.

Here I discuss at least some of them.

#151: Partial Turns.
Woo. I really, really liked this one. It's clever, original, and easy to understand. When I have the know-how to eventually turn each and every one of Squidi's ideas into a game (some games using more than one idea, of course), I will for sure make this one early.
It consists of a unit being able to take action earlier then it's priority would allow if an adjacent friendly unit just got priority. This makes it take longer until it gets priority again, and doesn't allow for all possible actions that unit could take, but allows for a killing blow to be made before whatever can be moved again, encourages grouping up and other team-based strategic actions. It also allows for a cool thing, that I call Team Combos.
Team Combos is probably an old idea. You have 4 white mages and they can cast the ultimate "Heal Beats Undead/Demon" spell, or 3 sorcerers can make a bigger fireball. Or the fighter can get in a massive X slash with the magical girl's hammers. All things I've seen in a game. But anyways, the idea is, certain abilities, when used at the same time as other abilities (Or in other words, when you have a partial turn), produce a different or better effect than either of them.
So when more then one unit is activated, and they can combo, then the combo is un-grayed-out, or whatever, and is an option instead of a normal attack or move.

#140: Vampire.
Why did I plan on talking about this one again? I must have liked something about it. #155, Scary Movie, written after my first entry, actually could be easily combined with this one, as just another type of killer (Think 3 character, each level you use a different one deal). A Vampire one level (With a human helper), a Teleporting Psyco the next (who can place traps without being seen), and a warlock during other ones (With the only ranged attacks the player can use). Mastering all 3 would be the key to beating the whole game.

#107: Card Flip Dungeons
I must have been in a hurry when picking mechanics and ideas to discuss. This feels like an over complicated board game, like Agricola (What? Spellcheck says that's a real word? Not just a made up agriculture based name, then.), but less fun. Because it's a board game emulating a videogame that's emulating a board game. Not a board game emulating a videogame (Like Roller Coaster Tycoon, fun family game, I recommend you get it), not a videogame emulating a board game (any RPG, chess, or any board or card based one), it's four layers of emulation; because the board game at the start was based off of adventurers going on epic adventures, and because this 300 article is about a video game that seems like a board game. Video <- Board <- Video <- Board <- Epic Tale. Really. I like a lot of his ideas, but this one doesn't really appeal to me.

#081/082: Card AI parts 1 and 2
I'm no expert, but I thought the idea of cards was to randomize things; sure, each card can have it's abilities and triggers, but if you're laying the cards of choice down for a game, rather than drawing cards and using those, then why have cards? You may as well just have a big sheet, or a computer file. Another one that just doesn't do it for me. However, when combined with the above, and computerized, and given some way to make them both randomized, both could make good BACKGROUND mechanics. Great, even, if done by an expert programmer.

#038: Escalation
I'll admit, I did play that childhood game mentioned. Didn't have quite as crazy things as that, but pretty close. No EMP bullets (EMP? Hadn't heard of it), but bazookas, yes.
This would go really great with #133, and it's Pick A Card idea. The one where you can either move something(s), change terrain in patterns (Ooh, ooh, and overlapping cards/terrains could have neat effects!), or discard an opponent's card.
So you play Fire Terrain, in a big blob shape. Units on that terrain take minor damage each turn. You play Fire Terrain again, in a different shape, partially overlapping. Now the Fire Terrain 2 area causes enemies to take medium-to-major damage each turn. And you play it again, overlapping again, and the Fire Terrain 3 is a big pit of Lava that immediately destroys units that can't fly, and definitely deals major damage to the ones that do.
Your opponent decides not to let you do that, and discards the 4th fire terrain, and plays a cancel over the pit. This brings it back down to level 2.
When Escalating units, why just add cards to a unit? Why not add specific cards to the unit, giving you more control over the unit's advancement then the idea discusses (Think, I have a hand of 32 enchantment - auras, and 3 creatures on the battlefield. I only have enough mana to cast one of these, or two of these...).

Bonus: Blind Map Maker Rehaul (#157-166, possibly more later)
I didn't understand what he was saying, the terms he was using, in the Blind Map Maker. But, in these redone articles, I suddenly can. Maybe it's just the order they're in, but they do make sense now. I have already used 160 to create a rough 7 zone (72 rooms including 10 gates) outline for a game, with 35 puzzle nodes. The idea doesn't cover alternate routes or optional "Make these challenges easier" things, but by making the puzzle tree branch upwards as well as downwards (Begining-to-end, as well as End-to-begining), one can add "Extra Gates". What I mean is, you've gone from area 1, to area 5. They happen to be next to eachother, so you want a gate there. But you don't want it unlocked while the player can't reach area 2 yet, so you throw in an extra puzzle in area 5 that unlocks the gate, creating an easy shortcut in case they need to get back and forth without going through 3 other areas (Going through the lost woods to get to Goron City instead of across the field, through the town, and up the mountain. All you need to open up this shortcut is the bombs - which come AFTER you visit Goron City the first time).
Also, say area 3 is unlocked, and area 13 is still locked. You can do any leaf node in area 3, right? Even if there's puzzles in there that you can't do until later, you can do any leaf node in the area. So while making the tree, before locking area 13, you can make area 3 leaf node puzzles that unlock puzzles in the area. So, think of this: You reach the big bad's hide out, but it's locked. It's got this big magic circle sealing it away, but the symbols look familiar. While you were... aha! The desert area was FULL of similar symbols, and this device you picked up way back when with no use for it... Wait, you don't have it? Well, you thought that was a side quest, it's not, but there's a teleporter right here that's easy to unlock and get back there.
Glue (#162): What a wonderful idea. That can't JUST be used for puzzle trees, but also make adjacent areas make sense. The Volcano isn't in the middle of a forest; It's surrounded by mountains, which THOSE have some forest next to THEM, because that makes a lot more sense. Likewise, the mountain forests won't be full of palm trees. And the ocean beach on the tropical island won't have rhinos, it will have monkeys.
#166 won't be a problem in a side-scroller, or a linear dungeon (see #101), but it's a pretty neat idea that could be used to make interesting rooms for the PGC articles, when used in combination with Glue.

I wanna make an homage.

To Borderlands.

Is it going to be difficult? H*** yeah. Do I have the skills to do so? H*** no. What can I do about it now? Write about it and tell some folks.

So, I wanna make this game, in either flash or Unity (Unity will be easier, I think, and more accommodating of what I want), share it with the world for free, and since it's different from Borderlands, but based off of it, garner the popularity that Portal: Flash, Flash Portal Challenge, and Portal 2D (All 2-dimensional flash homages to Portal or Portal 2) got. But mostly I want to make the homage so I can play it.

What's different? Well, the locations in the game, the plot, the classes. Only one class is in both games so far, and even it's wildly different. So, I can get away with having different classes without angering fans. The manufacturers are different, slightly; one or two may be out of business, and one or two new ones may have popped up, but the main thing is that they all produce all item types; just that the ones that traditionally don't make guns only make "very special" guns. Meaning you can make that shields only brand your preferred manufacturer by getting such a rare gun and using it.

Alright, obviously I don't know how Borderlands made their guns randomized; to the full extent. There's a wiki with all the parts that can show up on various guns and their effects, and hints as to how a gun is generated. Well, that suits me fine. I know some of it. So there will be all the original classes of gun, and each of those has 6 sections, as usual: Body, Stock, Magazine, Barrel, Sight, and Accessory. Each gun/part type combination has 10 parts, then a special ability version of each of those (More then Borderlands, I think more then Borderlands 2, and possibly more then both combined). Each of the part's in each category has a skin/sprite (Depending on whether I go 3D Unity, or 2D Unity or Flash) for each manufacturer/material combination, and a wireframe for each gun type, EVEN THOUGH EACH PART IS UNIQUE TO IT'S GUN TYPE. WHY?!!??!?!

Well, the reason is simply because of the gun generation process. To start the generation of a gun, first a type is picked. This could be combat shotgun, rocket launcher, revolver, whatever. Then, for an average of 8 steps (picked at the start, weighted curve 4-10), or until all the gun parts are filled (whichever comes last), the generator picks a part type, then a part within that type. This could be any of the six types, at a 15% chance of each of those types each. Leaving 90%... What's with the other 10%? The first 8% of that is "Re-pick type", where it repeats the step. The other 2% is "Gun Category". Whenever the generator picks THAT, then it adds 2 to the number of steps it can generate for (10 steps instead of 8). It can pick it multiple times (12 steps for twice, 14 for 3 times, etc.), and each time it does, it switches to an entirely different gun type; but only for picking parts from that type's list. If the generator ever picks a part type that's already picked, then it replaces the old part. So, for example, the generator might pick "Combat Shotgun, Barrel (Shotgun_Barrel_1), Body (C_Shotgun_Body_3_Special), Stock (C_Shotgun_Stock_2), Magazine (Shotgun_Mag_7), Gun Category (Revolver), Barrel (Revolver_Barrel_2_Special), Sight (Sight_None), Accessory (Revolver_Acc_Explosive), Sight (Sight_Revolver_2), Stock (Revolver_Stock_1)", which means that it has 2 special abilities, 2 shotgun parts, and 4 revolver parts. After it's picked all the parts, it uses the parts and their modifiers and abilities to figure out the gun's stats, then the gun's name. The gun type is whatever is in the majority of parts (In this case, revolver), or failing that, whatever was picked first (If there had been 1 more shotgun part, then it would have been shotgun). The appearance of the part will be based off of this gun type. So despite it using Shotgun_Body_3_Special and Shotgun_Mag_7, they appear to be revolver-type parts; though they bear resemblance to sections of a shotgun you saw once.

Your proficiency with a weapon is affected by how much of a weapon actually is that weapon type. So if you have a level 6 shotgun proficiency, and level 3 pistol proficiency, and use the above gun, you're only getting 2/3 the benefit of the pistol proficiency (effectively level 2), and 1/3 the benefit of the shotgun proficiency (again ~ level 2). So you're actually effectively a level 4 proficiency with that gun, just slightly better with it then a pistol, but much worse then with a shotgun. And while it looks like a revolver, it feels a lot like a shotgun.

Some notes; What kind of ammo the gun consumes actually depends on the magazine; that gun would use shotgun ammo. And the barrel affects what comes out. So out come revolver rounds (Because they are revolver rounds, they always proc, though). The special abilities are applied in order of gun-type percentage; so the shotgun's ability is applied first, then the revolver's. If they both affect the same thing, then the revolver's ability overrides the shotgun's. The gun's rarity is multiplied by the number of different types it is (and if a gun is generated with a rarity out of a current bounds picked at the start of generation, it is scrapped and regenerated), and is otherwise the sum of the rarity of it's parts. So say that the parts on that gun added up to a 9.32 rarity ("Common" is up to 3, "Uncommon" is up to 7, "Rare" is up to 12, etc.). With two special abilities, that's not hard to imagine. Then since it's got revolver and shotgun parts, gets x2. 18.64 rarity, meaning it's just above "Very Rare" (up to 18), and into "Legendary" (Up to 25). Yeah, while a gun like this might get created on occasion, it's very likely to be rejected and regenerated. In fact, it's unlikely to find a multi-type gun with any special abilities, let alone multiple.

So each part contributes to the whole of the gun, and it generates a name. Generally a tag ("random" letters and numbers), a prefix (possibly not), a title, and rarely a suffix. Then, if it's not rejected from rarity, then it checks what manufacturers it could be (special abilities might cause a manufacturer to not be possible, or enable one), and picks one from that list. If no manufacturer is available (abilities that can "only" be manufactured by one company), then it rejects it and regenerates. Then it checks the rarity, and if it's common to very rare, picks "material_1", Legendary to... something, picks either material_1 or _2, and anything higher picks _1, _2, or _3. It uses each part, the gun type, the material, and the manufacturer to build a wireframe and skin (or sprite) for the whole gun, then loads that up instead of each individual part, to save space. It also just stores and loads up the abilities, name, and statistics and a list of the parts instead of loading up everything from each part to save space and processing speed.

Before you ask, yes, the title, suffix, prefix, manufacturer, and material type each CAN contribute ever so slightly to a gun's stats. But are mostly based off of it's stats otherwise.

Classes. I've already gone in depth to how I'll generate guns, but classes are important. I need at least 4; one stealth-ish, one long range, one rapid fire, one massive damage. That's generalizing. Let's say that the Stealth one is rolled into the Long Range one, leaving me free for a class. Let's call it the Freecon. Ooh, while we're at it, it gets buying/selling bonuses. Free-, for long-range, Recon, for it's stealthy-like abilities. Let's say our rapid fire guy (otherwise known as a general weaponist) is our elemental person. That would make it another Siren - But fans expect some fan service. So, we're making her fast, so her unique siren abilities should be related to that. She can... jump ridiculously high and send a hail of every weapon she's got down. Up to 4 guns, fired until their clips all run out. And each shot fired during this arial assault actually splits into up to 6 (11 with class mod) different directions, spreading out to hit a large area. So, she has a sort of jet-pack with her, and her base dash speed can be increase through her abilities, and she's capable of firing really fast. And doing extra elemental damage. Uh... Our massive damage guy. Let's make this another girl, and.... Anyways, she's definitely not like brick, not a tank at all. A glass cannon. But definitely a cannon. One that can activate her ability to start doing multiplied damage, at the cost to her (very little) health. She does really, really good with fire weapons, too, having bonuses to incendiary damage. I don't know what to call her.

So I have a free class still. Let's make this a high-health, low damage, low elemental, low fire rate person. Like, a meat shield in every sense of the word. One of his abilities will cause some damage to nearby allies to be redirected to him. He'll have very fast shield regen, health regen, and some armor (reduces damage before being applied to shield or health). He'll be able to make weapons restore health to allies (and possibly in the same shot (scatter) deal damage to an enemy), and stun enemies to slow them down. Basically, he focuses on either taking lots of damage without dying, debuffing and cursing (but tech equivalent) enemies, and buffing and healing allies.

So what have I done? I've declared my intent to eventually make an homage, described how it will have several times the guns of the series it's an homage to, and infact, have exponentially more, and described in rough terms the 4 characters you can play. I guess I've let knowledge of my intent to make it multiplayer compatible loose, too, through my 4th class being ally oriented. And it's most likely going to be made in the Unity Web Player, in 3D.

What haven't I done yet? Describe any sort of plot, area (still on Pandora, don't worry), enemies, or controls. Or write a line of code. Or anything useful.

Quote from void_nothing

Quote from Flabort

*Restless Legs Syndrome + Sleep Apnea; If anyone wants me to write a rant about my weird medical anomalies, quote and bold this sentence.

GET OVER HERE BRO

Well, first off, I have the two mentioned above; Those two conditions are really frustrating, especially together.

Sleep Apnea means that I stop breathing sometimes during my sleep; This results in me snoring when I am breathing, and me waking up when I don't.
Restless Leg Syndrom means that my legs hurt when I'm trying to get to sleep (Or back to sleep) unless I move them, which means I'm doing something other then getting to sleep, which translates into me taking much, much longer to get to sleep.
The two of them together result in Fuax Insomnia; It's not really Insomnia, since I get an hour or two of sleep each night, usually, but it's really frustrating.

From hear on out, it's going to get a bit gross, by the way.

I use the bathroom much less frequently then normal/average. This has it's roots in my childhood, when my parents frequently took me to the mall, and I would have to "Hold it" much longer then I would have liked. So my body got used to not going very often.
This results in my body sucking more nutrients out of the same food, so that it can compact it down to take less room so I can hold it longer. It also means, though, that in order to digest all that extra stuff, it's using up more energy, burning more fat.
This means that I cannot gain weight; No matter how much I eat, my body fat index is below the healthy range. I'm trying to get fat (the "Flab" part of "Flabort"), but my body gets rid of it much too fast (The "Abort" part of "Flabort").

This next one you may not believe.

I have evolved a strain of bacteria that repairs enamel on my teeth. It eats other bacteria (such as the ones that damage enamel) and "poops" enamel into the damaged areas. This does mean I have to maintain a population of bacteria for it to feed off of, which results in chronic halitosis and gum disease, but it also means that my teeth themselves are in near-perfect condition.
Dentists usually have their X-ray machines checked for flaws after seeing my teeth on them; they are that good, but they don't believe it considering the condition of the rest of my mouth.
I really should brush more.

I have no Libido. 20 years old, and NOTHING turns me on.

I get this weird pain in my left shoulder, in the back, just "underneath" the shoulder blade. Usually after a heavy meal. I've been told this is my Gallbladder, but the person who told me that is currently on a kick where every problem has it's root in the gallbladder, so it may not be.

I am so weak and out of shape, that when I run for over 2 laps of a medium-sized gym, my lungs feel like someone's shoving a spear into my left side in the front, near the top, and out the right side in the back, near the bottom. Supposedly that's half a Kilometer that I run before that happens, but still.

When I was still extremely young, one doctor said that both halves of my brain were extremely well developed; but that the part in the middle, the gap, was so extremely weak that I'd either die, or only use one half of my brain for the rest of my life; Well, I proved him wrong, because I'm both creative, and good with math. Or are those both on the same side?... Well, anyways, I know I do use both sides. Rarely both at full power at once, but both sides.

Speaking of doctors who I proved wrong, I had a very vivid imagination as a child (everyone had an invisible friend, or knows someone who did), but one doctor thought I was having hallucinations. Seriously. So he tried to prescribe a medicine that would cause my liver to fail in about a month or two, which would somehow cause my hallucinations to stop; It's a good thing my parents didn't listen to THAT quack. I still have a fully functional liver.

I have a fold of skin underneath my left nipple (I'm a guy, so it's just vestigial) that has a bit of a lump on it; I'm fairly certain this is an incompletely formed 3rd nipple.

People always ask, have I been rubbing my eye? I have what looks like a rash. Well, no, I haven't. That's just a birthmark. Look up an "Angel's Kiss", that's literally a bright red birthmark that shows up next to the eye, and what I have. Not much wrong with that.

I need to wear sleeves that extend below the bottom of my shirt. I'm really tall, with rather LONG limbs. Nothing abnormal about that, except that even though I've been looking down at people for a couple years now, it still feels extremely weird to NOT be looking up at everyone; especially both my parents. Also, I'm 1/16th of an inch from rounding up to 6 feet. I am 5', 11 and 15/32nds of an inch. Do you know how frustrating it is to be THAT close?! i have to write 5'11", even though with ANY sort of shoe, I'm 6'.

I was born with a hole in my heart, but it sealed up rather early; I'm fine now. Except, maybe, possibly, it may have returned; once, while running for gym class (1.5 miles? No way, never again) I blacked out and wound up waking up with the teacher in my face, asking if I was OK. Yeah, yeah, just a blackout, I knew I was out of shape already.

My brain is hyperactive. During a football game (CFL, Edmonton vs BC, seat DD 25 12), I found myself designing a lottery. In addition to my other sleeping problems, I'm constantly coming up with videogame ideas while I try to sleep, or even while I am asleep. My mind wanders extremely easy, and is never empty of thoughts. Seriously, I don't know how you normal folks can sit and watch a football game and think of nothing but football, or watch any sport and not think of anything else.
This may be a result of Asperger's Syndrome, but I don't think it works that way. If I recall correctly, it means that I REALLY focus on something once I focus on something (such as videogames or card games, or chemistry, or computers, pirates, or fireworks; all obsessions of mine), to the point where it really is an obsession. Aspies (A term I hear a friend more knowledgeable on the subject use) can change their obsessions; When we do, we retain our knowledge and some goals from our previous obsessions, but it falls on the back burner (like fireworks and pirates), and our new obsession takes over. We can have multiple obsessions, but we really focus on one at a time. Which, I guess, does explain why I was thinking up Borderlands Hacks/3rd Party DLC as well during the football game; I'm just obsessed with NON-PHYSICAL (so card, board, or video) games. Physical work just doesn't interest me, in the slightest.
Which probably explains my inability to run. Though, I do run in short bursts, usually while thinking of songs such as "Escape From the City", "It Doesn't Matter", or "Live and Learn", all songs from the Sonic The Hedgehog series of games. I like Sonic. And Chao. BRING BACK THE CHAO GARDEN, SEGA!

And... that's pretty much all I can think of right now that's medically "wrong" or "defective" with me. Some good, some bad, some REALLY good (see last issue, aspergers syndrom), some as results of my own bodily neglect. So there you have it; I'm rather a freak.

http://www.squidi.net/three/index.php
Squidi's 300 mechanics project is an amazing feat of work, although incomplete. Anyways, I have read every single one, and have some thoughts.

Tiny Crawl: Squidi's baby, he's revisited it time and time again. I desperately want to make this game myself. But first I'd need to learn programming. And make some acceptable pixel art to serve as the game's background/objects. Still, I feel that:
By using #101, #071, #070, #032 and #029, a complete game could be made. Hallway-and-node based dungeons, situated in a large world, with clever AI, move able mini-windows, party capability, and otherwise hands off gameplay.
The world, if I were to construct this game, would be infinitely sized. Simply put, it starts covered with Fog of War, and only a single dungeon is visible to start... though there are roads to more.
I may or may not actually include #070. The early version, I wouldn't.

#146: Layered card class change.
I've been mulling that one over, during long nights. it's clever, but could be the basis of an entire RPG. Say a card had a 5x5 square of abilities... and say mousing over them revealed what they did, and they had a bit of a modular format (So, the weakest ability would be something like "[StaminaUse=+2][HitMin=+5][HitMax=+20][PhysicalDamage_Priority=0][melee_Priority=0][Damage=+1][Element=None]"). Some abilities have tags like [Next_Dir=1], which refers to Next direction (1 up, 2 right, etc), AKA when you use this ability, the ability in that direction is added to it.
So these abilities determine what your character can do. Some join together, too, to form larger, more powerful abilities - when they have conflicting tags, priority can be used to determine which takes place (1 beats 0, 2 beats 1, etc), so a normally Melee attack can become a ranged magic attack when paired with the right ability.
Other abilities have something like [Level_Damage=+1]. "Level_" refers to how much is added based on the ability's level (this is 1 damage per level, +2 would be 2 per level, etc).
Except for the base card, the "racial" card, that has nothing but the most basic of abilities, each card actually only has a few abilities. The others spaces are printed on clear plastic, and empty. So the cards beneath show through, and the abilities on them show. When a class/card has an ability, it covers up abilities underneath and removes them.
This is how an ability has a level. The more cards on top of it (without covering it up), the higher the ability. So you can stack 4 cards, and if the bottom card has an ability that's still visible, it's level is 4 (it includes itself). The next card up has abilities that are only level 3, because there are only 2 cards on it.
So, since cards represent classes, this represents... multiclassing. And because you can stack different classes this way (and in different orders, even if they're the same class), you can create various interesting ability chains.
when you mouse over a long chain, the individual ability you're mousing over shows it's stats, but so does the overall chain. So you could potentially see "[StaminaUse=50][MagicDamage_Priority=4][Range=3][RangePriority=2][Element=Tofu][Damage=29][Plus_Weapon_Damage][knockback][stun=40][poison=3][poison_turns=5]", for example. If you stacked Wizard (Common/#3) onto Bishop (Uncommon/#1) onto Assassin (Common/#2) onto Wizard (Uncommon/#2) onto Wizard (Common/#1) onto the basic race card, for example.
A 6th row could be used to determine the 5 passive abilities (Such as, [Melee_Damage=+1], or [Max_HP=+20], or [Stamina_Recovery=+2]).
And you could then explore and add cards to your character, or pop them off, or just keep them in your inventory. You could even reorder them, if you wanted.

Other Mechanics: To Be Commented On.
Planned #151, #140, #107, $081/082, #038.