Attack effects
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Yet another good topic for a Wiki -- I'll start it here, lets
discuss things a little and then maybe we can move it to the wiki.
The content of your game is very important once you overcome the
minor technical problems of writing the engine. ;)
I'd say that a lerge number of interesting and distinct monster
kinds makes for a very large part of a good roguelike game.
And one of the most obvious things that differs the monsters are
their special attacks and their effects.
So I want to try to compile a list monster attacks, both well
known and used in roguelike games, and those less known, but
at least sounding interesting.
The list is not supposed to be a list of all attack effects
possible in a roguelike, nor a list of attack effects that
every roguelike should have. It's supposed to serve as an inspiration
for your own ideas.
The order is chaotic.
* Hit -- Just your standard 'substract an amount of hp' attack.
* Wound -- Create a wound with long-term effect, ie. bleeding.
* Push back -- The pc is pushed back by the force of attack.
* Grab -- The pc can't move away from the monster.
* Paralyze -- The pc can't do anything for several turns.
* Sleep -- Like Paralyze, but it ends when pc is attacked.
* Teleport -- The pc is teleported into random place.
* Electric shock -- The attack ignores any metal armor.
* Corrode -- Attack can damage metal armor.
* Acid attack -- Attack can damage any armor.
* Torch -- The pc is set on fire.
* Fire attack -- Can damage scrolls/books/potions.
* Fear -- The pc becomes afraid.
* Confuse -- The pc moves around randomly.
* Blind -- The pc becomes blind for some turns.
* Steal -- The monsters takes an item from pc's inventory.
* Pickpocket -- The monsters takes some gold from pc's inventory.
* Curse -- One piece of pc's equipment becomes sticky-cursed.
* Disarm -- Makes pc drop his weapon.
* Drain stat -- Lowers one of pc's statistics.
* Drain level -- Lowers pc's experience.
* Silence -- The pc can't cast any spells for a number of turns.
* Dispel -- Removes any magical effects from pc.
* Energize -- Restores pc's mana.
* Heal -- Restores pc's hp.
* Trap -- Creates a trap.
* Clone -- Creates a copy of the monster.
* Mimic -- Makes the monster look/behave/have stats like the pc.
* Amnesia -- Causes amnesia.
* Steal spell -- Makes the pc forget one spell and gives it to the
monster.
* Summon -- Summons monsters.
* Krezus curse -- Turns an item into gold.
* Basilisk stare -- Turns an item/pc into rock.
* Shoot -- Standard ranged attack.
* Poison -- The health of pc decrease for some time.
* Destroy wall -- The monster tunnels into the wall.
* Polymorph -- Targeted at other mosnters, changes their kind.
* Rise dead -- Creates zombies from monster corpses.
* Make hungry -- Makes the pc hungrier.
* Drain magic -- Decreases magical pluses, turns scrolls into empty
scrolls, potions into potions of water.
* Drain power -- Decreases pc's mana.
* Switch places -- Switches places of pc and monster.
* Teleport from -- Monster teleports away from the pc.
* Teleport to -- Monster teleports to a sqare next to the pc.
* Darkness -- Makes the squares around pc dark.
* Light -- Makes the squares around pc lit.
* Earthquake -- Damages all creatures around.
* Hunt -- The monster can attack another monster of specific kind and
heal by killing it.
* Drain health -- The monster heals by attacking.
* Aggravate -- Makes all the monsters around come here.
* Stun -- Makes the pc unable to fight for the next turn.
* Tumble down -- Makes the pc unable to walk for the next turn.
* Idle -- No attack at all.
* Suicide -- Kills the monster.
* Seduce -- Makes the pc take off his armor.
* Charm -- Makes the pc unable to attack the monster.
Please add your entries and comment on the ones already added.
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(Qq) 3 Sob?
. . . ..v.vVvVVvVvv.v.. .
Chris Morris
> The list is not supposed to be a list of all attack effects
> possible in a roguelike, nor a list of attack effects that
> every roguelike should have. It's supposed to serve as an inspiration
> for your own ideas.
Nice list :)
> * Drain stat -- Lowers one of pc's statistics.
Maybe a distinction between temporary lowering (-50% speed for the
next 20 turns) and permanent lowering?
> Please add your entries and comment on the ones already added.
Ones I've seen or used at times other than those already listed:
* Armour-penetrating: Like a normal attack, but bypasses
(non-magical?) armour.
* Madness: Scares the target and drives it insane. Not necessarily the
same as 'drain stat'. One creature of mine gave the character a
special form of insanity that as well as reducing their permanent
balance (mental HP, if you like) also made them perceive the world
slightly differently.
* Convince: Convinces the PC/other creature to help this
creature. Generally this attack was used _by_ the PC, but I put a
creature in that used it for one quest.
* Disease: Prevents health regeneration, possibly other effects too.
* Slay foo: Attack does more damage against a particular sort of opponent.
* Vampirism: Transfer HP/MP/stat from target to attacker
* Kill: Instantly kill the target unless special conditions are
met. (e.g. Adom's banshee) Use with extreme caution...
--
Chris
Jeff Lait
> Yet another good topic for a Wiki -- I'll start it here, lets
> discuss things a little and then maybe we can move it to the wiki.
>
> * Teleport to -- Monster teleports to a sqare next to the pc.
* Teleport to self -- The PC is teleported to a square beside the
monster.
I think Everquest uses this for some highlevel mobs to allow the mob to
kill off casters with a powerful melee attack.
I'm planning on doing one in conjunction with Aggravate (which would
make you visible from anywhere on the map) to allow boss monsters to
drag you back when you try to run away.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://ww.zincland.com/powder)
Christophe
Poison can be used to drain anything for a short duration, not only
health. You could get a strength poison or a mana poison. Spiders would
use a strength draining poison for example.
> * Destroy wall -- The monster tunnels into the wall.
> * Polymorph -- Targeted at other mosnters, changes their kind.
> * Rise dead -- Creates zombies from monster corpses.
> * Make hungry -- Makes the pc hungrier.
> * Drain magic -- Decreases magical pluses, turns scrolls into empty
> scrolls, potions into potions of water.
> * Drain power -- Decreases pc's mana.
> * Switch places -- Switches places of pc and monster.
> * Teleport from -- Monster teleports away from the pc.
> * Teleport to -- Monster teleports to a sqare next to the pc.
> * Darkness -- Makes the squares around pc dark.
> * Light -- Makes the squares around pc lit.
> * Earthquake -- Damages all creatures around.
> * Hunt -- The monster can attack another monster of specific kind and
> heal by killing it.
> * Drain health -- The monster heals by attacking.
> * Aggravate -- Makes all the monsters around come here.
> * Stun -- Makes the pc unable to fight for the next turn.
> * Tumble down -- Makes the pc unable to walk for the next turn.
> * Idle -- No attack at all.
> * Suicide -- Kills the monster.
> * Seduce -- Makes the pc take off his armor.
> * Charm -- Makes the pc unable to attack the monster.
>
> Please add your entries and comment on the ones already added.
>
Here are a few more effect :
* Slow : the player isn't paralized but acts slower
* Disease : acts like a slow poison which can be passed on to other
creatures by proximity. More dangerous diseases will never cure by
themselves and will kill the player after some time.
* good music : increases the stats of all nearby friendly monsters
* bad music : damages and stuns the target. See sound attack :)
* Curse : inflicts the player with various curses. A curse here is
something you would find in Diablo or Guild Wars and has negative
effects but only lasts a short time
* Time warp : time clocks back at the point where the player entered the
level
* Phase out : target disapears completly for a short time. No other
adverse effects.
* Throw buddy : monster takes a smaller buddy and throws it at target.
Both projectile and target takes damage
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Christophe wrote:
> Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski a écrit :
>> * Poison -- The health of pc decrease for some time.
> Poison can be used to drain anything for a short duration, not only
> health. You could get a strength poison or a mana poison. Spiders would
> use a strength draining poison for example.
That goes to the 'Drain stat', which, as somebody noted, should be divided
into temporary and permanent.
Sorry for the attack names -- they are sort of arbitrary, meant to serve
as a reference rather than the one and only effect name.
> Here are a few more effect :
> * Slow : the player isn't paralized but acts slower
> * Disease : acts like a slow poison which can be passed on to other
> creatures by proximity. More dangerous diseases will never cure by
> themselves and will kill the player after some time.
This one's a little fuzzy.
> * good music : increases the stats of all nearby friendly monsters
> * bad music : damages and stuns the target. See sound attack :)
> * Curse : inflicts the player with various curses. A curse here is
> something you would find in Diablo or Guild Wars and has negative
> effects but only lasts a short time
That would be probably the 'Wound' attack...
> * Time warp : time clocks back at the point where the player entered the
> level
> * Phase out : target disapears completly for a short time. No other
> adverse effects.
> * Throw buddy : monster takes a smaller buddy and throws it at target.
> Both projectile and target takes damage
Great ideas everyone! More?
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(==) 3 Yawn?
Michal Brzozowski
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski wrote:
> > * Disease : acts like a slow poison which can be passed on to other
> > creatures by proximity. More dangerous diseases will never cure by
> > themselves and will kill the player after some time.
>
> This one's a little fuzzy.
I think it's a great idea if you balance it well. It worked in dungeon
keeper very nicely. Spread the sickness in a dungeon and come back
later to see everyone dead.
>
> Great ideas everyone! More?
Talking about dungeon keeper, the monsters had some nice attacks:
Fart bomb - damages all creatures nearby every turn, for several turns.
Breathe fire - damages monsters, say on 3 squares in a given direction.
Turn a monster into a chicken (or something else) - the monster keeps
his HP, but can't attack.
Wind - creates some kind of tornado that takes monsters and objects
with it in some direction
Double trouble (well, that's from nethack) - a monster can clone
itself,
but not infinetely, just 2 clones at most.
Chris Morris
Web - slows, entangles, etc. but can also be applied to a square
instead of a creature as a sort of trap.
Aging - ghosts in Adom, for example
Fly/levitate - avoid terrain, or get out of reach of PC
Hide - become difficult to see unless really close (chameleons?)
Invisible - become impossible to see without special powers
Divide - split into two (distinct from summon/clone in that each
half has half the power of the original)
Merge - undoes Divide (for an interesting twist on blobs)
Water attack - since every other element is listed (damages paper,
possibly food, possibly clothes, unless they're stored in something
waterproof)
Eat - swallow a smaller creature whole
Focus - join mana with nearby similar creatures to jointly cast a more
powerful spell than they could each cast individually.
Animate - raise weapons, armour, rocks, etc. to fight the
target. Possibly their weapon, possibly whatever was lying around.
Whirlwind - pick up items from the floor and move them around
randomly, possibly hitting creatures in the way
Corrupt - corrupts or mutates the target while not going so far as to
polymorph it.
Alter ground - turns grass to rock, or poisoned river to clean river,
or whatever. Superset of 'Destroy wall', I suppose.
--
Chris
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Chris Morris wrote:
> Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <thesheep@ sheep.prv.pl> writes:
>> Great ideas everyone! More?
> Web - slows, entangles, etc. but can also be applied to a square
> instead of a creature as a sort of trap.
> Fly/levitate - avoid terrain, or get out of reach of PC
> Hide - become difficult to see unless really close (chameleons?)
> Invisible - become impossible to see without special powers
These are not really attacks, even if you broaden the term.
I'm planning to put them in a separate article, 'monster behaviours'.
> Eat - swallow a smaller creature whole
How is it different from 'Kill'?
> Aging - ghosts in Adom, for example
> Corrupt - corrupts or mutates the target while not going so far as to
> polymorph it.
These two are pretty fuzzy -- I mean there's no single good effect of
aging or corruption. Maybe you could be a little more specific as to
the effects?
> Divide - split into two (distinct from summon/clone in that each
> half has half the power of the original)
> Merge - undoes Divide (for an interesting twist on blobs)
> Water attack - since every other element is listed (damages paper,
> possibly food, possibly clothes, unless they're stored in something
> waterproof)
> Focus - join mana with nearby similar creatures to jointly cast a more
> powerful spell than they could each cast individually.
> Animate - raise weapons, armour, rocks, etc. to fight the
> target. Possibly their weapon, possibly whatever was lying around.
> Whirlwind - pick up items from the floor and move them around
> randomly, possibly hitting creatures in the way
> Alter ground - turns grass to rock, or poisoned river to clean river,
> or whatever. Superset of 'Destroy wall', I suppose.
Excelent ideas, thanks.
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(..) 3 Bee!
Christophe Cavalaria
> At 08 Sep 2005 19:31:58 +0100,
> Chris Morris wrote:
>
>> Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <thesheep@ sheep.prv.pl> writes:
>>> Great ideas everyone! More?
>
>> Web - slows, entangles, etc. but can also be applied to a square
>> instead of a creature as a sort of trap.
>> Fly/levitate - avoid terrain, or get out of reach of PC
>> Hide - become difficult to see unless really close (chameleons?)
>> Invisible - become impossible to see without special powers
>
> These are not really attacks, even if you broaden the term.
> I'm planning to put them in a separate article, 'monster behaviours'.
And what about monster passive counter effets. Effects which are triggered
by specific attacker actions ? Like using fire against a fire elemental
gives him the effect of a healing+blessing spell.
>> Merge - undoes Divide (for an interesting twist on blobs)
Or you could have small creatures in the first place who can merge to create
bigger ones later.
Say, 3 small blobs => 1 big blob, much more dangerous :) There where some
critters like that in Phantasy Star 4
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Christophe Cavalaria wrote:
> Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski wrote:
>> At 08 Sep 2005 19:31:58 +0100,
>> Chris Morris wrote:
>>> Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <thesheep@ sheep.prv.pl> writes:
>>>> Great ideas everyone! More?
>>
>>> Web - slows, entangles, etc. but can also be applied to a square
>>> instead of a creature as a sort of trap.
>>> Fly/levitate - avoid terrain, or get out of reach of PC
>>> Hide - become difficult to see unless really close (chameleons?)
>>> Invisible - become impossible to see without special powers
>> These are not really attacks, even if you broaden the term.
>> I'm planning to put them in a separate article, 'monster behaviours'.
> And what about monster passive counter effets. Effects which are triggered
> by specific attacker actions ? Like using fire against a fire elemental
> gives him the effect of a healing+blessing spell.
They will also go to the behaviors, along with all kinds of movement,
attack-choosing algorithms (couterattacks), picking up items, etc.
It's gonna be much bigger than the attacks article.
>>> Merge - undoes Divide (for an interesting twist on blobs)
> Or you could have small creatures in the first place who can merge to create
> bigger ones later.
> Say, 3 small blobs => 1 big blob, much more dangerous :) There where some
> critters like that in Phantasy Star 4
Good idea. I can't recall that monster in PS4, but I didn't finish it, so
maybe I didn't get that far :)
In Chronotrigger there are many monsters that do their 'combo' attacks,
that require cooperation of two or more kinds of monsters.
* Cooperation -- performed by several monsters at a time.
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(Oo) 3 Eh?
Shedletsky
obscure places).
* Condemn - Put's a timer on the PC. When it expires the PC dies. This timer
could either be dispelled or canceled when the monster dies. (interesting
game dynamics here)
* Mute - PC can't use spells
* Nexus - Swaps around PCs stats (I hate this one, I think it's dumb)
* Drunken - Makes PC stumble in random directions/miss more.
* Fallen One - Reduce PC HP to 1.
* Blurrrrr - Makes PC "see" several copies of the attacker, only one of
which is real.
* Swizzle - Swap the PC's HP and mana totals
* BSoD - Crash the computer the game is running on (portability issues here)
* Disorient - Paint the screen upside down (this one could be great)
* Banish - Send the player to a different plane. This would be a specially
dangerous level that the player would have to find the exit to to return to
the original dungeon.
* L3 Doom - Kills any target whose level is a multiple of 3. (stolen from
final fantasy - you could have different levels and effects, obviously)
* Balefire - Kills target and undoes the target's last N moves. Hard to make
this practical since it requires you build an undo system into your RL.
However, once this system is in place you could do all sorts of interesting
time effects.
* Energy Shield - Monster absorbs all magical attacks directed at it and
converts them into health. Could also do the reverse (all physical damage
turned into mana).
* Head crab - Allow the monster to possess the player for N turns. During
this time the PC would be computer controlled and attack the enemies of the
possessing monster. Only good in some setups.
* Rip Van Winkle - Put the PC to Sleep for a looooong time. Maybe make him
incorporeal so that monsters can't interact with him. Then simulate the
dungeon environment for several thousand turns, then the player wakes up.
This is only good if you have a very dynamic dungeon environment (that
things would be different after N turns). Also advance the PC's age.
* Soul Steal - Steal the PC's soul, making the gods ignore his praying.
Maybe allow him to get it back somehow? Dunno.
* Mid-life Crisis - Force the PC to change his character class to a
different one (or randomly select a new one). This one could really suck.
Best used on one unique boss, maybe.
--
Blog:
Shedletsky's Bits: A Random Walk Through Manifold Space
http://www.stanford.edu/~jjshed/blog
Christophe Cavalaria
There were 2 kind of monsters : small blobs would merge for a big blob, and
2 different monsters called bladeright and hakenleft which would merge to
form a monster called twinarms
> In Chronotrigger there are many monsters that do their 'combo' attacks,
> that require cooperation of two or more kinds of monsters.
>
> * Cooperation -- performed by several monsters at a time.
>
Forgot about that one : meta attacks which damage according to a percent of
the remaining HP or the max HP. FF style attacks which take 1/2 of the HP
for example.
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Shedletsky wrote:
> * Condemn - Put's a timer on the PC. When it expires the PC dies. This timer
> could either be dispelled or canceled when the monster dies. (interesting
> game dynamics here)
Heh, have you seen my post about forcing the player to retreat? ;)
> * Mute - PC can't use spells
Already included as 'Silence'.
>
> * Drunken - Makes PC stumble in random directions/miss more.
Already included as 'Confuse'.
> * Fallen One - Reduce PC HP to 1.
Won't it cause lots of inta-deaths?
> * BSoD - Crash the computer the game is running on (portability issues here)
Well, you could just logout the player on non-windows systems... ;)
> * Disorient - Paint the screen upside down (this one could be great)
Opinions vary ;)
One of the Zelda games had that 'reverse controls' effect.
But I think it relies too much on the player's abilities -- we are
talking about turn-based games, such an effect would only make the playing
uncomfortable and increase the time the player takes to make his move,
because of all that double-checking.
> * Nexus - Swaps around PCs stats (I hate this one, I think it's dumb)
> * Blurrrrr - Makes PC "see" several copies of the attacker, only one of
> which is real.
> * Swizzle - Swap the PC's HP and mana totals
> * Head crab - Allow the monster to possess the player for N turns. During
> this time the PC would be computer controlled and attack the enemies of the
> possessing monster. Only good in some setups.
This one I'd call 'Possess' ;)
> * Banish - Send the player to a different plane. This would be a specially
> dangerous level that the player would have to find the exit to to return to
> the original dungeon.
In other words, 'teleport level'. Will only work for persistent levels.
> * L3 Doom - Kills any target whose level is a multiple of 3. (stolen from
> final fantasy - you could have different levels and effects, obviously)
We are talking about *monster* attacks against a *single* player
character. Any insta-kill attacks are probably off-limits.
> * Balefire - Kills target and undoes the target's last N moves. Hard to make
> this practical since it requires you build an undo system into your RL.
> However, once this system is in place you could do all sorts of interesting
> time effects.
Yes, but how do you undo moves of only one creature, when they obviously
interact?
> * Energy Shield - Monster absorbs all magical attacks directed at it and
> converts them into health. Could also do the reverse (all physical damage
> turned into mana).
This will go to 'monster behaviours' soon.
> * Rip Van Winkle - Put the PC to Sleep for a looooong time. Maybe make him
> incorporeal so that monsters can't interact with him. Then simulate the
> dungeon environment for several thousand turns, then the player wakes up.
> This is only good if you have a very dynamic dungeon environment (that
> things would be different after N turns). Also advance the PC's age.
> * Soul Steal - Steal the PC's soul, making the gods ignore his praying.
> Maybe allow him to get it back somehow? Dunno.
The soul loss might be temporary.
> * Mid-life Crisis - Force the PC to change his character class to a
> different one (or randomly select a new one). This one could really suck.
> Best used on one unique boss, maybe.
I figure thiswould be even more annoying than Nexus.
On the other hand, it resembles NetHack's player polymorphing...
Thank you for the ideas.
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(Uu) 3 Sigh!
Andrew Patrick Schoonmaker
Shedletsky <mylas...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>This is a great discussion. Here's what I cooked up just now (or stole from
>obscure places).
>
>* Condemn - Put's a timer on the PC. When it expires the PC dies. This timer
>could either be dispelled or canceled when the monster dies. (interesting
>game dynamics here)
>* Mute - PC can't use spells
>* Blurrrrr - Makes PC "see" several copies of the attacker, only one of
>which is real.
>* Swizzle - Swap the PC's HP and mana totals
>final fantasy - you could have different levels and effects, obviously)
>different one (or randomly select a new one). This one could really suck.
>Best used on one unique boss, maybe.
Since when is the Final Fantasy series considered "obscure"?
-Andrew ()
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Andrew Patrick Schoonmaker wrote:
> In article <dfq49f$q50$2...@news.Stanford.EDU>,
> Shedletsky <mylas...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>>This is a great discussion. Here's what I cooked up just now (or stole from
>>obscure places).
> Since when is the Final Fantasy series considered "obscure"?
His talking about "obscure places" -- you don't know where he keeps
his copy ;)
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(..) 3 Bee!
Jim Strathmeyer
> So I want to try to compile a list monster attacks, both well known
> and used in roguelike games, and those less known, but at least
> sounding interesting.
Some things that may have been missed:
Xan's boot prick, that slows/encumbers the player
In general, the way Nethack's Air elementals and varios v's engulf the
player can become and interesting place to hide.
Nymphs stealing the player's items, and other general non-combat based
attacks, such as foocubi.
And you also don't differentiate between normal attacks and passive
attacks, such as the splash from an acid blob or being frozen by a
floating eye.
And did anyone mention mind flayers sucking out your brains?
--
Jim Strathmeyer
Pekka Nurminen
"Shedletsky" <mylas...@stanford.edu> wrote in message
news:dfq49f$q50$2...@news.Stanford.EDU...
> This is a great discussion. Here's what I cooked up just now (or stole
> from
> obscure places).
>
> * Condemn - Put's a timer on the PC. When it expires the PC dies. This
> timer
> could either be dispelled or canceled when the monster dies. (interesting
> game dynamics here)
Another alternative would be to lay egg/seed inside PC. PC would need to dig
it out
(causing damage). Otherwise PC would die / lose control when egg hatches /
seed grows
enough.
Some additional:
* Modify/destroy equipment - Makes PC's items rust / damage / disenchant..
or destroy.
* Scatter equipment - Makes PC's equipment (some if not all) to be thrown
around.
* Self destruct - Suicide causing damage to PC.
* Sacrifice - If PC stands on an altar, sacrifice. Like in adom.
* Make deaf.
* Sonic attack - Causes damage / death unless PC is prepared - like wail of
the banshee in adom (instant death unless deaf).
* Modify air around PC - Makes harder / impossible to PC to breath.
* Modify vision - Modifies the way PC & player sees the level (e.g. shuffle,
blur vision); level itself is not modified. (this is similar to your
disorient attack.)
* Modify tile where PC is - Makes floor lava / quicksand / ..
* Modify PC's memory - Makes PC forget something, changes (e.g. quest
objectives) or gives new knowledge.
* Pull - Pulls PC closer. Might need prerequisites, e.g. first attach
tentacles / throw grapping hook to PC and then pull.
* Add item - Makes PC to accept an item (e.g. loadstone, timed explosive or
something else not so useful).
* Decide PC's next action(s) - Cause damage to itself, quaff a potion, zap a
wand, etc. One variant would be timed version: attack friendly shopkeeper
when next time in a shop / kick altar when seen.
* Take over - PC controls body of monster and monster controls body of PC.
Shedletsky
>
> -Andrew ()
Last one I played was FF6, from ~1995. I just assumed a ten year old
videogame was obscure *shrug*
Shedletsky
>> make
>> this practical since it requires you build an undo system into your RL.
>> However, once this system is in place you could do all sorts of
>> interesting
>> time effects.
> Yes, but how do you undo moves of only one creature, when they obviously
> interact?
I have thought about this some since it might be something I will use. My
idea is that I will save the states of the entire game for the last N turns
in an arraylist. Then, when something gets balefired, I revert to the saved
state from N turns ago. I place the current player in the old state, and
remove the victim.
This seems like a lot of work, but I will already have enabled save state
using object serialization for the save game feature, so to save the last N
states, I can simply stream the serialized data to an arraylist in memory
instead of a file on disk. Not sure what kind of overhead this is :-/
I think time-shifting effects like this are neat because, as far as I know,
no existing RL does anything like this (it's hard to do in C).
Chris Morris
> At 08 Sep 2005 19:31:58 +0100,
> Chris Morris wrote:
> > Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <thesheep@ sheep.prv.pl> writes:
> >> Great ideas everyone! More?
>
> How is it different from 'Kill'?
It depends. If it's reasonably corrosion resistant the target still
has a few turns to get out by teleporting, or by doing huge amounts of
damage to the creature from the inside, or by allies killing the
creature and chopping it open. If the target is immune to corrosion
then it doesn't harm it at all, it just has to work out how to get
out...
If the creature is sufficiently large and the target is immune to
corrosion there could even be a whole dungeon-level inside. ;)
> > Aging - ghosts in Adom, for example
> > Corrupt - corrupts or mutates the target while not going so far as to
> > polymorph it.
>
> These two are pretty fuzzy -- I mean there's no single good effect of
> aging or corruption. Maybe you could be a little more specific as to
> the effects?
Well, in Adom you get different stat bonuses and penalties depending
on your age, and you die if your age gets above the
racially-influenced limit. The effect an aging attack has depends on
how aging is implemented in the game, so it's hard to be more specific.
Corruption is tricky to define, but in Adom increments a corruption
counter, and every time that counter passes a milestone you gain a
corruption, which could be anything. So it's a bit like a fractional
curse.
"The demon hits you. You feel corrupted." x10-20
"The demon hits you. You feel corrupted. Horns grow from your forehead"
Any individual corruption attack (except really powerful ones) has no
visible effect, but the cumulative effect of many such attacks is
potentially lethal.
Crawl does it differently, but the overall effect is similar.
--
Chris
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Jim Strathmeyer wrote:
> Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <thesheep@ sheep.prv.pl> schrieb:
>> So I want to try to compile a list monster attacks, both well known
>> and used in roguelike games, and those less known, but at least
>> sounding interesting.
> Some things that may have been missed:
>
> Xan's boot prick, that slows/encumbers the player
Slow down was menationed, will add encumbrance.
> In general, the way Nethack's Air elementals and varios v's engulf the
> player can become and interesting place to hide.
Ok, so we've got an 'engluf' attack.
> Nymphs stealing the player's items, and other general non-combat based
> attacks, such as foocubi.
Stealing and taking off armor were mentioned. Don't know how to treat the
nurse, however.
> And you also don't differentiate between normal attacks and passive
> attacks, such as the splash from an acid blob or being frozen by a
> floating eye.
The 'passive' attacks aren't really the monster's action, so they'll
go into a separate article later.
> And did anyone mention mind flayers sucking out your brains?
Amnesia was mentioned. Stat drains too.
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(==) 3 Yawn?
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Pekka Nurminen wrote:
>
> "Shedletsky" <mylas...@stanford.edu> wrote in message
> news:dfq49f$q50$2...@news.Stanford.EDU...
>> This is a great discussion. Here's what I cooked up just now (or stole
>> from
>> obscure places).
>>
>> * Condemn - Put's a timer on the PC. When it expires the PC dies. This
>> timer
>> could either be dispelled or canceled when the monster dies. (interesting
>> game dynamics here)
>
> Another alternative would be to lay egg/seed inside PC. PC would need to dig
> it out
> (causing damage). Otherwise PC would die / lose control when egg hatches /
> seed grows
> enough.
>
> Some additional:
>
> * Modify/destroy equipment - Makes PC's items rust / damage / disenchant..
> or destroy.
> * Scatter equipment - Makes PC's equipment (some if not all) to be thrown
> around.
> * Self destruct - Suicide causing damage to PC.
> * Sonic attack - Causes damage / death unless PC is prepared - like wail of
> the banshee in adom (instant death unless deaf).
> * Modify tile where PC is - Makes floor lava / quicksand / ..
> * Pull - Pulls PC closer. Might need prerequisites, e.g. first attach
> tentacles / throw grapping hook to PC and then pull.
> * Decide PC's next action(s) - Cause damage to itself, quaff a potion, zap a
> wand, etc. One variant would be timed version: attack friendly shopkeeper
> when next time in a shop / kick altar when seen.
> * Take over - PC controls body of monster and monster controls body of PC.
These were already mentioned ;)
> * Make deaf.
> * Modify air around PC - Makes harder / impossible to PC to breath.
What's supposed to be the effect of those?
I mean in the terms of game mechanics.
> * Modify PC's memory - Makes PC forget something, changes (e.g. quest
> objectives) or gives new knowledge.
I'll split this one into Amnesia and Teach.
> * Sacrifice - If PC stands on an altar, sacrifice. Like in adom.
> * Add item - Makes PC to accept an item (e.g. loadstone, timed explosive or
> something else not so useful).
> * Modify vision - Modifies the way PC & player sees the level (e.g. shuffle,
> blur vision); level itself is not modified. (this is similar to your
> disorient attack.)
These are great, added. Thank you.
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
($s) 3 Ching!
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Chris Morris wrote:
> Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <thesheep@ sheep.prv.pl> writes:
>> At 08 Sep 2005 19:31:58 +0100,
>> Chris Morris wrote:
>> > Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <thesheep@ sheep.prv.pl> writes:
>> >> Great ideas everyone! More?
>>
>> > Eat - swallow a smaller creature whole
>> How is it different from 'Kill'?
>
> It depends. If it's reasonably corrosion resistant the target still
> has a few turns to get out by teleporting, or by doing huge amounts of
> damage to the creature from the inside, or by allies killing the
> creature and chopping it open. If the target is immune to corrosion
> then it doesn't harm it at all, it just has to work out how to get
> out...
>
> If the creature is sufficiently large and the target is immune to
> corrosion there could even be a whole dungeon-level inside. ;)
So in other words, you mean the NetHack's 'engluf' attack.
>> > Aging - ghosts in Adom, for example
>> > Corrupt - corrupts or mutates the target while not going so far as to
>> > polymorph it.
>>
>> These two are pretty fuzzy -- I mean there's no single good effect of
>> aging or corruption. Maybe you could be a little more specific as to
>> the effects?
>
> Well, in Adom you get different stat bonuses and penalties depending
> on your age, and you die if your age gets above the
> racially-influenced limit. The effect an aging attack has depends on
> how aging is implemented in the game, so it's hard to be more specific.
>
> Corruption is tricky to define, but in Adom increments a corruption
> counter, and every time that counter passes a milestone you gain a
> corruption, which could be anything. So it's a bit like a fractional
> curse.
> "The demon hits you. You feel corrupted." x10-20
> "The demon hits you. You feel corrupted. Horns grow from your forehead"
>
> Any individual corruption attack (except really powerful ones) has no
> visible effect, but the cumulative effect of many such attacks is
> potentially lethal.
>
> Crawl does it differently, but the overall effect is similar.
I try to avoid the effects that are bound too close to certain game
mechanics. When it's impossible, I try to include the description
of mechanics in the description of the attack.
The aging thus looks like a stat-drain attack with a chance of killing.
The corruption is more tricky. How about the Alphaman's mutations?
* Mutate -- pc grows/loses a bodypart, which changes his abilities.
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(TT) 3 Waaah!
Martin Read
[regarding swallow attacks]
>So in other words, you mean the NetHack's 'engluf' attack.
Nethack's "engulf" and "swallow" attacks are conceptually distinct. If
you can weather the damage indefinitely, an engulfer cannot kill you, but
a swallower is guaranteed to kill you after a finite period of time even
if you still have all your hit points, unless you escape before that time
has elapsed. "The purple worm totally digests you!"
(Also, a ring of slow digestion will prevent you from being swallowed,
but not from being engulfed.)
--
Martin Read - my opinions are my own. share them if you wish.
\_\/_/ in the metal and blood in the scent and mascara on a backcloth of
\ / lashes and scars in a flood of your tears in sackcloth and ashes
\/ -- Sisters of Mercy, "Flood I"
Pekka Nurminen
"Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski" <thesheep@ sheep.prv.pl> wrote in message
news:slrndi2hp9....@atos.wmid.amu.edu.pl...
> At Thu, 08 Sep 2005 22:04:34 GMT,
> Pekka Nurminen wrote:
>
>>
>> "Shedletsky" <mylas...@stanford.edu> wrote in message
>> news:dfq49f$q50$2...@news.Stanford.EDU...
>
>> * Modify air around PC - Makes harder / impossible to PC to breath.
>
> What's supposed to be the effect of those?
> I mean in the terms of game mechanics.
make deaf
- Makes chatting harder (or impossible) since PC cannot hear anything.
Also could give resistance against sonic attacks.
modify air
- E.g. remove air, so it's vacuum.
PC needs to flee to another tile unless he can survice without air.
- This could include summoning of clouds (like in crawl).
Jeff Lait
> Shedletsky wrote:
>
>
> > * Disorient - Paint the screen upside down (this one could be great)
>
> Opinions vary ;)
> One of the Zelda games had that 'reverse controls' effect.
> But I think it relies too much on the player's abilities -- we are
> talking about turn-based games, such an effect would only make the playing
> uncomfortable and increase the time the player takes to make his move,
> because of all that double-checking.
Zap'm has this, except as the effect of a cursed cortical implant. I
found it a very effective disinsentive for randomly plugging stuff into
your brain.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
Jeff Lait
> >> * Balefire - Kills target and undoes the target's last N moves. Hard to
> >> make
> >> this practical since it requires you build an undo system into your RL.
> >> However, once this system is in place you could do all sorts of
> >> interesting
> >> time effects.
>
> > Yes, but how do you undo moves of only one creature, when they obviously
> > interact?
>
> I have thought about this some since it might be something I will use. My
> idea is that I will save the states of the entire game for the last N turns
> in an arraylist. Then, when something gets balefired, I revert to the saved
> state from N turns ago. I place the current player in the old state, and
> remove the victim.
That would merely do a time-rollback, however.
What I think should happen is that you rewind the game the N turns.
You then replay forward N turns, repeating the players & all monsters
actions.
You keep a track of each creature's actions: "Attack north", "Drink
inventory item N", etc. If a creature was killed and no longer is
killed, it gets to run its AI to determine what it would have done.
The neat thing about this, IMHO, is that if an enemy were to balefire
your pet that had healed you, you could end up dead because your pet no
longer would have healed you.
Hmm... Another option is just to track all sources of damage/buffs and
when they occurred. You can then remove any of them that were
performed by that creature in that window, resurrecting as appropriate.
I think this is the most efficient and expected approach...
> This seems like a lot of work, but I will already have enabled save state
> using object serialization for the save game feature, so to save the last N
> states, I can simply stream the serialized data to an arraylist in memory
> instead of a file on disk. Not sure what kind of overhead this is :-/
The time cost of serializing the game state is often non-trivial.
> I think time-shifting effects like this are neat because, as far as I know,
> no existing RL does anything like this (it's hard to do in C).
It's no harder to do in C than it is in any other language.
The time-warp to when the player entered the level is a lot easier -
many roguelikes already freeze action on other levels, and this
provides one simple checkpoint that you could do easily.
Martin Read
>Hmm... Another option is just to track all sources of damage/buffs and
>when they occurred. You can then remove any of them that were
>performed by that creature in that window, resurrecting as appropriate.
> I think this is the most efficient and expected approach...
Sounds about right. (Remember to also include landscape deltas if the
landscape can be modified by creature actions. Yes, this can cause
causality failures. This is why both sides relegated the use of balefire
to the status of a desperation tactic and were very careful to use the
weakest possible balefire. If you balefired someone hard enough, it was
possible to make it as if they had never been born.)
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Jeff Lait wrote:
The problem arises when the pc have interacted with some monster that's
no longer there, or any other entity that changed because of the death
of the balefired creature. A trivial example -- the player attacked that
creature. Now, taht the creature is gone, should the pc move into it's
position instead? Or maybe just waste a turn waiting? The mosnter that
would have been blocked won't wait a turn -- but it will attack instead,
and it won't be where it was previously, so the player won't fight back.
It's like blind fighting. Suddenly everything is elsewhere, and offcourse
the player isn't allowed to change his moves -- becuase that would be
barely a rollback.
> Hmm... Another option is just to track all sources of damage/buffs and
> when they occurred. You can then remove any of them that were
> performed by that creature in that window, resurrecting as appropriate.
> I think this is the most efficient and expected approach...
Yes, and it doesn't suffer from what I described.
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(: ) 3 Snap!
Jeff Lait
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski wrote:
Swing wildly at the air.
> The mosnter that
> would have been blocked won't wait a turn -- but it will attack instead,
> and it won't be where it was previously, so the player won't fight back.
I had intended that *all* creatures use pre-recorded moves, not just
the player. Thus the monster would still act as if it was blocked even
though it wasn't.
> It's like blind fighting. Suddenly everything is elsewhere, and offcourse
> the player isn't allowed to change his moves -- becuase that would be
> barely a rollback.
If none of the other monsters are allowed to change their moves, it is
like blind fighting, but not as bad as you suggested.
> > Hmm... Another option is just to track all sources of damage/buffs and
> > when they occurred. You can then remove any of them that were
> > performed by that creature in that window, resurrecting as appropriate.
> > I think this is the most efficient and expected approach...
>
> Yes, and it doesn't suffer from what I described.
Agreed. As I think about it, doing change tracking with ownership of
the changes is likely the best route.
Still has it issues. If I cast heal, I need to record the total points
that would have been healed, not the number that had actually been
healed.
Jim Strathmeyer
> Amnesia was mentioned. Stat drains too.
Well, they're certainly the same _effect_, but definitely different
_types_ of attacks.
Also, the Quantum Mechanic's behavior of sometimes teleporting the
character.
--
Jim Strathmeyer
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Jim Strathmeyer wrote:
As I explained, I wanted to somehow summarize and list the possible
and popular attack effects, so that when you think "Well, I've got
that Tin Robot monster in my roguelike, which is kind of bland and boring,
I wonder whether there could be something special in his attack." you can
take the list, browse it and come out with your own attack, possibly
combining modified attack effects from the list.
Sure, the effects might be randomized, made to work 1 time in 10, weakened
or made stronger by various circumstances, etc.
I'm completely aware that it's a very limited approach, but I need a way
to sort the elements of a larger article I envision -- one that's supposed
to help you decide on another problem: "Well, I've got that Tin Robot
monster in my roguelike, wchich is kind of bland and boring. I wonder
whether there could be something special in his attack, movement,
behavior or the way it reacts to hits and spells."
I hope to make something like this on the Roguebasin Wiki, with the help
of the community.
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(@a) 3 Be?
Shedletsky
> of the community.
If you throw a first draft up onto Roguebasin, I'll be happy to give it a
lookover.
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
Shedletsky wrote:
The first version is online:
<http://roguebasin.t-o-m-e.net/index.php/A_list_of_monster_attack_effects>
I just copied the relevant parts of the posts. Now it needs a little
polishing -- I'll do it gradually, anybody is free to make corrctions and
add new attacks, of course.
R. Dan Henry
<mpr...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>sheep1 % sheep.prv.pl wrote:
>[regarding swallow attacks]
>>So in other words, you mean the NetHack's 'engluf' attack.
>
>Nethack's "engulf" and "swallow" attacks are conceptually distinct. If
>you can weather the damage indefinitely, an engulfer cannot kill you, but
>a swallower is guaranteed to kill you after a finite period of time even
>if you still have all your hit points, unless you escape before that time
>has elapsed. "The purple worm totally digests you!"
>
>(Also, a ring of slow digestion will prevent you from being swallowed,
>but not from being engulfed.)
The engulfing itself is the same, though. Under my scheme, they'd both
be engulfing, but with different additional effects -- the swallower has
a Delayed effect causing Death. And the ring thing is just different
resistances applying.
--
R. Dan Henry = danh...@inreach.com
R. Dan Henry
<pekka.n...@nospam.pp8.inet.fi> wrote:
>modify air
> - E.g. remove air, so it's vacuum.
> PC needs to flee to another tile unless he can survice without air.
> - This could include summoning of clouds (like in crawl).
I would treat vacuum as a cloud. Only it would naturally disappear in
less than a turn, so maintaining it should continue to cost the caster
mana if monsters have mana.
R. Dan Henry
sheep.prv.pl> wrote:
>At Sat, 10 Sep 2005 11:23:12 -0400,
> Shedletsky wrote:
>
>>> I hope to make something like this on the Roguebasin Wiki, with the help
>>> of the community.
>>
>> If you throw a first draft up onto Roguebasin, I'll be happy to give it a
>> lookover.
>
>The first version is online:
>
><http://roguebasin.t-o-m-e.net/index.php/A_list_of_monster_attack_effects>
>
>I just copied the relevant parts of the posts. Now it needs a little
>polishing -- I'll do it gradually, anybody is free to make corrctions and
>add new attacks, of course.
Well, I'm posting my clean-up of the list anyway. Compare the approach.
If you want to wiki it, go ahead -- it's mostly just organizing and
editing this thread a bit, anyway.
R. Dan Henry
sheep.prv.pl> wrote:
>The order is chaotic.
Something of a problem in a list, esp. for someone trying to determine
if his own idea is new and should be added or is already covered. Note
the following organization attempts to cover the suggestions in this
thread that are attacks (there's a fair number of things in the far
broader class of "things monsters might do" -- I've dropped these as
another subject) and mostly classifies by effects, not by in-game
description. Summoning, animating objects, cloning oneself, etc. are not
attacks.
Nor is healing the character an attack, although it is useful to
consider how an ally might do so. Since that is essentially simply
reversing various attack types, I don't think that deserves a separate
listing, just a note of reminder.
Firstly, I suggest breaking things down into several categories [an
attack can combine categories, of course]:
1. Damage
Damage is any harm done to the character's person. Any damage can be of
one of the three following types:
a)Temporary -- as long as the @ doesn't die, this damage will eventually
go away on its own. In RLs, most damage is of this type.
b)Semi-Permanent -- it only goes away once an appropriate restorative
measure is taken. Angband stat drains are semi-permanent, Crawl stat
drains are temporary.
c)Permanent -- the loss is permanent. The only way to increase the value
diminished by the damage is to do so as if the value had always been
this low. Permanent damage of most kinds should be very rare, but might
be good for some ultra-rare monster or powerful unique. If each hit from
Ghrashnar the Unspeakable reduces your total hit points by one forever,
you'll pay Ghrashnar some respect. Hunger attacks are typically
permanent.
Damage can also be:
I) Instantaneous. All damage is delivered when the hit is made.
II) Progressive. Typical RL poison. Damage is done over time --
curatives may allow prevention of ever taking full damage. For some
attacks this could be done until attacker is killed/wounded/stunned/some
other requirement (e.g. drowning, garroting, some magic)
III) Delayed. No damage done when hit, only later does it take effect.
As far as I know, no true Delayed damage is done in any existing
roguelike. Preventive measures might occur in the meantime. Delayed
could be, oh, alien/giant wasp lays egg in you. Sometime later, chest
explodes.
Damage types:
1) Hit points
2) Stat loss
3) Maximum hit point reduction (e.g. Crawl rotting)
4) Mana drain
5) Drain experience/level
6) Drain satiation (hunger attack)
7) Drain "sanity", "morale", or other game specific value
8) Drain life span (aging)
9) Adds to corruption/mutation/degeneration value
10) Drain piety
2. Inventory Manipulations
A hero is only as good as his weapons, or so some believe and among
those believers are monsters who steal, destroy, or otherwise screw
around in their target's pack.
1) Stealing
a) Goes into monster inventory and may be used by monster
b) Goes into monster inventory, not used
c) Goes into monster stomach inventory, destroyed if not
recovered after a certain time interval
d) Item is removed from game
e) Item is removed to another area (Demonic Thieves may send
their loot to a room in the Special Demon Crime Level.
f) Item is dropped on floor below player or nearby (a
disarming or "knock your hat off" attack)
g) Reverse theft -- adds (bad) item to player inventory. Could
just be cheap, heavy stuff to encumber you.
* In either a or b, recovery is as simple as killing monster
** Monster may only steal certain types of items, such as only gold.
2) Splash Attacks (named for typical acid splash)
a) Attacks items worn/equipped and/or unequipped inventory
b) Probably attacks only certain items types: metal, wood,
leather, armor, boots, whatever
c) Attacks usually check each item independently, but could have
it randomly attack a number of items, so the "carry
lots" method actually helps protect rare excellent item.
d) Attack can continue over several rounds as part of a "status"
(e.g. Crawl Sticky Flame is hard on scroll collections)
e) Attack can destroy outright or "damage" (reduce item hit
points or produce, e.g., "Rusty" status)
3) Exotic Item Attacks
a) Polymorphs item
i) Randomly
ii) Specific transformations like anything -> gold
or potion -> potion of filthy water
b) Removes blessing and/or curses item
c) Disenchants items
i) Subtracts "plusses"
ii) Drains charges of charged items
iii) Really powerful might de-ego items or even blank
artifact powers
iv) Good news: might also disenchant curses
d) Enchants items (reverse of c, usual risks of overenchanting)
e) Unequips or equips item (Hypnotoad makes you wield the cursed
Amulet of Stupidness...)
3. Player Status
Some status types like "poison" are really just ways to have Progressive
damage as described above. Those are not included here. Here is a list
of player status types a monster attack might cause. Effects of a status
depend on implementation in a specific game.
1) Hallucinations (screen display doesn't match reality)
2) Fear, Panic, Terror, Trouser Soiling
3) Confusion, Drunkenness, Vertigo, Nausea
4) Blindness, Deafness, Numbness
5) Death (use sparingly if at all) or Death's Door (leave one hit from
death)
6) Rotting, Disease, Illness (often a Progressive damage status, but
can include other things like retarding/preventing regeneration)
7) Cursed/Damned
8) Sleep, Paralysis, Petrifaction
9) Slow, Sluggish
10) Adds/Removes a mutation/corruption/cyberware patch. Or cause
polymorphing (change of whatever game allows polymorph player to
change)
11) Cancels/reduces duration of beneficial spell(s)/status(es)
12) Shuffle stats (okay, it isn't really a "status" -- I cheatified
this one) -- can include "stats" like mana, hit points,
anything that measures on approximately the same scale in
your game.
13) Seduced/Charmed/Hypnotized/Brainzapped - player either does or
cannot do some action for some period of time like giving his
gold to the attacker or not being able to attack his attacker.
Includes complete Possession.
14) Stunned, Dizzy, Knocked About A Bit
15) Silent, Quiet, Mute
16) Amnesia (may include loss of skill/spell knowledge)
17) Body Swap/Mind Swap - Monster AI is now the @ and player is running
the attacker. Good for cheesy sci-fi RL I guess.
4. Player Location/Movement
1) Player is teleported
a) Random, long-range
b) Random, within current room or player's or attacker's vision
c) To monster (nets, whips, gravity beams)
d) To another dungeon level
e) To a completely different game location (e.g. the Abyss)
2) Player and attacker change places
3) Knock-back: player moved in direction opposite attack, collisions
may result in additional damage
4) Player is knocked down. Probably some penalties until a turn taken
to stand up.
5) Player is pinned/grabbed/grappled. Cannot move until some condition
met. Can otherwise act to fight back/escape.
6) Player is engulfed by the monster. Moves with the monster, isolated
from dungeon until monster or player dies or player gets out.
7) Reeling In: player moved in direction towards attack (slower version
of 1c)
X. Player Defense
Various attacks interact with player defenses in different ways. Since
this depends in part on the combat model used by your RL engine, this
list is perhaps the least generally applicable part, but I'll try.
1) Armor
a) Armor has a chance to negate the attack
b) Armor will reduce the damage
c) Armor has a chance to reduce the damage
d) Armor is ineffective
e) Various parts of the damage use different options from a-d
(e.g. armor helps hit points against flame, but not
scroll destruction)
2) Evasion (it is assumed evasion always requires a roll for success)
a) Evasive capability of player can negate attack
b) Evasive capability of player can reduce damage
c) Attack cannot be evaded
d) Mix and match from a-c
3) Resistance
a) Worn items grant resistance
b) Intrinsics* grant resistance
c) Spells or other effects grant resistance
d) Carried items grant resistance
e) Multiple resistance do (not) increase resistance
f) Various damage effects of attack mix and match a-d
4) Vulnerability
a) Worn items cause vulnerability
b) Intrinsics* cause vulnerability
c) Spells or other effects cause vulnerability
d) Carried items cause vulnerability
e) Multiple vulnerabilities do (not) increase vulnerability
f) Various damage effects of attack mix and match a-d
So, for example, you can have electrical attacks that do simple hit
point damage, but are distinguished by ignoring armor or even increasing
vulnerability based on the amount of metal worn (or carried).
*-Intrinsics can include any @ feature: race, sex, class, stats, etc.
5) Oddities
a) Damage is fractional. E.g., Painfest does half your current
hit points.
Y. Range
1) Attack requires proximity (monster adjacent to player)
Range=1
2) Attack requires close proximity (Range=0) Usually only given
to traps, but a "floor mimic" that can share a square
with another creature could use this
3) Attack is range>1. Can be as low as range=2 for pole arms on
up to maximum detection range.
4) Attack can skip over monsters. Allows attacks from behind
allies/guards.
5) Attack beams through monsters. Allows attacks that kill the
sword fodder in order to get to @.
6) Attack had a radius (ball spells).
7) Attack passes through walls. (Ouch.)
8) Attack is passive. It is activated by player attacks:
a) Melee attacks
b) Ranged physical attacks
c) Magical attacks
d) Combinations of a-c
Z. Side Effects
This covers things that are not crucial to the attack from the target's
POV, but influence others.
1) Effects on Attacker
a) Costs mana (spells)
b) Costs hit points (fire elemental hurling parts of itself)
This can be all hit points for, e.g., bee stings.
c) Costs item/charges (archery, wand use)
d) Vampirism: attacker gets (some of) hits/mana/etc. done to
target
e) Power Theft: allows attacker to use some ability of the
target (spell, skill)
2) Effects on Others*
a) Morale boost/drain (awesome spell rallies followers)
b) Damage ally (necromancer drains power from henchman)
c) Moves ally (the "throw my buddy" attack)
d) Enrages allies (use of "War Criminal" attack style)
e) Alerts others (noisy attack)
* Additional to basic effects if caught in an area attack. Those within
attack suffer as player with whatever necessary adjustments for
monster/player inequalities.
3) Effects on Items*
a) Destroys items on floor
b) Moves items on floor (tornado)
c) Polymorphs items on floor
* For items caught in area of attack
4) Effects on Terrain*
a) Leaves an effect on (a) square(s) (clouds, webs)
b) Transforms terrain (ultraheat transforms ground to lava)
c) Destroys doors, traps, and/or walls
d) Changes lighting status to light, to dark, or inverts
* For terrain caught in area of attack
R. Dan Henry
<torespon...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Shedletsky wrote:
>> >> * Balefire - Kills target and undoes the target's last N moves. Hard to
>> >> make
>> >> this practical since it requires you build an undo system into your RL.
>> >> However, once this system is in place you could do all sorts of
>> >> interesting
>> >> time effects.
>>
>> > Yes, but how do you undo moves of only one creature, when they obviously
>> > interact?
>>
>> I have thought about this some since it might be something I will use. My
>> idea is that I will save the states of the entire game for the last N turns
>> in an arraylist. Then, when something gets balefired, I revert to the saved
>> state from N turns ago. I place the current player in the old state, and
>> remove the victim.
>
>That would merely do a time-rollback, however.
Plus removing the removed creature. Which is the only way to find out
what things would have been like without the creature.
>What I think should happen is that you rewind the game the N turns.
>You then replay forward N turns, repeating the players & all monsters
>actions.
Making no sense at all.
>You keep a track of each creature's actions: "Attack north", "Drink
>inventory item N", etc. If a creature was killed and no longer is
>killed, it gets to run its AI to determine what it would have done.
So, killed creatures don't hallucinate the deleted creature, just the
ones who originally lived. So they can kill the poor bastard swinging
away at something that isn't there. Great.
>The neat thing about this, IMHO, is that if an enemy were to balefire
>your pet that had healed you, you could end up dead because your pet no
>longer would have healed you.
Except that if that happened, I would likely have done something
different to prevent it, like use one of my healing potions.
Frankly, it's a bad idea to begin with, but a partial rollback like you
suggest produces a nonsensical sequence of events.
Christophe Cavalaria
Reminds me of the overkill implosion spell of M&M 4&5. It might be better to
just least the implosion happen than to try to suffocate the target. It's
likely to kill him much faster and it works on nearly anything :)
Chris Morris
> On 9 Sep 2005 07:32:39 -0700, "Jeff Lait"
> <torespon...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >That would merely do a time-rollback, however.
Time *and* RNG state, ideally. You don't want the goblin to hit your
henchman when they missed before the goblin was balefired.
Of course, since the goblin won't be taking up global RNG state if
it's not there, you need to give everything in the game a personal RNG
state.
> Plus removing the removed creature. Which is the only way to find out
> what things would have been like without the creature.
There's an obvious catch here, of course.
MP Message
100/100 "You open the door. An ambush greets you. You balefire the goblin"
11/100 <time rollback>
100/100 "You open the door. An ambush greets you. You balefire the hobgoblin"
11/100 <time rollback>
100/100 "You open the door. An ambush greets you. You balefire the dire wolf"
...etc...
So you just keep going round the loop until all the monsters are dead.
Or even better, you balefire the goblin, and go back a bit, then
second time round balefire the hobgoblin a round *earlier*, so the
goblin reappears (and should disappear next round, but try keeping
track of all that).
Possibly if your engine can't keep track of what's supposed to be
happening with multiple balefire beams it should just throw everyone
into an abyss and be done with it :)
> Frankly, it's a bad idea to begin with, but a partial rollback like you
> suggest produces a nonsensical sequence of events.
A full rollback isn't much better, though. Absolutely agreed on it
being a really bad idea.
--
Chris
Jim Strathmeyer
> Damage can also be:
> III) Delayed. No damage done when hit, only later does it take effect.
> As far as I know, no true Delayed damage is done in any existing
> roguelike. Preventive measures might occur in the meantime. Delayed
> could be, oh, alien/giant wasp lays egg in you. Sometime later, chest
> explodes.
Green slimes and cockatrices have delayed effects that you try to
nullify in those three or four precious turns, though they don't exactly
do delayed damage.
--
Jim Strathmeyer
David Damerell
>Damage can also be:
>III) Delayed. No damage done when hit, only later does it take effect.
>As far as I know, no true Delayed damage is done in any existing
>roguelike. Preventive measures might occur in the meantime.
Deathly sickness, stoning, sliming etc. in NetHack.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
Today is Teleute, September.
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
R Dan Henry wrote:
> On 08 Sep 2005 15:01:32 GMT, Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski <thesheep@
> sheep.prv.pl> wrote:
>
>>The order is chaotic.
>
> Something of a problem in a list, esp. for someone trying to determine
> if his own idea is new and should be added or is already covered. Note
> the following organization attempts to cover the suggestions in this
> thread that are attacks (there's a fair number of things in the far
> broader class of "things monsters might do" -- I've dropped these as
> another subject) and mostly classifies by effects, not by in-game
> description. Summoning, animating objects, cloning oneself, etc. are not
> attacks.
>
> Nor is healing the character an attack, although it is useful to
> consider how an ally might do so. Since that is essentially simply
> reversing various attack types, I don't think that deserves a separate
> listing, just a note of reminder.
<snip>
Great analysis, took me a while to read it.
You did a great amount of work dissecting the attacks types and
cathegorizing them. I'am trurly impressed, altrough there's one
minor point I want to address later.
However, I think the 'raw list of ideas' also has it's place on the
wiki -- I suggested it before on the Themes page. These ideas are
not supposed to give you better understanding of the matter (your
article does it much, much better), but intstead give a boost to
your imagination. You know, kind of like brainstorming. Personally,
I find such "raw" resources very helpful, because they don't suggest
an implementation, don't fix the way you look at the problem -- on
the contrary, they can broaden your look. Not that detailed analysis
of the problem at hand isn't even more helpful ;)
Now, for the minor point. I think that healing and other "positive"
effects can also count as attack effects. You're likely to have an
attack with several effects. It's more interesting, if not all of
them are actually harmful.
For example, there could be a monster that heals you when it hits you,
but corrupts you at the same time. Or heals you, but uses up you mana
for that. Or a monster with a healing attack that will heal everything
around -- usually more beneficial to monsters than to player, as they'll
have an advantage in numbers.
Similarily, there could be attacks that deal a lot of magical damage, but
can have side effects of enchanting your equipment and recharging wands.
R. Dan Henry
<dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>Quoting R. Dan Henry <danh...@inreach.com>:
>>Damage can also be:
>>III) Delayed. No damage done when hit, only later does it take effect.
>>As far as I know, no true Delayed damage is done in any existing
>>roguelike. Preventive measures might occur in the meantime.
>
>Deathly sickness, stoning, sliming etc. in NetHack.
And UIAM, none of these do damage as I defined it, but change player
status. Use of Delayed results for a status effect has been done and I
acknowledged this in my analysis of the way my system handles NH
"engulfed" v. "swallowed" states.
R. Dan Henry
sheep.prv.pl> wrote:
>For example, there could be a monster that heals you when it hits you,
>but corrupts you at the same time. Or heals you, but uses up you mana
>for that. Or a monster with a healing attack that will heal everything
>around -- usually more beneficial to monsters than to player, as they'll
>have an advantage in numbers.
Anything that bizarre should IMO originate at the level of the monster
concept, not result from looking at a list of ideas for making a monster
more "interesting". An "a healing attack that will heal everything
around" is not an attack, it is a healing (defensive) spell with a
possible benefit to the player.
>Similarily, there could be attacks that deal a lot of magical damage, but
>can have side effects of enchanting your equipment and recharging wands.
Yes, there can, but all of these effects are just combining reversals of
attacks with attacks, so the regular attack list already serves as a
resource for designing them.
Jeff Lait
ADOM's (and, for that matter, POWDER's, as it shamelessly copied this
from ADOM) final poison damage would be delayed damage.
The normal damage over time is supplanted by an extra dose of damage
when the poison expires. In POWDER, as a result of a bug which I have
canonified as "working as intendend", the final poison damage happens
even if you have poison resistance. This means with poison resistance
being poisoned causes no damage until a certain delay is over.
R. Dan Henry
<torespon...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>R. Dan Henry wrote:
>> On 14 Sep 2005 13:03:25 +0100 (BST), David Damerell
>> <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>> >Quoting R. Dan Henry <danh...@inreach.com>:
>> >>Damage can also be:
>> >>III) Delayed. No damage done when hit, only later does it take effect.
>> >>As far as I know, no true Delayed damage is done in any existing
>> >>roguelike. Preventive measures might occur in the meantime.
>> >
>> >Deathly sickness, stoning, sliming etc. in NetHack.
>>
>> And UIAM, none of these do damage as I defined it, but change player
>> status. Use of Delayed results for a status effect has been done and I
>> acknowledged this in my analysis of the way my system handles NH
>> "engulfed" v. "swallowed" states.
>
>ADOM's (and, for that matter, POWDER's, as it shamelessly copied this
>from ADOM) final poison damage would be delayed damage.
Okay, that qualifies. Progressive + Delayed damage poison.
>The normal damage over time is supplanted by an extra dose of damage
>when the poison expires. In POWDER, as a result of a bug which I have
>canonified as "working as intendend", the final poison damage happens
>even if you have poison resistance. This means with poison resistance
>being poisoned causes no damage until a certain delay is over.
So possibly purely Delayed damage in POWDER. Oh, and that's *evil*!
David Damerell
><dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>Quoting R. Dan Henry <danh...@inreach.com>:
>>>III) Delayed. No damage done when hit, only later does it take effect.
>>>As far as I know, no true Delayed damage is done in any existing
>>>roguelike. Preventive measures might occur in the meantime.
>>Deathly sickness, stoning, sliming etc. in NetHack.
>And UIAM, none of these do damage as I defined it, but change player
>status.
I'm not sure I see the difference between this and your example of a
beastie bursting out of the character's chest. It changes the character's
status; specifically, to being dead.
--
David Damerell <dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?
Today is Olethros, September - a weekend.
R. Dan Henry
<dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>Quoting R. Dan Henry <danh...@inreach.com>:
>><dame...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>>Quoting R. Dan Henry <danh...@inreach.com>:
>>>>III) Delayed. No damage done when hit, only later does it take effect.
>>>>As far as I know, no true Delayed damage is done in any existing
>>>>roguelike. Preventive measures might occur in the meantime.
>>>Deathly sickness, stoning, sliming etc. in NetHack.
>>And UIAM, none of these do damage as I defined it, but change player
>>status.
>
>I'm not sure I see the difference between this and your example of a
>beastie bursting out of the character's chest. It changes the character's
>status; specifically, to being dead.
That example was added at the last minute and not with adequate clarity.
That is not an example of Delayed Damage, but of a Delayed Status. I was
not clear about this. My bad.
Of course, you could have parasitic larva that burst forth doing damage
instead of simply being lethal.