Loof

Wow this is reaching codex level of silly arguments .....

Congrats cool that you got in. Out of curiousity how many student per year does that program have? And does it fill said places based on grades alone of do you have to do work samples? (I think you mentioned an interview or something in the old thread didn't you?)

Sounds like a interesting setting. Is the Dark city name an indication that the city will have a bit of the same feel as the city in the movie of the same name? About time period, I have nothing against a 1920's estetics feel but I would prefer a bit more modern social climate (I have never realy liked any of the campains I have played in 20s settings and its one of the prime reasons I have trubble keeping my interest up in a CoC campain...)

I think his point is that savepoints don't go hand in hand with 30min play sessions...

My warning level is equal with Child of Flame. Well, Kaftan in all of his wisdom dropped the amount of warnings by one. So it...sort of fluctuates. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You can have levels of warnings? I never knew that... guess that just goes to show that I'm part of the simulation :cool:

The reason CS students don't learn that many languages is that the focus isn't on the language but on the theory behind different methods and concepts. So you tend to get to learn the languages that the teachers feel are the best tools for teaching the theory in the subject in question. At least thats how it is here, we have a grand total of 1 language focused course in the 4 year program I'm taking. And that one is just to learn the basics of C so that we can code an OS in it (the teachers eventualy realised that it was a bit hard to manage to code an whole OS in C when all that you had coded in before was sparc assembly and standard ML)...

Hmm wonder how much work it would be to set up a automated stats calculator. So that anyone can register themselves for voteing, but they remain a simulation untill they have X votes, once a sufficient vote count is reached the system could automaticaly update said "persons" character sheet to reflect the votes. Of course cheating might be a bit of a problem...

irc.psionics.net is the adress for a irc network. I don't use mIRC so im not 100% sure how it handles connections but you should be able to join the network by simply typing: /server irc.psionics.net (have never used that network myself)

Yes I agree with what you said about D&D, but im not sugesting makeing a single attribute the speed modifier I'm sugesting that you use multiple statistics to for a derived speed modifier. You could even have several different speedmodifiers for different kinds of actions. So that each skill has a speedfactor for example: Swordsmanship speed could be based on: agility(speed of movement) + wits(reactionspeed) + swordskill(economic movements) Athletics speed could be: agility + wits + athletics... And so on... Just because you just have one value that modifies each action in the end doesnt mean that they have to be all the same or that there has to be any one single attribute that is allmiportant for speed. My design philosophy has always been have many factors that can be precalculated so that you get variation but once the system is in play keep things as simple as possible. Anyway whatever you deside on in the end I wish you luck and would very much like to see what you end up with if you ever get it finished

Ok I can see the point of using dice to break the randomness by having a initiative roll. Don't think I would use one If it was my system but I see the point. About the argument that the skilled swordsman shouldn't get a bonus to the action itself and instead get a smaller delay between actions. Firstly the actual swing would be just as fast no matter your agility to, I would say the variable is the repositioning between swings, the flow of moves and the mental reaction time. And I would to simplifie the system incorporate reactiontime into the actioncost of every action so a mentaly agile but average agility character might in practise be as fast as a physicaly fast but slowwitted character (this representing the fast witted character antisipating the the agile character). So its realy just two ways of doing the same thing. The reason I would choose my system is that it has less components and would probably result in faster and easier gameplay. In other words what I'm trying to say is why have two or three mechanics that basicaly determine the same thing when you can bake all the contributing factors into one mechanic and have a simpler system?

Didn't Sony acquire OpenGL and nVidia's CG-language in order to make it a bit easier to program the PS3? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The reason people are concerned about the difficulty of programing for the ps3 doesnt realy have that much to do with the graphics system. It has to do with the cell processor being a rather extreem multicore, so to use the system fully you have to write multithreaded programs. Programing multithreaded aplications is a bit harder then singlethreaded. But the big concern is that debuging multithreaded aplications is MUCH harder. EDIT: Of course the xbox 360 is also a multicore cpu, but it has fewer cores and they are all identical so it sould be a bit easier to code for. At least in theory...

But who acts first is based on stats anyway since actioncost is based on the characters stats, why have an extra stat for reactiontime?

Yeah thats a bit better. Although I still prefer to not have any initiative at all I think. In other words a system where every character can start declaring actions as soon as he is aware of the situation (determined by GM), and actions take place efter the action cost number of phases have passed since they where declared (as oposed to a system where the action takes place at once but you have to wait untill actioncost phases have passed untill you can declare another action).

I just have two small comments to make: Why do you need a initiative roll at all? Why not just say that an action takes place when the ap cost number of phases have passed since the action was anounced. And just let any values that would have modified initiative modify action costs instead. I definetly think skill level must modifie action costs. A master swordsman will swing his sword more effectivly then a fisherman no matter that the fisherman is a marvel of agility and quick wits. Of course this has a light problem in that the ap modifier will vary from action to action, but as long as you keep the skills relatively broad I think you should be able to precalculate these modifiers pretty easily. You could realy just add an extra column to all skills where you have the precalculated action modifier for any action based on that skill.

Ender are you sure about ps3 gettinga HDD as default? I thought I read that it was an optional upgrade for the ps3, as I remembered it the reviewer said something along the lines of it being the only thing sony was skimping on. Is this info in error or am I simply imagining that i read that?

Yes this is true in fallout but what I was sugesting for Jediphile wasn't a round+actionpoint based sytem. It was a roundless phasebased system which was more or less the same thing he was already thinking of, what I was realy sugesting was that he was overdoing the complexity and should tone down realism a bit in favor of playability. My specific sugestion was to remove all fractions from the actioncosts and lump actions into simpler groups without bothering to have different costs for everything. Also your examle with the 5ap action meaning one action per turn for 9ap but 2 for 10 is somewhat missleading. Firstly after doing one action of cost 5 you would still have 4ap to do things with so its not like the excess points are wasted. Secondly the problem (I admit its somewhat of a problem) can be greatly decreased in severity if you simply makeing the rounds longer by increasing the amount of action points everyone gets per round. You could also alow ap's to carry over from round to round so said character with 9ap could take his two 5ap actions in one round but if he did he would only have 8ap next round. In other words as long as a character has any ap's at all he can take any action even if he doesn't have enough, the penalty being that he gets to act less in the next round.

The problems I see with your idea isnt so much designing it, thats just a hell of a lot of work, but it can be done with enough time and effort. The problem I see with it is that I think once its done it wont be fun to play because there will be so much calculation and so many factor to remember/look up that playing it will simply become a bother. As lancer said this kind of detail would work in a computer game/simulation but there will simply be to many factors to remember for the system to flow reasonably fast. I also don't agree with your satement that scraping your actiontimes in favor of a phasebased system would mean that you had to scrap the concept of stats affecting action times. You would just have to have small enough phases that there is room to modifie action costs without unbalancing the system.

lucky we have hex, counting to two is so much easier then eight (not that I can read binary ascii... I don't have THAT much spare time)

Well all platform independence is relative, you will never get EXACTLY the same behaivior from two different interpretators. So the question is realy where do we draw the line for what is platform independent and what isn't? Is the question even worth asking? *shrugs*

Cool, hows your project coming along? (and what group are you in?) My group is marching very unevenly, but if we are realy lucky we will have the base system up and running this week (we more or less threw the code skeleton out the window and desided to do a different kind of game).

Oh and I would probably try and let several factors affect the action cost. If it was my system I would probably modify base action cost based on agility or physical speed, wits or mental speed and most importantly skilllevel.

why time things in seconds (or fractions thereof) when an abstraction would serve just as well? One nice thing about haveing actions costs for everything is that you could actualy eliminate rounds. And instead start combat from phase 0 and count up. So a person that starts an action of cost 3 on phase 0 would take said action on phase 3. I think you would have to alow any character to abandon an uncompleted action on any phase and start a new one or situations where fast attacks could be sliped in the middle of an ongoing slow attack and so be unstopable would become a problem. Only alowing some actions to be performed directly after soem other actions (like your counterattack example) could add tactical depth. All in all I think you might have the base of a very interesting combat system. But I think you would have to think very carefully about alot of teh details so they become streamlines enough or the system will probably bog down alot. If what I have described is anywhere close to what you had planed it would be pretty cool to see teh result if you finish it.

I didn't realy get all the details of yoru combat system. But if you are looking for a system with very detailed mechanics and lots of predescribed options, maybe feng shui isn't what you are looking for (although of course it's still what you need ). The feng shui combat system isn't great becase it has alot of tactical options, it's greatnes is that it has mechanics that encurage the players to describe their actions well (for instance the player saying "I hit him" or even worse "I hit him agian" would result in severe to hit penalties for boring description). Although the system for initiative and action points is pretty nice (they are the same thing every action you preform you subtract its action cost from your initiative and check whos highest to se who goes next), and you can buy alot of special atacks and stuff (exalted is in my opinion something of a ripoff of feng shuis shtick trees), but they dont form advaced chains of counteratacks that follow predescribed rules or anything like that. I think the original producers of Feng shui went out of buisness but I found out just the other day that it's now being sold by atlas games. URL: http://www.atlas-games.com/fengshui/index.php

Don't forget that they don't usualy HAVE the 800phones so they just test on a few from each series and hope for the best. Now I know at least one type of gameing job im going to do my best to avoid when I graduate...

A second a recomendation of feng shui for any action heavy game, and it would probably suit a matrix game very well. Actualy it's the only rpg I have ever played where combat realy is fun, and just as imaginative as the other parts of gameing. Feng shui is very fast and very easy to get a hang of, just as an example I first played it at a convetion. Thought it was fun and bought it after the session, went home read the rules and started to GM it three days later :D I can also recomend the game from a pure rulessytem interest point of view, even if you arent interested in playing a HK action inspired game, it's full of good ideas on how to make action sequences in rpg's more enjoyable. And has alot of good rule ideas that can be incorporated into other systems and settings.