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A common frustration experienced by SCN designers is getting "spells" to work in your scenario. Well unless you've got A LOT of time on your hands (or you're a genius), its almost impossible to get spells to work in every section of the map if the player has any freedom what-so-ever. Furthermore, in multiplayer scenarios, this can be even MORE complex. What I do is only make spells available in boss fights. Boss fights will always be in an isolated and undisturbed area with a fair amount of space. The only units in the area are you, your allies, and the enemy. First, you must have 2 players that do not appear in the map... Player 5 & 6, for example. Second, you must designate one of your resources to be a player's "magic points"... wood, for example. Third, ALL players must have a market. Now, lets say you have 3 spells: Fireball (1 magic point), Inferno (2 magic points), and Volcano (3 magic points). 1 magic point is equal to 100 wood. So knowing this, assume the player has just entered a boss fight. Lets say I want to cast the Fireball spell. Well there's some trigger loops behind the system. First, make it so that every time Player 5 recieves 100 wood (1 magic point), an explosion appears (your own creativity) and the boss recieves some damage (damage object trigger). Now, what if I want to cast it again? You're thinking that if I tribute 100 wood again, Player 5 will have 200 wood and it'll be all messed up? You're right, thats why you need one more trigger. Make a looped trigger so that Player 5 ALWAYS tributes all of its wood to Player 6. This way, the split second player 5 has the wood, the spell will be casted. If Player 5 recieves 100 wood, it'll cast Fireball and tribute its wood to Player 6. If Player 5 recieves 200 wood, it'll cast Inferno and tribute its wood to Player 6. If Player 5 recieves 300 wood, it'll cast Volcano and tribute its wood to Player 6 before it can cast it again. I guess you can see where I'm going with this. And if you're making this scenario multi-player, keep the amount of players small. What you can do is either make each player's "magic-point" resource different, or have different Non-Appearing Players (the player in the condition of each spell) for each player. Its up to you. You might think this is really complicated, but read it over 2 or 3 times and you'll understand its actually quite simple. ------------------------- Here I'll make a BIG example. Lets say Player 1 and Player 2 are the human players in a multiplayer scenario. Player 3 is a neutral player (ally to everyone), and Player 4 is the "bad-guy" character who is enemy to Player 1 and 2 (the human-controlled players). Player 1's unit has reached level 3 and learned the "Fireball" spell. He can cast it with 2 magic points. He gains magic points at mana pools scattered throughout the world. Player 2's unit has reached level 5 and learned the "Summon Wolf Spirit" and "Summon Holy Legion" spells. Summon Wolf Spirit is 5 magic points, and Summon Holy Legion is 7 magic points. Wood has been designated as Magic Points. Every 100 Wood = 1 magic point. Gold is money, and Stone experience points. Food is undetermined. Player 5 is a Non-Appearing player, and so is Player 6. The players enter a boss fight with a lot of magic points in stock. They are in a walled area (the walls are Neutral... Player 3) and the enemy is an extremely strong War Elephant with about 3000 HP (he belongs to Player 4, enemy). You can mess around and whack on him for a little while. But after a while, Player 1 and 2 are running low on hit points. Therefore, Player 2 tributes 700 wood to Player 5, which immediately triggers off the "Summon Holy Legion" spell. Although the trigger is looped, there is another looped trigger that immediately tributes all of Player 5's resources to Player 6. Therefore, to cast another spell, the player must tribute another set of magic points (wood) to Player 5. But back to the story... Player 5 just casted "Summon Holy Legion". The spell trigger creates 2 allied Monks to heal your party members and it also creates 5 paladins to attack the elephant. This is the Summon Holy Legion spell. If the player wishes to cast it again, or any other spell, you simply tribute Player 5 the required amount of wood (magic points). Very simple. In the end, if you don't make the scenario too broad, you'll only create about 75-100 triggers on spells. Not too bad, and its definitely worth it. The triggers aren't tedious, either. I think they're fun creating spells and summons and such. Well thats about it for the big example. ------------------------- I've got a few other ideas (like potions, equipment, etc) but I don't feel like typing them all up tonight. In my scenario, To Defy the Supremacy, there will probably only be about 5 spells per character and 5-10 bosses. Thats 25-50 triggers per character (there's 2 characters), and 50-100 triggers for the entire spell system... well, with a few more for the background system work. Maybe I'll call it the 100-trigger long spell system. 100 triggers isn't THAT much, either. Its about 2 weeks work if you pace yourself. Heh well call my crazy, but I find it quite useful. -TDS
- Designate 1 resource to be "magic points."
- Make a looped trigger that sends all of the first non-appearing player's "magic point-resource" to the second non-appearing player.
- Make a trigger for each spell and each boss area. Make the condition, "First Non-Appearing Player Recieves (###) 'Magic Point-Resource.'" Make the effect whatever you deem fit. Its the effect of the spell.
-If your player can only get 5 spells, and there is 5 bosses, that is only 25 triggers per player. Thats not too bad considering the triggers are fairly short each (About 2 conditions, 3-5 effects each).