Chargable Spells

[paladicprince]

Hmm... I've been working on something that would be a perfect addition to this mod once you get it to a workable state.

 

I had an idea for a better kind of archer-mage. It's all well and good to be able to enchant your bows, but I was thinking about enchanting arrows. So I thought, what if you could apply a spell while your arrow was drawn back .

 

So you're sneaking around (or maybe not sneaking, but either way you have a bow), see an enemy and want to shoot it. But lets say it's a ghost and you don't have silver weapons nor did you choose alchemy so you don't have poisons, but you're skilled at destruction. With my idea you could tap the cast button and it would apply the effect of your current spell to your arrow.

 

I'm somewhat getting it to work, but it's still a little clunky, however I realized that in conjuction with your mod it would work perfectly. You would charge the spell to apply to the arrow exactly like you charge your spell currently and the magnitute would be based and whatever formula you come up with.

 

It would even be a pretty cool thing to bundle as one mod if you're interested.

 

For right now I'm getting it to work with the vanilla magic system, but using a charge system would be so much better.

[Retribution]

Hmm... I've been working on something that would be a perfect addition to this mod once you get it to a workable state.

 

I had an idea for a better kind of archer-mage. It's all well and good to be able to enchant your bows, but I was thinking about enchanting arrows. So I thought, what if you could apply a spell while your arrow was drawn back .

 

So you're sneaking around (or maybe not sneaking, but either way you have a bow), see an enemy and want to shoot it. But lets say it's a ghost and you don't have silver weapons nor did you choose alchemy so you don't have poisons, but you're skilled at destruction. With my idea you could tap the cast button and it would apply the effect of your current spell to your arrow.

 

I'm somewhat getting it to work, but it's still a little clunky, however I realized that in conjuction with your mod it would work perfectly. You would charge the spell to apply to the arrow exactly like you charge your spell currently and the magnitute would be based and whatever formula you come up with.

 

It would even be a pretty cool thing to bundle as one mod if you're interested.

 

For right now I'm getting it to work with the vanilla magic system, but using a charge system would be so much better.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25224

[paladicprince]

Thanks Retribution. :) I'd actually seen that mod, but personally I wanted it implemented slightly different, thus the reason I'm doing my own. But I have used it as a reference occasionally, though I ended up handling things quite a bit differently.

[grmblf]

Links are now in the description and comments sections.

 

[...]

 

Like I said, I wanted to keep it simple and adaptable. I think you could achieve a lot of this stuff without big edits to my script.

 

1. disablecontrol or set restrained should work if you want to stop movement. I think setrestrained prevents you from looking left and right though, so you'll probably want to avoid that. Another option is to make the player able to walk, but unable to run. Another option is to burn fatigue or magicka if you move.

 

2. disablecontrol can work. But I do like the idea of having moving, attacking, blocking, etc. as perks.

 

3. You could change the formulas or the max charge time to achieve this. You could change the spell so that it's not autocalculated, and calculate the magicka cost with your own formula, then consume the magicka using player.modav. Another way is to cast a simple cheap fireball, then get the fireball's reference with getfirstref/getnextref and getprojectilesource, and then use addfulleffectitem to add whatever effects you want to the fireball.

 

4. If you want to make it really complicated, you can use a bunch of variables for your formulas. Charge time, magic school skills, willpower, intelligence, max magicka, luck, etc.

 

Thanks for the link. I doubt anyone that go straight to the download section would ever stop to comment a very beta mod on the forum unless it annoys him/her so much, wich seems not very probable considering it's small and clean and it doesn't mess with anything, but who knows...

 

1 & 2 - I hadn't thought before of limiting movement but it's a good idea, and making all this movements available as you progress as perks sounds very good, and some ideas are pretty interesting. How about this preliminary list?:

Novice: Can't move nor attack nor jump nor block, solely can charge the spell.

Apprentice: Can walk now, but consuming fatigue, i mean stamina, if he does.

Journeyman: Can run with minor stamina loss, and also can block.

Expert: Can walk, run and jump with no fatigue, and block as well.

Master: Can attack too while charging.

 

3 & 4 - I already have the formulas, I'm using vanilla ones with a modifier to take into account time charging. They all are explained in this topic's first post. Feel free to sggest modifications.

 

 

My thought with touch vs target, if you make one spell combine them! Well you can't, but just always make it a target spell and try to keep magicka costs somewhat balanced. If the enemy is really close to you a target spell hits them almost as fast as a touch would anyways the only difference in vanilla being touch is cheaper.

 

Also, modifier controls is an excellent idea. If you want I just made a script for my KeyboardViewControls mod that has a nice reference for how to allow people to define custom keys. Just download it and open the quest/script to go over it (I think in that mod everything I added is prefixed with a z, where in everything else I've been working on I prefix it with PP).

 

Modifier controls could be done however you want, but here's a quick basic idea:

- Spell cast unmodified is a target spell / Self Spell for beneficial effects.

- Spell cast with modifier 1 (Default = Shift [i know it's used for running, but in my experiences that doesn't conflict]) is a self AoE

- Spell cast with modifier 2 (Default = Block [Just used your idea, it should be tested to see if it causes issues])

- Spell cast with modifiers 1 & 2 is a touch

 

Man, my hands only have 5 fingers each one! I'm trying to imagine myself trying to cas a 3-key-combo while moving back and aside to evade from incoming attacks while I keep an eye on my magicka and try to aim my shot at the same time and I just go crazy to think about it :D No, seriously, I don't like very much the idea of multiple combo keys, first because it's more things that people have to learn and get used to, and second because it always makes it less confortable while moving, so by now I think at most I'm adding block button for an extra functionality.

 

I'm not sure about merging target and touch ranges into target only, but yeah maybe I make only target and self to keep things easy and to not add too much spells to the list. Also, with the bonus given at full charge, a touch spell could be unfairly overpowered.

 

About charging spells into arrows or bows... by now it's not between my goals but I've enjoyed the Conduit Magic mod and I like the concept, but it's somehow the opposite to this one. While mine it's about charging and concentrating magicka to cast a spell the other kinda represents the magic that flows from you without efford or concentration (if used with small spells). So unless it's something slightly different from that my answer is a 'no at this moment' otherwise I'd ask you PM me a more detailed explanation of this idea.

 

 

btw, I've started merging my almost-fuly-functional script with documn's well-written one and I hope soon I'll have a test-able version with all the features commented among this topic's posts.

[paladicprince]

The perks list sounds like a good option.

 

And yeah combo keys could be a hassle. It could be programmed in such a way that they only have to be pressed when you start charging the spell as a thought.

[grmblf]

First post updated again.

 

Finally one additional key has been added. When pressing block at the moment the spell is casted it triggers an alternative effect (either increasing radius for 'on target' spells, or spells 'on self' becoming 'on touch' for companions and NPCs). I've made a few spells and after several tests I've tweaked the maths a bit so now it should be balanced, yet powered. I'm going now for the perks and movement limitations, once I'm done with this and I'd made a few more spells I'm releasing a version for playtesting. Suggestions are much appreciated, as for spells, mechanics, spells' names, etc. Check the first topic for spells already implemented.

[paladicprince]

It's been a few days, just curious about the progress here. :)

[grmblf]

I'm doing pretty well by now, finally I've done a chargeable version of almost every spell in the game to be able test all variations. I'm adjusting a few values I saw were wrong and making sure I haven't missed anything; I'm releasing it this weekend.

[Pronam]

Sounds good!

[grmblf]

A first BETA version has been released! You can download it here. I hope it meets your expectations.

 

Oh, why is that ugly site bot starting a topic at uploaded files? I thought it'd ask me but it didn't. Is it necessary to handle the comments page? I'd prefear discussion takes place here... is it possible to make this topic the 'official comment' topic? Oh damn, this ugly bot has even tagged it as the 'endorsement' topic, I'm not expecting endorsements by now as it's a Beta version, all I want by now is people commenting their experiences with my mod... should discussion move there now?

 

Back to the mod, finally I haven't implemented yet the perks system because I was thinking of tracking the charged spells to accumulate 'experience' like if it were a new (invisible) skill, so perks would be obtained by charging a lot and not simply by increasing each magic skill. But this is only a thought by now, I still have to polish it. What do you think it makes more sense, being able to move once one is used to charge and concentrate magicka, regardless of the type of magicka, or rather being able to move when handling some kind of magicka one is used to, regardless of the practice on charging spells? Maybe I'll end up with some hybrid system combining them both.