Mechanics

Page last edited 4,140 days ago
From Web Of Lives
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Step Time

Web of Lives progresses time in steps based on player action, much like classic Rogue-likes. When the player inputs a command for an action, the world updates alongside the his character. As long as a player is not inputting action commands, the world is still, save for idle animations. When the world updates, everything updates simultaneously. Although the player's character appears to update at the same time as everything else, she technically acts before the rest of the world, so if conflicts arise, her actions happen first. Essentially, this is a turn based system that represents all turns as simultaneous. Only one action can be taken by the player per step. Monsters can also only make a one action per turn. Some monsters exhibit compound actions within these constraints, such a pounce that allows for a simultaneous movement and attack.
Not all inputs count as action commands, so not all inputs cause the world to update. Below is the list of inputs that count as action commands and cause the world to step forward.

Action Commands
Move
Attack
Consume Item
Read Item
Throw Item
Enchant Item
Equip Item
Drop Item

Exploration

Movement

The character moves through one floor at a time, from tile to tile. Groups of tiles are separated into rooms within the current floor. Character movement is step-based, so when he moves one tile, the world will update one step at the same time. This allows the game to progress at the player's pace without making her wait for the AI to act. The player can move the character one step at a time. The character will move using absolute directions oriented to the screen. Alternatively, the player can click a valid tile for the character to move to, using A* to determine the shortest path. If the player clicks a valid tile, the character will find the shortest path and will attempt to move to that destination, while the world updates once for every tile traversed. Due to the dynamic entities in the world updating with the character, the path to the destination may become blocked, resulting in the character stopping at the last possible tile. Even if there is an alternate route that becomes available, the character will continue down the original path. If the inputs an action command, such as movement, the character will stop traversing the current path.

Vision

While the player can see a large area of the world from the top-down perspective, her character's vision does not reveal everything onscreen. The character can only see within a circle around himself, and dynamic happenings will only appear to the player if they are within this range. When a character enters a room, all of the tiles in the room are revealed, but everything else is invisible unless the it is within the vision circle. Rooms that have been visited by the character will obey similar rules, so the player knows where she came from but is not aware of everything that is happening in the world. When the something important leaves the character's view, a faded placeholder stays in the place where the character thinks it is. When the player loses sight of an entity due to his own movement or rotation, the placeholder appears in the last spot he saw the entity. When the entity moves itself out of the sight of the character, such as an monster might, the placeholder appears in the place where the character last saw the entity move to. In both cases the placeholder appears at a tile outside the character's current vision circle and disappears when the vision circle contains that tile or the related entity.

Map

A map of the current floor will be constructed automatically as the character moves between rooms. When a character enters a room, the entire room is added to the map. A room is represented as solid 2D geometry on the map, so individual tiles are not be represented, but the rough size of the room is apparent. Important, static parts of the environment are also represented on the map as faded icons. Positions of moving entities, such as enemies, will not be recorded on the map. Exits on the sides of the room will be represented as breaks in the outline stroke around the room geometry. Rooms that have not been visited will not appear on the map, so the player will easily be able to see where she has not been on the current floor. The current floor will also be printed in the top left corner of the map. The map can be accessed by either clicking the map icon, or pressing the Map key. When input is given to open the map, the camera zooms in on to the character opening a rolled up map. While open the map covers most of the screen and disables all input beyond its own functionality and game system commands, such as opening the options menu. Opening the map is a free action that does not cause the world to step forward.

Resting

When the Rest key on the keyboard or the Rest button on the HUD is pressed, the character rests for one step. When the character rests for a step, she regains a small portion of HP. The world also updates one step. As long as the Rest key or button is pressed, the character continues resting. On the first step of a rest, the character plays a sitting animation to show that she is resting. She stays in the resting position until the first step in which she takes a different action; that action incurs no penalty from being performed from a rest. Waking up is a free action so no extra steps occur when acting after a rest.
Resting is intended to help characters in the early stages of their labyrinths survive. The HP regeneration is very modest and is only really effectual when allowed to continue over multiple steps. In early stages, the character will have time to rest in between encounters, but as she progresses further into the labyrinth, stronger monsters with longer patrol ranges will appear in greater frequency, limiting the amount of time that can be spent inactive. Resting should still be viable in later stages of the labyrinths, but it should be restricted. The intention of resting is to give new characters a smooth start while they don't have many items to support themselves, without making HP an unlimited resource. To limit the amount the amount of health that rest can restore, the player can only rest a limited number of turns per floor, split up however the player likes. This limit is static across all floors. The gradual weakening of the rest mechanic is intended to add tension and require a player to play more thoughtfully as his character progresses.

Combat

  • When a player encounters an enemy, he can hit them with the weapons that he holds.
    • Whether the weapon is a melee weapon or a ranged weapon, the range of hitting is determined.
      • A melee weapon has a range of one tile around the eight directions – N, S, E, W, NE, NW, SE, and SW.
      • A Ranged weapon, for example a bow, has range attached to it. It can perform an attack against enemies within this range. Again the eight directions of attack prevail (N, S, E, W, NE, NW, SE, and SW).
    • Scrolls:
      • Scrolls are carried by the players, in which, various spells are present. Based on the spells, the player can use them on the enemy to inflict damage/evade from the attack.
  • Accuracy :
    • After an attack has been performed, the accuracy of hit is determined only for ranged weapons used by the player.
  • Damage :
    • The total damage inflicted will be based on three factors:
      • Base attack.
      • Dexterity
      • Strength

The items page defines the amount of damage inflicted by each item used. The fundamentals of damage revolves around this equation : BaseDamage+AttributeDamage.

The monsters will chase and attack the player if the player comes in the cone of vision of the monster. There is no evade or escape in the game. Once a monster sees a player, the monster will chase and follow the player. There are no explicit defense mechanisms defined, but the health points and health potions do account for a player's survival. Also, the Player's armor increases HP, whereby the damage caused by the enemy monster can be withstood. The CON factor is determined by the armor that the player wears.

When in combat, the player can only attack and has to suffer from the damage that the enemy monster inflicts, but can heal and protect himself with scroll spells. The player might tend to run away from the monster, but eventually the monster will follow the player at any cost. When dodging from one monster and running into another, the player just does more damage to himself as both the monsters tend to chase him. The best advice would be to settle up the fight then and there rather to think of outrunning the monster.

During the combat if the player kills an enemy, he can perform a search on the enemy's corpse and can find treasures such as gold, weapons, armors, ammunition, health potions and scroll scripts if present on the enemy. The higher the level of the enemy, the higher probability of getting a better resource. This would cost a move on the player, as the world around updates for the move that has been done by him. The Player might find new resources, such as armor and weapons, and add them to his Inventory. If the player drops anything in the world, it stays in the world until the player finishes the labyrinth floor.

Game combat loop - Combat with monsters happens in step-time. Attack and take damage loop continues until either one of them is dead. After the end of the combat, the player might heal him based on the scroll spells or health potions if present with him. Otherwise he has to carry on with the current attributes.

Treasure

There are two forms of treasure, Items and gold. We will have a leader board, for those who have collected the most gold. Gold is found in the world either from chests or on from dead enemy corpses. The amount of gold found each time is random and the proportion of gold found increases at different levels. The player holds the gold in his bag and the amount of gold held at any point in time can be a max of 999999.

  • The usage of gold can be done in different ways; for now the usage is restricted in three ways:
    • Shop: The player can use it to buy items at a shop
    • Point buy system: when the player's character dies, he can use the gold to let the character hold to various items it has with it. But the point buy system works with that of the gold that is earned in the current level.For example if the player holds with him 1000 gold coins, out of which 500 was earned in the current level. The point buy system works with the 500 earned in the current level. The player can decide what items stays with the character and rest of the gold is sent ahead as such. So here in this case, 500 gold coins, which was held initially is sent over with the character and the rest 500 is used to stick items to be held with the character for sending over to the cloud. If the player can only buy an item with 400 gold, the rest 100 is destroyed and that doesn't carry over to the cloud.
    • Beggars: The gold can be given to the beggars in the world.