Re: [Adonthell-devel] Item categories

[Kai Sterker]

On Tue, 06 May 2003 08:02:29 -0700 Mike Avery wrote:

> Kai, have item categories been defined?  I can't seem to find
> reference to a convention.

Nope. I thought we would come up with those as the according item
templates get written. Since we can use inheritance, defining new items
should be fairly easy. Pick some template that already provides part of
the functionality and subclass. In the same way, should several
templates turn out to include similar code, it will be fairly easy to
extract that part into a separate class.

 
> I see the template for weapons and I have a question about wieldable
> items. Is the intention to have the wielded weapon visible on the
> character? This is a graphics question, but I think it has deeper
> meaning.  If the player changes from a sword to a mace, is the avatar
> changed to reflect this graphically?

We discussed that on one of the summer meetings, but never on the list
AFAIK. I don't think we really came to a conclusion, as there are both
advantages and disadvantages.

If we wanted to show the proper weapon a character is holding, the best
solution seems to be to animate characters and weapons separately and
combine them at runtime. (That would also allow to show the character
without weapon while not in combat mode)

But to make the weapon animations reusable, all characters would have to
be animated alike. And one thing Benjamin was asking for was more
freedom in character design (size, etc.) and animation.

Like I see it, you can't have both. Or at least, not so easily. 
 

> The reason I ask..
> 
> It seems from looking a the code, that implementation of items is in
> early stages, so I'd like to suggest a few things and ask a few
> questions. First, will the avatar be updated to reflect the type of
> item / weapon in hand?  This represents a good chunk of work for the
> artists, but everyone would agree that it would be cool.  There are
> fringe benefits as well which could effect how items are defined.... 
> Think seeing your avatar wield a candlestick, or a pitchfork, or a pan
> if need be in a  fight.  That would be very cool indeed!

It would be cool, no doubt. I for one would like to see that, but it all
depends how much time our artists can spare. (Not much, I fear. Ben?
James? Lunarblade?)
 

> Technically though, this possibility raises question insofar as how
> item categories are defined.  If we want to be able to let the player
> use unusual objects as weapons (such as a candle-stick), what is the
> check to find out if it is wieldable, or how much damage it does?

Possibly via the Categories property, which at present is a simple list
of strings. So if you'd want an item to act as a weapon, you'd add
"Weapon" to the list. But you'd also had to provide further attributes
needed by a weapon.

Now I also see what you probobly mean by categories, and whether they
are defined yet. The answer is no. Of course we can define a list of
obvious categories ("Weapon", "Armour", "Light", "Poison", ...) and
stick to these. But the whole category thing is meant to be really
flexible. Say, if I would need to mark all items from a certain place
for use in the plot, I would add an according category. Any scripts
could then check whether an item comes from, say, the cursed graveyard.


> In
> some cases, the category of item could not be used to determine
> reliability.  Obviously a Candle-stick's primary purpose is as a light
> source, but if wieldable, we also need weapon-type stats for it for
> melee number crunching. 

In case the candle stick template would probably subclass both weapon.py
and lightsource.py. And among its categories would be "Weapon" and
"Lightsource" and maybe "FromCursedGraveyard" as well.


> Going back to graphics, the idea of wielding a rolling pin to clobber
> someone over the head would be greatly diminished if the on-screen
> avatar is shown holding sword.  While actually using a frying pan as a
> weapon is cool, as a player I REALLY want to see my avatar whack
> someone with a cast iron pan in hand instead of a mis-matched weapon. 
> So for me at least, the feasibility of allowing common items to be
> used as weapons hinges on our ability to give the player the
> satisfaction of watching their character skewer their enemy with the
> ice pick!

Agreed. It wouldn't be fun to use all kinds of stuff as weapons if it
doesn't show on screen.

 
> Do we have the base item template adopt the melee attributes (base
> damage, requirements etc) as well, and use bool item.weildable and
> character.slot? Should in the interest of the above have item_base
> incorporate weapon-type members as well?

Hm, I don't know if that is a good idea. I'd like to keep the item base
classes pretty generic. 

One reason is that it might also become the base class for fighting
feats and spells and the like. And although a lot of them are related to
combat, they aren't actual weapons.

Does anything speak against subclassing the weapon template whenever the
item in question should become usable as a weapon?

Thing is that there will be many items that shouldn't be useable as
weapon. But they all have weapon properties, so you need an additional
flag to tell them apart. The other way it is much clearer: if it has
weapon properties, it can be used as weapon, otherwise it can't. I think
that making that difference might help avoiding errors.
 
> Do we stick to having weapons defined as weapons only, and that is
> that?

Sorta. The items you had could be hybrid. Both weapon and cutlery. That
would be the inside only though, and might not need be obvious to
players until they actually try to equip the frying pan as weapon.

Kai