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(A blog focusing on the development and design of Norwegian Wood, a privately run Ultima Online-shard - with focus on design-theories, discussing pros and cons of individual features, status-reports from the development process and other tidbits that people might find interesting.)
Saturday, November 01, 2003
Spellcasting and You
This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of gameplay feature posts. We'll be taking a look at the Magery system this time around, more specifically the Magery system used by the "good" mages. Necromancy, Racial and Drudic spellcasting isn't covered here.
To become a Mage there is a very distinct order of progression. First your character must be selected to become a student at the Spirit Tower. By taking classes and learning Mage lore you will accumulate Lore Points. These are used to "purchase" new spells. As you attain more and more spells your rank within the Spirit Tower will advance, eventually allowing you to become a full fledged Mage or even a teacher.
There are two divisions among mages there, Wizards (Males), and Witches (Females). While there are some common spells between both groups for the most part they have a completely different set of spells. There are however many spells which provide the same sort of end result among both groups. Witches in general tend to be more subtle in their spell use, while Wizards are more flashy. A Witch for instance would cast a curse on someone which made them hurt themselves where a Wizard would hit them with a fireball.
Spells are arranged into a tree with some spells being pre-requsites for others. There are 9 major areas of focus in the spell system, 3 for the Wizards, 3 for the Witches, and 3 common ones that can be learned by both.
For the Wizards the areas of focus are Etheric, Divination, and Summoning. Etheric spells are your general sort of offensive and defensive spells, fireballs, energy shields and the like. Divination spells are used for finding out information about items and people, spying on locations, and negating some of the spells that a witch can cast. Summoning spells are fairly self explanitory, these deal with the summoning and control of otherworldly beasts.
For the Witches the areas of focus are Fate, Natural, and Negative. Fate spells include things like curses and coincidental effects like droping your weapon in the middle of battle. Natural spells deal with healing, growth and weather. Negative spells are mostly designed to hide things or counter the effects of other spells.
The common groups are Enchantment, Lore, and Transformation. Enchantment spells temporarily increase the abilities of characters, the stats of items, and add special effects, like fire damage, to items. They also include trap like spells. Lore spells revolve around deciphering ancient texts or traps, detecting what type of magic was used in an area, and mimicing the spells that others can cast. Transformation spells deal with changing things, this includes spells like polymorph, but also spells which make items weaker or stronger or even turn them into different items altogether.
Casting spells is easy, you click on a focus item, which is different for each area of focus listed above, and a menu will appear allowing you to select your spell. Most spells will bring up a targeting cursor, but some may not, and there are a few spells which require that you do certain things, like cast other spells or use certain items, in a certain order.
Well, I think that's about it. I hope this was informative.
To become a Mage there is a very distinct order of progression. First your character must be selected to become a student at the Spirit Tower. By taking classes and learning Mage lore you will accumulate Lore Points. These are used to "purchase" new spells. As you attain more and more spells your rank within the Spirit Tower will advance, eventually allowing you to become a full fledged Mage or even a teacher.
There are two divisions among mages there, Wizards (Males), and Witches (Females). While there are some common spells between both groups for the most part they have a completely different set of spells. There are however many spells which provide the same sort of end result among both groups. Witches in general tend to be more subtle in their spell use, while Wizards are more flashy. A Witch for instance would cast a curse on someone which made them hurt themselves where a Wizard would hit them with a fireball.
Spells are arranged into a tree with some spells being pre-requsites for others. There are 9 major areas of focus in the spell system, 3 for the Wizards, 3 for the Witches, and 3 common ones that can be learned by both.
For the Wizards the areas of focus are Etheric, Divination, and Summoning. Etheric spells are your general sort of offensive and defensive spells, fireballs, energy shields and the like. Divination spells are used for finding out information about items and people, spying on locations, and negating some of the spells that a witch can cast. Summoning spells are fairly self explanitory, these deal with the summoning and control of otherworldly beasts.
For the Witches the areas of focus are Fate, Natural, and Negative. Fate spells include things like curses and coincidental effects like droping your weapon in the middle of battle. Natural spells deal with healing, growth and weather. Negative spells are mostly designed to hide things or counter the effects of other spells.
The common groups are Enchantment, Lore, and Transformation. Enchantment spells temporarily increase the abilities of characters, the stats of items, and add special effects, like fire damage, to items. They also include trap like spells. Lore spells revolve around deciphering ancient texts or traps, detecting what type of magic was used in an area, and mimicing the spells that others can cast. Transformation spells deal with changing things, this includes spells like polymorph, but also spells which make items weaker or stronger or even turn them into different items altogether.
Casting spells is easy, you click on a focus item, which is different for each area of focus listed above, and a menu will appear allowing you to select your spell. Most spells will bring up a targeting cursor, but some may not, and there are a few spells which require that you do certain things, like cast other spells or use certain items, in a certain order.
Well, I think that's about it. I hope this was informative.
What? Halloween? Where?
Hey everyone! Yep, still alive here.
As usual, Halloween came and went without me taking much notice. I'm not really in habit of doing anything Halloween-related stuff, so no big surprise really. What's more important to me right now is that today marks the start of the National Novel Writing Month! It's a project where each participant writes a 50.000 words long novel in the month of November, or dies trying. There's no grand prize for reaching the finishing line, there's just your own feeling of accomplishment as reward. And I love it! So, since there are 50 000 words to be written, I have to average about 1600 words per day or more. My first day of writing went pretty smoothly, thank [insert favourite deity]...but no doubt I'll run into a few walls along the way before reaching the end (IF I reach it)...so wish me luck.
Yes, I know - the above isn't related to Norwegian Wood at all. And yes, I'm aware that more than a month has passed since the last entry in this development journal. We'll try to work on that. I'll be working on a little entry concerning worldbuilding and whatnot, and there will probably also be an article on the magery system coming your way soon :) So - have patience.
Hey everyone! Yep, still alive here.
As usual, Halloween came and went without me taking much notice. I'm not really in habit of doing anything Halloween-related stuff, so no big surprise really. What's more important to me right now is that today marks the start of the National Novel Writing Month! It's a project where each participant writes a 50.000 words long novel in the month of November, or dies trying. There's no grand prize for reaching the finishing line, there's just your own feeling of accomplishment as reward. And I love it! So, since there are 50 000 words to be written, I have to average about 1600 words per day or more. My first day of writing went pretty smoothly, thank [insert favourite deity]...but no doubt I'll run into a few walls along the way before reaching the end (IF I reach it)...so wish me luck.
Yes, I know - the above isn't related to Norwegian Wood at all. And yes, I'm aware that more than a month has passed since the last entry in this development journal. We'll try to work on that. I'll be working on a little entry concerning worldbuilding and whatnot, and there will probably also be an article on the magery system coming your way soon :) So - have patience.
