Landson June 13-19

Planeshift Weekly Report #3

This week I have focused a lot on making a prototype of the ideas I posted last week and developing them even farther. Basically this week I have decided that the best way to make this system and have it as expandable as possible to to make my attack structure purely abstract. The idea here is to break each section of combat into their separate child classes, sort of like a plugin type of system. I want to make all attack specific actions and calculations into the attack specific classes. I want to abstract as much as possible out of the combat manager because it takes away from the power to make each attack work differently. This will allow for starters to really create a difference in range and melee attack styles. It will also allow me to wrap magic combat in a way that it can be used in combat the way melee and range is. I will also create a default or “auto” attack style that will be plain to be used if nothing is in the attack queue. Though I will likely reduce it’s damage some to make it less desirable compared to other attacks. So far the main issue I’ve found is dealing with npc combat but I’m currently working on the best way to fix this. I am also trying to figure out how to handle duel wielded attacks, but this is a much smaller issue. In conjunction with this plan I have set my first major milestone. By June 25th I want combat to function exactly like it does today except that it will be running on my attack “plug in” system. After this is functional I can just create each of the 3 other attack styles and just plug them in as they become complete. My goal is to allow the rules and setting teams as much flexibility as possible with what attacks they can create and implement. I hope I explained this well enough here but if I did not you can read a much more detailed plan at: http://planeshift.ezpcusa.com/pswiki/index.php?title=Combat_enhancements.

So what I’ve completed this week:

• I have updated the wiki to include details about my current plan. More will be added as I get to it or think of it.
• I’ve merged with the trunk, and spend some time fixing conflicts and some problems I had with it.
• I have learned how to use jobber-svn.pl to create and repair my visual studio project files.
• I have started to implement a prototype attack plug in structure running the default attack. Currently it works for players, but does not work for npc’s. this is something I am working on fixing.