Will a physics engine allow us to mod everything?
While I am drooling over the moddability of the game, I look here and think can SD make everything moddable? Here is my try, definitely is just a thought exercise, but if SD can implement it (after there is a refined suggestion comes up) that will be awesome. In that post Frogboy says:
For those of you not familiar with modding let’s break this down into its elemental (no pun intended) parts:
1. You have asset creation. That is, the ability to make things you can see in the game.
2. …
3. You have resource creation. That would be everything from iron ore to magical gems to wood
My first question is can we custom make a spell? When there is an existing “Doom Bolt” spell, it should easy to mod a “Super Doom Bolt”. But what if I want to mod a spells that does not look like anything shipped with the game? One of the ways to allow us to have that is having the right physics engine, and everything is broken down into its elementals.
So, let me lay down the foundation first. I have post similar ideas in my previous posts.
1. Everything is a resource, which can be subdivided to Creature Resources (CR), Natural Resources (NR) and Manufactured Resources (MR). Even Factories, City, on map buildings are considered as MRs.
2. Map tile is a container of resources. Multiple resources can be ‘warehoused’ there.
3. All resources are made from at least 1 material. Some of them are physical, like Flesh, Plant, Soil, Stone, Water, ice, wood, crystal different kind of metals, ethereal, shadow, etc.
4. All physical material can be damaged by other physical material, and non-physical powers like fire, freezing, lightning, wind, essence, and all kind magic e.g. Life magic, Chaos magic etc.
5. With all things equal, 1 unit of Damaging Strength (DS) can reduce 1 HP of its target. When the target resource (may it be made a wooden bridge, or your knight) has 0 HP, it dies or be converted to another material like ashes.
6. The physics engine will handle the material conversion automatically, e.g. when I melt the ice by fire, certain % HP of water is created.
7. Damage caused = DS * Material modifier (MM). If this value becomes –ve, it means material is created, or flesh is healed.
The actual value of DS can be determined by a lot of factors, like the skill of the spell caster, how forceful your knight can swing his sword, how fast & big a boulder is falling onto your head, how hot is the fire burning your peasants etc. Modder can create a Firewall spell that as a DS of 400, or even of higher value.
For damages caused by physical collision, the MM equals to “Material Hardness (MH) of Attacker minus Defender”/ ““Material Hardness of Attacker”. Say I’ve my Knight that can swing his iron sword with DS of 40. Iron has MH of 70, Flesh has MH of 25. Then the poor unarmored soul at the receiving of the sword will receive a damage of 40*(70-25)/70 = 25 HP. If the defender now wears armor which increases the defender MH from 25 to 30, he receives less damage from the same blow. When your knight gains more experience & level up, his strike will be more powerful so his DS value goes up. (All numbers are for illustration purpose only)
For damages caused by non-physical powers, the MM is read from the following table. Of course the table will be way more extensive to account for all kind of material possible in the game.
Because everything in the game environment is made up from material(s), everything can be destroyed or killed; may it be a forest, a river, a stone wall, the ground. All you need is high enough DS and/or high MM.
Ideally, the physics engine should include a gravity engine component, so modder can make the meteor rain spell, or flood the dam to damage the village downhill. DS increase for any physical collision when the attacking object accelerates.
I believe complete moddability can be achieved if SD provides some universal rules for us to create & destroy any resources. I’ve mentioned the creation part here, but there isn't much interest.
This kind of system must have weakness or problems I am not aware of. OR if you think this kind of physics engine is a must for EWOM, pls let us know here in this thread!
