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Finalizing Item Generation
🕑 Added 2021-07-03 17:13:53 +0000 UTCSome significant progress has been made on random item generation! I thought I'd go through one weapon and point out everything that went into this image from top to bottom:
Battle Claymore of the Turtle: Items now have a much more robust naming system built in to every step of the process. Every modifier that generates has about 5 prefix names and 5 suffix names. 'Of the Turtle' is referring to the block chance that this sword provides. 'Battle' is a general prefix available to all swords which was added to reduce the likelihood that both the prefix and the suffix that are selected to describe the item don't both come from the same modifier. ie; Turtling Claymore of the Turtle.
4 Stars: You can think of this as a +4 Weapon in traditional Dungeons and Dragons. In Myriad this is the item's 'Tier'. The damage of the weapon is scaled +4 (Greatswords are default 10 damage) and will continue like that in a linear fashion. If the item is very low quality, or 'Broken', it will have -1 damage. Each star also improves the quality of all other modifiers that the item rolls. A 0 tier item would have +2% block chance instead of 10%. Items are also scaled by how many modifiers it has. If Block were the only modifier on this item it would be even higher than 10%.
Superior Greatsword: 'Superior' also refers to what level of quality the item is in correspondence with the previously mentioned Tier system. 'Greatsword' is the base type of item. If you hover over this text, it tells you the exact numerical value the Tier rolled rather than image representation. Internally it is a d100 that gains a Tier every 25. Players may influence rolls to increase them above 100.
Description: Nothing has really changed here. Still trying its best to create a description of the item type and use adjectives and material types that match the Tier of the item. In the future there is room for me to add prefix and suffix names for items within this description as well. Instead of 'of the Turtle' it could perhaps be 'of the Human Eye' to take phrasing from the description. If I do that, I'll leave it to much later as we are still trying to get important things done so a game can start again.
Heal Self 6 On Critical Hit: This simple line required an entire overhaul of how all weapons and attacks were made. I previously would create effects like this AFTER a weapon attack took place, because it varied per magical effect and required the attack to determine if it was a critical hit. I moved everything around so it fits within the universal attack macro which is important because it allows for more informative tooltips when attacking.
Placing a random 'Healing: 8' in the damage output would be very confusing. It always made it look like you were healing the target you attacked rather than yourself. Now, when hovering over 'Hit', it will describe all On Hit effects that benefit the attacker and triggered.
This includes the structure to create any possible effect that happens on Hit, on Crit, on Miss, etc...
Block +10%: This whole process also applies to the new 'Block' mechanics when hovering over the word 'Blocked' in the damage printout. The chance to block can be scaled, so it also informs of the characters total chance to block for players who are attacking new enemy types. The damage reduction as a result of a block is a default 15% reduction that can scale to a maximum of 75%.
Damage 14: The weapon printout counts all the modified damage and displays the final result. This is helpful particularly for 'Large' weapons that increase damage by +75%.
1 Action : 2 Handed: A simple, but important inclusion due to characters now having 2 Actions available instead of 1.
Target Image: This is a reminder of the attack pattern of the weapon type. It is also possible to modify a dagger to have a greatsword attack pattern, so it would be important to display that.
Overall Table Display: I really hate html. Actually a few days ago I thought this would be impossible and not worth the effort simply because I'd have to put the true name of the weapon at the top (and that isn't known until all the modifiers generate prefix and suffix names). The code I made so long ago was poorly structured to the point that making that one change took an entire day and entirely uprooted how this whole process is handled. It worked out better than I thought it would as converting the already completed Armor sets to this format took about 5 minutes once it was all ready. The process itself is also streamlined in every spot to make creating new modifiers or weapon base types easier than it was before. This also allows this chat output of the item to also be the identical tooltip for the weapon when you hover over the equipment icon on your character.
Most of the keywords within the description of the item can be hovered over to give a tooltip about what the system mechanic actually is. The weapon below showcases this in giving a tooltip when hovering over 'Lunge' to explain what that skill does so you can figure it out without equipping the item. Tooltip displays for skills could probably use a bit of an overhaul just like these item ones...
Access to the Lunge Skill: An absolutely massive timesaver in the internal code is how Skills can be added to randomly generated items. If you remember me fighting with several layers of quotes on stream, it was like that, but with even more layers of complication. It is intended that each weapon type have its own pool of modifiers. That has been getting streamlined in global lists of things that can be placed on items and each item type drawing from the global selections.
If you have multiple items equipped with the Lunge skill, it will only remove the skill from your character once all items have been taken off that have it. It is incredibly simple stuff like that which is the hugest hassle -- and this item generation process has been filled with those.
I hope that you can see how much consideration has gone into one generated item's ui. It has reworked the code structure within every attack and been informed by new mechanics like blocking, elemental properties, resistances, and an entirely redone rarity system that scales everything.
Comments
The item generation looks very impressive. If I were able to use it I'd just generate items one after another to see what it would come up with.
