Abstract

Skills are attributes of the stats of the player. They increase the effect or the counter of an effect on the player. How each one functions in the game is up to the programmer and there will be different skill sets for each game based on type. It also allows the game to use the same stat name internally and just create the skill sets. The reason for this is for another game type unlike Mecha RPG, that wouldn’t make sense to have the same names as in the others.

Versioning

I hope to eventually place different skill sets that are in every game in a basic versioning and then allow the program to extend it. In the first version, I can’t really plan ahead for this, so it will be up to the programmer to do that.

Points

Points will be given out depending on the level and how many points are in the player stats for the skill. Some skills will have a limit based on level that can be set up by the admin panel. The points received can be given to any skill set, and they can be saved for the next level.

Speed

Stamina

Stamina determines how many attacks a player can give before tiring out and how far the player can travel before the same affect takes effect. Stamina can have any increase that the programmer gives, but stamina decreases and once it does, then the player is stuck until it is gained it back.

This skill increases the Stamina gain at each level and how much is gained back at each turn.

Teleport

Teleport doesn’t use stamina to travel, but its limit is based on how many points it has. Where the player can travel depends also on where the player has been and if they have used their special ability to “save” the location. Saved locations will be kept for the player.

Attack Rate

Attack rate determines the speed of which the player can attack before the other player. A higher attack rate doesn’t give the player the exact right to attack first every time, it is only the chance to attack first.

Block Rate

The block rate goes with the other blocking skill and gives the chance of if an attack will be blocked based on the other players attack rate.

Counter Attack Rate

Determines when an attack is blocked if the player will get a free counter attack, that the player won’t get to block.

Travel Speed

This may or may not be used, but it determines how far the player can travel when traveling based on each turn. It decreases how much stamina is used when traveling.

Strength

For simple attacking types, the can be added and the attribute is same for all of the types. This will have to be set up in the database and in the Admin Panel.

Hand

Hand to hand combat damage modifier.

Weapon

Light Weapon damage modifier.

Heavy Weapon

Heavy Weapon damage Modifier.

Magic Attack

Doesn’t have to be magic in the game, but modifies the damage done by magic types.

Blocking Counter

Determines the damage modifier when countering an attack after blocking. It will be added to the weapon damage modifier.

Critical

For weapons that have a critical attribute, this determines the damage modifier that will be added to the weapon damage modifier.

It is possible that a counter will have both a blocking Counter and critical attacking modifier added to the base weapon damage modifier. It is also possible to kill a player with just that, which would give extra bonuses for doing so.

Health

This skill increases the Max HP gain at each level.

Defense

The basic armor modifiers work the same for each one and are an in game engine item that can be added or changed for each game type. The specification should be, so that it works for each game and can be set to work for the jobs.

Light Armor

Damage Resistance modifier for light armor.

Heavy Armor

Damage Resistance modifier for heavy armor.

Blocking

Determines how much damage is blocked, when an attack is blocked by the player. It is the base modifier for all blocking attributes.

Magic

Determines the base damage resistance modifier for each magic type. The game doesn’t have to use the magic name for this to work.

Block

For each magic type, there will be a blocking attribute for that.

Attack

When blocking an regular attack, this modifier increases the damage resistance, added to the base.

Disease Resistance

Resistance modifier to diseases and viruses. The player won’t be completely resistance to these types but will have resistance to weaker types with a high enough resistance.

Charma

Alignment

How evil or good the player is based on the player actions and what the other players think of the player. This doesn’t really have any effect on the game system, but does tell the other players how trust worthy the player is.

Job

Increases the players ability to do their job, it isn’t needed because the level determines the ability more than this skill would. It could give that little push to a superior weapon from just a good one.

Reward

Increases the chance to gain a rare item and how much money is received after a battle.

Stealth

Stealth

The ability to go into a location and not be seen.

Discover

Discover people in stealth mode and traps set by other players and those in dungeons.

Traps

The ability to set traps. How exactly this will work is hard to say. There can be traps set in battles, but elsewhere will still have to be decided.

Thief

The ability to rob a player or a store run by a player or game.

Intelligence

The magic skill sets will be increased here.

Energy

How much Energy will be increased after each level.

Job Skills

All jobs except I think the banker will have skills associated with them that will increase what the player can do and how fast they can do it.

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Mecha City

There will be a city where everyone starts off and is open for everyone. While in the city, there is a level difference attack ban for those not within a range. That means a level 100 can’t battle a level 1. The city will allow people to have houses and set up shop at their primary job.

Clan Cities

When a clan is formed, a city is created for them to add defenses too. The defenses will require a carpenter to increase the strength of the defense around the city. When a person joins the clan, their house is added to the city. They can either keep their job and keep their job experience for the new clan or they can take a new job and have a small percentage converted over to the new job.

Dungeons and Caverns

There will be missions and random placements of dungeons and caverns around the map, where the player can go through and fight a boss, in the dungeon. On some missions, it will only be a lesser boss and the big boss would be found in another location.

There will also be mission placements for some missions where finding the area will have an event, where the event page will appear and the player will have to do the right actions to complete the mission event.

It will be totally cool.

Attacking a city and Stealth

Players will be able to attack a city and steal what is inside or enter the city by stealth and see what is inside.

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Jobs

The Position List:

1. Banker
2. Food Supplier
3. Doctor
4. Mining Operator
5. Blacksmith
6. Carpenter

Banker

Changes:

1. Savings will handle out a lesser amount /100 instead of /10.
2. Banker can turn on or off the loan feature.
3. Banker will be able to set whether or not is it /100 or /10.
4. Banker can turn on or off the savings feature.
5. Banker will be able to be attacked by other players.

Doctor

The doctor implementation is by far the best one that I have made. It does its job quite well.

New Features to Add:

1. Curing Illinesses.
2. Learning which illiness the doctor can cure.
3. What illiness the doctor can learn to cure will depend on intelligence and level.

Food Supplier

Formerly Gardener

I had to change the name since the gardener didn’t grow anything and was more like a food supplier in description anyway. The food supplier will work like the gardener, except for a few things that I found where too much of a hassle.

Changes:

1. Allow the Food Supplier to set the modifier based on the level.
2. Set the maximum of the modifier can hand out. That way, there is always a food that gives level 1, even if the person is level 4 person.

New Features:

Queue: The queue will be in place when the food supplier is gone for an extended period of time and will automatically fill in the amount that the food supplier sets.

Mining Operator

The mining operator was set to replace the outposts, but I have a new idea instead of doing that. Every player can be a mining operator and it doesn’t take place over the job. Since it will be its first implementation, there will be problems with bugs and the design. These will have to be worked out over the course of testing, feedback, and play.

Features:

1. Miner can mined only a certain amount per day.
2. What is found is randomized in what metal it is and the quantity.
3. Miner can buy defenses to further defend the mine from theives.

Blacksmith

The Blacksmith will create weapons for the players and then sell them. The blacksmith will gain the materials from the mining operators and then process the materials and then create the the weapon from that:

Buy Raw Metal -> Process (Str dep Level) -> Create Weapon.

The quanity of the raw metal depends on mining operator level, so the final strength of the weapon is dependent on the level of the Mining Operator (which the Blacksmith can’t control, but can buy from higher level miners) and the level of the blacksmith. The level of the blacksmith increases with each weapon created. There will be an overall experience for creating any type of weapon and a weapon type level, which will further increase the strength of that weapon. That would allow a high level blacksmith to create a moderately powerful weapon for something that the blacksmith never created before.

Carpenter

Houses:

Houses store weapons and armor and can be attacked or broken into.

Builds houses and further the defenses of the city. It takes the carpenter to build the defenses and how much defense depends once again on the level of the carpenter.

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Introduction

After some thought, I have decided at the first draft of the next game version. After taking a look at the current game and thinking about ways to improve upon it. I have also looked at what Bobman and Google It are doing and thought it would be cool to incorporate it into the design also. What isn’t included is the other non game items, such as PM, account management, and other things not associated with planning the game.

Stats

The player stats are such as it is now, except for a few modifications.

• Agility->Speed
• Attack->Strength (internally the same)
• Defense
• New->Block
• Charma
• New->Stealth (intenally not used)
• Intelligence

Speed

Speed is how quick the player can attack. It doesn’t exactly give the player the exact ability to attack first, but is a chance, the higher the speed above the enemy, the greater the chance to attack first.

Strength

The strength determines the amount of damage can be afflicted on the enemy. The weapon can modify the strength to improve the damage done.

Defense and Blocking

There are two attributes for defense, one is blocking and the other is well, defense.

Defense is how much damage is absorbed from an attack. Blocking is the chance to block the attack completely. A high blocking ability doesn’t guarantee that each attack will be blocked.

The speed and blocking can be attributed together to increase the over blocking. It will only be a small increase, even if it is used with blocking. I don’t think it should be used together at all.

Charma

Charma is the chance to gain quality items from a battle and will be used for other things also.

Intelligence

A high intelligence gives the player the ability to learn spells and uncover traps.

Stealth

Stealth can be used in conjunction with skills to do different things. Such as stealing money from an user, robbing a shop keeper, and other things brought with points obtained with leveling.

Skills

Skills can be learned from a trainer and then developed further with gaining levels or solving missions.

Types of skills:

• Attacking
• Defending
• Thief
• Stealth
• Magic Skills
• More

Configuration of Skills

Since it is a game engine, then the skill names will have to be changed. What each skill does would also have to be redone also to match that game. For Mecha, the names would have to be changed since, there is no magic in the Mecha World. That doesn’t mean that it is worthless, the magic skills would just have to be changed to match the new types of attacks. The same will be true with HEAT. If the game engine is done right then it will create a great system that will be able to take skills in account.

Conclusion

When a game is recreated, the player attributes or stats, will have to be changed. The names of them will most likely change for each game, but the actions can be the same. The display of it will be up to the developer.

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I have been contemplating the matter of whether I should import the old stats into the new system after the game engine is complete. I’ve been trying to design something that could get past the complexity of orphaned Private Messages that would probably not be from anywhere. I was wondering on how I could get past having the players register again for the new game base. I was thinking of checking the old player table before checking the new one and then if they are found then send them to another “register” page that converts them over to the new game stats.

I was also thinking of just serving this as a game reset for everyone to play on the same level. If I change the Mecha Warz code to where nothing is the same, then I think this would be a great idea, but I probably won’t have the time invested to do that. I already have to go through the jobs and change those so that they function better and improve the user input into it so that it works smoothly, even when the player isn’t there.

The attacking has to be changed and I still haven’t done the mining operator job to replace the outposts (which I will probably do after I complete the code base for the mecha asylum game. I will most likely convert each item over a course of three or four months or until everthing can be tested. The current jobs will be transferred over first and revised. I want to give the bankers more control over the savings and loan operations. I guess the doctor job works as it should. I think it probably should cost more money so that the doctor can take home more profit. I think the one thing I may add is how many turns a person can take before they are shut off until the reset.

The gardener’s position is almost a failure, I think I can scape what remains by adding a queue feature, where if the player doesn’t select the amount by the reset then the queue will kick in and do it for the gardener. My inital reaction for this is that I wanted the players full action for the position. It wouldn’t be that hard to put a queue in, but I felt it would take away the responsiblity of the position if the game did all of the work. I realize now that the players can’t be on at all times when the reset happens. The time I will probably give is increments of 8 or 12 hours. If they are away for that long, then the game will take over and complete the players position job. This is so that there won’t be a shortage of foods. I think I may just change the name to food supplier to give a more accurate description.

Tribes implementation should also be revised, along with a name change, and be global for both Mecha Asylum and Mecha Warz. Mecha Asylum, will include the Alliance Implementation and I will see if I can’t add in admin controls for controling the two modes.

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I have already gave a few reasons why the staff cannot ban on just the Sign In log alone. The reason why is that people can ‘fake’ their IP address or use a proxy to use the web site.

I once wrote a script that allowed a person to change the template on the site by IP address and soon ran in the event where it would change the template for everyone on the same network. The better solution is to use cookies and I eventually did, taking an IP at face value isn’t a good idea.

That is not to say that the Sign In log isn’t any good at all, it does tell you when the person signed in and signed out. That is helpful, but can’t be used for every case.

The level of cheaters and those who would bring the game down in a flaming death is more than what I would suspect for a 100 or so player base game. Damn, a lot of enemies were made, some where. The negative one being the most worse. In most other languages the ‘> 0′ works like it should, but for some reason the type casting on PHP sucks major ass. I almost wish PHP made you define the type, but it is quite helpful when you want to add a integer to a string, that is always a bundle of joy in C and other low level languages. I should reiterate and say that is only for dynamic situations. It only a function call to cast a integer to a string and a string to an integer.

The point is, is that Cheaters suck!

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It seems that whenever I sign on to the Mecha Warz web site, 99% are staff members and the rest are a few members here and there. I don’t think that is needed. Staff don’t need to manage staff. I’m going to set the limit to four other staff members besides the three developers.

• 3 Developers
• 2 Staff Members
• 2 Moderator

When the active members gets above 100, I will ask for one more Super and one more Moderator. The first picks will go to the ones that were dropped. Kazan hasn’t been on forever so the slot has been lost for the person. The other staff members will have to reapply and give a reason for their appointment to a staff position. That means, what they have done, and what they will do in the future.

The new game engine isn’t near enough complete to ask for this now. I already have a few people in mind that are already locked into a position, but I think it would still be good for them to give a logical reason why they should remain, when there aren’t enough active members to appoint 11 people as staff. That is about 30% of the active members. Most games don’t have more than 5 at most. The others could become Forum Staff members. A forum has a greater need of a lot of staff than a simple game.

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I decided it would be a good idea to use some more subdomains to create support sites for the development of Mecha Asylum. I certainly couldn’t use the updates for stuff not related to Mecha Warz. I also couldn’t just put a design document on a blog so I used the Wiki for the design documents. I haven’t really had any time to do anything with them yet. I’m going to spend some time on it later. I have to learn how to do the Wiki, which I hope isn’t hard and convert the design documents over. After that then I need to add the links to the current game sites.

Forum
Wiki Documentation
Blog (this site)

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