Mod Ideas/Magicans

Description

In a scene like for example a wood, let there be 2 teams of magicans. Both belong to different clans. Both teams start out at their home bases which only they can enter. If they die, they will respawn in there. There are a few pots of gold in the map. And both teams of course will try to get them. There's only one problem:

Every player has magical abilities ( which can be expanded but see later ) but the poor one who has to carry a pot can't use his powers. There's so much gold in there that he merely can carry it, and with both hands holding the pot and the heavy pot doesn't allow him to fly etc. . The pot's gold amounts will vary - so you will get much more gold if you carry an gold pot from your enemy to your base ( At last, it's still a magical pot of gold ).

If the team can bring the pot home, they will get the gold and the pot will respawn, maybe not in the same location as before, and maybe to immediatly, but it will respawn. Now comes the tricky part

Each team has a shared gold-store, and they can develop new spells which the players of the team can choose from. This of course is not cheap - and some heavier spells will be quiet expensive. They can also extend their mana - but this will really be expensive The winner is not the team with the most frags or pot captures, but the team with the most gold in storage! Thus you have to decide how much gold you want to use for development.

Players have mana, while it slowly recharges within the level, it recharges fast in their bases. If a player gets killed, he will drop his left mana. Be aware that if you spent all your mana you will be ( due to slow recharging ) an easy kill for another player with more mana.

So, that's a mod-idea I had a few months ago, but I failed in beeing too lazy to code for a team and for my own project

Interested Scripters

If you are interested in developing this mod for UT2003 then add your name to the list. Once you start development you should indicate that below (and hopefully include a link to a journal page). Before you start development you should also check this section to see if anyone else has started.

Discussion

DJPaul: Do we have rainbows, and can we run along them?

Dante: Uhm, there's a temporary solution: Take drugs, play UT. And you might also see some rainbows

EntropicLqd: That's a nice idea - I particularly like the fact that the gold carrier is crippled. It seems like this particular game type would benefit from each map being played for an hour, to give each team time to afford the higher level spells. The way the game currently stands any team that gets a lead will automatically gain an advantage over the other team (they can upgrade their spells). It maye be worth having a few pots of gold on the map worth differing amounts just to even things up a little. How about having one team with all the magic, and the other team with "normal" weapons and technology. Balancing things would be difficult. Does each player have a "magic strength bar" that recharges over time - when they have no magic strength left they can't cast spells.

Dante: Yo, I made a few changes. Your ideas sound good. But I will leave the magic vs magic atm. If someone actually "makes" this mod, he can add an additional human-team with normal weapons. Actually I forgot to write about the mana stuff.

EntropicLqd: Do the spells you have learnt and mana extensions propagate to the next level or not? If they don't then there is no real driver to extend mana and gain new spells if the winning team is the one with the most gold (unless the new spells are significantly better than the default ones). It might be worth assigning gold to each player whenever the pot is captured. This prevents one player from spending all of the teams hard earned gold. If player enhancements and learnt spells exist from one level to the next it may make a good single player game.

Dante: The new spells will be much more powerfull. And gold is compared after a given amount of time. Players won't be able to spend the money of the team, they should be able to vote in their base. And if enough people vote vor something, it will be developed.

EntropicLqd: So once a spell is developed it becomes available to the whole team rather than the individual? If you have the time a more detailed description would be nice.

Claw: Hmm, this sounds like it could be a gametype for Dark Magic 2. Yes, it will come. There is nothing you can do about it.

Dante: I once wrote to Dark Magic, and someone replied that a similar idea is planned... But this was quiet some time ago.

Claw: Never heard of it... maybe Zed's time? It's been all haphazard in the last year anyway. Actually I am almost happy to be the only coder now. Only now I got to modify and tweak and fix stuff mostly done by others... annoying.

Anything new of relevance isn't likely to happen prior to DarkMagic2. At least it was a learning experience.

Icedude: The 4e Fortress magicians had a good magic system: Choose the type of magic you want to learn, and depending on your level, you can get better spells (Like under Dark Magic, it goes from Vampiric Blast as your first spell, to Spirit of MAX as the last one)

Claw: Dunno, while the system was pretty, it seemed impractical for a fast-paced multiplayer game. For singleplayer I'd have been great, but I spent too much time on selecting spells and even more on "mapping" them to keys.

In the new Dark Magic system, you start with several spells, and the system automatically assigns new spells when you level up. The assignment is based on your playing style, basically if you use Fire spells often, you get a new Fire spell. Etc. I think it's sweet. Too bad it's so late though. If we had started a year earlier there'd have been a working release well before UT2k3, and I wouldn't be itching to "get over it" and start on Xenocide instead.