Ars Magica 2 - Ideas
Poll: If I were to implement an API, would you make use of it? (able t
Ended May 15, 2014
Poll: If I were to make the code for this mod available on GitHub, wou
Ended May 15, 2014
Poll: What specific mod integration would you like to see the most?
Ended May 15, 2014
That sounds excellent
I will still add my own worldgen, as I don't want the mod to be specifically dependent on anything other than Forge, but what I will do, is if your mod is installed I will use your API/Hooks to put AM loot and bosses into the dungeons and disable my own.
so think you for your time and consideration you put into this!
i havent understood the layrinth either. there doesnt seem to be more than a couple of pig spawners in there.
some of the generated buildings seem to have blocked off areas and you seem to need the blink spell to access them, since you cant axe your way through a wall. thats a little bit of a problem, if you dont luck out and find the specific spell early on.
its better to guard these secret rooms with riddles and minigames, instead of depending on a specific spell.
the way the buildings are generated can be weird too sometimes, and the algorithm might need some cleaning up. theyre often spawing on giant blocks of sand and just cut off other parts of the already generated world.
but apart from that, the research system already gives a good method to get that one spell, you just cant seem to find. i didnt have a lot of trouble to get some specific spells, if i needed them, since i found a lot of different spells and duplicates of the journals in my world exploration.
if you still want to make it easier to gain spells, without too much world exploration, you could increase the chance of recipe drops or journals from hostile mages, and maybe even make it possible, to trade spells recipes with white mages.
ars magica villagers could trade specific spell recipes for any spell recipe (instead of emeralds), so you have a use for duplicates, that you might have found in your exploration.
there are only a few little things that are bugging me at the moment with the mod, really.
for once, its that some spells have to be charged by holding down the mouse button. its like an additional cooldown on top of the scroll cooldown. it would be better to choose either one or the other. having to charge up a spell, or put a cooldown on the scroll, but allow it to be immediately cast. not both.
second, the gate travelling system. as far as ive understood, you cant connect two gates exclusively to each other. basically, if youre unlucky and want to a specific position in your world, you have to step through your entire network, to get there. this doesnt seem like a very elegant solution, especially since keystones already allow to color code every gate individually. this would actually allow for a stargate-esque gate dial mechanic, where you could spontaneously connect a gate to a specific second gate, by "dialing" its assigned color code.
imagine some sort of gate book or spell, that can store every adress you have assigned to a gate, allowing comments. for example an entry for the gate "white, blank, blank, blank, blank" with the comment "village". opening a gatebook in your hand, or on a lectern next to an existing gate, could open up a small gui, that would allow to choose an entry and connect the gate youre standing next to it, with your "village" gate.
right clicking on a recepticle with the book in your hand, would add an entry with the gate adress to the book.
this mechanic would still give the option to have some "secret" exclusive gates, like the current keystone mechanic. with the advantage that you wouldnt have to carry around a couple of different keystones in your inventory, when you want to have more than one. you would just have the gate adresses stored in your book instead.
or simply the possibility to exclusively connect two gates, by assigning them to the same color code would already be enough (think enderchests). it would allow to build a portal nexus, similar to a mystcraft nexus, thats already being used by a lot of people.
other than that, personally im having a lot of fun with your mod. some of the spells, like thunderstorm are incredibly awesome. though im definitely intersted in your concept of a skill tree.
one other small request. it would be nice, if we could dye our mage robes. like the option to have either red, green, purple, white etc. archmage robes would be pretty cool.
Happiness is like peeing in your pants, everyone sees it but only you feel its warmth.
The possibilities with this mod are indeed great, and I feel it could make great use of a class system, with several classes crossing. One could start out as a simple neophyte, following their own path and specializing in their own mix of spells/affinities, with a chosen class giving them more advantage over the related magic. Certain spells can only be uncovered, understood and used by certain classes, or perhaps even have different effects if used by another.
Examples of 2 purposed classes:
Pyromancer/fire mage has mastery over flames, and can manipulate them with more ease (lesser mana cost) and with more intensity.
Necromancers can enslave the undead, channel the unseen spirits to do their will and perhaps even defeat death itself.
Furthermore, each affinity can have 2 sides to their power: one that harms and one that aides. The life affinity gives spells the ability to heal, but it can also distort life to poison, wither and so on. Since it is life, it could possibly animate objects as well...
Like I said, the possibilities are very great. Hope these ideas can inspire new, better refined ones. Peace out
A 'fix' you could implement to the current system is making the fabricator duplicate items (customizable) instead of recipes (any it can calculate the essence value for).
I.e. The fabricator has a single slot that you place an item into. It will then find the essence value of that item in the config file. If it is explicitly defined, then you can fabricate it.
The config file would then have options for:
Maximum charge of fabricator.
Section for defining which items can be duplicated, and their respective essence cost.
Section for defining what items can be thrown into a blue nexus, and what essence values you get for each. (This section would be used with your current recipe calculation code to determine essence value for blue nexus unmaking. Ideally this section would still define all base items and costs as you do now.)
This way it becomes entirely configurable which items the user(s) can fabricate, and people can adjust the balance (cost and what is possible) to their own taste.
One person might only make cobble and runes creatable at average essence cost, while another makes all base resources creatable at high essence cost, while yet another makes blocks of diamond creatable at very low essence cost.
At least then it is their own choice.
It's the flying cutlery that stresses me out.
both mods could form one complex, while still being separate mods, that can stand on their own. where ars magica would basically do, what its doing now. adding a spellcasting and spell crafting system to minecraft, while thaumcraft currently focuses on magic devices and item crafting.
its one of those things thats REALLY annoying me about all the tech mods. all these modders are testing their builds on the same server, most of them even work together and do coding and modeling for each other. they build these amazing mods and even go out of their way, to make them compatible with each other.
yet, a lot of those mods use their own energy system, and everyone is basically reinventing the wheel. if you want to use industrial craft and buildcraft, you have to set up separate infrastructures with machines, that in a lot of cases do the same thing. why? if all these guys develop their mods together anyways, why dont they agree on a single energy system to have total compability across all the mods? why are there different versions of copper and aluminum, when they are compatible across the mods anyways? all of these mods could form different branches of a complex, and wouldnt need different versions of the same machines.
the same could be done for the big magic mods like thaumcraft and ars magica. if youre going to restart your mod anyways, this could be an interesting opportunity.
a good example of how this could work, is buildcraft and forestry for example. both mods stand on their own and can be played individually. but theyre compatable, since their machines are based on the same energy system.
one thing, that will definitely help, is that azanor is working on culling down his aspects to less than 10 for the 3.1 version of his mod. these basic aspects could coincide with the affinity system in your mod.
some of my ideas:
the affinity should have some negative affects and affects that are both good and bad.
for example earth affinity can make you slower and life could heal all mobs around you, meaning both allies and enemies get healed.
also you should be able to get multiple affinity to balance out the negatives (one affinity's positive negates another's negative)
so you can have both water and fire affinity, but having a water affinity would make getting a fire affinity harder.
affinity should also affect the damage of the spell and what kind of casting you can use (fire affinity one means only diminished fire spells, fire affinity twenty means diminished fire spells and normal fire spells)
spell components could be
Spell Shape=runes (different rune than the first mod harder to craft maybe?)
Spell Effects=essence (fire=fire damage/light fire etc)
Spell Modifiers=scrolls (found, mob drop, and/or crafted)
Spell Parchment= same as before, used to put spell on
tell me what you think!
find the tower protector (gold black purple thing) and destroy it
1. Customizable golem type things would be cool. Probably would be worked into the spell customization system.
2. Make sure you can share spells with other players. Similar to like you can give other players spell recipes now.
So thats my suggestion.
Basically it is held that the planet is criss crossed with a network of energy lines called ley lines, and where these lines intersect they form Nexus'. The more ley lines converging the larger and more powerful the energy there. This energy can be tapped into to create larger spells and sometimes are required for very large and powerful magic.
Also there are many types of spellcasting: verbal, gesticular, runic, symbolic, etc etc would you be focusing on just the Gesticular or also delving into runes and symbols?
Just food for thought.