Coding

[Calliope]

This is a place for you to interact with other like-minded individuals discussing possible options or ways one could code things on Project Legilimensia. This site will be monitored and if there comes a time we feel your coding acumen fits our staffing needs, you will be contacted immediately. Thank you! :)

This section is dedicated to those Forum participants who are eager to contribute to Project Legilimensia, but do not have the time nor the inclination to become actual staff. If anyone contributes to this site, you are granting Project Legilimensia and its staff permission to use your work, ideas, or theories.
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To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best night & day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
~e.e. cummings

[rust_wolfsoul]

I have no idea of how your codebase is constructed and some of the ideas have already been coded if not all. Why bring them up then? Because somewhere in my rambling answer I may hit upon something useful. I will attempt to do these brainstorming sessions every few days because 1: this thread needs posts and 2: I may stumble across something that you find useful. I will be discussing it mainly in terms of theory and what little code I do offer will be pulled from several languages and the coders would most likely have to port it to C for their use anyway.

Todays agenda: Quidditch and Spell Authoring.

I am aware that you had had problems sorting out how to go about quidditch but have since come to an answer, here is my possible answer.

Firstly, the field would need to be designed as a series of matrices with each point corresponding to a various location(which I imagine is close if not exactly how it is being done but I am probably wrong).

For example one matrix would handle the location and layout of the bottom of the field, the next 10 feet in the air, the next 20, and etc. The matrices would be used to story the description of the specific node and also to pass directional information, player location, ball location etc.

Snitch movements would be randomised, bludgers would be affected both by the direction in which the ebaters hammer them and a random degrade towards changing direction, with the quaffle being passed back and forth between characters or being thrown(possibly set a boolean variable with true being "possesed" and false being"thrown")

Players would be given an option of which direction to move at each point along with a short quick description. Also needed is a simple way of setting a timeout so that they are constantly updated even if they just want to sit there like a lump and not choose a direction. Along with the option they should be given a few special manuvers(which are slower to type which helps set a skill level for good quidditch players) to attach to their character. Importance would need to be placed on their quickly deciding the next direction to fly by punishing hoverers with making them attract the bludgers. This keeps the palyer on their toes to keep moving while trying to balance it with keeping an eye on the game. For example:
"
You see a bludger hurtling your way, down and to the right Amanda Hugandkiss speads toward the Slytherin goal with the quaffle

f-forward
l-turn left
r-turn right
u-fly up
d-fly down
special manuver 1 - sloth grip role
special manuver 2 - Wonky Faint
"

Characters could also be given the option of auto to handle their movements and simply allow them to perform the more important tasks. Also needed would me a set of characteristics needed specifically for quidditch dealing with thigns such as speed and broom handling. The special manuevers could be learned during training, but it is vital that they are tricky to type out so that it takes a rare callibre to become a master fo quidditch and not just someone who trains a bit.

There, possibly crappy or possibly useful.

Now on to making you own spells.

We see from the HBP's potions book that sometimes much tinkering needs to be done to perfect a spell. With a system that makes many spells some of which are not listed and characters are expected to chance across them we have a bit of hinderence, but if we add to that a system that allows spell customization without having to list the individual spells that can be created, then we have a good method of keeping things different and lively.

Spells(or potions and their ingredients) would need their incantations divided word by word to create a sort of massive dictionary of possible words to use in incantations. Each would need assigned to it a skill level, an effect, and a backfire(also wand movements but I want to keep this to the basic idea as the wand motions make themselves self explanitory when the basics are covered). The skill level would determine if the character was powerful enough to capably use this word in an incantation. The effect determines what effect it has and backfire determines what happens on a poorly constructed spell, a weak wizard using a powerful spell, or just shitty luck.

for example:
liquid based spells could have a set of incaning words to determine the liquid such as aqua, sangui, etc. Then another portion of the spell could determine the action such as menti causing the liquid to be expelled from the wand. Thus aguamenti would discharge a stream of water from the wand as seen in HBP, but sanguimenti would discharge a stream of blood(or if this spell is given the qualities of being a bad combination the caster may very well expell his own blood).


I hope these ideas are somewhat usefull. If not then let me know and I won't go further. If they are I will try and make this a weekend tradition.
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caveat lector

[jibberingfink]

why haven't you applied to become project staff?
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It's got too many lips!

[rust_wolfsoul]

[Calliope]

Actually, a lot of the logistics of Quidditch have been worked out. We've already built the stadium (complete with stands). :) But I'll be sure to direct Aether, who has designed the game, to this site. Thanks so much!! And, yes, please feel free to continue to place things on here. We greatly appreciate it.

[Goatman]

Did the staff come up with a way to handle Occlumency / Legilimency? I have the begining of an idea, but haven't really thought it through yet. So, my question is, is it worth thinking about or is it already covered?
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[Calliope]

We've toyed with it, but if you have ideas why don't you PM them to me so that the general population doesn't see them, in case we would love to embrace your ideas. :) By the way, this should be under quest design. :) Thanks so much! tina

[rust_wolfsoul]

Sorry for the slowness of my next batch of ideas. It will probably go slower than I anticipated from now on. Such is life lol. THis post I am going to discuss Legilmency and its sister art Occulamency.

Legilmency is obvious a tricky art to code owing to the fact that the ones who think for the characters are meta-game players. How are we supposed to read their minds then? I have thought up a system which, while not fool proof, could have great potential use. The problems will be size, as I cannot say what methods the games programmers are using to store character data. I am working under the assumption however that it is a tetx file, xml file, or another equally small size text format. I am also working under the assumption that the current legilmancy will reveal some of the stats and weaknesses of the player being read, from a chatacter sheet standpoint. Why do I assume this? Because it is the easiest possible way I can think of to have ingame legilmancy and thus save me comple xguessing and ponderings. My idea will build upon this assumption and add a few new character traits. These would be interaction traits based off of player-characters the player meets ingame. Each unique player would be added to a list. Stats would monitor the positive and negative reactions each take toward the other. Hugs, talking, following, healing one another, teaching one another spells, etc, would all add to the positive trait modifiers. Attacking, threats, spells cast on one another, running from one another, etc, would add to the negative trait modifier. Using this simple construct(I say simple as I feel you would all be grown up enough to take my base ideas and elaborate yourselves) we could generate a fairly good indicator of likes and dislikes. The legimens, when using his magic, would draw at random faces of these players coupled with a random action denoting it being a different degree of positive or negative. Thus characters who had kissed in game would have an exceptionally strong positive modifier and could be shown(their short description of course unless the legilmens has that person on his list and thus knows them) holding hands etc in the legilmen's vision pulled from them.

Example.

Berg the Icy's past memories flood before your mind's eye. You catch glimpses of him failing to transfigure a teapot into a turtle, you see him arguing with Silvia DeMortis, he is snogging a dark haired woman with green eyes, he successfully charms a house of cards to build itself.


THe example would use random descriptions to show that Berg the Icey is not all that great at transfiguration, does not get on so well with Silvia DeMortis, gets on rather well with an unknown woman, and has an affinity for charms. It is a loose example but I think gives a bit of how it could work. The main factors will be recall speed on the list in question. If each character has meta data holding their names and the like then a person could build facial recognitions and thus put the interaction traits to even more use. Several other ideas can easily be built upon it but I think this will do at the moment.

[rust_wolfsoul]

Now it is time for more, hopefully helpful, probably useless, coding ideas from rust.

On today's agenda, ancient runes. I will be using a set of Norse Runes known as the Elder Futhark for my example. The reason being that you can easilly find information on them here and that they are the type of runes used in divination and a websearch can easilly give you a multitude of magickal meanings for each one, which makes the creative process easier for you and adds a nifty air of authenticity. An added bonus is that the Elder Futhark is very angular making it very easy to represent in ascii text in game. You could sequentially number the runes if a person is wishing to write in them and display what each one emans, you can also show runes on various items in their runic form. For example:

"
You see etched deeply into the side of the wall
|\ | \ / ^
| \ | \ \ / | \
| / | | / |
| \ | | \ |


And you feel watched.
"

As far as making spells, enchantments and the like with the runes goes; since each rune does have a meaning in both the name itself, divination, and magickal practices, you can use that as a framework to build how to generate spells with it. Different runes can provide different bonuses in conjunction with one another and there even exist combination runes which the neo-pagan movement seems to particularly enjoy(I do not know a link to any offhand but they should be easy to find). Aside from that you can prefabricate certain words to use with the runes to be taught alongside the runes. Such as a runic word for protection so that you can etch protection spells into items, or runes of posessions which cause items to fail for all but those who meet the qualifications. For example if I were to do the inscription for "owned by rust" on a dagger, then use of this daggeer would always backfire on anyone else who attempted to use it. For a little idea to further elaborate the same owned by spell, we could have "Admit Slytherin" be a runic spell carved onto a door on which only members of the Slytherin House can pass, "open parseltongue" on a door which can only be opened by someone speaking parseltongue, "block morsmordre" to keep anyone with the dark mark crom passing, etc. We can also use it as a further technique to enchant items such as invisibility cloaks and the like. It provides a fun and creative alternative to simply casting enchantments on items, and could be used as a longer lasting means of enchantment. If given such a flexibility it would become a powerful part of a wizards arsenal but also needs an uncommonly smart wizard because it would be tricky to get the exact translations. For example "launch fire hand" on a glove could cause the glove to throw balls of fire from the users hand, or when triggered it can cause the person's hand to be ripped off and go flaming through the air. A correspondance table would need to be generated to show how words and even letters work in relation to one another. The letters and their relation would be mainly for when a wizard chooses to make his own word, or as a means of inscribing his name(thus meaning there would be power behind a characters name even aside from it being their identifier, so when a dark lord chooses his name, if he is knowledgable of runes, he may pick a new name for the power the runes show for it) I would allow so much formulae and words to be taught in school, but after that I would let it be one of those mysteious magicks that one has to be clever or stupid to experiment with. One last example is the pensieve. The pensive could be an extrordinarily complex combination of transfiguration and charms which allow the memory to be displayed, and runes which categorise and sort the memories in the pensive. This is just another loose idea, but I do not know how you are approaching runes and tought this way may interest you as it opens the way for much flexibility within the game and at the same time makes it a study worthy of hard work as it can be powerful and/or deadly.

[Calliope]

Rusty Wolf, thank you for the great ideas. Coding, goat gods, anything you don't know? :)

[rust_wolfsoul]

[Trevlac]

I do not know your engine's base code or the progress that the coders have made on the dynamics of potions, but I do know that simply adding ingredients and hoping it works based on skill might be a bit too little considering all of the intricacies of potion making.

I have two suggestions for how a potion should actually be created. One of these is a live, real-time potion brewing and the other is not.

First, the live. It would be absolutely marvelous to gather your ingredients, prepare them how you would like, and then light your fire, stew, add ingredients, etc, all in real-time. Here's how it would need to flow:
Preparation.
Make sure you have the correct ingredients of the correct amount.
Prepare them carefully, like "silver_dagger crush sopophorus_bean" yeilds more juice than "silver_dagger cut sopophorus_bean" and loads more than "silver_dagger stab sopophorus_bean"

Cauldron and lighting.
Allow the players to adjust their cauldron fires at regular intervals. And if they've read the book for a certain potion they are creating, allow a reminder of when to raise or lower the heat to pop up.

Mixing and stewing.
Ah, the most important phase. Some potions would take a very long time this way, for example, Lacewing Flies must stew 22 days before you can use them in Polyjuice potion. So make that 22 in-game days (however your in-game clock and time system works). Who knows, you may even be able to fit time-turners in with this. Also for this part, if someone has read a book containing that potion, I would advise allowing a prompt for when to add this, stir that, mix this, etc.

The other method. This one is a bit like an exam. Someone reads the book that the talented Writing Services Team wrote and goes to their cauldron to make the potion. They have their ingredients ready and they begin. To make the potion properly, they take a kind of "test" on the way it is prepared, the next step, adding something extra to counter a particular side-effect, and such things.

This could allow players to actually learn the potions themselves and become real potion makers rather than this:
place wood on floor
incendio wood
place cauldron on wood
make Amortentia

That's kind of cheaping out of it... However, I did notice on this board that someone so very intelligently suggested having descriptions for ingredients where one could figure out the ingredients in a potion simply by investigating possibilities. Nice idea, it rings familiar of Grawpalott's Third Law.


And if you all can't tell by now, I'm a potions fanatic.

If any of the coding team needs help implimenting this system (should you choose to use it, or a refined version) please ask me, I'm more than willing to help out any way I can.
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[Nic]

You guys mentionned in another thread that Fenix Felicis might have to be roleplayed. That seems to me like a waste of a potion that may take a while to learn. Instead I have come up with two ideas as to how Fenix could work.

In the book, Harry is guided by "Fenix", or his enhanced intuition, as to how to secure the memory from Slughorn. In the game, after you have taken the potion, "Felix" could steer you towards areas in which you will be "lucky". For example, if "Felix" tells you that hunting would be a good idea, then the chances of a creature hitting you would be severely reduced, enabling you to kill things much stronger then you normally could. If Felix tells you that questing might be a good idea, then the rewards for quests would be increased while you were under his infulence. If a gambling parlor is in the works, perhaps "Felix" could suggest increased odds?

This methode would be good because it's true to Canon (a being with inhanced intuition giving you advice). On the other hand, it doesn't leave you with much choice other then do what Felix tells you, or else you'll waste the potion.

Another way would be to simply make you lucky in everything possible. Change the odds of any random based occurance (as long as it's useful... you wouldn't want to get spammed with twice as many echo's for instance). Also, you could provide enhanced sences to increase the chances of overhearing something importent.

Of course, misuse of either of these would have to have it's consequences. I suggest hallucinations. Make the client load the descriptions of random rooms for the person, instead of the one they want. Make rooms appear to have more, or less exits then they normally would. Have people in the room appear to randomly cast spells at them, and random creatures appear to attack them. Have these effects wear off after a while, and have it take more time to wear off with each additional Felix dose over the limit, in a certain amount of time.