Visually handling spells casting on TmwAthena

[Bertram]

Hi everyone,

Now that skipy has achieved the new playerset frames:
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 62#p100862

I'm starting this thread to gather thoughts about the development specifications needed to permit the display of the spell casting being action in an elegant manner.

Not entering too quickly the technical side of things, let's imagine that the character joins his hands for a seconds or two while casting a spell.
Is that a simple (fake) instantaneous action, that can be overriden by an attack,walk,sit,dead action half a second later, or is there here some cooldown to add?

Now, as for the code, (try to keep it simple and stupid):
Is a simple cooldown time feasible in tmwAthena? (Not speaking about manaserv, here.)
What should be the protocol additions, backward compatible changes here?
How should the client handle the spell casting?

Thanks for all your thoughts about it.

Best regards.

[Crush]

My thoughts about the magic system?

Trash it completely and reimplement it using the eAthena skill system.

You've already wasted more than enough development hours on this glorified chat bot.

[Bertram]

Hi,

Trash it completely and reimplement it using the eAthena skill system.
You've already wasted more than enough development hours on this glorified chat bot.

Did I say KISS? (Keep It Simple And Stupid)

In a perfect world, if we're going to trash something, let's trash TmwAthena support, and start supporting the real eAthena, I'd say.
But within the few hours per week we have, can we try to provide a simple but working-as-for-what-is-requested solution?

Best regards.

[nmaligec]

Any update on whats happening on the technical side?

skipy will probably alter the weapon frames, but the casting frames are done and a rough draft of the new playerset xml is done. Just wondering if this might get into the new client, or will it be delayed for later?

[Bertram]

Hi,

On the client side, I know that the official action name is 'magic'.

On ta server-side, let's ask the magic system makers.

Turmfalke? Freeyorp? Any idea of who is still around and skilled in that?

Best Regards.

[fate]

Bertram,

there isn't any `natural' event that matches this on the server side, so either some pre-existing eAthena packet must be hooked into or someone will have to add a new packet. A more interesting (because less technical) question is when the new frame should be used. Right now, all spells are triggered instantaneously (unless things have changed since I last looked at them), though the spell implementations of course can explicitly defer effects (cf. the summoning family of spells). As such, the current magic design has no natural place for actually showing the player frames.

The most natural thing to do would be to add a `warm-up time' to each spell, as a new kind of prerequisite. This would be the time between the user initiating the spell and the spell actually being triggered, and you can then design interesting game rules for `what happens if the player casts a second spell during that time' or `what happens if the player is attacked'.

However, unless you have changed the client to allow forcing the player not to move, all this is a bit pointless: it wouldn't look very convincing to use spell-casting frames while the player can still move around...

Sorry if I'm re-hashing discussions that have occurred elsewhere. Anyway, good luck with adding this part to the glorified chat bot!

-- fate

[skipy]

i know im just i guy with some pixels and know little of what im talking about here....
i have been doing some thinking on the player-sprite and the way it works with what it is doing(like spell frames).
one thing that keeps poping up in my head is "hit" frames(frame of pain and/or being pulled-back).
if this is indeed to work with the spell-frames it can be added(ill add them anyway )...
`warm-up time' for spells could work nicely imo...

thats my to pennies-----------skipy