» Fri May 25, 2012 2:43 pm So, for a starter project, because that is always the best way to learn, I have come up with a spell concept which should require a pretty broad spectrum of functions to achieve correctly.
My goal here is to solicit contributions. Anyone who sees any aspect of this they find familiar, have dealt with before, or have some ideas on, please feel free to link/post your thoughts and I will happily test their application. Also I will be expanding this once I have some of the initial scripts worked out.
For now, just the concept sketch:
Blizzard/Ice Shatter Spell Effect
This will be a rune-targeted expert level frost destruction spell.
The effect field itself should appear as a pattern of frost shards raining down within the effect field followed by the ice spike effect ice wraiths cast appearing to fill the field as each shard impacts. This will potentially be very cool looking. However again, it will require some clever trickery to pull off, like spawning a dozen or so invisible floating bad guys over the target area to have them cast the ice shards in sequence. I will also have to look into how to get the ice wraith ground effect to localize and appear as each shard hits.
Think of it as a blizzard type effect, with ground effects.
Each effect field will last something like 4-6 sec at the location of each hit. Each effect field pulses every .2 sec within it's radius doing moderate frost damage per tick (whether enemies are physically hit with the ice bolts or not (the effect is largely for show). This will stack with other overlapping fields to increase damage done, and being caught in any field also applies an effect which slows enemies to ~25% speed for 30 sec (reset each pulse they remain in the field) and silences ranged abilities while in the effect field. (Will have to look into how to force mele combat while in the field.)
Of course if they manage to crawl their way through the ice they will be able to range-attack again, though they still keep the remainder of their 30 sec speed debuff.
I was thinking the spell should be calibrated to use roughly 1/6 mana per application of the ground effect, perhaps more. These and the damage numbers will of course be tweaked once the basic functionality is there.
Using both hands simultaneously will be coded to have a separate effect, applying a "shatter" in a ~90 degree cone out to ~512 game units to any caught within and/or presently effected by the 30 sec speed/stam debuff from the pulse effect.
This effect should stagger and do a significant amount of frost damage to any with the debuff, as well as "shattering" any still active ground effects and removing the stam/speed debuff from any enemy hit by the cone and not killed by the shatter effect.
With the ice wraith ice, I want to say I remember being able to hit it with weapons and it disintegrates. This will be a challenge though. How to have all the remaining icicles explode on command?
The shatter ability is balanced to consume roughly 1/3 mana. Because this spell is rather powerful it is designed that a single cycle through intelligent placement of ground effects plus a shatter that hits all affected targets should "clear a room" of standard foes on master level.
It is calculated that by the time you reach expert level you will have enough cost reduction through talents and gear as well as regen so that even after a full spread of three blizzard fields and a shatter you will have barely enough magicka to finish off any stragglers, or cast other spells (fear, heals, etc.) enough to regen mana and finish the job.
I was also thinking about a second support spell, like a flash freeze. So, you could hotkey the main spell, but since the blizzard effect itself is cast with one hand, you would switch to the other hotkeyed support spell in the offhand, so between or after applying the blizzard fields, using the second spell would “snap” enemies within a short distance of the player currently effected by the frost fields for a decent amount of damage.
This would cost a fraction of the 2-h finisher, such that by casting say four cold snaps it would cost about the same mana (or slightly more) than one cone finisher, and do almost as much damage.
The flash might also stagger enemies that are in mele range, so that if you are close enough to be hit by a sword, the spell should save you. It would also let you run around the fields to drag them through it, and allow more effective positioning so it would be simple to hit your hotkey for the main spell to switch back to 2-h casting and aim the finishing shatter.
Some other difficulties I can imagine will be in tight quarters, will my invisible bad guys be able to cast the shard rain down through a ceiling? Should be, since most collisions are 1-way…
The way I am thinking of doing that is place an invisible marker at the center of the rune, and use simple trig functions (simple now that the scripting language codes for them!), to calculate the dozen or so invisible impact points around the perimeter like spokes on a wheel, with concentric rings of them, each with a corresponding floating invisible bad guy something like 500 game units above (perhaps with a slight offset to give the shards some angle) coded to target his corresponding marker and spam his frost spike ability.
That will probably be the most complex part and yet ironically it is probably the part I am most confident in being able to pull off at this point! The rest will require some learning of the language.
