Each living thing has various attributes that
describe it. This paragraph has
words which describe those attributes in a
fair amount of detail. I will
outline the data involved with a character in
the game by following the process by which
such a character is
constructed. Here we go.
Body
First, there is a Body class. This
class is basically a collection of Limbs, and
all the information associated with creatures
of similar shape and build. For
example, a Humanoid body would cover any
creature that has two arms, two legs, a head,
a torso, and stands upright. This
could include Humans, Klingons, Elves,
Dwarves, Androids, you name
it. Each Limb has a name, a parent
limb, various information about size and
position, and then a flag for whether it is a
hand or not. A hand is anything
that can hold and manipulate a
weapon. That's right folks, that
means that Bodies can theoretically have more
than two hands. We have the option
of making races that have 4 hands, or 8 hands,
or 20 hands... or NO hands! Pretty cool, eh?
It also means we can have n-handed
weapons.
Which brings me to the last thing that Bodies
keep track of, they keep track of HandCombos,
which are combinations of hands that are valid
for wielding one weapon. Let's say
we have an alien with 3 hands, two normal
hands at the ends of arms, and one at the end
of a tail. The alien should NOT be
able to wield a weapon in it's left hand and
it's tail. That wouldn't make
sense. So, Bodies have a list of
valid combinations of hands that can work
together.
Race
Next, there is a Race class. Each
Race has to choose a Body, but a Race has
other attributes that build on top of that
body. For example, the Race of a
Character determines what that character's
default weapons are. For a Human,
it would be a Fist. For a cat-like
creature, it would be claws. That
sort of thing. A weapon is assigned
to be the default for every hand on the
body.
Also, certain races may have a certain amount
of damage resistance built into their
body. A hard exoskeleton, for
example, might serve as good protection
against crushing
weapons. Therefore, each Race has
protection information for the whole body,
just like an Armor object.
Other things included in Race are the default
Attributes (covered below) of Characters of
that Race, the Hit Point bonuses that
Characters of that Race enjoy, speed and dodge
modifiers, and some other smaller details.
Living
Each Living thing then has to choose a Race,
which means choosing the Body that goes along
with that Race. From there, the
Living thing can modify the attributes that
are standard for the Race. Not all
Humans have the same Strength, Intelligence,
etc, but we are all in the same
range. Attributes are automagically
raised when you get enough experience in a
given Attribute. Each Attribute has
it's own experience level that is independant
of all other Attributes. When you
use a skill or perform an action that uses a
particular attribute, then you get experience
for that attribute. Which reminds
me, another thing that Living keeps track of
is Skills. I'll talk about those
later. But you know generally what
skills are.
Attributes
There are 8 (eight) attributes in
Xarble. I prefer more attributes to
less, for some reason. There's a
tradeoff, here: if you have too few
attributes, then each attribute stands for SO
much that things no longer make
sense. This is one of the problems
I had with the GURPS
system. Because there were only
four attributes, each attribute took on a lot
of meaning. On the other hand, you
have a problem when you have too many
attributes, as well. Sometimes, one
needs to test something that falls between two
attributes, or onto both. So do you
test the average? Do you test
both? What do you do? I
think it would be really cool if attributes
were interdependant, so that rasing one would
raise the attributes that are similar to it a
smaller amount. As I mentioned
before, each attribute has it's own experience
counter, and they all raise
independantly. I can simulate
interdependance by having experience given to
one attribute to spill over a little bit onto
other attribute that are similar. I
could even automate this in the
add_attribute_experience() function, so that
the scripters do not have to worry about it.
Maybe I'll do that. Just
maybe...
Here are a list of attributes and summaries of
their significance:
-
Strength
Your brute force. Your natural
ability for applying pressure to
things. Used in calculating
damage for manually-operated weapons
(Bows/Melee Weapons). Also used
in cases where sheer force is required,
like kicking in a door.
-
Dexterity
Your "Defensive Dexterity." Your natural
ability for controlling your body as a
whole. Used in calculating
Dodge, to determine how far you can jump,
to determine whether you can slip into
tight spaces, and things of that
nature.
-
Accuracy
Your "Offensive Dexterity," or "Manual
Dexterity." Your natural ability to
control small parts of your body very
accurately. Also, your hand-eye
coordination in general. Used
in determining whether you hit opponents
with weapons. Used when
creating or fixing mechanical or
electrical things.
-
Endurance
How many hits you can
take. Your natural ability to
withstand physical
adversity. This can be pain,
damage. Determines how long you
can hold your breath, how long you can run
without tiring, how long you can hand from
a ledge without falling.
-
Intelligence
How smart you
are. Duh. Your
natural ability to understand things,
learn things, and use that learned
knowledge. Used in any academic
skill, any sort of design, or constructive
process. VERY important.
-
Perception
How easily you notice
things. How far you can see,
how good your peripheral vision is, how
detailed you can analyze pictures and
scenes. This is a bit of a
passive attribute, but
useful. Your character will
notice things that he might not with a
lower Perception.
-
Charisma
Moxie. Chutzpah. Your
ability to make people believe in
you. Your ability to convince
people. Your ability to make
people like you. How well you
can talk. Used in determining
people's reactions to
you. People may say certain
things if they have a favorable reaction
to you, and they may say other things if
they hate your guts. Usually,
it's better for them to like you than
not.
-
Speed
Simply put, how fast you
are. This is a major factor in
combat, and characters with very high
speed may get two or even three attacks
for every one of their
opponents. This is covered in
combat, later, but I'll say now that every
little bit of Speed helps.
Skills
So far, there are 23 (twenty-three) skills in
Xarble, and more are on the way if we come up
with them, or if we get suggestions that we
like. Right now, they are all
hard-coded, but maybe I'll eventually move
them to the Java part, if I decide I want more
flexibility.
Each skill will eventually have a distribution
across what I call "Affinities".
Right now, I have plans for three, Scientist,
Warrior, and Thief, but I'll probably
rename/rewrite them. I may just
break it down into two,
Physical/Mental. Anyway, each skill
is related to one or more of the affinities.
The player has a certain position in the
"affinity space", which modifies performance
of those skills. For example,
Unarmed Combat probably has an affinitiy
rating of 100 Warrior, and zero Scientist and
Thief. Dodge, on the other hand,
might have 50 Thief and 50 Warrior, and zero
Scientist affinities. So if the
player's affinities match the affinities of
the skill perfectly, there is a bonus to the
skill, whenever a test is made. On
the other hand, if they are wildly skewed from
the skill's affinities, then there will be a
penalty. This is all relatively
invisible to the player, there may be a bar
graph in the character sheet that describes
this stuff.
Each task you want to perform with a skill has
a certain predefined
difficulty. Each skill will
eventually be based on one or a combination of
attributes. In order to see if the
player suceeds in using their skill, you just
add the average of all the attributes the
skill is based on to the character's trained
level in the skill to a random number between
1 and 20. If that number is
greater-than or equal to the difficulty of the
task, it was performed successfully.
Anyway, here are a list of skills and what
they are used for:
-
Unarmed Combat
This is one's trained ability to fight
without any weapons that don't come with
the body. This includes
punching, tail attacks, claw attacks, and
so on.
-
Blunt Weapons
This is one's trained ability to fight
using a blunt weapon, like a bat, or a
table leg, or a crowbar.
-
Knives
This is the trained ability to use a small
knife in hand-to-hand
combat. This can range from
steak knives to machetes
-
Swords
This is the trained ability to use a large
blade in hand-to-hand
combat. There aren't too many
swords in Xarble, because most people have
Guns when they want to kill, but there are
some new innovations, like the vibrosword,
which is an electrically-charged sword
that vibrates at a very high rate, making
it look like a blur. It slices,
it dices, it makes Julilenne AND curly
fries with the flick of a wrist.
-
Pistols
The use of your standard, one-handed,
small pistols. Most of them are
automatic, these days, but occasionally
you'll find a revolver from the olde
days.
-
Rifles
For longer range, and more accuracy,
people train in the use of Rifles instead
of pistols. Most notable about
rifles is the long barrel, which
supposedly keeps the bullets on target
more. This is a broad skill,
and covers sniper rifles, hunting rifles,
and assault rifles, as well as shotguns,
which aren't technically rifles.
-
Submachineguns
This is the ability to hit a target with a
small weapon with a very high rate of
fire. This doesn't include assault
rifles, but it does include things like
Uzis.
-
Laser Guns
This is the ability to hit a target with a
gun that emitts a highly-focused beam of
light/energy. These babys
usually have no recoil, and that's a bit
hard to get used to, actually.
-
Rail Guns
This is the ability to shoot guns which
use the electromagnetic force to propell
small shards of metal at near the speed of
light.
-
Throwing
This is the ability to hit a target with a
thrown object.
-
Dodge
This is your ability to see an attack
coming, and to get out of the way in time.
This isn't really limited to combat, it
could be for traps and other odd things,
as well.
-
Lockpicking
The ability to pick locks.
-
Pickpocketing
The ability to steal stuff from other
people's person without them
noticing.
-
Stealth
The ability to not be noticed when you
don't want to be.
-
Electrical Engineering
The ability to design, fix, and
reverse-engineer electrical
equipment.
-
Computer Programming
The ability to make computers do what you
want them to.
-
Computer Hacking
The ability to make computers do what you
want them to, if someone else doesn't want
you to.
-
Piloting
The ability to pilot or drive any sort of
vehicle.
-
Weapon Maintainance
The ability to repair, clean, unjam your
weapons.
-
Armor Maintainance
The ability to repair and clean your
armor.
-
Vehicle Maintainance
The ability to repair, clean, and modify
any sort of vehicles.
-
Mechanical Engineering
The ability to construct, repair, and
reverse-engineer mechanical
devices.
-
Medicine
Knowledge of pharmacuticals, as well as of
physiology, and how to assist wounded
people.
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