alchemy

[kshinji]

Hi there guys. Anyone remembers me? ;]

I recently learnt how alchemy works in TES3 (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Alchemy). Quite inspiring.

Instead of copying that system i suggest something more sophisticated.

Ie. there should be dusts and oils, each dust 'possesing' 4 'color points' from variety of like 12 colors. When mixed together, exact number of them, dusts would turn their 'color points' to 'dots' - if there are 2 same 'color points' on 2 different dusts, they would turn to 'color dot', if 3, they would turn to 'better color dot' and 4 to 'best color dot'. Each unsued color point would turn to grey color dot.

Then oils should keep sorted lists of 'patterns' each 'pattern' consisting of several color dots. Whenever dusts would get mixed, oil should get mixed with them. After calculating color dots, patterns should be found and replaced with alchemy-created objects.

Either single object at a time, or searching for patterns as long as there are any. Also, percentage of grey dots should be taken into account - ie. better objects should require low percentage, while rares should either require very low to none grey dots, or a high percentage - but these are ideas to make things even more sophisticated.

Now there should be skills to obtain dusts from different things - minerals, organics etc. And should dusts be used in creation of oils? Either would be entertaining.

What do you guys think? And no, i am not the one to code it all

[Leaf]

I suspect there may be some copyright issues involved with their alchemy code - which wouldn't allow another game to use it.

[kshinji]

I don't suggest using the code I just suggest getting inspired by their creation which anyways is not satisfactonary i think. Inspiring, yes.

[mwedel]

I suspect that from a general idea, copyrighting the idea that each component has multiple properties, and how those are combined determines final result, probably isn't enforcable. If we took that same ingredients and put in the same properties, then we would be in trouble.

Making such a change to crossfire would be quite a bit of work, because different properties would have to be assigned to all the possible ingredients. I'm also no sure how that plays with the current system were we do have set recipes.

[kshinji]

I suppose this could be addition, and also first set could be somewhat randomized. Ie. you could make around 15 archetypes per group of dusts, with different values, which would have properties randomized.

Ie. group "blue" with inclination on blue property.

And anyways, i think this system should be more sophisticated, ie. adding bonus-X property that would have some special rules, (almost)unique properties, etc.

[SilverNexus]

Another thought on alchemy:

No matter how many of an item you create when creating an alchemical ingredient (i.e. water of the wise), you get the same amount of experience for it.

It probably would make more sense to have a base amount of experience for making the material successfully, and additional experience for each item over one made at that time, since making zero hardly counts as a success.

EDIT: On top of that, as a separable thought, make luck more dependent on intelligence, with higher intelligence resulting in less variation in results and lower intelligence greatly varying the results.