Stealing ideas: mechanical Fighing simulation anyone?

[Christoffer Lernö]

Hello everyone, I'm back! I'm gonna go a little off-topic. I hope you can forgive that.

I have been reluctant to jump back until I knew I had time to get immersed in the discussions again. Not that I really have more time now, but what the heck.

So, what I have been up to? Well, still waiting to get access to my old notes on Yggdrasil I've been working on webgame. (Yeah, I haven't had a chance to use my original notes since like November or something)

Anyway, my webgame doesn't really have anything to do with RPG. It's a management game. To be more specific you manage a team of (video game style) fighters. You send them off to matches against fighters belonging to other players.

Now the tricky part is that I want to generate all sorts of neat fighting results (text based) for every match. Since you manage a lot of fighters and you don't have to accept challenges, there is little actual decision-making possible to input into the matches except for the stats of the fighters.

I was thinking I might be able to simply implement some neat RPG system to work as an outline of such a game but so far I haven't been able to find anything suitable.

So far I've looked at Trash, Final Stand and Slayer of Dragon but neither solves the problem.

Am I overlooking something? I've been working so long in the opposite direction that I don't really know where to start.

Anyway, it's good to be back.

[ThreeGee]

Hey Chris,

It is good to have you back.

Do you mean output like that generated by fantasy wrestling sims, also known as e-Wrestling? If so, I recommend looking at a few to see what people have already tried. http://ewrestling.avigne.org/history.html provides a decent overview of the subject.

This project sounds rather ambitious, and I wish you luck. Will you be using PHP or something else?

To correct an obvious typo, the game is Thrash, not Trash, which sounds like an entirely different style of game.

Later,
Grant

[talysman]

To correct an obvious typo, the game is Thrash, not Trash, which sounds like an entirely different style of game.

thanx for the correction... he had me worried there, because I'm designing a Jerry-Springer-like RPG I'm calling Trash Talk. I thought I was going to have to find a new name!

[Christoffer Lernö]

Hi Grant and thanks for the link. I knew there were some e-Wrestling stuff but hadn't found any quality links. That one was interesting.

Still, it's not solving the fundamental problem (it seems), in that it relies on generation of moves.

Basically I imagine two major schemes:

1. Decide if attack is successful, then select move and damage.

and

2. Decide on move and test if that move is successful.

Both have their advantages. Since matches will run without player input (because you don't have to accept a match for it to run), option #2 means the computer has to pick a move somehow which in turn puts all the strategy into the computer choices, which feels very hard to control and arbitrary. It's just like when you add a huge number of strategy options to an rpg combat system. You can't be sure that you don't accidentally introduce some quirk which makes a single strategy more worth than all the others.

Anyway, I'm leaning towards #1 which might partly come from the strategy I ended up pursuing in Yggdrasil. However, this means I have to create reasonable results afterwards which then are little more than color.

The only system which comes to mind for this method is the brawling table of AD&D 2nd ed (RM is too hard to tweak) where your D20 attack roll also gave the move you hit with.

But I'm getting rapidly off-topic. If anyone feel like discussing these things with me I'd love to do it by e-mail or PM.

Just one final note to give some background: this game is based on an old BBS-door called Arena Warriors. Or actually it's based on a tribute/sequel to that game, a tribute I myself wrote back in the early 90's. Although it has a lot in common with e-wrestling, the focus is different since you manage many fighters (5-10) at the same time.
I have a version up and running using mySQL and JSP. Very ugly but all the basic functions work. I'm not sure how I want to go on and modify the combat system though, which is where I am at the moment.

[ThreeGee]

Hey Chris,

If you go up a level from that link, some games, including Jeff Berry's games, are listed. Honestly, I think one of his games, combined with a flavor text generator, would do what you are looking for. Basic lookup tables with values filled in at character creation would not be hard to implement.

I am afraid I missed Arena Warriors, but the idea as you described it sounds interesting. It does seem very far into the fantasy league style, though. Am I correct in that a player creates a stable of fighters, and from there, simply waits for periodic match reports, having no further input into the system?

Later,
Grant

[Dr. Velocity]

Chris, sounds interesting, I had also considered a similar online multiplayer game, though mine probably would have been a mix of wrestling and probably kumite or what-have-you, perhaps similar to yours. And sorry if this seems like an ad, because its not my intention, if you or anyone else is still interested in wrestling sims, I direct you to http://www.pwse.com , which I originally founded and should be able to provide you with a lot of ideas and resources of some ways people have done things (though nothing web-based). I really like the idea of a team of fighters competing against other players' teams; presumably you could improve them, perhaps upgrade styles or equipment, etc. I too wish you good luck with this endeavor, I'll be interested to know how it turns out!