Activateable Abilities

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Hello,

this is partly idea/question. I can see that with the new active mutations framework, some things will change, as basic abilities every human is usually capable of, like schouting and running are also proposed.

So my question is, is it intended to eventually add a larger variety of “abilities” available to the player?

I am especially thinking of martial arts, where all the special attacks are automatica and random. Now, we probably don’t want to clutter combat too much, but a few special attacks that the player gets for combat training / martial arts, seem like a good idea, don’t they?

Independently of that, I believe that a few basic abilities (as proposed by rivet), have to go in: Running, Shouting, Jumping, etc.

2

[quote=“Snaaty, post:1, topic:7320”]Hello,

this is partly idea/question. I can see that with the new active mutations framework, some things will change, as basic abilities every human is usually capable of, like schouting and running are also proposed.

So my question is, is it intended to eventually add a larger variety of “abilities” available to the player?

I am especially thinking of martial arts, where all the special attacks are automatica and random. Now, we probably don’t want to clutter combat too much, but a few special attacks that the player gets for combat training / martial arts, seem like a good idea, don’t they?

Independently of that, I believe that a few basic abilities (as proposed by rivet), have to go in: Running, Shouting, Jumping, etc.[/quote]

MA is an interesting thought. I’m not sold on it but not firmly opposed.

The general idea is YES we will be expanding player abilities, that’s why I wanted the menu implemented.

Mutations that BeigeSand incuded:
Hibernation, positive safety on it
Web Weaver, just activate it, pause safely
Ruminant/Grazer, no need to eat the plants if you don’t want to
Noisemakers, make noise on demand
Omnicellular, spawn slimesprings on demand

I approve of all of those.

Rivet’s got a sprint/shout PR in the hopper but it’s not quite where we’d like it to be (updating old saves, and how the stamina is tracked). If we can fix a few spots, it’ll make it in.

[hr]
Mutations that I plan on making activateable (no promises on speed, or that any of these is guaranteed in):

Combat tails (spike, club, thick, raptor): Activate to lose the dodge bonus, but also the 1/3 roll to activate them (so you’re only checking DX and Unarmed, same as most mutation attacks). If you’d rather have them not kick in at all, but pay to swing, I can accommodate that.

Insect wings: bigger speed boost, but make noise and burn energy when on.

Nauseous/Vomitous: If for whatever reason you need to stealthpuke, you can do so on demand. (Using royal jelly when full, etc.)

Retractable Claws: Retract and safely wear gloves

Hummingbird Beak/Proboscis: same as the bionics, arm if you want to eat (not sure it’s necessary, but wev)

Vine Sprouter: detach a vine (functionally a Long Rope)

Roots: manually plant yourself, become immobile but gain root benefits

[hr]
Some mutations I plan on adding now that they have the infrastructure:
Gecko Feet (Lizard): at significant fatigue/hunger cost, can latch onto walls. Lizard Style combat bonuses, hopefully floor-hazard evasion.

Hummingbird Wings (Bird): Crippling expense and noisy, but you can hover over dangerous terrain. Talking 2-3 squares TOPS.

Ink (Cephalopod): release a brief but effective field that blinds everyone involved. Including zeds, since they can’t see through the ink on their eyes.

Purr (Feline): It helps relieve pain and calm a cat, as well as anyone around. Adds fatigue, probably impairs crafting/constructing/reading/ranged attacks, and makes noise, but stabilizes morale into positive, improves NPC reactions, and provides up to 4 points of pain relief.

Leap (Feline): “Umm I wasn’t going to pounce you honest.” Basically what the cougars do, maybe a bit shorter-ranged.
Leap (Raptor): Jump at a target, claws-first, and attack. Hit knocks the target prone and pinned by your claws so long as you don’t leave that square–proceed to biting!

Tunnel Rat (Rat): Once the claws and teeth get up to spec, howsabout being able to penetrate walls?

Plant Promotion (Plant): Why should Triffid Queens get all the fun?

3

So, I take it first the mutations, and then perhaps other things like standard abilities or MA?

I am myself also not 100% sold on the MA thing. If yes, there also has to be an option to revert it to the current status, so some guy with 10 unarmed doesn’t have to manually beat all the zombie children to pulp, but can do so with fewer keystrokes.

In a similar thought, there probably should be a way to activate mutations directly, without opening the mutations menu. For most mutations I guess it’s okay to go to that menu, but combat ones, that can be used often (as well as MA moves) can get tedious, I suppose.

As for mutations, how about:

  • Quills: You fling your quills at an nearby enemy hurting him (cost could even be pain, I guess)

  • Spit fire: Yeah, I know we’d need a dragon mutcat for that, but it sounds fun to me

  • Spit acid: A player version of the spitter attack?

  • Jump/leap: basic version could be available for the average starting char, advanced ones can be spiders and cats

  • Adrenaline: The trait might as well give an adrenaline bost on demand? Not sure on this one, though.

Also, what would I have to change, in order to port a now randomly-triggered attack to the activated ones? If that’s too complicated to explain, nevermind. I already fiddled around with that, but I couldn’t make my coldblood-mutation as a toggle one. (I took that just as a random experiment.)

4

The general idea is to enable or disable various abilities in the menu. In practice (especially in combat) you aren’t triggering the abilities manually all the time, they just kick in whenever there’s an opportunity.
Mundane martial arts has the same concept, you toggle your attack goal, which you probably do only rarely, and attacks are triggered by moving into an enemy space as usual.
Look back in the issues for GlyphGryph’s martial arts proposals, that’s still the direction we want to go with it.
It is possible that different MA techniques could be toggled on or off from the abilities menu though.

5

[quote=“Snaaty”]- Quills: You fling your quills at an nearby enemy hurting him (cost could even be pain, I guess)

  • Spit fire: Yeah, I know we’d need a dragon mutcat for that, but it sounds fun to me

  • Spit acid: A player version of the spitter attack?

  • Jump/leap: basic version could be available for the average starting char, advanced ones can be spiders and cats

  • Adrenaline: The trait might as well give an adrenaline bost on demand? Not sure on this one, though.[/quote]

Shooting stuff is unlikely, and fire is Not Gonna Happen in mainline. Jumping is intended, though I’d probably restrict it to Felines, Birds, maybe Spiders, and definitely Raptors.

Adrenaline reactions are by definition a stress reaction. The Mycus Defender will get one when sighting Triffids (horrible evil plants, kill them, protect the fungus, the Mycus must grow), plant mutants might well get one for seeing fungaloids (horrible evil fungus, kill it, protect life as we know it), but I don’t think it’ll ever be an on-demand mutation. (There are some things that bionics do better.)

6

What’s the matter with shooting things as a mutation?
Of course, respectively they have to come with a big penalty in order to avoid spamming;

I’m finde with restricting jumping to certain mutcats, although the average non-mutated human should also be able to jump, don’t you think so?

As for the adrenaline, yeah, I realize making it really activateable makes no sense for mutations.

@Kevin

So, things like special attacks from MA or Mutations are supposed to stay passive or become a toggle?
And about the “attack goals”; does that mean that there will be “stances” in fighting, like “reckless”, “defensive”, “offensive”, “turtling”, something like that?
I couldn’t find GlyphGryphs stuff yet, I will look for it.

7

[quote=“Snaaty, post:6, topic:7320”]What’s the matter with shooting things as a mutation?
Of course, respectively they have to come with a big penalty in order to avoid spamming;

I’m finde with restricting jumping to certain mutcats, although the average non-mutated human should also be able to jump, don’t you think so?

As for the adrenaline, yeah, I realize making it really activateable makes no sense for mutations.

@Kevin

So, things like special attacks from MA or Mutations are supposed to stay passive or become a toggle?
And about the “attack goals”; does that mean that there will be “stances” in fighting, like “reckless”, “defensive”, “offensive”, “turtling”, something like that?
I couldn’t find GlyphGryphs stuff yet, I will look for it.[/quote]

Breath attacks hit the same problem as the Heatblades. Nifty, look cool, and don’t have a sufficiently realistic explanation.

Sure, humans can jump. Thing is, we can’t jump that far from a standing start, so we can’t meaningfully jump in DDA’s terrain, where the general presumption is that a tile is some vague meter-like distance square. (Bunny-hopping from one tile to the next would be less efficient than typical movement, and I’m not inclined to let that fool turrets.) If you want a running start, I can consider that, but then we’re talking UI issues and another aspect to the learning curve.

By comparison, the Hummingbird Wings won’t fly, but they keep you hovering from a jump, hopefully long enough to cross a dangerous tile or two.

8

Okay, what about flinging your quills, though? That is fairly realistic, as the real-life pendant of the mutation is also used in that way.

I have one quick question regarding the code, so I’ll ask here, in case there’s a simple answer.

If I want to check (for example with retractable claws) if my mutation is currently activated, could I say:

if (unarmed_attack()) {
if (wearing_something_on(bp_hand_l)) {
if (has_trait(“CLAWS”) || has_active_mutation(“CLAWS_RETRACT”))

Or something along those lines? Is there a function I can call to check if the mutation is currently activated/toggled on?

Of course, in this case I would also have to modify the json entry, and add messages upon activation/deactivation.

9

uh, what flings quills? I’m not aware of any animal that does that.
if you’re thinking of tarantulas, that’s hairs, and it might as well be melee range.

10

The only ranged attack I can think of at the moment is some kind of sticky glob attack for the Slime mutation category, slow down an enemy (or several on an area?) in exchange of nutrition and fatigue.

Another possible one is the archerfish’s ability to “snipe” prey with water. We can translate this to mutation as an ability to shoot water at enemy and possibly knock them back or stun them, at the cost of fatigue and obviously thirst.

11

Regarding the quills, my bad; I thought porcupines were able to fling their quills for short distances when threatened. A quick research has shown that I was wrong.

12

The ability to use the water spit ability to fire things you quickly chuck in your mouth, like weak acid water or something.

13

The ability to use the water spit ability to fire things you quickly chuck in your mouth, like weak acid water or something.[/quote]

Worth considering. Thanks for the link. And Snaaty, that’s about the short version of it, presuming that non-retracted = “on” for retractable claws.