» Fri May 13, 2011 8:08 am Some of you may recall the mod I worked on through much of last year, "Elemental Magicka" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ect2AyrAOxg). It was a good learning experience, and allowed me to familiarize myself with basic Morrowind scripting techniques. It certainly had its flaws, some worse than others, and I found by the end of it that I'd created something I wouldn't play with myself.
I've been working on another project (Reawakening of House Dagoth) but have still felt unsatisfied with where I left Elemental Magicka. I didn't feel like there was anywhere else for the project to really go, until last week, I picked up a little game on Steam called "Magicka." Lots of fun, and instant inspiration. In short, I decided to completely revamp Elemental Magicka to use a more Magicka-styled system. I've started with a fresh .ESP file and gone back into development on a more scalable framework that I think will be more fun and hopefully a lot more polished.
Elements
- Air
- Cold
- Earth
- Fire
- Life
- Lightning
- Shield
- Water
Cast Types
- Area
- Self
- Strike
- Target
How it works
Well, just like Magicka, you'll cast whichever base elements you want to combine. Then, cast your selection for how the spells will be combined. The eight runes which correspond to each element will be scattered across Morrowind, and the spellbook which allows the different cast types will be tied to a little quest. Thus, as you find more runes, more spells will be available to you, instead of the previous system where each spell had its own page that would be individually placed in the world.
There is an upper limit on how many elements can be combined together based on how fast you are at switching, and on the duration of the base spells themselves. Spell magnitude scales in a "bracketed" manner with Intelligence and Willpower, and so higher level casters will be better rewarded for casting the same spells that a lower level caster can use to less effect.
There are a lot of spells that can exist under this system, and so this will probably be under development for a long time. It will, however, be almost trivially easy in terms of compatibility to release updates whenever I'm ready to merge them in. I've been building the "infrastructure" sort of scripts most of this week, and testing out some simple things (like "Lesser Heal" -- Life + Cast Self). I'll be updating this thread with videos as I continue development.
