[Visionaries] Re: A hint of Sourcery in the air

[Peter Minten]

Peter Minten wrote:
> Peter Minten wrote:
>
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > I decided to reactivate Sourcery as the example project for DG-Scheme 
> > and Forum. I also decided to reform some things to fully use the power 
> > of DG-Scheme and make the game more fun (read more complex :-).
>
>
> Some more rules.

And yet some more (I always seem to document best in mails, so expect yet
another monologue :-).

Since it's virtually impossible to design the game engine without knowing all
the rules here's an attempt to document a Sourcery turn.

At the start of a turn the generators usually add some resources (configured in
the on-turn-start trigger).

In the second part of a turn pieces may be placed on the field, if there is
enough energy for them. In this fase the newly placed pieces may also get their
triggers modified.

The third part of a turn is the attack fase. At the start of this fase the
attacking pieces are assigned their targets (this includes artifacts and
spells), the order of attack (tactically very important) is also programmed.

In the second part of the attack fase the defender (the opponent) must program
his defense, aka assigning blockers for certain attackers. Note that the
defender cannot program triggers in this fase (while the attacker can), this is
to prevent the defender from doing just-in-time programming with a huge
information advantage.

In the third part of the attack fase the actual battle occurs. The players can't
influence this fase anymore.

After the attack fase the fourth fase of a turn starts, in this fase pieces can
be moved.

In the fifth fase the player may activate user-triggers (triggers that can be
activated by a push of a button so to say). Common usage of user-triggers are
mode-switches that modify the behaviour of a piece. This is also the only fase
that triggers for not newly placed pieces may be modified (those of newly placed
triggers too).

Then the turn goes to the other player.

The goal of this system is to force the players to think ahead with their
triggers. The usage of boxes allows pieces to be placed without much danger
(boxes are resistant to ALL normal attacks, and only special anti-box spells can
hurt them) so there is no need to worry about pieces coming into the battle too
soon.

Note the exception for newly placed pieces, the use of that is to allow speedup
of the combat, if you think ahead.

====

The new resource system is based on the original Sourcery system. The basic
resource is energy, in the old system you also had a matter resource, but since
energy and matter are convertable (e=mc^2) there is no need for a seperate
matter resource.

Beside energy there is also a resource called mana. Mana is needed for magic.

I dumped the psy and life resources since things become too complex with them.

Besides the general energy and mana resources there are also categorical
resources, or more exactly categorical energy and mana resources. For example
you can have fire energy and water mana. Since all categories are derived from
the 'vanilla' category all energy is usable as vanilla energy and all mana is
usable as vanilla mana.

====

Now to some piece templates. The first important category in these is 
'generators'.

---

name: small vanilla energy generator
defense: 10 # generators tend to be really tough
on-turn-start: generate 1 energy
level: 1
cost: - #free

---

name: small vanilla mana generator
defense: 10
on-turn-start: generate 1 mana
level: 1
cost: -

---

The second important category is 'artifacts'.

---

name: small energy/mana converter
defense: 10
on-turn-start: turn 1 mana into 1 energy or 1 energy into 1 mana        
               depending on the mode
user-triggers:
 energy-to-mana: set energy-to-mana mode
 mana-to-energy: set mana-to-energy mode
level: 1
cost: -

---

name: small mirror
defense: 5
defense-range: 1
on-attack: if attack-power < this.defense then reflect attack, else this.die
level: 1
cost: 2 energy

====

Enough piece templates. Let's take a look at the basic categories:

* air
* fire
* water
* earth
* quantum (lightning and stuff like that)
* illusion
* life
* death
* information
* light (good)
* darkness (evil)

====

It's possible to enhance pieces by adding powerups on them, this is done by
placing a powerup on the same square as the piece. The powerup will then become
part of the piece. A good example of a powerup is the Purse of Assimilation that
 gives half the attack points and half the defense points of a slain creature
to the creature that wears the purse.

====

Sourcery is most fun when played in tournament mode. At the start of a
tournament you must select 40 level 1 cards to play with. This becomes your
deck. You then get a player rating of 0.

The rating works like this:
* Your level is rating / 10, rounded down to an integer.
* Your sublevel is rating % 10.
* You are allowed to battle anybody with the same level as you, the tournament
engine will however attempt to match you up with somebody with the same 
sublevel.
* If you win a battle you score a sublevel. You also score a card.
* If you lose a battle or draw you don't lose anything.

Every card has a level, you can't play or earn (in a tournament) a card that's
over your level. This prevents rookies from using super powerful stuff like the
Purse of Assimilation.

====

It's possible to preconfigure the cards in your deck (setting triggers before
the game starts). To do that you need to download your cardset from the
tournament server and modify it, then you must sign it with your GPG key and
upload it again.

It's possible to migrate between tournament servers with a deck (and a rating)
if the server you're migrating from is trusted by the server you're migrating
to. The main principle is that your deck is signed by the tournament server when
it sends it to you and thus the authenticy of the deck can be established.

====

All Sourcery piece sets are free software under the GPL, since they must link
with the Sourcery piece libs to work.

Greetings,

Peter