Magic system

[pale tangle]

Note: I havent started working on the project in unity, as I just started developing the spell system, and am trying to center things around that.

Hi, I guess Ill start off with an overview of what Im trying to;

I want to make a mixed perspective game, where players can play as the king or leader of some kingdom, similar to the civilizations games, where they see a strategic view of the world.

Or players can play the rpg part of it, where they can do essentially the normal stuff you do in an open world rpg, but with some other stuff.
They could do various jobs in a kingdom, like spy on enemy kingdoms, scout, develop magic(Ill get to this later), defeat monsters/bosses, etc.
Or maybe they could be bandits, disrupting kingdom trade routes or whatever.
You get the idea.
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Now Ill explain the thing Im currently working on, the magic system.

Basically I want to make a symbolic spell system, where players basically cast spells acting as forces on in game objects.
Ill include a picture of my work below.

The idea is that players can specify the target object, or sub-object,
(I want to let players specify geometry in at least certain objects to effect, ie raising a wall from the ground)
Then specify what properties they want to effect, and by "rune composition" determine the effect on the object. Sorry if that was explained poorly.

Theres a lot of details, variables, and notation that havent been explained properly so please ask if you dont understand something

Also Im not dead set on this implementation of magic, but I want it to be a very difficult and in depth system for reasons.

Oh something I forgot, I dont plan on telling players how to create a spell, I plan on making them figure out what each rune does by experimentation, though I plan on putting hints in somehow

[pale tangle]

Im not sure exactly how to implement spell development even conceptually though, I want each spell to have value so players could sell them at an in game market or whatever. So maybe adding an encoding method for spells so players can protect their value.
(Im not against other players being able to decode the spell page to basically pirate it, but I would want it to be somewhat difficult or time consuming)

Another thing I forgot to mention was that my original idea for spell imlementation was a spell book players could either "write" spells in, or if they found or bought a spell "page" they could put it in their book and cast it.

There are alot of details that need to be worked out for this to work at all, but for now Im focusing on the spell system.

Oh also my purpose for posting this was for getting ideas and revisions if anyone's interested

[pale tangle]

Sorry about my handwriting

Updated work

[pale tangle]

Correction: curly Σ isnt a group

[pale tangle]

Magic system

[trail basin]

Kids, this is what happens to your brain when you pursue education. Let this be a lesson for all of you

[paper hawk]

This is giving me flashbacks to university maths, love it

[pale tangle]

Lol, what do you think of it? Do you think that integral is a good way to calculate initial mana cost?

[real cargo]

complete wipe of all knowledge related to calculus after each math final exam

[pale tangle]

lol

[latent ridge]

I'll be honest. I don't understand everything you've written mathematically (it's been too long since calculus), but I find it interesting.

Why is time a function of your spells, and why does it affect every part of the spell? I can understand if you wanted it to have a duration, or it changes in intensity, but why is every rune based on time?

[pale tangle]

The idea is that players can model more complicated behavior, for example if they wanted to have a rock oscillate in time, start out slow then speed up, or whatever. This isnt really necessary, but I wanted to give players more freedom in terms of what they could do. Maybe spells could also be less predictable for example and be harder to block.

I also didnt want effects to be instant, so at cast time they have to "ramp up". Also you mentioned duration, ρ(mana density) is the decay parameter, the spell ends when ρ is small enough

Mana density also effects intensity

Though I might need to make ρ decay faster

Just to clarify, we're composing the functions not multiplying them.

[pale tangle]

Potential new mechanic:

Either by some sort of "charm" item in game, or a universal rule, function compositions satisfying some to be determined conditions get a mana cost discount.
e.g. oscillating over some interval, passes through some points, rate of change in some interval, similarity to certain predefined functions, etc.

Purpose: to encourage the development of more interesting spells, namely nonlinear ones.