Good physics simulation has been used in RPGs before, such as in Might & Magic: Dark Messiah. But I'm surprised those physics simulations have never been tied to character statistics and skills.
For example, as your character becomes stronger, his strikes become visibly more powerful by doing more damage to objects and transferring more momentum to enemies. Wood is splintered faster, metals dented more, enemies knocked back further, weapons and shields shattering, physical stun attacks are more effective, etc. In other words, the number or other value representing the character's strength has a direct effect on the physics calculations.
This could be applied to any number of other influences, of course, such as speed and agility.
And the physical changes can be related to gameplay events other than character stats. Changes could be tied to the environment in the form of astronomical events (the day/night cycle or alignments), for example.
I'd love to see interaction between physics simulation and story events, character development, etc.
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dude, I'm surprised that nobody has hired you, well actually I'm not surprised, cuz they probably aren't reading your blog, but at the same time, its a shame. This is up there with destructible terrain on my "I'd like to see this more" list. "Battle Damage" ftw!
ReplyDeleteI agree, in fact I've been searching and searching for a decent RPG / MMORPG where the player abilities do use physics.
ReplyDeleteCity of Heros had a class that had a small knock back, however I never leveled that character up. World of Warcraft has the most I've seen so far. Warriors and such can charge in (kinda physics), Death Knights can pull you to them, Shamans and Druids can knock players back. However, these values (distance / speed of charge, distance of knockback) are static, so you don't get a feel that these abilities level up other than the damage values.