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Re: CF: Moving on to implement diseases

On Mar 2,  8:19pm, Peter Mardahl wrote:
> Subject: CF: Moving on to implement diseases
>
> Thanks for the input.  I'm going to go ahead and implement diseases.
> I imagine it'll take me a couple of weeks.
>
> I plan on keeping poison and disease separate entities.  Someone
> may want to retrofit poison's into the 'disease' mold, but I see
> them as different enough to leave as they are.
>
> I also plan on making certain monsters able to inflict disease on
> successful hits:  mosquito-->malaria, lich-->leprosy, dog-->rabies.
> I'll do this by making a successful hit by something which 'carries'
> the disease cause the disease.

 Actually, doing poison the same way could make sense - ie, the stinger of the
bee carries the poison that gets inflicted.

>
> If you've had a disease, I plan to make players immune to getting the
> same disease twice, provided the disease they're 'catching' is of
> <= level.  I.e., someone immune to level 20 flu will be completely
> immune to level 10 flu, but level 21 flu might floor him.

 I don't know if this is a totally good idea, unless there are a lot of
diseases.  And on a realistic point, it may depend on the disease - for
example, people can get teh flu each year - the vaccination is only a temporary
immunity.  But other things, like chicken pox and measles, are more a just once
type of thing.

 But this may be one of those things for playbalance.  A more reasonable
approach might be to adjust the potency of the disease based on what the player
has had before.  Inthe above example, a person who has had the level 20 flu
might still have some minor effects if they get a level 10 flu, and a level 30
could be quite potent.

>
> Diseases may be progressive, in that they may start out relatively
> weak, but eventually kill the player.  Healing will help (reduce
> progression), but only
> 'cure disease' will remove disease.  Restoration will 'cure disease'
> at the level it is cast, as well 'cure disease'.  Altars will be able
> to cure disease.

 I don't know if all diseases should be deadly.  Some diseases may make it
very difficult for the character to do adventuring while diseased (ie, loss of
hitpoints, slower movement, higher food intake may make it very difficult to
survive in combat if diseased, but if standing in one place with a pile of
food, you may be able to wait it out and heal on your own.)

 Also, you need to be able to handle the problem that poison has right now - a
player with enough regen can get hp back faster than losing it.  I would think
it might not be hard to do a negative regen type thing (ie, regen-1 means you
will regain hit points slower by one value.  Meaning a character with no regen
devices won't get hp back, a character with regen+1 now gets them back at
normal rate, etc.)  A disease which prevents gaining of HP or mana via natural
means is pretty nasty - won't outright kill the character, but will make life a
bit more difficult.

>
> Kills via disease will grant experience.  Undead will never suffer
> from disease, nor will demons, though both may cause it.
>

 Not sure if that is totally true.  Some things, like ebola, may not care what
the flesh is - whether it is animated undead flesh or still living human flesh.

 While demons may be supernatural, so are many other races (titans, dragons,
etc).  Maybe specific diseases for specific creatures (although, this may be
another playbalance area.)(

> Curing non-player-caused disease will grant experience.  In some
> cases, such curing could even be quite RISKY.
>

 Could also see a protection from disease spell to reduce chances of getting
the disease.

 One thing that would be nice, and not totally related to diseases, is having
morre chapels set up that will cast various spells for various costs. (it would
also be nice to have enough chapels set up and remove the random dietifacation
of the altars, since that creates some weirdness right there.)  Certain gods
might be pretty unaccessible also (for example, the dwarven god might very well
not have a chapel in the starting  town, but instead in some dwarven city under
the mountains).  Of course, this also goes along with different races starting
different places.

-- 

-- Mark Wedel
mark@pyramid.com
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