So, it partially began as a thought exercise to see if I could figure out what you’d need to do to make BattleMaster use Might & Fealty’s combat script. Eventually, I got to the point where I wanted to see if I could put my thoughts to paper (or computer, as is the case), and that happened today.
Until we think of a better name, I’m calling it the Unified Combat System, and the goal is to have it work for both M&F and BM.
I’m still working my way through figuring out the flow of BM’s combat script and what it does where, but I’ve started porting the M&F combat code to a separate repository. As I duplicate parts I’m working on figuring out what things have straight correlation between games, and what things don’t. For example, both have player characters, but only some BM characters will engage in combat. Another example is that both have regions, but BM’s also act as the only land locations you can travel to, while M&F has a full coordinate-based map.
And as I figure those out, I’m also working out which parts don’t correlate at all and leaving notes in my code to figure out how to match things up, and figuring out what code I need to have in the supporting files for each game to make it all function.
I’m kind of rambling, but while this began as a thought experiment turned in-progress-rough-draft, it becomes the basis of a combat update as well. I’ll already be adding a bunch of functionality in for understanding equipment damage and variable range and movement speed and stuff in order to incorporate all the quirks of BM combat, some of which are things I wanted to add to M&F anyways, so I may as well carry on with a full update.
I don’t know if the code I worked on today will ever make it into BattleMaster, but I’m fairly certain it’ll make it into M&F given enough time. I plan on making a demo file as well, that can show of what it does and how it works, so it’s possible that some other developer out there working on an open-source game might see it, and use it himself.