Since I'm new to the board, I realize that Bows&Arrows have probably been talked about before, so sorry if this is beating a dead horse. The problem I see with bows, gameplay wise, is that you are in a dark cave. I mean, you can't see for shit. Infravision would help, even then out of my 30 or so games I've had it once, and its not that big of improvement. Most of the game is in narrow tunnel ways that twist and turn, with the exception of a few places. Under normal conditions, you'd get at most one shot before an enemy is on you. Also, the base skill to use a bow is more difficult than a sword or axe. Anyone can pick up a blade and start swinging, but even getting an arrow to fly 50 feet without instruction is pretty tough.

True, it's a lot harder to grab a bow and shoot an arrow than it is to grab a club and brain someone, but in a game you have to have the right balance of realism vs unrealism, to make the game fun. If everything was realistic, you wouldn't be abruptly losing entire limbs to leprosy, heads and limbs probably wouldn't fly as far when severed, and you wouldn't heal anywhere near as quickly. But it's a game. And it's designed to be fun. A slowly decaying limb would be, well, more difficult to program for one. Flying heads is fun to watch. And if it took days and days of sitting around to heal from a severe cut, you'd get bored faster than you can say "Screw this." Here, Maybe this link will get my point accross in a humerous way... :P Arak, I like your ideas. I think I've thought about this a few times, but never as in depth as you have apparently. I think I was mostly thinking about materials. That was back when I was compliling my complete spoiler list all about them, and tinkering with creating a few new ones...

My two bits: I confess to being utterly unfamiliar with the IVaN code, but I recall hearing something about materials having "flexibility" and "hardness" as traits. I don't have a full list, so the "ideal materials guide" is my only source for now. Instead of creating a new "Flexibility Power" trait, why not just create it as a merge of flexibility and hardness? FP=hardness/flexibility^3 (or ^2, or ^4, as appropriate), with the cutout that any material with flexibility 0 has 0 FP. Angel hair makes lousy bows, copper doesn't have sufficient flexibility (it has a nasty habit of bending instead of flexing).

That could work, Potato, though there are no items with 0 flexibility. The lowest any item has is 1. Most metals are 1 or 2, most woods are in the same general area, and most fabrics are 10+ (except troll hide, which is 5, which explains the dex loss when wearing a cloak of it.)

If we're talking about the same thing, weildedBitmapPos is just the location in the weapon graphics file that has the graphic you want to draw when the character is weilding the item. Good luck. This sounds cool.

Ok ok ok... this post will be annoying; a newbie that do the devil's advocate.... But please consider that I really like the bow idea, there is just some things that I want to put to light... aslo my English is really poor today so sorry in advance. The 1st thing that comes to mind is balance. If the bow is aplyable it means that monsters wont be a ble to use it and given the relative lack of ranged enemies (well in early to mid-game, since I never really gone past GC5 in non-wizard mode) the amout of time required to aply the bow will need be -really- carfully balanced. I know that one of the limiting factor will be the perception range but since it can be boosted with the not-so-hard-to-get helm of peircing perception it could throw off balance quite a bit. Also, by being aplyable I think that each time an ennemy will come into range while you are shooting you will get the "hostile ennemy approching" intreruption message and that if you stop shooting your bow will still be readied (the same way the pickaxe work) and it will be more annoying that this post... at least I think. 3rd... ermm... by the time it took to write my first 2 ideas in a coherent manner I forgot what my other points were... oh well...

weildbitmappos grabs graphics from Humanoid.PCX and overlays it over the character. Unforunately, there doesn't seem to be a bow graphic. The best replacement I can see is a scythe at 160,48 since it actually curves. If you want I could try drawing one in and sending you the modified Humanoid.PCX

Just to cut down on your to-do list slightly, you won't have to make a wielded arrow graphic since... wait never mind. I'm sure someone will want to weild just arrows and stab things with them. :twisted:

Slightly stupid question: Does the ArmStrength ^ 2 give you ArmStrength squared, or ArmStrength bitwise-exclusive-or 2?

On a side note, some metals would make good bows. I suppose any metal with a flexibility != 0 would work. Copper would be impossible, but mithril would be quite good for the ultra-strong characters, and you might decide whether meteoric steel is usable as a spring steel.

Metal bow could be possible with a mechanic configuration, something with pulley, I don't know ;) IVAN is a game, no need to be realistic if we found an explication :p

Have you considered....
something like the Angband targeting/use system? I'm not sure if it's against forum etiquette to mention other Roguelikes, but I think it's a pretty good idea to try. For those of you who don't play Angband, here's how it works. You've got a ranged weapon. It has its own inventory slot, and it has its own properties - basically, a function that determines the impulse on whatever it is you're shooting, based on your stats and whatever the weapon you're using is. You also have 5 slots for 'wielding' ammo. You can wield multiple types, and picked up confirmed duplicates are automatically placed in the quiver (At least they are in the variants I play) - so if you have 10 +1 wood arrows, and you, say, shoot a kobold three times, you have 7 arrows in your quiver. Then you walk over the arrows and BAM! You have 10 arrows again. Then, say, you find 3 more, and you walk over THOSE - BAM AGAIN! 13 arrows. Also, the use interface is simple. Angband has a targeting system integrated with the look system, which makes for a MUCH better ranged weapons experience than Nethack. The general idea is when you press f - the fire button - you go into "look mode", where you move your little ASCII cursor over your target, and then confirm your selection, and choose your ammo upon when you see the arrow fly in the direction of the foe and (hopefully) hit. It also has a shortcut - "target nearest enemy" - which is very useful. I realize this would take some serious coding, but it's a very solid engine - very usable, very intuitive and quite flexible. It allows all manner of ranged weapons. In other news, hello all of you. I've been lurking around the forum a while and finally decided to decloak. ~RdRonin

In other news, hello all of you. I've been lurking around the forum a while and finally decided to decloak. "SEND OUT THE CARRIER FLEET!!!" "TOO MANY UNITS, WE NEED MORE PYLONS!!!" Welcome to the forums. ^_^ In my oh so subtle opinion, your system wouldn't be implemented very well in IVAN. It would take a TON of coding for something that could easily be implemented into the (A)pply command. But I digress.

Which bit would be hard to implement? The multiple quiver thing is excessive, I agree, but the concept of targeting actually makes ranged weapons worth something, and if you're planning to add ranged weapons that is in fact the way to go. The impulse junk would probably be built into the actual weapon itself - or it would just have a flat bonus, or something.... probably a flat bonus, because no matter how strong you are if your bow's not up to par you might as well throw your arrow. But what about slings? You can whirl those things as fast as you like.... Yeah, I'd have to say that each weapon would just have to provide a certain "stat" bonus to the shot, if you have enough to use it in the first place. But then again it's not my game, so I can't really say anything about this. What stats would shooting be based off of? Perception? Arm strength? Dexterity? All of the above? And you've already got a look system, and a line-of-sight system, so you can just assume anything you can see you can shoot, right? SOME kind of targeting system would not go amiss. I mean, seriously - zapping wands, throwing stuff... Say you've got a really fast and powerful monster a knight move away from you - two squares right and one down. He's within range of a wand, wouldn't you say? Less than 3 squares away. But you just can't zap this guy. You've got a wand of striking, he's got not very many HP but you just know if you can't kill him this turn your character is dead. And guess what? You can't kill him. Or when your foe is ten squares to the right, and one up. "He's almost in my sights... almost... Nope, can't shoot him. He's five degrees away from my shootin' directions. Ayup. I can hit precisely 8 spots that far away from me, and that ain't one of them. I can throw accurately while under heavy attack, while wounded, while bleeding, while starving, just after running.... but I'll be danged if I can adjust my aim five degrees." Another idea - lobbing. If you have a bottle of acid, you want to hit your foe, right? Why not just LOB it at his feet, so it splashes him? It would ROCK to be able to target a square rather than throwing in a line and missing. Because even if you miss whoever's on the square, you still hit the square, and acid SPLASHES. "Oh thank goodness - he missed my torso with that bottle of acid. Now I just have to worry about my feet dissolving and landing me torso-first into a pool of acid.... Man. This isn't really an improvement, is it?" Yet another brilliant idea... "leg"s for animals. I mean, a dog has legs, no? If it steps in a pool of acid it's going to lose legs first, yes? It's not like the dog rolls where it's going. "Rollin' down the corridor. Yessirry Bob. I've got legs, which are pretty much expendable. Two more than my master has. But I feel like bringing all my innards that much closer to any nasty things on the ground. Yup. Oh nuts, a pool of acid. Well, time to roll on. Ouch." .... I started rambing again didn't I? Sorry about the style, but I just got through a stand-up comedy marathon and I seem to have absorbed the style... ~RdRonin