Dungeon Master Forum

Cut from this thread http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... 9358bf77af -b.

Of course, in custom dungeons, the shape of the runes can also be completely different

You always complicate (customise) things, George...
We like it!

George Gilbert wrote:Of course, in custom dungeons, the shape of the runes can also be completely different

Can that also be changed to have *more* than six runes per spell part, or even a fifth class of rune?

Or is that pretty much hard-coded into the game system (for lack of a better descriptive)?

Right now, yes it is hard coded (not by the engine per se though, but by the need to specify the font for them using the lowercase letters a-z, so there's a total limit of 26!).

could you increase that limit using the 0-9 numbers (is that possible)?
?

Numbers are already used for, erm, numbers.

What about writing the rune names out in all lowercase? That'd also make it easier to remember what to write in scrolls.

The notation of rune is thought in the DM player in Japan too.
but it is difficult to express everything.

<<　□　＝　◇　)-　⊿
田　二　：：　И　％　品
又　δ　司　ε　こ　Ｚ
メ　ψ　λ'　士　米　廿

There might be a character not displayed according to the environment.

R.K. wrote:What about writing the rune names out in all lowercase? That'd also make it easier to remember what to write in scrolls.

Yes, there are numerous ways of doing it in a similar style to this (e.g. by putting "ful" or "%FUL%" or "%RUNE:10%" or ...) and if I was starting again, I would do something along those lines.

However, changing at this point would present a backwards-compatibility nightmare! Hindsight's a wonderful thing

Would it necessarily make backwards compatibility difficult? It seems like it would be enough for the game to compile spelled out rune names to particular internal values and lowercase letters from old versions into the corresponding values, and the editor to translate lowercase letters into whatever identifiers should be used in the current version.

Are there any characters that aren't currently recognised as doing anything by the RTC engine?

Things like punctuation marks and such, @ # ~ and so on...?

Of course it all depends on if the idea of additional runes would be somehow detracting from what Dungeon Master is.

Exactly, I don't understand why this is really a backward compatibility problem, if lowercase letters are still assumed to be off-limits.

a = %RUNE:0%
...
z = %RUNE:25%

and if you want more than %RUNE:26% use the new system.

I was thinking more of what would happen if lower case letters (no longer being needed for specifying runes) were to be allowed in "plain text".

Then how would you tell as to what an 'a' meant - 'a' or '<<'

If lowercase are off-limits then you're right that it's not a problem.

Ah, future backwards compatibility not current backwards compatibility.... that's forwards looking!

George Gilbert wrote:I was thinking more of what would happen if lower case letters (no longer being needed for specifying runes) were to be allowed in "plain text".

Oh, true enough, but one way that gives designers more choice, and makes it easy, would be:

Have a flag, that, if set, makes lower case letters able to be rendered as letters. If it is not set, make lower case letters equal to runes. Obviously, if the flag is not present, it won't be set, so old dungeons will behave as intended, as well.