Game unit design: a shield

[Hans Ronne]

>I am trying to design a castle game where each fighting unit is an
>individual person.  I'm trying to create a unit that represents a shield
>that can be picked up, caried and used by any fighter.  It has 5 HP and
>protects whoever is carrying it from 80% of attacks, absorbing the
>damage itself and disappearing when it reaches 0 HP.
>
>I've read through the code in fantasy.g and cave.g and have copied
>portions relating to fantasy.g's ring of protection and any thing else
>that seems relavant.  At this point, I can't even get one of my fighters
>to pick the shield up, let alone see if it behaves correctly.
>
>What do you have to do to create a unit that behaves like an item?
>Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Check out the Lord of the Rings game, or rather its base module 3rd-age.g.
The Ring in that game works pretty much the way you want, except for the
fact that it confers a higher attack value on the bearer.  This is achieved
through the table  occupant-affects-attack which could be changed to
occupant-affects-defense in your case. To use these tables, you need to use
combat model 1, though (the Civ-type combat model). I would recommend it
anyway if you are writing a new game since it is easier to use in the sense
that units have absolute attack and defense values instead of the relative
values (the hit-chance table) that you find in combat model 0.

Hans

Hans Ronne

hronne@pp.sbbs.se