Further thinking about stats and skills

We are still thinking about how we want to handle the customization. On one side the option to give full customization is tempting, as it would really allows game owner/designers to change the rules as they want. On the other side it will for sure increase the difficulty for new comers to approach the system as they may need to write some code to change the rules.

This can be of course mitigated by the fact we offer some default content, documentation and tutorials but it may scare some people.

Does it then make sense to take this road or would it be better to offer mainly a form which need to be tweaked?

Let's take a possible example: our "Life" or "HP" stat:

// Example of the script behind the HP stat.
// Function returning the currently maximum allowed value.
function MaxValue()
{
    return API.GetStat('Level')*20;
}
// Function returning the currently minimum allowed value.
function MinValue()
{
    return 0;
}
// Function run every time the value is modified
function ValueChanged(newValue)
{
    if(newValue < 1)
    {
        API.Teleport(0,0,0,0);
        API.SetStat('HP',1);
    }
    if(newValue > MaxValue())
    {
        API.SetStat('HP',MaxValue());
    }
    UI.UpdateStatBar();
}

In this example the API and UI are functions offered by the engine. While the functions defined in the stat code will be called from the engine at some points. As you see this could open the door to multiple features like a "berserk" skill which could trigger once you reach 10% of life.

To implement this, I will first have to develop the full parser / runtime of this language, however if I do it now, it will be possible to use it later on for plug-ins development which would mean we would have a single language used in multiple places.

Also having such language could be used on the objects themselves for example a potion could restore a stat or kill you.

Again it's a question of balancing flexibility to user friendliness (easy to use) and here I'm a bit unsure which road we should take.