You're a wizard

Do those people actually think they're wizards? What do they do when their magic doesn't work?

do you ACTUALLY do any wizard stuff?

Non-linear Action-RPG minus RPG mechanics like experience points. Player character's advancement is tracked solely through a spell book and the mumber of quests they've completed, rather than retarded levels and stats. Mana pool is non-existant, spells take time and reflexes to cast, putting you on edge in combat situations.

Im thinking about such a concept as well for years now. My idea revolves around a magic system that somewhat has its basis around real laws of physics and the spell discovery would effect the very engine to some point.

The magic schools dont revolve around the dnd archtypes but strictly chemistry, particle physics, energy conservation and manipulation and so on. You could reach certain spell effects via different routes, like there are different ways some kind of laser beam can be achieved by manipulating existing light or forcing a new light or energy source to appear and manipulating that.

Its way more complex than Ive written out here but maybe youll get my drift.

oblivion modded with the wizard tower was comfy as fuck.

as a legitimate warning, do not ever go to that board or express interest in what that board is about

just stick to video games instead, it is far safer for your soul and won't especially attract things from below to you

i recall there being a game that i hear has a fun and/or intricate magic system

was it called arcana or something?
even without me or someone else remembering what that game is called, you could probably just play some oblivion or morrowind mod

You watch a series of animated vignettes about girls doing wizard stuff and play magic-related dice minigames to unlock new spells. It's a VN.

Did you almost achieve 7th level mastery of the arcane arts?

Age of Wonders Shadow Magic is actually pretty close to what you described, just be sure to download a balance patch and you should be set.

OSRS
Fable 1
Morrowind
Oblivion was still somewhat fleshed out with magic

Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode
Magicka
Nox
Morrowind

I thought about posting DF as well but then I remembered how "magic" actually works in that game. Unless Toasty does a huge update on it, which wont happen before 2040, theres no way to be a serious caster.

No magic in dwarf fortress yet

Atelier series

its alchemy and not quite wizardry, but its damn close

I included DF simply because it has the best necromancy implementation I've ever seen in video games

Ive never been one. How does it work?

I think Masterwork has a magic system, but the dev decided to start again from scratch apparently so I don't know the current state of things.

Does anyone know the name of this shitty looking black and white flash game that let you combine different attributes to create spells. Square based map. Can't remember for the life of me what the name was but remember having some fun doing muscle wizard/poison cloud/other shit with it

what about the MC?

Archmage Rises looks decent, though it isn't out yet.

There's always Morrowind as a Telvanni with various Telvanni support mods.

Two Worlds 2.
No wizard tower, but you can create some crazy spells

There's also the 1993 4X game Master of Magic, which is my favourite game of all time.

I'm working on a Minetest mod based on it. If you join the Holla Forums server, you can test it out.

He does wizard stuff as well, but less frequently and usually off screen because he's supposed to be a self-insert.

This games spell system was amazing up until the point you realize that your falling anvil tornado does jack shit other than look awesome

But yeah it's a lot of fun for a little while

Found it, Tower of the Archmage. It's nothing mindblowingly but you can craft some neat spells with it once you get going. Guess it's in color now. Fun for a bit

oh well, nothing is perfect

Try Carnage Heart EXA.

If you get past the aesthetic I think it's very similar (in spirit) to what you want.

Half research/experimentation, half execution.

I wish somebody would make a high-fantasy version.

Master of Magic and Age of Wonders 2 are very much like that, although you will be spending most/all of your time in your tower.

You didn't abuse the bounce/spwanm cared, together with elemental cards?

You didn't create 3 flame projectile that bounce, spawning 3 electrical projectiles on each bounce, that explode into freezing orbs when they hit something?

Yeah, you could comfortably argue that magic isn't easy in it, but it's hardly a game you can do "wizard stuff" in.

oh hey, thanks for reminding me of it, I'll happily play it again.
It was cool as hell
I actually kinda-know the guy who made it. He posted on the same nearly abandoned message board as I did

I always had this idea of making a Dwarf Fortress/SimTower mixup with wizards.

Imagine it: You have to build your own wizard academy and manage your individual mages. They like or dislike each other based on personality traits and field of magic study, have different needs for laboratory equipment and so forth. You also need to keep good relations with the outside world and by occasionally summoning rain for the peasants or craft a magic item for some king. Add in AI similar to Dorf Fort and indirect control and hilarity will ensue.

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I feel you brother, there's no rpg nowadays that let you play as a pure wizard, let you develop spells potions enchantments, let alone dress like a 80s wizard like in your picture

Morrowind really is the closest we can get. Oblivion magic mods were pretty underwhelming, but skirim mods made magic much better and different from the vanila system, check skyrimgems.com/
A shame skirim by itself is shit, but there are some good fan made campaigns

There are other games that help to make you feel like a wizard:

Neverwinter 1, d&d pure wizard, lots of spells, scrolls, equipment and potions to enchant, plus you have side quests to get into the mage's guild, which unlocks said guild on all the game's stages

DA:O, the begining of the game puts you on a mage tower if you're a mage, you do mage stuff. Then you leave and it's a regular rpg. Also, the DA setting is really interesting for magic and mages look it up

HoMM 2 or 3, play as a wizard and command magic golems and other magic stuff

I know there're more but I cant remember

Avencast is a pretty sweet mage only RPG, but there's a specific quest at the start of the game that's a pain in the ass and might be a complete turn off.

Also if anyone has played it, how's Battlemage Lichdom?

I have it installed. It's OK.. collect runes, make spells, fight with them. I can't really say it's good or bad, it did not hold my interest. If you want a FPS wizard it would be probably interesting to you. It was on TPB

something is fucky when we have to turn to minecraft mods to get a wizard experience. theyre pretty fun though.
anons in the minetest thread are also working on a minetest wizarding mod

how can anyone not, especially on Holla Forums? video games draw in the curious and the experimenters.
besides, how do you think the people running the show are doing it? sucks, we have our own little cult in this community and they waste it all on something that doesnt even truly suit them.

Bump

I think the spell system is one of the better ones I've encountered even considering the simple nature of the game. Kudos to that guy

Any of you niggers tried Codespells? Had a good time going from making a "small puddle of water on the floor spell", to a "Holy fuck mine is the geyser that will pierce the heavens""

Game definietly still needs a lot of work, but theres some potential there. No story or anything at the moment, just some arenas or an open sandbox world where you can try and get your fucking Whirpool spell to actually work.

Overlord, Sacrifice, Dungeon Keeper 2, that one MMO on Steam I forget the name of where one of the characters you can play as is a wizard and the object is to build your tower and invade other people's towers for loot. I feel like there's a bunch of games like this on Steam that were sort of experimental, but I vaguely remember them because most were total shit.

Arx Fatalis, kinda.

Is there any way to change the controls? Bought it and no option that I could see so probably gonna get a refund if there's no way to change them.

I don't want to spend 10 years making that like Toady did with dorf fort.

Problem with magic system is making it have depth without being overpowered

Particularly bad is Morrowind. It's nice to make your own spells but the game in general is so easy to break. At least it's fun making a handful of spells with drawbacks and self imposed limitations.

That's another thing I dislike a general MP bar. I've outlined a few systems on paper and I like to have an "affinity" stat that affects charge time for the spell. It costs 250 mana to cast and you have 10 mana per turn? Your mega fireball will take 25 actions then

You can get a lot of depth without spellcrafting, but I assume you mean with spellcrafting.

As long as I have some freedom to be creative I'm happy.

Morrowind as I mentioned. Path of Exile is okay too but there's usually an ideal setup for any particular gem and it's a grindy game so not maximizing your dps means wasting time and casters tend to fall behind item based melee classes anyways

Magicka isn't very good because while it's creative on the surface there's one or two optimum protection spells and otherwise a laser beam of death that kills things in 1 or 2 hits, everything else takes like 10 hits to kill

Guild Wars did not have spellcrafting but the enormous amount of spells available, great mechanical depth, and limited skillbar + class combos, plus easy and limitless respeccing between instances did produce a game with a lot of freedom to create all sorts of fun and distinct builds.

Probably doesn't sound like quite what you have in mind, but it certainly scratches my spellcasting and experimentation itch.

until they get nerfed, damn im still salty when they killed my ele tank build, she was unstoppable in the fortress map with the turtle siege weapons

As far as I know Obsidian Flesh works fine in PvE, maybe not in FA anymore, though FA is dead anyways.

Don't think so, and on top of that after playing it a bit last night they've toned some things down spell wise. Would wait for it to expand the game more before buying, unless someone is really into wizards and coding shit

Better get started.

Games will never allow this.

Master of Magic is superior in every aspect not counting music.

Like you would want to wait 3 in game days worth of time to cast a spell

Some people just aren't cut out for magic, user
You seem better fit to be a warrior or something instead

That's it, just get thaumcraft and you're good to go.
It requires retarded levels of research and commitment to do the wizard stuff.
Was a bit too much for me but might be just what you want.
Install a powerful monster mod like grimoire of gaia and then you really have a reason to get all the wizard stuff.

Morrowind
You can become leader of the Wizards.
You can do a quest line to slowly grow your own wizard's tower.
There is a mod that adds another tier of upgrades for your Wizard's tower, including dwemer guard bots, several people that live around your tower, many servants, wizardy secrets and quests based around your home.

Also the spell making system goes well with letting you be which ever type of wizard you want to be.

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You don't need a computer to play the waiting game user.

And you don't need one to become a wizard either, but this is a thread about wizards in vidya, faggot

No its about games where you can be a wizard.

So, wizards in vidya

lol

Seconding this. Large number of spells made by combining various elements, and being able to do this combo spells on the fly without having to select from an inventory; just enter the right combo.

Includes shit like "electrocuting you if you try to use lightning while wet" and similar such stuff.

One doesn't necessarily mean the other.

haven't you ever read lovecraft?

But one necessarily includes the other
Not all wizards are players but all player wizards are wizards

I don't remember the lovecraft story about chuuni tumblr snowflakes on japanese imageboards

Yea but it's fiction.

Yeah mine includes the other. Yours doesn't. Anyway I think I should know what my own fucking thread is about.

Are you dyslexic?

UNLIMITED POWER!

wizards in vidya doesn't necessarily mean that you are the wizard and this thread is about games where you can be a wizard. actually it was just me asking for a game like I described and nothing here is quite like what I was looking for

For fucks game Holla Forums, it's even on our preapproved cirklejerk list.

The literal first reply to this thread named the only game that includes what you want

Academagia

Someone already mentioned it

As far as you know

user we have threads about this shit all the time
Magic in vidya is nearly universally shit

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Thaumcraft is probably the best you'll get.

I FUCKING LOVE BUILDING A CRYSTAL FLOATING TOWER IN THE SKY, UNTOUCHED BY THE PLAGUED LAND BELOW, THAT I FLY TO FROM A PLATFROM ON THE GROUND WARDED AGAINST INTRUSION, WHILE KILLING SHIT WITH FIRE BALLS AND LIGHTNING SWORDS

AND WITHIN THAT MIGHTY TOWER I UNRAVEL THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE WITH PUZZLING THEOREMS ON THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE

Thaumcraft is shit. It's yet another tech tree mod that adds little in the way of actual fun stuff.

I'm working on a Minetest mod that adds exclusively fun stuff.

Magicka

Like what?

That one neverwinter nights module comes to mind, It's on the nexus, and you play as a proper NPC tier wizard, so everything is about dialogue choices and research making treks from home to tower to places of knowledge nad power.

Heretic / Hexen
Ziggurat
Trine
Everquest 2 There's even a house that you can purchase that is a literal wizard's tower
Dragon's Dogma
Dark Messiah of Might & Magic
Neverwinter Nights
Dragon Quest 9
Ultima IV

I'd also say Morrowind and Arx Fatalis, but those have already been mentioned.
Good luck, OP!

those little golem shits are adorable though

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You should learn SQL, that's the closest you will be to feel like a Wizard writing spells. Pic related.

Actually, you are giving me ideas, OP, and I now actually intend to make a game where you are a Wizard leeching magic from mana pools using SQL queries. I will do it after I finished my actual game about programming nanomachines with cubes.

Good job showing just how casual Holla Forums is. Granted thaumcraft isn't exactly bad, but suggesting it and only it is all kinds of retarded when you can play with 50+ magic mods at the same time and have a true wizarding experience where you don't know what the fuck anything does without actually reading through books for hours and testing shit, killing yourself repeatedly from using too much magic, battling an ancient evil, causing all kinds of chaos and disasters, accidentally cursing yourself with demons and shit, getting lost in an unknown dimension, and finishing your monster-girl-in-a-jar collection.
Go get a mod pack like Resonant Rise or something, search around for other magic mods to add like Ars Magica, sort out all the conflicts, don your robe and wizard hat, cast magic n shit.

While not exactly related, has anyone here played Destrega? It is almost like a 3D version of Touhou soku. You can mix different magic with the properties 'power', 'fast' and 'spread' and the order you select magic also determines what magic you get, like power-fast is a different spell than fast-power. Used to play this PS1 demo all the time with my cousin.

People mention thaumcraft specifically because it's the most polished
It also has the only in-game book that is both complete, not cancerous(botania), and not a pain in the ass to navigate
In contrast, ars magica is one of the least polished, some of the core features are fantastic and I'd never consider not using it if it's available, but it can't be denied that it's a goddamn mess

And really, you need a lot more than just magic mods, magic's no good if you don't have a good world to use it in

SQL just feels like summoning magick

I pity the faggots who need to maintain that kind of ancient shit.

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I had it on a demo CD. Shit was pretty rad. I have no fucking idea what its about though. Always liked the only song i got to hear during the demo.

you're right that's completely unrelated. Fun game though. I actually bought it after playing the demo for a long time. It was hard to find even back then.

The Immortal. I also remember a wizard game in a tower that is loaded with traps and monsters forgot the name however

Muh nigger.

also another*

Goddamn right you fags are casuals.

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geneforge

You don't really seem to get this whole wizard thing.

you can't be serious

Fuck, I remember that game!

Well that sound good because I do know SQL

I want a game which is based around being a pilgrim and searching the world for tomes that describe the various methods and incantations to summon the kings, counts, and marquis of hell so I can bargain with them for unlimited power.

I'm currently drawing up a magic system for a game I'm making. I don't really have anything concrete yet; I'm just hammering everything from the technical shit to the actual game mechanics in a design document. Anyway, the system will work almost like programming, except instead of making computer programs you're making spells using symbols and ancient writing. One of the biggest hurdle right now is deciding how much functionality I need in the language. The other biggest hurdle being how to make the player feel like a wizard and not a programmer? It needs to be subtle, I don't want it to come of as a programming game (think TIS-100); I want the player to feel like hes a wizard delving into the arcane.

So yeah, that's a thing if I ever actually make it a reality.

Damn, I fucked that post up in more ways than one. But you get the idea.

Make it like befunge, where the "program" is a 2D array of things (symbols in your system, probably)

There shouldn't be a difference
Also, don't just give all the pieces to the player with perfect tutorials of how they work, give them a basic set of shit with proper explanations, and then make them find and experiment with the rest

I've been thinking of getting off my ass and toying around with a text-based spell creation system, with the lack of good wizard games leaving a hole in me. Not for any usage in a real game, I don't have the drive for that shit, just something to eat time.
The vague system I was thinking of was a very high-level and simple language mostly made up of pre-built "functions" which would take the form of phrases/runes/symbols/whatever the fuck, for instance: fire; projectile; lightning; and then a simple drag-and-drop shape system for actually creating spells.
A pentagram, for instance, would have slots for 5 runes/phrases/symbols, of which there'd be a fairly large number of pre-built ones like mentioned above. The runes/symbols would be placed on each point, and the lines would determine their interaction. I.E, fire at the top-center, projectile runes in each of the bottom two points, lightning in each of the top two would cause a spell that flings two fire+lightning projectiles.
It'd be a hell of a lot of mindless work to build the library up, but would allow toying around with spell-crafting without having to feel like a programmer.
The balls-deep approach would be creating those pre-made runes/phrases from the rules of a lower-level language that the game would actually run on, with an option for the player to create their own runes/symbols at that level. Let them take a look at how those pre-made things were built, and slowly reverse-engineer their way to an understanding of the system.

How that'd be achieved well is the bit that's interested me into giving it a go for the sake of trying, and simultaneously scared me out of it, but it would allow for something like a player creating a joint fire+projectile rune/phrase which would then allow a slot to be saved at the shape-based spell creator phase and some serious magical fuckery.

There'd need to be some limiters, be it cast-time or some mana-cost scaling system to stop somebody just copy/pasting everything into one rune, but reaching the point where balance is even a concern would be a miracle.

I remember passing a lot of time in the tower in Divinity 2, you could make stuff and also create a creature with body parts. Also, it has the most funny cliche, out of place, wizard character in any game I know, it's genuinly funny.

Thanks for the suggestions. Player experimentation is something that's pretty important, so I'll make sure it isn't rushed.

One idea I had for spell creation basically boils down to drawing a magic circle/pentagram/whatever, and then having the player write their spell in it. Still not really sure if that's the route I want to go though.

Goddamn, here's a bump.

I've often thought it would be interesting to have a game where magic was based around something like (or even identical to) Conway's Game of Life, a simple set of rules at yield complex behavior.

Going with that example, perhaps for a fireball you need as many cells active as possible after 10 cycles. For a shield, maybe the goal is to enclose a large area with a stable ring of cells. This is sort of artificial and I'm not sure if there's any better way to handle it, but still it would be up to you to figure out how to accomplish it. The better you solution was, the better the spell.

Sorcery 2

It's really sweet. You can be a necromancer with a growing army of corpses sweeping across the land, slaughtering villagers and kings alike and forever changing the history of that world. Newer updates let the world continue "living" after worldgen, so the things you do in fortress mode or adventure mode get worked into the natural progression of history.

What would happen before?

It was like most games, where nothing really changes except in response to the player.

So which games did spellcrafting the best?

Still modded minecraft

i wonder when someone will run with those ideas to make a whole game out of it.
theres a few interesting mission packs or whatever theyre called for minecraft that involve various magic mods. they start out cool but the objective is always to "graduate" to sand box mode. still entertaining though

you cunts are useless

Well what do you suggest?

user, minecraft is concentrated autism, and autism is what is necessary to do magic right
It's all we really have