I'd like to apologize in advance for this bit. It's far, far too infodump-y, and it makes me wonder what past-me was doing that left him so uninspired.
There are better ways I could've delivered all that info, or at least the most important bits of it... like a training battle, with Numbers. Readers love battles. ^^
**********
Entry 41 (Day 748)
I've been busy. Very busy.
Since my last entry, I've made some significant revisions to every single spell I have.
Let me repeat that. EVERY. SINGLE. SPELL. Even with how new I am to this whole 'mage' business, that's a lot of work.
I started with my flight spell. From an engineering standpoint, Air Cutter is fairly decent. It was designed to do one thing- drag me along in any direction I chose- and it does that one thing quite well. The spell is reliable, simple enough to control, and quite servicable. The problem is that it isn't what I need.
In that fight on P3J-992, I found myself in need of a whole laundry list of capabilities Air Cutter didn't have. True levitation, lateral movement, high-speed dodging, improved visibility, improved flight control... the list just goes on and on. The first version of Air Comet could do all of that, but it was too complicated, too inefficient, and had half a dozen major bugs in it. I basically had to rewrite it from scratch... again.
I'd used three different shooting spells at P3J-992, all of them built off the same basic mechanics to some degree or another. From what I've seen in Scaglietti's spell archive, those mechanics had three or four glaring mistakes in them, all of which I've since figured out ways to avoid... to some degree or another. I'm still working on finding the most elegant solutions, but my off-the-cuff solutions have increased efficiency by about 8%, and decreased heat buildup by a solid 14%.
Magic Missile had to be mostly rewritten. The old version couldn't handle less than six or more than thirty-two missiles per casting- I always ended up making either more than I needed, or not enough to really blanket an area. That's been fixed. Arcane Blast had too much of a delay between reaching the target point and exploding. Also fixed... or at least improved.
Arcane Bolt was kind of a mixed bag. It was supposed to be the equivalent of a Buster-type bombardment spell, but I managed to completely misunderstand what I was aiming for. I created a continuous beam spell, when I should've made a pulsed beam. Both of them have their benefits and their drawbacks- pulsed beams are better at penetrating armor, but can't be swept around for area damage like a constant beam- so that worked out.
Anyway, not only did I have to redesign each of my spells from the ground up to fit what I needed and work better, but I also had to revamp each and every variation of each of my handful of spells. I have a lot of spell variants. See where this is going?
Oh, and I had to develop a pulsed-beam long-range bombardment spell, but that's neither here nor there.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.
There are better ways I could've delivered all that info, or at least the most important bits of it... like a training battle, with Numbers. Readers love battles. ^^
**********
Entry 41 (Day 748)
I've been busy. Very busy.
Since my last entry, I've made some significant revisions to every single spell I have.
Let me repeat that. EVERY. SINGLE. SPELL. Even with how new I am to this whole 'mage' business, that's a lot of work.
I started with my flight spell. From an engineering standpoint, Air Cutter is fairly decent. It was designed to do one thing- drag me along in any direction I chose- and it does that one thing quite well. The spell is reliable, simple enough to control, and quite servicable. The problem is that it isn't what I need.
In that fight on P3J-992, I found myself in need of a whole laundry list of capabilities Air Cutter didn't have. True levitation, lateral movement, high-speed dodging, improved visibility, improved flight control... the list just goes on and on. The first version of Air Comet could do all of that, but it was too complicated, too inefficient, and had half a dozen major bugs in it. I basically had to rewrite it from scratch... again.
I'd used three different shooting spells at P3J-992, all of them built off the same basic mechanics to some degree or another. From what I've seen in Scaglietti's spell archive, those mechanics had three or four glaring mistakes in them, all of which I've since figured out ways to avoid... to some degree or another. I'm still working on finding the most elegant solutions, but my off-the-cuff solutions have increased efficiency by about 8%, and decreased heat buildup by a solid 14%.
Magic Missile had to be mostly rewritten. The old version couldn't handle less than six or more than thirty-two missiles per casting- I always ended up making either more than I needed, or not enough to really blanket an area. That's been fixed. Arcane Blast had too much of a delay between reaching the target point and exploding. Also fixed... or at least improved.
Arcane Bolt was kind of a mixed bag. It was supposed to be the equivalent of a Buster-type bombardment spell, but I managed to completely misunderstand what I was aiming for. I created a continuous beam spell, when I should've made a pulsed beam. Both of them have their benefits and their drawbacks- pulsed beams are better at penetrating armor, but can't be swept around for area damage like a constant beam- so that worked out.
Anyway, not only did I have to redesign each of my spells from the ground up to fit what I needed and work better, but I also had to revamp each and every variation of each of my handful of spells. I have a lot of spell variants. See where this is going?
Oh, and I had to develop a pulsed-beam long-range bombardment spell, but that's neither here nor there.
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.
I've been writing a bit.