Does someone ever tried to make a magic system based on programming?

The laundry book series features magic as higher mathematics (and extremely dangerous to you and every being on the same celestial body).

Selected laundry operatives run mathema(t/g)ical equations on their palm pilots/phones as apps and these can get quite branched so one could of programs.

In an RPG i have not seen something like that, sorry friend.

I've never played them but I by the Ar Tonelico games have a magic system that uses some programming syntax.

Do you have any documents or information detailing this system? I would love to learn more specifics about what you folks came up with.

you are the least funny poster i've encountered this week. You must be thrilling at parties.

I lost a lot of the paper notes in a housefire, and the digital notes are barely existent, but let me see what specifics I can remember.

The basic formula composition was " (Energy) + (Catalyst) * (Controls) ". You pick the kind of energy you want (From among the D&D energies), then picked the Catalyst from your inventory that you wanted to shunt that energy through (this gave the spell its typing and its general effect), then applied checks to institute Controllers (which determine stuff like who you can hit, as well as any modifiers to things such as saves, speed of casting, or Metamagic effects). The important part of the Controllers is that it's a multiplier. Some Controllers (like the basic "melee range" scope) don't have checks and just let you have the default 1x, but other Controllers would either require you to pass checks to get the full multiplier, or would just cut down the effectiveness by even HAVING the Controller (for instance, the "No Save" Controller would remove the need for a save, but would ALWAYS cut you down to 25% effectiveness, even if you passed the check to use that Controller). Controllers always work, but will only give their maximum effectiveness if you pass the check. We dicked around with what specific skill to use for the check, and ping-ponged between Spellcraft, Knowledge(Arcana), and a class-specific skill, but dropped it before we settled on anything.

A well-crafted spell that was within your understanding and ability would easily devastate an entire platoon with fire, but that same spell being used by somebody without the ability or the proper understanding may not even be enough to light some kindling

was it magic-related housefire?

Yes. The ghost of Gygax was after me because I was two steps away from discovering the formula for actual real-world magic, and well before my time as a Wizard should've began.

It's kinda what I did. But it's more based on my actual job as a programmer.

Learning frameworks, creating new tools, digging through layers upon layers of abstraction, teaching newer people how to use them so that they may improve upon them one day, and so on. Gives mages something more to their work than just staring into old book all day.

Take a look at code from any new program or library, it's gonna make as much sense as a 1000 year old book.

This one?

So, it's not really a stupid idea? Testing a program, is mostly just running it.

>So you would need to do the equivalent of not being able to test an program before running it for the first time.
You've clearly never programmed before.

>vaguley

Jewish Kabbalists and numerology.

Inb4 Brandon Sanderson hatewagon

Perfect State does it with one of the characters

Im shit at homebrew but i can say for inspiration if anyone wants to tackle it the anime irregular at magic high does a programmed magic system well along side traditional magic

Jesus christ i cant remember the last time i heard someone say something so useless. Youre not REQUIRED to post in the thread after you open it, you know, its not compulsory.

Fuck, you're right.

That's absolutely a relevant reaction image.

...

You have no idea how irresponsible programmers and wizards are.

Also the universe doesn't shit itself just because you make call on null.

Rick Cook did a series that was based entirely on the idea. Unfortunately around book 4 or so he got into a car accident and will never finish the series.

You'll probably have a blast reading it though. It's literally a programmer from earth on a fantasy world learning how to program magic.

goodreads.com/author/show/230692.Rick_Cook

Oh wait, guess it was heart trouble or something. Well either way the poor guy is retired and will never finish another book.

*Pushes glasses up nose with one hand while looking down smirking*
*Chuckles to himself while shaking his head*

cryptorpg.com/cryptomancy/

What does it feel like to be so cool and hip that you get triggered and scoff when someone else wants to be cool too?

Yes, thank you very much.

Oh yeah? Where do black holes come from then, smartass?

>Testing a program, is mostly just running it.
Yes and that's why its a stupid idea.

People usually run the program before releasing it, they don't just study the source code, trying to find bugs and stuff that should be changed.

When testing to do a fireball spell or whateaver, you basically need to cast it.

>Also the universe doesn't shit itself just because you make call on null.
Bugs could make the universe shit itself.

Another problem is that once you know the magical equivalent of compiling a code, you can do any spell ever as long someone create the magical equivalent of the source code and gives to you

It'd be more interesting if bugs in the system just created monsters. And system crashes opened up portals to hell.

>Be wizard
>Cast fireball
>Accidentally capitalize a line in the code
>Suddenly the fireball explodes into a demon gate
>The goblins are now the least of my problems.

Holy fuck, not using style="tone:sarcastic;" or moving it to css in 2016

That is some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard in Veeky Forums and I love it.
>Be wizard
>Cast Charm Person
>misplace a semicolon
>Accidentally kill the duration
>but also accidentally kill the part where they still are mostly themselves.
>Accidentally make a permanent Yandere until you can figure out Dispel.

>It'd be more interesting if bugs in the system just created monsters. And system crashes opened up portals to hell.

A bug is just something else than its intended by the developer. Nothing more.
Fighting game bugs actually become considered gameplay by competitive players and they become angry if those bugs are fixed between ports.

So an bugged program is just an alternate program version that you didnt really wanted that existed

Get off my lawn

And thus the Dread Empress Stalker was born. The court wizard really fucked up that arranged marriage.

You'd probably want a random effects table. Creating a random monster from the monster's manual, opening up a plane to a random dimension, wild transformations of individuals nearby and relatively harmless effects like everyone turning blue. Or alignment changes, etc. You might want to create one for each school of magic so the random game-bugs table can replicate any spell from that school of the equivalent level. So Conjuration would be more likely to open portals or create new monsters. Necromancy might raise the dead or randomly drain someone in the area of life. A bug in a scry spell could give false information or make your scrying really obvious. Cursed items could also be the result of poorly programmed stuff.

Hell, the color change one would explain why there are so many blue humans around in a lot of fantasy settings.

But you're right. Not all are negative. I think they should mostly be random, though. Otherwise players will exploit it to get two spells at once or something like that.

Next time align your response with tables, grandpa.
I'm gonna watch it from atop of my npm modules pile.

public class Spellcasting {
static Spell myspell = new Spell();
public static void main(String[] args) {
myspell.cast("Fireball", 3, "Goblin");
}
}

Magic's already like programming. The spell does exactly what it's designed to do, whether or not that's what you intend it to do.

>Bugs could make the universe shit itself.
Or, you know, just kills/knocks out the caster because if he accidentally casts an endless loop or something similarly stupid then he'll just exhaust his mana equivalent on a spell unintentionally far above his abilities and the spell would vanish the same way any program would if you pulled out the power plug.

>Another problem is that once you know the magical equivalent of compiling a code, you can do any spell ever as long someone create the magical equivalent of the source code and gives to you
nigger what the fuck do you think a spellbook is? You realize in even fucking DnD you're limited in spellcasting by your Int and casts per day?

>When testing to do a fireball spell or whateaver, you basically need to cast it.
how the fuck else would you test it?

>Bugs could make the universe shit itself.
There are literally already systems for shit like this, Wild Magic, Psykers, etc.

They had a Kickstarter a while back
codespells.org/