Spellcasting UI

Way back in September 2016 (already?!) I wrote about how the magic system works in the world of Phidaine, so I won't go into detail about that now (you should totally check it out if you haven't though). Instead I will be explaining the UI I came up with to work with that magic system.

In CoS you will be able to obtain the divine favour (DF) of a total of 12 gods. In the UI, you can see them listed on the left side of the spellcasting window. The ones in blue and white are the gods that you've gained DF from already. The greyed out are the gods that you have yet to obtain favour from, thus their symbol is unknown.

Here is a list of the powers each god will potentially bestow upon you:

• Branurr: life, protection
• Alden-Hael: death, curses
• Agnosh: fire, light, time
• Saluni: nature, animals
• Perage: thunder, lightning
• Vrage: war
• Hoalia: luck
• Suvith: knowledge, time, predictions
• Larieki: winds
• Tehr-Tnan: earth, forests, travel
• Sanar-Zeam: trade
• Ulmaris: trickster magic

While these powers aren't quite set in stone yet, they are a guideline with which I will work when designing the spells.

Worth mentioning is that the enemy will enjoy the magic from an additional god, which your party won't have access to. If you haven't guessed by now, which god that is, it is probably for the better.

Something I haven't gone into in the aforementioned article, is how the words of power (spells) are built.

The base are eight particular words, called echs: AN, ET, IIS, GA, KU, MO, RA, and UC, which when distributed in a circle, form the circle of echs. The echs in the circle represent anchoring points for a thread that  is knit differently for each god it represents. In the big blue wheel in the screenshot above, you can see the pattern for the sun lord Agnosh. Each spell is represented as an icon in an empty field between two or more threads running between a pair of echs.

In his mind, the mage uses the wheel of echs as a way to remember each god by the pattern of threads, and the spells by the threads delimiting the symbol for each spell.

To the right of the wheel is the name, ech sequence, description and other spell data, which varies from spell to spell, but let's stop for a moment on the ech sequence with which a spell is defined. Starting at the topmost ech (12 o'clock), you move in a clockwise fashion and read aloud the echs that are threaded around the chosen spell icon.

So for the Mindlight spell, you start with the AN ech, then follow the line down to the KU ech. Then resuming our clockwise movement, you read out the ET, then follow the line to the left towards MO. Again resuming the clockwise motion, you read out the last pair of echs, GA and MO. This completes the incantation and casts the spell.

Of course as a player, you won't have to know any of this. All you'll have to do is select a god from the list, and then click a symbol for a particular spell to cast it. If the spell allows for its power to be set, then you'll be prompted to choose how much endurance/health to invest into it before it is cast.

I want to purposefully keep the spellcasting system simple, but the lore behind it intriguing and moderately complex. I'm sure much of the enjoyment in spellcasting will be in obtaining the DF from the gods and the associated spells, since you'll start with a very bare list of gods and a deep empty-ish blue circle of echs.

So that concludes the overview of the spellcasting UI. As always, if you have any questions and/or suggestions feel free to comment below, or contact me directly.

Thanks for reading.