HL - Athletics and New Lift Formula

Working on new lift calculation... may not make it into this release, but it will finally reflect muscle-condition and muscle-mass properly in lifts.

The old method used power as a static weight, then added a percentage for body-weight...

The new method uses power as a percentage of muscle-mass, independent of the remaining body-weight. It will also distinguish between fast and slow twitch lifts, using SPD for fast-twitch, PHY for slow-twitch, and STR for both.

So fast-twitch scales with power, and slow-twitch scales with vigor. Most lifts will use a blend of the two, but some moves will isolate fast or slow. (to better approximate lift values, slow twitch will always activate, whereas fast-twitch bonus will depend on move speed)

Anyway, the new lift is basically:

((muscle.mass+muscle.condition+STR+PHY+[%SPD]) x [vigor+%power]/100 x condition/potential)

So muscle-condition and related stats are treated as additional muscle-mass.

I should note that vigor and power will have a minimum of 10%, no matter how low they are, and a maximum based on overcharge (100% x Magnitude), but the amount beyond 100% will be a scaled bonus, not a straight multiple; it will probably be done as x 1.1^(((current/max)%)-1). We can safely apply that as an energy-level bonus on all lifts, without breaking anything. With energy-levels between min and 100%, it will add a 0-10% bonus, and with anything over 100% it will be in compounding 10% bonuses.

Which means, if you have max-overcharge and a magnitude of 7 (which would require level 406), then instead of 700% it would be 200%. (rule of 72)

Note also that untoned muscles will have very low lift-strength. (minimum tone is 1/capacity, which would result in lifting a fraction of what you could with proper training)

Now, once the formula is in place, it still needs to be converted to a lift-base to ensure the values are in the expected range for the exercise. (we pick one exercise as a baseline, such as bicep curl or bench press, then find the constant needed to scale the average person for that exercise, and yields the expected average lift for that person)

This updated formula will also be used directly for combat, not only for lifts, but fast-twitch is used for strikes, and slow-twitch for grapples.

This new formula is just one aspect of the new athletic-feat calculation function I'm working on. Ultimately this will be able to estimate run speed, jump height, how much weight you can swim or climb with, how fast you can swim or climb, etc.; as well as estimating stats for each exercise. (1-rep max, 6-8 rep target weight, #reps @ 100% bodyweight, ...)

Once that's ready, I can work on an athletics stats screen to present all this... and knowing these numbers is the first major step to adding athletic contests to the game. (scheduled for engine v0.4) And once that system is in place, you'll be able to challenge anyone you encounter (doesn't necessarily mean they will accept/agree to the contest... don't expect the 84 year old woman struggling to put her groceries in the trunk to want to race you across the parking lot)

I was hoping to have more content for this weekend's release, but what I have planned will require a lot of engine and encounter prep-work, so I'm going to release the debugged version of the last beta today, and follow up with another release when the content is ready.