Rename attack boosts

[Omega]

I'd like to suggest that attack boosts be renamed. The name is inaccurate and very misleading. Until you read the documentation, it's not clear that it can boost stats besides attacks or be associated with skills other than attacks. If I recall correctly, the name is a hold-over from older times.

So I propose that we depreciate the `attack-boost` element (in the same way that `attack-strenhgt` (or however they spelled it) is depreciated). We can support both `attack-boost` and some new name (the XML parser has simple means of doing this, which are already used for `attack-strength`.

I think we should use the name `emanation` to describe attack boosts. This is the term that GAE used. MG's attack boosts and GAE's emanations are roughly the same thing. Dictionary-wise, emanation is also more accurate: "an abstract but perceptible thing that issues or originates from a source". Alternatives include "aura", "automatic-effect", or simply "boost" (using one of these would allow our terminology to be distinct from GAE -- I can think of pros and cons to this). "Boost" is what the English transformation is already using in-game.

If we do rename attack boosts, we should consider doing so in the source code, too (very easy to do with a bit of find and replace).

[Coldfusionstorm]

i would have to agree on this, This is a oddity that it's called like this in it's current form.

I vote yes  on a rename

[titi]

I personally don'tt like the "emanations" too much but I am no native english speaker. Another reason is that it is not the same as GAEs implementation and not really compatibel with this.  What about simply calling it "effect" or something like  "area effect"?

But if  its renamed it must be compatible with old things so new and old syntax works.

[MoLAoS]

GAE also has effects. Emanations are effects on a unit rather than a skill. So you would still be using GAE terminology.

Emanation means to spread from a central point or source.

[John.d.h]

I think "aura" is better than "emanation", just for simplicity.  My issue with "boost" is that the word means an increase specifically, so it makes less sense if it's something that causes harm or weakness.  That may not be that big of a deal.  My favorite alternative would be "influence".

It may be worth noting that in GAE, emanations and effects are separate but related, with emanations just being a passive delivery system for effects.  Effects can also be applied by attacks.  I know there was a "cast-spell" skill in the works that would have worked for actively applying an effect without attacking (so a medic could heal an ally, for example), but I don't know if it was ever implemented.

[MoLAoS]

I think "aura" is better than "emanation", just for simplicity.  My issue with "boost" is that the word means an increase specifically, so it makes less sense if it's something that causes harm or weakness.  That may not be that big of a deal.  My favorite alternative would be "influence".

It may be worth noting that in GAE, emanations and effects are separate but related, with emanations just being a passive delivery system for effects.  Effects can also be applied by attacks.  I know there was a "cast-spell" skill in the works that would have worked for actively applying an effect without attacking (so a medic could heal an ally, for example), but I don't know if it was ever implemented.

It was not fully implemented. I looked at that and implemented some basic stuff while working on Mandate.

Aura is a much more common term for what GAE calls emanations in video game development.

[titi]

I like Aura alot more than emanation, and for non native english speakers it is a much more common word.

[Omega]

So, titi, softcoder, can we rename them? If desired, I can make this change.

What I would do is make "aura" (since that seems to be a term we can agree on) an alias to attack-boost (in the same way that attack-strenght and attack-strength are aliases). I'd then rename AttackBoost to Aura. Do a grep for various combinations of attack boost and rename them appropriately (so that the code is consistent in naming things).

Once the change is in a release, we can rename the term in our documentation and declare attack-boost as depreciated. As an aside, I'm thinking that the --validate-* functionalities should warn about depreciated elements (not sure if they already do).

Note that this will create conflicts between any awaiting changes that modify attack boosts. So my tags change would have to be integrated first (possibly others?).