Melee while casting?

[saevel]

I generally have you blocked and a whole of others but I occasionly view it anyway to entertain myself so the feeling is mutual. None the less you cant deny that there is a clear hierarchy of events between job traits and skills like shield, guard, evasion. The player is "reacting" so to speak based on those same checks you mentioned. I say the player reacts because of the simple fact that there is animation for it when it occurs. Shield activates the player animation raises the shield in blocking motion etc for example. In coding speak after the checks are done the function calls are clearly returning a value to another procedure that determines whether to run the animation for blocking with a shield, parrying, or complete evading the attack or do nothing at all and allow the attack uncontested.

Though even still with all that noted I dont see this as a reality giving the insistence of keeping with old visions and many of the points made later in the thread like many of the original programmers of SE proprietary engine either being fired, retired, or even dead. It is often difficult to come in on somebody elses baby and pick up where they left of or improve upon what they have established without a good consultation with those involved without some serious implications.

In any case I dont see this happening for the simple reason that in most games magic is seen as a function of high intelligence and as such requiring total concentration. In addition cast usually utilizes the hands in the effort to help concentrate the power of the spell being cast and as such would reduce the concentration level of the spell as well as the damage done once it is cast. Now that in itself may be a solution in implementing this feature and allowing spells cast to suffer a damage penalty when trying to physically attack while it is being cast. It wont be popular but it would logically make sense and be "realistic" so to speak.

I've gone over this a few times, you don't block anything. There is no checks done on the client side about blocking or reacting. The block is part of the monsters attack round and doesn't involve any actions on the players part.

Monster Attack Event -> Do calculations (damage / hit / block) -> determine block has happened and perform calculations accordingly.
Send client packet saying block has happened -> Client shows block animation.

Absolutely nothing you did effected that block nor it's animation.

What people are asking for is the ability for the client to initiate two simultaneous actions and have both actions resolve independently without effecting each other. This is not impossible, not even hard, but it requires the server's event engine be programmed to handle it. This is a VERY big change in server code. I'm not talking action scripts which are the things that handle all the calculations and event resolutions, I'm talking the actual management code behind everything. That can cause catastrophic unpredictable effects. Nothing that lots of debugging and testing can't fix, but still manpower intensive. I would expect them to recode the entire client to DX9/10 before I'd expect them to recode the server.