Mod/Web Updates Options

[Galactygon]

9-16-07

Summer is almost over, and I made less progress than I anticipated.

Besides finishing polymorph (except for the icons and the disguise system, which will be one of the last things I will implement), 2 items have been giving me a great deal of trouble: Arrows of Slaying and Book of Infinite Spells.

Rather than creating many types of Arrows of Slaying, I decided the item would kill a random type of creature. In other words, you would never know what it would be effective against. They are practically +3 arrows more than anything else, so I intend to make them occour more commonly.

As for Book of Infinite Spells, which gave me the most trouble so far, I have randomized the number of pages as well as what spells occour where. This will be determined at the start of the game by setting globals, so reloading would be no use if you are not content with the spells you have.

Other than that, I have spent most of my time revamping some inventory/spell/ground icons. What I intend to do in the near future is give quest items certain practical uses other than completing quests. For example, having the Rynn Lanthorn in your party would dispel all illusions from enemies.

-Galactygon

This post has been edited by Galactygon: Sep 16 2007, 03:24 PM

[Galactygon]

09-23-07

I have been continuing work on items, and am finally assembling a proper to-do list with complete details. Having such a list would speed up progress at least threefold, and I regret of not coming up with a proper plan (on paper) earlier.

Also, I came up with a bleeding system, where a character suffers 1 point of damage per round unless his/her wound is treated, which can be done by: resting, healing spells, potions, certain items (not fully implemented), or remaining idle for a certain period of time (not implemented yet). Certain powerful creatures and weapons will inflict bleeding wounds.

About items, here are some interesting items I came up with:
- A helmet that has a 50% chance of preventing death through damage (but not through other means!).
- A short sword +1 that grants thieves a bonus to backstab damage, and enables non-thieves to backstab if conditions are met.
- A certain cloak that frightens werewolves and other lycanthropes

Occasionally I return to fix up a few spells, and yesterday it was Power Word Kill. Because spell immunity-like selections are hard to work with, I have decided to alter Power Word Kill so that the player does not choose whether to kill one creature below 60HP, or multiple creatures below 10HP (the 120hp total limit is hardcoded). Instead, the choice is automatic, depending on how many hit points the target creature has. If the target creature has 10-59 hit points, the spell simply affects that one creature. If the target creature has less than 10 hit points, the spell automatically becomes an area effect spell, killing all surrounding creatures with less than 10 hit points. If the target creature has 60 or more hit points, nothing happens.

Something else worth mentioning is the system about draining hit points has been revamped. In my earlier implementation, when draining hit points with Vampiric Touch or Larloch's Minor Drain, the hit points gained were not cumulative. I have changed this so that hit points gained above the normal total are not cumulative. But hit points gained as healing are now cumulative.

More importantly, I have decided to scrap my earlier version of Prismatic Sphere (this is the third time for that spell). This time, I will not touch a single .baf file or .cre file, and will resort purely to .spl files (not even .effs!). In other words, scripting is dirty and I do not like it. Because of this and engine restrictions, the sphere will follow the caster around, and will only affect him/her. That means, I will have to weaken the offensive and protective effects of each layer. An example I am thinking of is allowing more than one spell to bring down a layer, in addition to weakening the protectice effects themselves. But even then, how am I to weaken the spell so that it could compete with seemingly less useful spells, like, Energy Drain?

I have tried my hand at 3DS Max, and created some animations for Prismatic Sphere (again, this is something I had many gos in), but they still look worse than everything else in-game.

The original AD&D description of Prismatic Sphere can be found here (scroll down).

If you have some interesting ideas on weakening Prismatic Sphere, and they are better than mine (I have been lazy so far), please share them!

-Galactygon

This post has been edited by Galactygon: Sep 23 2007, 06:25 AM

[Galactygon]

10-14-07

Again, most of my work these days dealt with minor alterations, like, fixing a few bugs and inconsistencies, making items work, and expanding the to-do list to more details. Most of what I did were slight tweaks to items worn by creatures (items the player can use are nearly finished, but constitute only 10% of the total number of items existing in the .dat file). Some changes I could highlight:

- Revised (Demi)Liches' immunities to vulnerabilities. If you know the AD&D rules, you probabbly know what they are.

- Rings of Invisibility recieved another remake. A character having the ring equipped becomes invisible except the round following a successful attack roll, or when a spell is attempted. I have not yet extended that to activating items, but I intend to do so. The Ring of Improved Invisibility does the same thing, except the character remains invisible while the ring is equipped. This might seem slightly overpowered, but I intend to alter the creatures' behaviour against improved invisible characters.

- Protection scrolls have all been revised to their AD&D counterparts. I still have to invent curses for cursed scrolls, and ways they would be triggered without the player knowing it.

- Characters who are smaller than average sized (dwarves, gnomes, etc) recieve a higher defense rating when equipping small shields and bucklers. And they are restricted from wearing shields too large for them.

- And I am still thinking on what to do for Prismatic Sphere. The story never ends, you see.

I would say 60-70% of my work so far had to do with making the details consistent. Had I skipped the details, I would have released the mod over a year ago.

-Galactygon

[melkor_morgoth75]

So is a new spellpack available to download?

tx,

mm75

[Galactygon]

I found it easier for me not to worry about it, so not for another while.

-Galactygon

[quinlan]

Aug 8 2004, 05:27 PM --> Oct 22 2007, 10:59 PM

I have stumbled by chance upon the first page of this thread... That was a couple of hours ago. Right now i have just finished with the last post - before mine. I read non-stop. I am excited by all the info i found out about your changes to the game. "Keep up the good work" is meaningless for someone like you, who has already kept this project alive and kicking for more than 3 years! What percentage of your mod as a whole have you completed up to now?

Congratulations!

[Galactygon]

10-22-07

I am finishing up the items: I still have to worry about swords and ground icons for other weapons and armour. Other than that, I went back and fixed some bugs, and made 2 complete spell revisions: death spell and cloudkill. Death spell now works exactly the way it does in AD&D (with conversion factors et all) with the exception that partial numbers could kill an extra creature. And the beauty of that, is I have not touched a single .baf file in the process. As for cloudkill, it is now a traveling spell, lasting 1 round/level, and slowly moving away (even through areas) from the caster - ideal if you cast it in narrow hallways.

What is really taking away my time is I am now updating/creating string entries for each individual spell and item - something I should have done months ago.

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

10-27-07

Some of the fixes that I have made these past few days include:

- Simulacrum is a 7th level spell, the effects are permanent, and there may be any number of simulacrums for one character. But, the level of the Simulacrum is 20% to 50% of the original creature, the simulacrum is made out of snow and ice (more vulnerable to fire-based attacks, and can only be healed by a regeneration), and most importantly, the simulacrum remains inert until a reincarnation is cast on to bestow a life force.

- Death Fog properly reduces movement to one-tenth. While the damage might seem insignificant (dependant on how much time is spent in the cloud, with a maximum of 8) compared to the 12D6 of Chain Lightning, creatures are bound to be stuck in there for a *long* time, so damage would easily accumulate.

- Improved Slow is not cumulative with Slow anymore.

- Major domination and exalted eye work as they should.

- And of course, more strings. [I owe Caedwyr for reminding me]

Meanwhile, I am in the process of assembling SpellPack B4, and I am definate of making a release sometime soon.

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

4-15-08

I was gone for the last ~2-4 months, because I was at a difficult point in my studies (high-level physics, calculus, and economics combined!) plus part-time work.

Right now I am at an easier point in my studies, so I will be around more often, and I might even manage to do a few more fixes. Starting in July, I will return to modding as I did before. But I have a degree to earn first.

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

8-13-08

I am on my way to becoming part of the WeiDU club, and there are some tricks I have learned on the way. I am in the process of updating the mod so it patches all existing items rather than overrides them. I have already reduced the size of the mod to half by compressing pretty much every single .bam and .wav there is, and deleting some of the junk; some of them included spurious 4 Mb .bam files that I only have for reference.

My hope is, once I get to the AI, I will base much of it on SCSII's AI. I have to admit I am very attracted to SSL.

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

8-15-08

I am pleased to tell you that Lost Crossroads no longer overrides the projectl, missile, and fireball ids files as it used to.

A total of 1069 spells, items, and projectiles use 342 new projectiles. It would have been a nightmare to change all of them to use patched projectiles. Had I done it manually as I originally anticipated, it would have taken me at least 2 months of drudgery counting all the bugs it would have generated in the process.

With my (newfound) WeiDU skills, I was able to construct a master table that tells what spells and items use what projectiles. It is very easy to use and update, and everything is taken care of macros. So instead of the 2 months of manual labour, it turned out to be 2 days. And so far, it hasn't generated a single bug.

Expect things to speed up.

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

8-21-08

I have been updating and cleaning up the way effects exclude creature types. Vanilla BGII handles it by adding a whole bunch of undroppable rings that protect from various opcodes without . I think this is rather crude, and it is easy to lose track of what creature is immune to what. Not to mention the inconsistencies it can cause when mod creatures do not have the same invulnerable rings equipped as the vanilla ones.

Earlier, I did it manually by adding effects to extended headers. Now when we are dealing with subtelities such as large creatures cannot squeeze through a shadow door or a bigby's hand does not crush incorporeal creatures, that can be overwhelming to update and change. Not to mention all the assumptions and mistakes and inconsistencies it can generate if I manually add thousands of effects to hundreds of headers.

But I do not have to worry about this anymore. Using several macros and a few tables, I can dynamically alter and update what effect can be used on what creature, and maximize mod compatibility. The only thing I am assuming right now is that the GENERAL.IDS is not radically altered. Other than that, all I have to do in the event of mods is add a few lines to a few tables.

I have already updated half of the effects so they are patched this way, and I hope to finish the rest this week, so I can move on to the good stuff.

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

9-7-08

I am pretty much finished with cleaning up all of the effects, making sure there are no inconsistencies. I do not have much to say, and it might not seem like much from someone else's point-of-view. But what we are talking here are thousands and thousands of effects. This would be impossible to maintain without mass patching.

I still have a few more macros to write before I can start making sure items are not overwritten. Even though this mod is a rules conversion mod, I would still like it to be compatible with as many mods as possible.

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

12-14-08

I've been away for a long time because of uni, but I haven't left FOREVAR. I will do a lot of catching up the next few weeks.

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

1-29-09

I did some macro work, I am still setting myself up for items. If anyone is interested, I wrote a macro that functions like a search function inside .spl or .itm files, finding effects much like a search function inside a text editor.

This way, I could do massive changes with little effort and time involved.

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

12-26-09

Since I only have a free week, I am postponing a SpellPack update to July, when I have the time to tackle bugs, compatibility problems, etc. So now I am working on LC instead.

Before I delve into items, I decided to tie up some lose ends with spells first. I have been putting this off for a long time, I have finished coding the 6th level wizard spell, "Reincarnation".

It works almost exactly like Raise Dead, except you do not need a corpse - you can raise disintegrated characters. So far so good - but there are consequences with raising a character in a different body, and there are limits. The spell randomly redistributes the character's strength, dexterity, and constitution values by doing this:

1. The spell adds up the character's former strength, dexterity, and constitution values, and ends up with a number.
2. If this number is larger than 50, then it becomes 50. This spell cannot create exceptional bodies. Even a total of 50 is exceptional (i.e. STR 18, DEX 16, CON 16)
3. The character's new STR, DEX, and CON scores are then rerolled as if you started a new game, keeping in mind race and class restrictions. This means there will be no scores of 20, and scores of 19 happen very rarely (and only due to race, i.e. 19 DEX for an elf)
4. The character's INT, WIS, and CHR scores are untouched, since this spell does not make characters smarter or wiser.

For example, if I reincarnate Vicona (STR 10, CON 8, DEX 19, total 37), she might end up with STR 12, DEX 13, CON 12 (a total of 37). It's probably not worth reincarnating characters that are really good in something, and bad in something else, because high scores will be diluted into medicore scores.

This spell is a gamble. I'm interested in what people have to say.

-Galactygon

This post has been edited by Galactygon: Dec 26 2009, 06:37 PM

[Galactygon]

12-29-09

Fixed Fog Cloud, Pyrotechnics, Improved Strength, and a few others.

Just a statistic: My total spell count is 509. These include changes from the original game, so my estimate is the new spell count is around 200. I have 45 spells left to bugfix, did 20 or so these past 4 days, and I hope to do at least 30 by thursday, so I could upload an alpha in the workroom. These bugs were mostly oversights from previous years, or things that I have been putting off.

I intend to randomize the spells available in the game, and restrict certain spells to certain kits and specialist mages. An illusionist will be very different from a sorcerer.

I have 89 more spell ideas with a rough implementation sketched out for specialist mages, and I am very tempted to do all of them, but I will save those for later and concentrate on a playable release instead.

My to-do list right now looks like this:
- Fix the rest of the spells
- Do a few spells for specialists (Illusionists, Enchanters, Diviners lack good low-level spells)
- Go in and change the CLAB files for specialist wizards. I haven't tested it yet, but with Taimon's .exe fix, I can distribute extra spells for specialists the same fashion as HLA's
- Implement the sphere system, and kits for druids and clerics. I intend to adopt and radically change DR.
- Do the item changes in a cool non-overriding way. This will take some time.
- Do some item rule tweaks (this would deserve to be a seperate mod, called "Lost Crossroads Item Tweaks")
- Change the AI behaviour of creatures and characters. I am going to do this in a low-key way, mainly because there are mods that do a much finer job at this. What I really should be doing (and eventually will do) is working with the mod authors for compatibility.

I will be rolling back some content such as items and kits for non-spellcasting classes, since other mods do a fine job covering them, and my efforts should be spent elsewhere.

Which still leaves me with a lot of work, but a manageable amount. I have grown and matured, and now that I think back to the previous years, I put up unrealistic goals and tasks for myself, hard to do with WeiDU, unmanageable without it.

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

07-28-10

I have good news for those awaiting SpellPack B6. With the generous help of Mike1072, I was finally able to get a race immunity macro working. It is one of the big plans I had for the next version of SpellPack, along with a cleanup of existing macros, and breaking down the components into smaller more compatibility-friendly components. With this race immunity macro, I could make sweeping changes in 10 seconds that would have originally taken me (literally) a day of hard work of copying and pasting effects and extended headers. Assuming there are no human errors in the process. It's even better than simple patching, because I don't have to remember which race to exclude for which spell. Instead, I have a few parameters set for each creature (with single characters denoting a parameter)... for example, a scepter's parameters would be RACESIZE = [ M ]arge, RACEMAKE = [ I ] ncorporeal, RACEFLY = [ Y ] es, and so on.

Here is an example application for Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting:

SPWI812.spl 1-50 **** EFFECT=1 CLASSMAKE B_N_I_M RESOURCE=PRSPLVL8_RESISTTYPE=0_POWER=8_TIMING=0 **** **** **** ****
SPWI812.spl 1-50 **** EFFECT=1 GENERAL 3_4 RESOURCE=PRSPLVL8_RESISTTYPE=0_POWER=8_TIMING=0 **** **** **** ****

The first column in the first row means it's going to use the spell file SPWI812, the second column means it's going to patch extended headers 1 through 50 (or lower if there are less extended headers). Ignore the third column for now (that will be a later feature). The fourth column means it's going to place effects at the beginning of the spell before all the other effects happen. The fifth and sixth column means what type of parameter the effects will discriminate based on, and which of the parameters they are. In this case, the first row will apply effects for all creatures made of [ B ]one, [ N ]onliving Flesh, [ I ]ncorporeal creatures, and creatures made of [ M ] inerals. An earth elemental would fall into the last category, so the effects would also apply to earth elementals. The next column gives details on what exactly the new effects will be. There are default settings, so I only have to specify the important stuff. The effects always use opcode 177, they would be calling in an external effect "PRSPLVL8". That external effect protects against ADHW. So this means, all creatures made of bones, non-living flesh, minerals, and incorporeal creatures would be immune to ADHW!

I'll let you figure out how the next row works, it's pretty simple.

That being said, I also have some other good news to share. I am 100% done decentralizing the ADD_PROJECTILE functions from the required first component into those components that really need them. 95% of the new cloud projectiles have been appended to CLEARAIR.2da, so your deadly Death Fog can easily be countered by some Sweet Air.

Sectypes will no longer override your old sectypes, the components append the MSECTYPE.2da only when necessary. I still have to mass patch spells to take the new sectypes into account, which I will do in a week when I get back from vacation.

Also, I've changed some of the spells to be party friendly (prismatic spray, will do whirlwind), and others are now more interesting. Here are the two most interesting changes:
- Earthquake now lasts for an instant, but affects creatures even if they are standing on the other side of the wall - the damage is not high, but the exploitation possibilities make this spell a 7th level spell. When cast indoors, it causes debris to rain on the creatures for 5D12 points of damage.
- A fireball or a fireshield not only clears away patches of webs, but starts a fire inside the web that spreads to interconnecting webs, damaging creatures within.

Here is my to-do list, and my estimate to how much time each will take: finish race sensitive effects (1 day), sectypes (1-2 days), clearair.2da (1 day), cleanup of some of the old macros (2-3 days), breaking down the components (2-3 days), and whatever new spells I can bring over from Lost Crossroads (much of it is copying and pasting, I don't have an estimate for this).

-Galactygon

[Galactygon]

08-09-10

I'm finished with racesensitive effects - it took me 2.5 days instead of 1, but that includes testing. The results are very good, subtelities include: Death Fog conceals and slows small and medium creatures but giant sized creatures can easily pass through, . I'm also finished with CLEARAIR.2da - this one took 10 minutes instead of 1 day. So that leaves me half a day behind.

This my to-do list for this week: make sure the new sectypes interact regardless of what components the user installs, break down the components (which will now be pretty easy), and fine-tune Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, Blade Barrier, Thorn Spray, and Circle of Bones.

I'm pretty sure SpellPack B6 will be in a releasable format by the end of this week, and by the next week I will be into porting spells from Lost Crossroads, and looking into supporting DR's sphere system.

-Galactygon

This post has been edited by Galactygon: Aug 9 2010, 11:03 AM

[Galactygon]

08-17-10

I'm done writing all the patch macros for SpellPack B6.

My to-do list looks like this:
- Break down the components (they are already technically independant, I just have to write the BEGIN @COMPONENT_NUMBER). I will announce my decisions for the surveys thread tomorrow, when I have finished breaking down the components. This will take a few hours at most.
- Convert the .ogg sounds on a component by component basis.
- Split the Tweaks into a new mod
- Add new spells

SpellPack B6 will be in a releasable format tomorrow. Because I have work to do next week in RL, I will guarantee a release sometime next week. All of the bugs have been fixed, so only new content will be compromised if I run out of time.

SpellPack B6 is completely different from it's predecessors mostly due to my attitude. For the previous versions, my vision for SpellPack was a "taste of Lost Crossroads" at most, a fooling-around mod at least. SpellPack was a satellite mod of Lost Crossroads, and I figured "Lost Crossroads will be released anyway".

After some hardships in RL, I figured Lost Crossroads is never going to be finished if I keep working on it like I did in the past few years with ambitious dreams. So now I've given up working on Lost Crossroads; all of my planned content will be broken down into a series of smaller mods. Many, smaller releases motivate to produce content at a more efficient pace.

As for the bugs, there were some. I do not consider SpellPack B5 to be exceptionally buggy, but a few painful ones - Web, HorridWilting, installer bailing out on corrupt files - and some components overriding existing old spells with new ones caused people to shy away from earlier versions of SpellPack. All of this is gone from SpellPack B6; you should be safe to play every single component with the standard repertoire of mods. Every single file that is not patched in the game will be documented in the readme under each component.

-Galactygon

This post has been edited by Galactygon: Aug 17 2010, 09:08 PM