posted
Would appreciate a fix for the feedback loop bug where a summon/all on summoned monsters summons the maximum number of entities allowed in a scene.
Would also appreciate a unification of the host's party and the "summoned/allied monsters" party, so that heal/all, damage/all, summon/all spells work properly across teams.
-------------------- Constantinople! We shall never forget your zany barge poles! Posts: 4232 | From: Gresham, OR | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
These are probably asking too much, but @eventIncarnate and @eventDisincarnate in SCENE 0 would be really useful. The commands, of course, would be enacted on the character as they incarnated or disincarnated (including exiting the game). This would be helpful if you wanted to have game events be dependent on a scaled time (so a real hour might be a day, or even a week of game time), but only while the player was actually playing (it wouldn't be fair to have years pass while the player sat disincarnated, would it?).
This way, I could set incarnateTime to whatever time.now is when the player incarnates, and disIncarnateTime whenever they disincarnate, and then figure out where in the progression of time we are any time the player enters a scene, so that the player could have a different experience in a shop at closing time than during mid-day or similar things (which add a great deal of variety at fairly low cost, when supplying conversational strings by calling the same function from each scene).
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Along the same line of thought is a new addition to the COLOR command: Lighting. I realize that this would most likely not work as well as might be hoped, but I would like the ability to change the "lighting" in a scene (so I could make it purply at sunset or bluey at night, with greater precision). One method I can think of for this is by bit-limiting the image to apply the color to to a different index in your pallette (the default being white, or no limit).
This method works at least for the white in the scene quite well, changing it from white to whatever new index has been chosen. Perhaps the index could be chosen through a dotted argument?
The big problem is that 8 doesn't divide nicely by three, which means that souls.pal is just a list of indexes at heart (with (probably) 24-bit colors to match each index), so that doesn't work quite nearly so well. It would mean having to process the image with the color before reducing it to pallette (which would produce better results, but means that smoothing must be re-done, which would bloat the cache).
I guess this one should wait for the (never-going-to-happen) upgrade to 24-bit (or better yet, 32-bit (alpha-masking FTW!)) color.
And no, there aren't enough parenthetical statements in there yet.
-------------------- Constantinople! We shall never forget your zany barge poles! Posts: 4232 | From: Gresham, OR | Registered: Nov 2003
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These would be optional extra frames which would have meaning based on which world they were in. Probably most useful for monsters (or hero skins provided with the world), these would be extra frames which could be indicated for use by spell or item properties (so, when attacking with amazing spell 3, we use the amazing spell frame rather than the spell frame).
This would be amazing for some of the persistent NPC characters I've got, because each of the various spells they can cast would cause them to have different appearances while casting, which would be pretty much awesome. Obviously, if a given frame did not exist, the default (attack/magic) would be used.
-------------------- Constantinople! We shall never forget your zany barge poles! Posts: 4232 | From: Gresham, OR | Registered: Nov 2003
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All of the speed hacks that work in camps other than your own work in the same way. All of them cause attack packets to be sent abnormally fast. Perhaps you could add some form of limiter in a camp owners' camp for how often an attack packet can be received? That would stop some of the more prevalent abuses of it.
posted
OK, well, this is just a last minute thing I thought I would cram in.
You know the hot key popup window? This is another way to see your hotkeys
This is an OPTION.
1.) it is limited to function keys F2-F12 (I fixed F10)
2.) you can bind a spell or an item to an fkey either by ctrl-FKeyNN while spell is selected, or ctrl-click-on-hotkey-button
3.) feature requires at least a 1024 wide WoS window
4.) point to a button to see details
5.) for items, shows the item image, for spells shows the 'element image' (it's actually set up so someday I could have per-spell images)
But it's limited to just the F keys, and F2,3,4 are still special, so really only for your 8 favorite spells/items.
I was thinking (not yet) of making a right click on an item button sort mean 'use it on myself in next move' to make it easier to eat a cheese sandwich in a hurry.
-------------------- He knows when you are sleeping. Posts: 10752 | From: California | Registered: Dec 1998
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posted
Now that's pretty badass, but what icon will be used for various spells and can you click on the hot key to change to it rather than the fkey?
-------------------- SoV: Exalted Devout Oracle | World Developer | The Black Guard Outside is just a prank older kids tell younger kids at Internet Camp Posts: 9509 | From: NY | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Note: in the image above, most of those *are* spells, and the image is showing the 'element' of the spell (and you have to point at a button to see the actual spell name, or remember your binding, if you map more than one spell of the same element.)
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It works like this...
Your world can override a new file "spells.bmp" (moral equivalent of helmets.bmp swords.bmp etc.)
Failing any other input, I depict a spell by taking an image from this filmstrip, with index 0 being used for element 0, etc. Up to 8 (8 and above all use image 8 - chaos)
So on the button bar, in A96, you will see the same image for two spells of the same element, and will need to remember which is which (or point to one and see it's name appear, as in the picture above).
And remember the WoS metaphor is still the reverse of WoW (click on weapon, then click repeatedly on target, as opposed to the WoW mode of click on target, then click repeatedly on weapon).
So when you click on a button bar button, it does exactly the same thing that pressing the matching FKey would do. it just 'quick selects' that spell/item, it doesn't cast/use it until you click on the target.
But yes, as a convenience, I made it so you can bind a button like this:
1.) get a spell or item selected 2.) hold CTRL key down 3.) click in button. (or tap FKEY, your choice)
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FOR THE FUTURE (not A96), I want to:
1.) add a couple numbers to the spell table so that an individual spell can call out a different image than the one implied by its element. Such that "4.2" would mean "use image index 2 from the filmstrip spells_4.bmp"
Then an ambitious world developer could give every spell a unique graphic.
Still the downside of that is that people would inevitably expect more buttons (buttons which would not actually be related to FKEYs) In the "I only have 8 buttons" world, it's easy to conceive you would map to your favorite restores, and most powerful attacks and maybe 8 can manage that.
2.) I would like to be able to right-click on a button and have that be more insta-action. (Obviously it could only work during my turn, one hopes, but let it assume the target to either be 'me' or 'the guy I have been whacking on most recently') Mainly so I could eat a cheese sandwich when I was close to death, without a lot of fumbling around.
In this case, I would want the click to be 'temporary' and have focus return immediately to whatever weapon I had selected before the right click (so to speak), rather than actually changing the focus to the thing I right-clicked on.
-------------------- SoV: Exalted Devout Oracle | World Developer | The Black Guard Outside is just a prank older kids tell younger kids at Internet Camp Posts: 9509 | From: NY | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
What about editable cap for level, GP, and PP?
Such as you can level up to 50 at max or 900 at max. Change it that your money only stops at 30,000 instead of 1 million. Change it that pp only stops at 30,000, etc..
posted
Is there a chance we could get a map flag like 2048 (No Rewards), but only no xp? I want the player to still receive items, trophies, and gold, just not xp.
But anyways.. Dan, is it possible to get a map flag that basically makes all fights on the map FIGHT2? It'd be so much easier that way instead of having to check for every map during every fight scene then tell it to skip over to a FIGHT2 command. Basically a "you cannot run on this map" flag. It'd be great!
posted
Also, could we get a Mission option that would force players to turn in their mission where it was received?
It makes more sense to do that when a mission giver asks them to bring back the head of a bad guy, or an engineer needs you to bring him more sprockets for his gears.
I was hoping for a "can only be turned in in scene nn" kind of option. So they could only turn it in if they are in the right scene.
posted
Alright, another Mission request. (they're like the best thing since cookies!)
Missions currently are trophy based. Which is great! But would it be possible to add other conditions as well? Here's what I want to be able to do: send the player on a mission to kill 10 rabid bunnies, because they're spreading rabies among the rabbit population.
The only way I can currently do this with a Mission would be to make a trophy, tie it to the rabid bunnies, set the drop rate to 100%, then require 10 of the trophies. This method works, but it takes up some potentially valuable trophy bag space when all I really want them to do is kill 10 rabid bunnies.
Also:
Would it be possible to allow us to set or add to a cookie upon completion of a mission? This ties in with my request for the "you must be in scene nn to turn in this mission" because I'm pretty sure you require a scene to modify cookies. Anyway, basically what I'm looking to do is add to a players "reputation" each time they complete a mission. The more missions they do, the more reputation they have throughout the world, etc.
Also..
Would it be possible to show the EXP and PP they would gain in the mission book? It shows the gold, items, and spells they would receive, but not the amount of exp and pp. It's not a huge issue for me, if you don't show it for some reason of your own that's fine, I was just wondering if it'd be possible.
quote: Would it be possible to allow us to set or add to a cookie upon completion of a mission? This ties in with my request for the "you must be in scene nn to turn in this mission" because I'm pretty sure you require a scene to modify cookies. Anyway, basically what I'm looking to do is add to a players "reputation" each time they complete a mission. The more missions they do, the more reputation they have throughout the world, etc.
Couldn't you give a token, read the token, add the cookie, then take the token?
Something like...
code:
;script gave T57 for completion of the mission IF T57, @add END
@add ADD cookie, "2" TAKE T57 END
It takes a bit more of a hassel, but it's also a bit easier than Dan reworking his missions engine.
-------------------- SoV: Exalted Devout Oracle | World Developer | The Black Guard Outside is just a prank older kids tell younger kids at Internet Camp Posts: 9509 | From: NY | Registered: Apr 2003
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Right now (I think) it works where a weapon/spell can use a trophy and give another trophy, but it requires the first trophy to even attack. Could it be set that the weapon/spell can still be used, but just not give the second trophy without being able to use up the first one?
Another option that would be cool would be if not using a trophy to attack did less damage. Like hitting someone with a baseball bat without having a baseball to compliment it would only do 100% max damage.
Of course, the option to set it above 80% can allow for some nice plot twists.
-------------------- SoV: Exalted Devout Oracle | World Developer | The Black Guard Outside is just a prank older kids tell younger kids at Internet Camp Posts: 9509 | From: NY | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: Couldn't you give a token, read the token, add the cookie, then take the token?
Something like...
code:
;script gave T57 for completion of the mission IF T57, @add END
@add ADD cookie, "2" TAKE T57 END
It takes a bit more of a hassel, but it's also a bit easier than Dan reworking his missions engine.
Technically yes, but that still requires the person to enter a scene with that in it, and I'd really rather not clutter up a whole bunch of scenes with more lines to read than it really needs to. I know it's not a huge amount of lines yet, but there's also the fact you can only give one token per mission, and sometimes you may want to give the player a token you don't want to take away and modify a cookie too.
Anyway, another mission request: Repeatable Missions.
Either a mission option or some way to make the mission available again. Here's what I'd like to be able to do:
Send the player on a mission to get some bear skins that drop from the bear because the tanner needs leather. This gives the tanner materials to make some leather armor for the player to buy. But the tanner needs more leather to make higher level armors, so he needs the player to go get more for him.
I realize this is capable with scripting in the scene, but I'm trying to utilize missions as the main object in keeping the player focused on what needs to be done.
posted
It'd be neat to be able to set a limit to what level monsters below you will give xp. I'll try to explain.
Let's say Johnny, who is at level 30 kills a level 5 jelly. Normally Johnny would receive his rewards and xp, but with this option, world developers could say that if a player kills a monster x levels below them, they receive no xp. So lets say that number was 10. If Johnny killed anything level 20 or below, he would only receive gold, trophies, and random drops, no xp.
It'd help keep players killing things their level, and it kind of makes sense, you can only learn so much until you need something more difficult to learn on. Maybe something in config.ini?
posted
Even better would be specifying two numbers and having it curve off (diminishing returns kind of thing), with it not losing much at first, then dropping steeply and finally petering out slowly near the end.
Edit for typos, which is what I get for typing with one hand late at night.
Would be amazing, since they get sent to every client anyway. Sets event.category and event.variable, I would think.
If category is a soul ID (8-digit hex or 9-character string starting in "Soul "), auto-forward only to that player, if connected
This would work in conjunction with the previous one, to make developer-created minigames possible against other humans rather than just possible against AI. Obviously, not real-time minigames (due to the 3000ms lag induced by sending SSVs at all), but perhaps turn-based ones light on sending stuff. Between 2 people, no more.
Really, I'm thinking of a turn-based battle simulator. It'd be rad.
-------------------- Constantinople! We shall never forget your zany barge poles! Posts: 4232 | From: Gresham, OR | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
Can you give me a couple of coordinates and boundaries to help me figure out the initial "checkerboard" placement of enemies? It'd be quite useful for scripted fights and such.
-------------------- Constantinople! We shall never forget your zany barge poles! Posts: 4232 | From: Gresham, OR | Registered: Nov 2003
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Send a specific variable to one person of a specific soul id
serverSideRangeVariable
Send a specific variable to a group of people that fall under a specific range of ID (say GS 1000-GS 2000)
Coupled with flamelords request of @eventServerSideVariableReceived you could make a pretty cool long range quest or game that doesn't spam the entire server.
Posts: 1992 | From: Beaverton, OR | Registered: Apr 2002
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At long last, you can use timers to restart a script after it has ENDed. You have 10 timers (numbered 0 - 9). When a scene first starts, all the timers are turned off. You turn on a timer like this:
TIMER 4, 7.8 END
This means that timer 4 will fire in 7.8 seconds from RIGHT NOW (time starts from the moment you execute the TIMER command, NOT from a subsequent END command.)
When the timer fires, it looks for a label like:
@eventTimer4
(where 4 is the timer ID from this example, but could be 0 through 9)
Like other events, timer events can only trigger while the scene is ENDed (and they wake the scene back up.)
So, what are timers good for?
Well, you could maybe end a fight, change the weather, play a sound effect, change the background, evaluate how long it took someone to do something, etc.
If you wanted a periodic timer, you might try something like this
1: I will change the weather every second TIMER 1, 1.0 END
@timerEvent1 WEATHER %R9 TIMER 1, 1.0 END
So, when the timer triggers, I change the weather to a random value 0-9 and then restart the timer for another second (and then END again, of course!)
posted
SO! I've finally messed around with the tactics things, and I'm coming with a few suggestions / bugs repport. Sorry if the bugs have already been repported. Here we go:
Bug: When a player use a piece during a battle, and then no longer meet the requirement to use it (he has the token needed taken for instance), he will still be able to use them as long as he doesn't change them to another piece.
Bug: Bots can't manage weapons with a minimum range. A bot with such a weapon will move next to its target, then try to hit it (of course he can't as it's too close), and then just do nothing.
Bug: Bots have hard time with long ranged weapons (no minimum range this time). Typically, they're gonna move next to their target, then hit it. The next turn, they're won't do anything (no rest points). But then, instead of staying at the same place (I supposed they're still standing next to their target), they gonna move to another place, and hit again. For example, if they were on the adjacent bottom step, they're gonna move to the upper step. So basically instead of hitting every turn, they hit one turn out of 2, and lose 50% of their effectiveness. If 2 pieces with longe ranged attacks fight together, both are gonna do this untill they hit a map border (sometimes pieces bugging with the minimal range thing will do it too). Eventually, they will keep doing it untill they hit a corner, and then it gets really funny :/ I still remember waiting 30 mins (well I was afk...) for the yellow bot to decide what to do
Suggestion: Don't show the pieces you cannot use (when you have only 20ish pieces you can use among 150ish, it's kinda boring): even if they're grey-outted, scrolling down (very slowly) to pick a piece between ID #140 and 160 is kinda boring.
Suggestion: Let us make somthing like: you can only use one out of all these pieces per battle (so players can pick a "champion" for their army among several).
Suggestion: Let us define token restrictions or something like that for bots (or a range or pieces they can use for every bots or something like that). To be more contrete: I'm adding "armies" in Athelias. Players will chose between humans, elves, orcs, etc, and get a set of pieces they can use accordingly. But when it comes to bots, they pick any piece, so you see elves and undeads fighting side by side for example, which is definitely not what I'm looking for (and I could add that the random piece picking of bots may make things unballanced, as in every army, there are 1 or 2 pieces a bit stronger than the others: champions, warlords, etc. A normal player can use only one of them, but bots can come up with 3 or 4 of these pieces, as it's gonna pick them in different armies.).
Suggestion: let us save "templates" for our armies (sets of 9 pieces predefined by the user). In the above example, players could locally store a "dwarf army" template, and a "gnome army" template, etc, so they won't have to go through all the pieces to change them whenever they decide to change the army they play.
Last request: this is not related to the tactics game, but there are a few issues with the new shortcut bar. The actors that were on the bottom of the screen are now half-covered by it. The same goes for monsters during a fight. Eventually, you not able to hit a small monster that spawns on the very bottom of the screen, because it's totally covered by the bar. So I'd suggested to change the way the actors/monsters/players position are caculated. The Y coords shouldn't range anymore from the top to the bottom of the screen in my mind, but from the top of the screen to the top of the shortcut bar. That would definitely fix the problem.
posted
No, the y coords should definitely range to the bottom of the screen. Losing that much real estate would be unpleasant at best, at smaller resolutions.
-------------------- Constantinople! We shall never forget your zany barge poles! Posts: 4232 | From: Gresham, OR | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
So what do you suggest for the issue with small monsters completly hidden by the hotkeys bar? WDs could eventually go through their scripts and change the position of several thoussands of actors to make them fully visible but there is nothing to do for monsters...
EDIT - And at lower resolution, they cannot use the hotkey bar, can they?
posted
Most SFX archives are changing their sounds from wav to mp3 as it is. The ability to use MP3s instead of WAVs will drastically help (and let's face it, which sort of cheating is preferable: Using scenes at every link to have OMFG huge sound files playing, or using scenes at every link to have nice, tidy sound files playing?)
Posts: 64 | Registered: Nov 2007
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posted
MP3 leads to copyright troubles. It's not evitable.
Besides, they're enormous compared to midi files. And against wave files? Heck, just convert them to wave. Sure, you take a hit on size, but you can use them without Dan needing to add mp3 support.
-------------------- Constantinople! We shall never forget your zany barge poles! Posts: 4232 | From: Gresham, OR | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
I'm too lazy to check, but .bmp files and .png files are close to the same size inside a .zip, are .wav and .mp3 much different in that regard?
-------------------- SoV: Exalted Devout Oracle | World Developer | The Black Guard Outside is just a prank older kids tell younger kids at Internet Camp Posts: 9509 | From: NY | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Zipping audio files earns you almost no profit. A standard wave file originally 26.9 mb in size was zipped down to 25.6 mb. The same file, only mp3, originally was 4.89 mb, and zipped down to 4.87 mb.
Granted, these files were about 5 minutes in length and sfx would be much shorter, but as far as zipping goes, you don't cut down on file size that much unless you're working with a huge amount of files.
posted
If not MP3 support, then perhaps Dan would be willing to add OGG support? It wouldn't have the copyright issues of MP3, and filesizes are smaller than those of wav files. I'm sure there are some libraries to aid in the playback of OGG files floating around.
-------------------- SoV - High Priest Posts: 1145 | Registered: May 2005
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-------------------- This signature contains a lot of foul languages. Also racism. Posts: 2227 | From: Yokohama, Japan | Registered: Oct 2002
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posted
I did see the bit about using them in themes, which use sfx. Kinda flipped the curiousity bit, so I'd be interested in hearing why you want to use MP3 for those.
-------------------- Constantinople! We shall never forget your zany barge poles! Posts: 4232 | From: Gresham, OR | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
It could depend. He might be planning on a rather lengthy cutscenes accompanied by voice narrations. In this case if a cutscene is going to last more than a minute, it would be a good idea or even a must to compress wave files into MP3s or OGGs.
-------------------- This signature contains a lot of foul languages. Also racism. Posts: 2227 | From: Yokohama, Japan | Registered: Oct 2002
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My main concern was for other developers getting their file sizes down. I can get wave's down almost as low as mp3 without losing quality, but I don't think everyone else can without the proper software.
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to make them fully visible but there is nothing to do for monsters...
