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Ethereal Monsters?


MisterManlyMan

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Hi. I've been thinking about adding some ghost-like monsters to my scenario; ones that can go through walls to hunt you down and stuff. I know this can be done if you make the terrain Walk Through Opaque and throw a Can't Enter node on it, but afaik this only works well under special circumstances. I want this type of monster to be able to walk through ANY terrain, in any town, without other NPCs/monsters having the same ability. Is there a way to do this currently? I'm not very familiar with the new editor, so I might have missed something.

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I don't remember anything as easy as that. Walls were always a party's best line of defense. But there are tricks you can do like destroying a monster on one side of the wall and creating it again on the other side or setting timers for when to make a monster appear close to the party. You'd have to do it very intentionally, I think.

 

That said, I was last in the editor about eight years ago so... what do I know, eh?

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I haven't added anything to allow monsters to move through arbitrary walls. There is a way for the player to do so in debug mode, but that's probably not relevant.

 

With the removal of various limits, a solution similar to what you described is likely more viable than it used to be; you could even put the Can't Enter special in the terrain definition (rather than using a ton of placed specials in every town). It's still not a general solution, though; in particular, it won't help the monster pass through doors (they'll just open the door like any other monster).

 

I had nebulous plans for letting individual monsters specify which types of terrain they can move through (for example, to allow for swimming monsters). This could potentially also allow for ethereal monsters. However, I haven't given much thought to this, so it's unlikely to be implemented for awhile. (Probably not in time for 2.0.)

 

If I recall correctly, you can use a node to teleport a monster through a wall with the latest OBoE, making a solution similar to what Balladeer solved more viable, since current hp and status effects will be preserved by teleport. If I do not recall correctly, it probably wouldn't be very hard to implement teleportation of monsters. It's also possible to make a monster call a special node as part of its turn.

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Oh, I think I should note that the game is looking for scenarios in C:\Users\"myname"\AppData\Roaming\Blades of Exile\Scenarios, not in the actual scenario folder. If there are no scenarios in there, the game will tell you to put it in Blade of Exile Scenarios folder even though it's not looking there. It took me a while to figure this out because I didn't notice the editor was directing me there until the third time lol. The three starting scenarios work fine, though.

 

Also, I noticed the action buttons (spells, look, use, fight, etc.) are static, as nothing happens when I click on them. The shortcuts work fine, except for a (map), s (shoot missile), u (use), and e (end combat).

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Oh, I think I should note that the game is looking for scenarios in C:\Users\"myname"\AppData\Roaming\Blades of Exile\Scenarios, not in the actual scenario folder. If there are no scenarios in there, the game will tell you to put it in Blade of Exile Scenarios folder even though it's not looking there. It took me a while to figure this out because I didn't notice the editor was directing me there until the third time lol. The three starting scenarios work fine, though.

The different location is intentional, since applications generally don't have write access to their own directory these days. I should correct the note saying where to place it, though; but I don't remember when that happens? How did you get the game to tell you where to place scenarios?

 

Also, I noticed the action buttons (spells, look, use, fight, etc.) are static, as nothing happens when I click on them. The shortcuts work fine, except for a (map), s (shoot missile), u (use), and e (end combat).

Okay, this is pretty bad. Ugh. It's probably fixable by tweaking a few constants in the code, though. Hopefully. I'll look into it.
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One issue is that AppData isn't really meant for user-editable stuff: it's a hidden folder, so people have to go out of their way a little bit to put things in there. I feel like the best place for something that needs to be editable by both users and the program would be a folder in Documents.

 

How did you get the game to tell you where to place scenarios?

 

I think you get that error message if you try to start one of the pre-included scenarios (Valley of Dying Things, etc.) and the game can't find it, or if you try to start a custom scenario when the scenario folder is empty.

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Being hidden wouldn't be a problem if there's a button to open the folder from in-game. (Which there isn't at the moment, but I have thought about adding one. It could replace the How To Order button, or maybe be a button in the scenario selection dialog.) Mind you, I'm not really opposed to moving the scenarios folder to documents or similar, though (but I'd leave prefs and logs there).

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How did you get the game to tell you where to place scenarios?

After you create a new scenario, the save box will come up, and it always has that particular folder open to start. If not for that, I don't think I would have ever figured out what was going on without help. This only happens when you make a new scenario in the editor, and not when you try to Open or Save As (unless it was the last folder you had opened, of course).
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Ah, so a prompt comes up in the game when you click on Custom Scenario but have no scenarios in the AppData folder (and you have a party loaded ofc). It says,

 

"Blades of Exile currently has no scenarios installed. To install a scenario, copy it (with extra graphics files, if any) into the Blades of Exile Scenarios folder."

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I remember in the Troglo/Giant quest in E3, the place with shifting walls had ethereal monsters, but that was a one-off based on weird terrain in there (and they didn't go through normal terrain).

 

Had a similar idea about monsters that could go through windows, but that was just going to be more fiddling with terrain and keeping it as a one off.

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