DevilinDupriest

Normally I'd say the walkthrough is enough, but the more I look at this game, the more I think that a quest checklist would be better. Anyone have one by any chance? Y'know, just: Quest Name/Location recieved/Location of Quest That way you could go down the list and check for ones you've missed. And if you need more info you can always use the walkthrough.

Quote: Originally written by Delicious Vlish: How about the ability to lure rogue creations in to your care with food? Seriously. Why not? I mean, you can adopt creatures like Greenfang and all the others in previous geneforges... If only we also had some way to capture them. Some sort of ball-thing specifically for capturing. *cough* Actually, I don't think that's a bad idea, although balance wise it wouldneed to be pretty specific or pretty limited.

Cool. Good to know. Now I might just play a Battle Buddy army after all. After I'm done with my current mixed fire/magic group.

I can't figure out any way to test this, but I'm pretty sure I just had a Plated Clawbug (zero intelligence, running on AI) attack something next to it, then move, then attack another target. If what I think happened actually happened, it might make ai-run Battle creations a little neater. Although still not useful. ETA: Okay, yeah, it definitely does that. Since I haven't done any melee PC's I have no idea if it's supposed to or not. So...is it supposed to do that? I was under the impression that you weren't supposed to be able to move once you had attacked, period.

Quote: Originally written by Yama: Xian Trall? The Vahnatai Creationists are gaining ground... I'd better double up my mooving prayers. Argh, I just caught that joke from before. Can't believe I had to have it spelled out for me. <--is going to name his next Trall 'Without Sin'.

....Well, that kinda sucked the fun out this thread on a point by point basis. Allow me to rebute: 1) Realism is for threads that don't involve the word 'Wish'. If I wanted to deal in 'realism' I'd go back to the Fallout 3 forums and listen to corporate apologists explain why Bethesda simply doesn't have any choice and 'must' make Fallout 3 a real-time first person game. I mean, honestly, I've lobbied for a personal shaping lab in every single wishlist thread for GF that I've ever posted in. (starting after GF 2, I think, although I could be wrong. I'm absolutely certain that I mentioned it after Avernum 3 and the house you could buy.) Nothing fancy, just find an abandoned lab and clear it out, then use it as a home base. Fun-ness. A great side-plot. What's more, I'm hardly alone in that wish, I know a lot of other people said the same thing. Likewise, there are several other things that are well within the scope of the current engine that have simply never happened. So...realism? Not really interested. It doesn't really seem to affect things one way or the other when it comes to wishlist threads. Which is to say, I've yet to see anything mentioned in a wishlist thread ever happen. 2) Several games? Seems more like since the beginning. See last part of #1. 3) Never is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time. Extremely unlikely I will grant you. Never? Not so much. 4) Rocks are lame. Magic is mostly a bunch of artillery, with the exception of their tier 3. Fire is the 'middle-ground' of both ranged and melee, though somehow it ends up being cooler at both of them. Battle is supposed to be the meleers. Making the fifth tier Battle Creation a gimped range creation was distinctly meh. And for goodness sakes, am I reading the creation damage chart right? Why does it look like the gazer does the highest melee damage of all creations?

Quote: Originally written by Delicious Vlish: Thorny Artilla is on a different map. Keeper Tycho. Heh, I just bumped into it by random, actually, on my latest run through. I never knew that thing actually had a spines like ability, since I've always zorched it at range.

Quote: Originally written by Delicious Vlish: [We are already using the Drakons to engineer our plot to eleminate the shapers. Now. Be quiet. And our plans quiet. Or else I will alter your mind and make you believe you are a chicken decended from a T Rex. Oops, I've said too much. Uhh...I mean, I plan to write a scenario titled, "Night of the Living Tool" that revolves around a facility where living tools have gone rogue and are crawling through the air ducts attacking people. Actually, that *is* one I want to write. heh. Oh, and I definitely agree with Student of Trinity (mostly, I don't neccesarily want to find myself often using mass rush tactics, but I'd like the option. Plus you'd need more open slots to make turrets/mines viable) about making shaping a deeper system. I like most of your ideas, although I do want to add a 'Plant' school, to represent turrets, spinecores, and mines. I *very* much want to be able to shape turrets and mines finally. The use of overlay template bonus abilities, such as 'cryo' is also an interesting one, and would allow for quite a few variations. I'm somewhat afraid that he current variant system would need to be removed if such a system were implemented though. Although, I suppose if one of the options were, say, 'Plated' then the bonuses you get for adding 'Plated' to a creation could vary depending on the type of creation, so you could still get both the Plated Artilla, and the Plated Clawbug. And in fact, could add a damage resistant 'Plated Thahd'. Perhaps also a 'minor shaping' school that includes rats, worms and other such useless things. Why? Why not, I *like* trying to win a game with the most useless allies/powers imaginable. =) Although with more thought, worms could likely be in their own invertebrate school with artilla.

I always enjoy these discussions, so I figure I'll start one. Things I would like to see in GF5 in regards to creations: No more creation management window/section. I like being able to see my creations at a glance, but I'd rather be able to create a zerg rush fyora army. Skip the 7 unit management window, and just have my creations be something I can click on individually or via a list window. That would allow the shaper to create more units. (possibly based on intelligence vs tier level of the creation, since it does often mention that stretching yourself can be very draining mentally) Two: A *massively* widened creation list. If it's out there, I should be able to learn how to make it, even if I have to vivisect it to do so. I'm tired of being a middling little apprentice shaper/life crafter. To that end, there should be so many possible choices that no one character could ever learn all of them. More on this later. Three: Battle Creations. They really should be cooler. Four: More creation types. The three schools has been good to us so far, but it needs to be expanded. More entry level schools should be added, as should advanced schools ala Nethergate's magic system. Five: More unique creation abilities, but they need to stay unique. Like one or two creations should have Spines, one or two should regenerate, one or two should have life-steal, etc. Six: Turrets and mines should be it's own catagory/school. I *WANT* to be able to set up turret ambushes as an Agent/Infiltrator and lure mobs back to them. Likewise mines. Seven: Both rats and worms should also be available as low-cost zergling style shaper units. Rats should be stealthy, worms should just be cheap. Eight: More creations, yet again: All (or at least almost all) variants of a creation should be available, not just one. Basically, my idea is to rework the whole shaping system to throw it wide open and create a lot more options. As it is there are really only two strategys: disposable whatevers, and artillery army. The game really needs a large multitude of creation options to open up strategy options. With more creations you could have some truly big but slow Battlers, some high end creations that are good as glass cannons but nothing else (unlike now when high-end creations are pretty much better at everything since there's so few choices and so few slots to create creations), critters that are good at ambush or stealth attacks, etc Oh, and I'll go ahead and list a specific creation I'd like to see, too: Discipline Vlish: Like the discipline wand, the Discipline Vlish can only damage creations. They are used to keep large armies of thahds and battle alpha's in line while waiting for the attack order. I would also, if Blades of Geneforge ends up happening, like to stake claim to writing a scenario that revolves around Vlish secretly becoming more intelligent over the years and telepathically plotting to escape Shaper control ala the Drakon.

Quote: Originally written by Suspicious Vlish: Quote: their any enemies that anyone can think of that have built in spines? The Thorny Artila from that place where you assist the scout to find the Shaper camp. Ah yes, I seem to recall that. I'll go take a look, thanks.

Spines is a good idea. Likewise, I've been considering regeneration. Are their any enemies that anyone can think of that have built in spines? If so I'll go check their map files to see if it might be possible to borrow that ability. I'm not sure about extra AP for battle-buddies. I mean, on the one hand I can see it, they're hard-charging sons of guns, but on the other hand, I'm a big fan of the 'big and slow' school of ham-fisted smackdownery. Incidently, if anyone has played with the updated version I posted up there, lemme know what you think. Also, does anyone know how the color_adjust works? I'm just kinda putting in numbers at random, currently.

Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: Although I'd be impressed if you could do that without making every place in the game where battle creations swarm you horribly fatal. Well, that part is pretty easy. GF4 calls to a different entry for most hostile units. You just make sure that the hostile versions have the original stats, to avoid upsetting the intended game balance. Changing pc Battle creations is fixing the game balance for a single character type. If the changes were universal, then it would mess things up for all character types. Incidently, I think I made pretty sure of this, for all creations except clawbugs. It's possible that clawbugs may all become the overpowered version I wrote, depending on whether the game checks the just previous entry in a critter species, or goes all the way to checking the first definition of the critter. Hmm. Oh, and Thahds are bit stronger in my version, across the board... Hmm, and Battle Alphas/etc have a bit more health and damage. But not a huge amount. Basically, the clawbugs may be a problem, but the Thahds and Alphas are just a little dangerous now, instead of being upgraded rats/worms.

Well, this was irritating. =) Not a lot accomplished either, but here's version .05 of my modded monsters: http://www.filefactory.com/file/b16672/ http://www.filefactory.com/file/f7e330/ I also apologize about filefactory. Just stick with it, you'll get to the actual download link eventually. As a hint, the download option is generally somewhere in the middle of all the ads. =p Anyway, basically it's the usual drill, download the two of 'em, make a back up copy of your copies, then put those two in your script folder. Here's basically what I did: Thahd: Slightly higher damage, but not much plated bug: slightly higher phys def, and some fire and acid res, added poison back, then improved it's poison attack. Freely admit that this makes it slightly overpowered for it's tier. Don't care. =) Charged Vlish: The new charged vlish is a real fan favorite! Maybe that's why they go so quickly. Ur-Glaahk: added stun back Battle Alpha: slightly higher health and damage (I think...if it works the way I think it does) War Trall: Made a pure melee monster. If I was really into this, I'd make a new character model for him. Currently balance testing. Shock Trall: Very little change, just editted so his thrown attack was fixed. Was going to make this one the 'ranged' version of the new war trall, but since I cannot edit out the 'charged' state I skipped it. Other 1 and 2: ??? I don't think I'm going to do any more, really. If I could actually add content that'd be one thing, but mostly I think I've succeeded in fixing one or two things, and breaking just as many others.

Okay, first note: CR_Natural_Armor: *Impressively* broken. As in character images spazzing out then game crashingly broken. Although to be fair, that may just be how the game responds to *any* unidentifiable command line. In which case you need to be awfully careful modifying, because one unclosed line=hours of hunting for where you forgot to put a ; ETA: Some more notes, for others: Damage type 0=physical 1=magic 2=fire 3=ability 25 disruption? 4=poison 5=Acid? 6=Cold 7=Golem is practically immune? CR_Statistics (I haven't tried to figure these out, yet. I think the first few are the physical stats, although I don't know if this is a straight bonus, a straight replacement, or a level multiplier, or what) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 22 ETAA(gain): And of course, shortly after mentioning just that, I forget to close a tag and spend an hour hunting it down...=p

Interesting. Plated clawbugs appear to have an ability that was commented out: //cr_natural_armor = 8; I'm gonna turn it back on and see what happens. If the game crashes every time I summon one, I'll have this note to remind me to comment it back out. =) Also, their attack ability level was set at 0...however, since I'm not exactly sure how attack ability level truly affects things (I think it affects the percentage change of special effects...not sure..it might be what gets multiplied for the effect_per_level string from objmisc though) I just went ahead and cut and pasted the clawbug attack ability whole clothe. Interestingly, I can't see any reason the ur-glaahk didn't have stun when the glaahk does. If this works the way I think it should, since it shows no attack ability, it should have inherieted the base critters attack. Hrrrm. Well, took care of that one too. Maybe. I'll have to reroll with a trainer to test. A *lot* of the second level critters, at least the early ones, have zero difference except for their base level and max health (although I'm not absolutely sure that max health means what it sounds like). I was expecting at least some changes in resistance level. Hmm. The 'charged' variants seems to be handled internally, so I can't edit those out into something else. Alas. Hehe. Alwan and Greta's attack upgrades are still listed in the objmisc file, just commented out. I'm tempted to reassign them to different slots and use them. HMmm: cr_abil_step_of_launch Just an educated guess, but that's to determine at what point in the animation the damage is 'delivered'? Otherwise I can't figure out what could be affected from the itemschar file that might apply to. Anyone know? Eh. I'm not going to mess with it. Gazer has three different attack abilities? Did I miss a memo somewhere? Well, I think I'm going to test what I have so far, the plated bug, Ur-Glaahk, and War Trall. I'm not sure exactly where the Rot's double-strike is handled. It may be internal. Likewise, before I can really play with this stuff, I'm going to have to sit down and map out what all of the 1-22 CR_statistics are for critters, and which status_effect goes with which number. Since I can't really add new critters whole clothe, I may simply leave it at this. If so, once I've tested it, I'll post it here.