TheKian

There is no definitive answer, but there's a list of usual subjects. Given what the desert sage says, it's not unreasonable to suppose that it's a previous player character (where the rebel endings to G3/G4 are more or less the canon). Just because you were found wandering in the mountains doesn't mean that you were necessarily involved there previously. A decent assumption is that, if you select a rebel class, it's the G4 PC, while if you select a Shaper class, it's the G3 PC, which accounts for the evidence about as well as you can.

Other popular ideas include Shaper Monarch, but he fits more poorly.

If I recall correctly, the Sholai have magic (but not Shaping). Essence is just a slurry of organic bits, basically, that serve as the basis for producing living creatures, but not the foundation of magic. There are spells in the game that cost essence, but I'm not sure it exactly has a meaning lore-wise separate from the gameplay mechanic (any more than your ability to run past people in combat mode means you're invisible, say).

Checking the walkthrough, it seems you may be able to use the servant mind in the Darkstone Core to open up the mine instead, although that requires not killing it, killing a drayk and then passing a 9 leadership check with the mind. And also feeding it. But, you know, if it's alive you can see if that works.

I do not believe so. You may have to test it out just to be sure, but I believe it destroys the items and creates a new copy of the artifact, so it wouldn't keep the augment.

A new version is finally out! Shaper Edition v1.2 adds many quality of life features and generally makes things much more pleasant.

You can download it here or in the main post.

Patch notes for this version are as follows:

OG1's (and G2's, and G3's, and G4's) zones are a different format than in G5 (where we do know the zone format), and nobody (so far as I know) knows the format, so no zone modding for it. I also imagine the new one's zone structure is different as well, so probably no such mods for it either.

Editing the image shouldn't have any impact on the color of the cryora. The game just palette-swaps the image, regardless of the bitmap file. Are you certain you didn't accidentally enable fast graphics mode or something? I haven't played the demo, but I assume it might have that setting from G5, which gets rid of palette swapping (makes everything look the same).

Making the small Fyora sprites would be pretty EASY, but horrendously tedious. What I'd do is use something like Paint .NET to remove all the black lines and resize the image down to 60% size and then copy over each square to the original, which would take forever. The alternative would involve meddling with the tileset definitions, which would probably end up being just as tedious because you'd need to make sure that the new resized sprite sheet works for the new tile definition, since resizing won't end up with the tile borders being correct.

But if you have enough time on your hands, I'd suggest you try the fairly easy first method.

Edit: Also, in earlier versions of Geneforge, editing the bitmaps can cause serious issues if they're not encoded properly. I don't know whether the remake uses the typical encoding, but it's possible there can be issues with the color palette etc. when you try to edit it.

8 hours ago, alhoon said:

Man the game is scary... For starters the "Canisters are the main way to gain abilities" sounds a bit ominous... I mean, I value the choice and all, but I would prefer to keep my sanity. 

Unless G1M has very significant differences from G1, there is basically no way to get magical abilities without canisters. Just maybe a few points in a couple abilities from script events.

The noble (creatable) Ornk has been an Easter egg in every Geneforge game. I rather doubt that such a beautiful, iconic creature would be removed in the remake. Also there was never any indication that the cockatrice would be upgradable.

3 minutes ago, alhoon said:

And before we put  the cart in front of the horse... is anyone willing to make such a modification that includes a patch for the ending? Or it's an academic discussion?

As I have mentioned at some point in the past, I eventually plan to add a feature to GeneMS where people can make ending/quest modifications and then use GeneMS to apply it to the executable. After asking Jeff for permission, of course. Haven't had much time lately, though.

3 hours ago, Sealing Librarian said:

 

I did not say the second part, and I in fact linked to a Wikipedia article that states: "while redistributing complete games with adaptions most likely does not fall under fair use, distributing the modifications as a patch might be legally permissible; however, that conclusion has not been tested in court."

I guess I misread the article; it mentions a court upholding what appears to be a system that patches games (including Nintendo games) at runtime.

17 minutes ago, alhoon said:

 

I still don't think it's legal even with a patcher. Unless there are parts in the discussion that I have missed.

What Slarty said is that patches can be in a somewhat legally gray area but have been upheld by courts. The kind of patch I'm talking about is even less legally suspect because it doesn't involve reverse engineering the code or distributing the code with alterations, just changing text. Slarty's suggestion, with which I'd agree, is to ask Spiderweb for permission before distributing anything like it.

Just now, alhoon said:

 

Unless you mod it, as I mentioned above. 😉

As regards ending text, you can view it in the executable using a hex editor. As I previously explained re quest descriptions, the only legal way to distribute a mod for it would be with a patcher.

Trakovites and the 3 Shaper options (Alwan, Taygen and Astoria) fight Ghaldring and only Ghaldring. When allying with the rebels, you fight the Shapers and only the Shapers. Those are the only factions.

Hold up, I just noticed something. Somehow the character in the screenshot has 2 thahds or battle alphas, a clawbug, 2 cryoras, an artila and fyora with only 53 essence?! I understand there may be development cheats or something active, but that seems... extremely odd.

I can't speak to what creatures or items could be behind it (although I guess Randomizer can), but I can import the terrain from G4 into my modding suite and the terrain is just an empty 3x3 square room. So most likely a cut cell for a creature intended to join the fight.

Some interesting things in the stat list. Evasion instead of anatomy, which I suppose makes a lot more sense than parrying kill spells. Essence mastery is a new attribute, which leaves one wondering how it interacts with intelligence. Does it reduce essence costs, perhaps? It would make spellcasting for Shapers a lot easier.

Also an actual stat for stealth. Not sure how much of a point it has when running past enemies in combat mode still works. Perhaps he's making it so enemies register you running past them on your turn.

I assumed that ab_missile_short_range determines whether you can use it at close range (in earlier Geneforge games, if you're too close you do a melee attack instead of a spell even with the spell as default attack). I think that was removed in G4/5 so it may not do anything in the later games.

As regards the problem with not moving into range to do the melee cleave attack, does the ability still work if it's set to ab_abil_type = 0? Also maybe try ab_abil_type = 23, which was the Geneforge 4 area spell ability type.

I am not 100% sure, but I am fairly certain ranged attacks have a hardcoded range.

There is a drayk in zone 43 with a special cleave attack, but it appears to be coded into its script:

            print_named_str(ME,"whirls around, cleaving the air with its claws.");

            damage_nearby(get_ran(get_level(ME) + get_attack_bonus(ME),1,8),ae_range,0,0);

            pc_heard_sound_delay(3,100);

                             spray_missiles(15,12,ae_range);

This appears to be based on the mobae.txt script. Maybe you could find a way to work that in, but doubtful.

Jeff tried to make acid spray a multi-target attack using ab_num_of_missiles, but apparently it only works for actual projectile attacks.

I think something you could do is try making an attack ability based on the war blessing definition.

    import = 9;

    ab_name = "War Blessing";     

*ability stuff*

         ab_range = 5;

    ab_energy_cost = 10;

    ab_essence_cost = 3;

    ab_ability_sound = 100;

I'd say try constructing it to do physical damage and setting ab_range to 1.

Alternately you could try to copy the melee attack ability but add a projectile to it and use ab_num_of_missiles.

10 hours ago, MadCreator said:

Thanks for the info, that is really cool, maybe I'll add some very interesting companions at some point.

 

I had been hoping to post my "teaser" for my mod on Halloween, but I have come upon a bis problem. Despite my g5itemschars currently being the same size as the original, it isn't running. This feels like the file size limit issue, but again, mine is identical in size to the original, and I've seen that the warrior mod is even slightly bigger but works just fine. Ive only changed existing things so far so I'm kind of at a loss here. Is there some weird limitation I'm not aware of? I'm going over it with a fine toothed comb to make sure I didn't screw anything up but I thought I'd ask before I go crazy.

There's a maximum ID for stuff. 255 for creatures (256 total), 511 for items (512 total).

Honestly, I was kind of hoping to not have the radioactive-vomit-green GUI in the remake. Ah, well.

I wasn't sure of it before, but it definitely looks like the remake is going to have the southwestern areas be a lot less green. Not sure how I feel about that. I thought the point was that wasteland was slowly spreading out from

20 hours ago, Gameman112358 said:

*snippity snip*

Do you know if you can apply those effects to party members? I imagine you would be able to, but the question remains of whether those effects are tied to the creature itself or are limited to the zone where it's applied.

Okay, so the warded gamma has the mobgroupgd script which obviously doesn't have any reactive abilities, so the zone script is the most likely source. I suspected set_new_abil to be the most likely culprit (based on the Runewarded Thahds), but couldn't find anything defining that ability. It does, however, definitely confirm that you can't bake anything like that into a creation. It is possible that what you could do is go in a loop through the party members, and if any of them is creature type <whatever creation it is>, use set_new_abil on them, and put that in every single zone script.

My best guess is that those abilities are somehow hardcoded. They definitely do not correspond to abilities defined in gf5objsmisc.txt, and they don't correspond to whatever hardcoded ability types are referred to in the ability definitions by ab_abil_type = #. It kind of makes sense that they'd be hardcoded, because all the more complicated effects (how protection works, how regeneration works, how speed works, etc.) are all hardcoded too.

Looking through the sfx (gf5objsmisc.txt) definitions, it actually looks like those do govern the death effects. The rat has a death effect number 84. If we go to begindefinesfx 84, we find this:

begindefinesfx 84;     

    sfx_amount_of_effect = 100;

Which inherits from these:

begindefinesfx 80;

    import = 50;

    sfx_graphic_sheet = 1;

    sfx_sfx_sound = 165;

begindefinesfx 81;

    sfx_sfx_effect = 3;

    sfx_amount_of_effect = 10;

If we go look at searer (which poisons in G5 for some reason), its status effect type is 3, which matches the effect of the pulsating rat. The import of 50 is the base for 'exploding stuff' and uses template 41. Graphic sheet 1 means the graphics are G1411.bmp, which is the poison explosion effect. So it looks like the sfx definitions are what controls death effects.

Also, if you can find somewhere in Geneforge 5 where there are things like runewarded thahds that cause some effect when being hit, I can look through all the relevant data for them to try to figure out where the effect comes from.