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Nephil Thief

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Posts posted by Nephil Thief

  1. Sorry I disappeared, Real Life has been a horror show. Fortunately I'm starting a new job soon, and so will have less constant worry about money (though also less free time).

     

    Anyway. Another one that really bothers me is melee weapon damage scaling with strength, but thrown and archery damage not scaling with anything.

    Obvious fix is to have those scale with Dexterity the same way melee scales with Strength. However I think I'd prefer Dexterity just affecting hit chance, and Archery and Throwing affecting damage, for balance reasons. Also Archery should add the bonus on the launcher to damage, not just to hit chance (currently IDK if launcher bonuses even do anything).

    Edit: oh, I already mentioned this one above. But yeah, will try to implement this... at some point... I guess 😐

  2. Implementing -Wall -Werror across the board, I found some interesting breakage in the monster casting code, in boe.combat.cpp:

     

    
      if ((caster->m_d.health * 4 < caster->m_d.m_health) &&
          (get_ran(1, 0, 10) < 9))
        spell = emer_spells[level][3];
      else if ((caster->m_d.status[STATUS_HASTE_SLOW] < 0) &&
               (get_ran(1, 0, 10) < 7) &&
               (emer_spells[level][0] != SPELL_MONST_PRIEST_NO_SPELL))
        spell = emer_spells[level][0];
      else if ((friend_levels_near <= -10) && (get_ran(1, 0, 10) < 7) &&
               (emer_spells[level][1] != SPELL_MONST_PRIEST_NO_SPELL))
        spell = emer_spells[level][1];
      else if ((target_levels > 50 < 0) && (get_ran(1, 0, 10) < 7) && // <- This does not do what it looks like!
               (emer_spells[level][2] != SPELL_MONST_PRIEST_NO_SPELL))
        spell = emer_spells[level][2];
      else {
        r1 = get_ran(1, 0, 9);
        spell = caster_array[level][r1];
      }

     

    that logic on the commented line will never be invoked, because comparing a boolean expression with an integer is always false.

  3. @Salt Monolith

     

    Quote

    10 Defense skill guarantees an effective reduction of 1 to the value of each piece of equipment's Encumbrance value (individually).  This allows a mage to wear 1 piece of 2-encumbrance armor, and any number of 1-encumbrance pieces, and still cast.


    IME this isn't the case. One piece of 1 or 2 encumbrance armor is okay; two or more piece of armor with 1 or more encumbrance, and you'll start seeing cast failures. IIRC this was confirmed in one of the munchkin skill breakdown threads a while back.

  4. @The Almighty Doer of Stuff Mm yes, thanks for reminding me about those.

    Re dumbfound, it actually does work, the problem is it wears off really fast - monsters lose one level of dumbfounding every 4 party turns. Since dumbfounding never wears off on its own for PCs, and magic immune monsters always resist anyway (and magic resistant ones have a chance of resisting), I don't feel too bad about doubling that... at least, once I figure out why my mingw-w64 build of CBoE is unpredictably crashing.

    Edit: okay that last is an optimization issue. Works with -O0, crashes with any other optimization level. Predictable I guess given the archaic code.

    Edit: ah, another issue with dumbfounding! It seems unable to actually reduce monster spellcasting level to zero.

  5. This is for things that don't fit in the other thread because they're not broken... at least, not on a consistency or function level; but that I still think were bad ideas.

     

    Weapon poison only applies to the first weapon in the inventory list

    This makes poisoned arrows much more annoying to use, since an archer character has to unequip their melee weapons for poison to apply (including from spells).

     

    Monsters/NPCs preferentially summon way too much
    Most summoning spells (except for Demon and Guardian) just clog the battlefield and eat up turns. I'd like to have monsters preferentially use damage dealing spells, to make battles both more dangerous and over faster.

     

    Archery and throwing weapons are useless in terms of damage

    Already covered in another thread but yeah. As I said previously, I'd like to make them less cost effective than melee, but actually useful.

  6. Feel free to add your own below. TBH I'm considering making a CBoE fork where some of these are dealt with, or at least have compatibility options for enabling/disabling them.

    Acid

    So in the final version of CBoE, as in original BoE

     

    - Acid has no damage cap for PCs, and each attack (acid spit, touch or whatever) adds to the damage.

    - Avatar is the only spell that can remove the acid status. Otherwise you have to use items or get onto the outdoor map.

    - This makes acid pretty much the deadliest thing in the game for PCs.

     

    OTOH, against monsters and NPCs
     

    - Even very powerfully acid branded weapons do like... 1-5 damage per turn max

    - The damage does not increase with repeated attacks

     

    I'd suggest a cap of 15-20 for both PCs and NPCs. That's enough per turn to still be dangerous without being ridiculous. Also Cleanse and Major Cleansing should probably remove acid.

    Dumbfounding

     

    Dumbfounding PCs works as expected. Dumbfounding monsters/NPCs does literally nothing. Doesn't decrease spell frequency, doesn't decrease spellcasting level, nothing at all. Been a while since I looked at the code, but IIRC the game treats it as equivalent to a curse spell.
     

    Bless

     

    Stacks infinitely for PCs, but not for NPCs. I'm of mixed feelings about this TBH, since the exploitable nature of infinite bless stacking is kind of fun. OTOH this has enormous effects on game balance, especially in the late game.

    Webbing

     

    Does nothing to monsters/NPCs, but it's one of the most dangerous effects for PCs, because it can bring their AP down to zero. Again I'm of mixed feelings about this, because having giant spiders be "that one enemy" that even the most powerful parties have to watch out for is cool. But I'd be in favor of making webs have some effect on NPCs. As is, their only use is the Web spell blocking LoS.

    Flame Arrows, Venom Arrows, and Smite

    These spells do not do a useful amount of damage. Death Arrows works out to half the damage of a Kill spell most of the time, but the other arrows spells do like 5 damage with maxed Intelligence and level. That's more like 1/6 the damage of a Flame or Ice Bolt spell. With Venom Arrows, it's so weak that targets often aren't poisoned at all.

    Ice Bolt

    It's just... not powerful enough to be useful ever, especially given its relatively high cost. I assume some wonkiness with the damage calculation.

     

    NPC Kill and Firestorm damage are reversed

    PC Kill does up to 120 damage, Firestorm more like 70 max. The opposite is the case for NPCs.

    [edit: I'm gonna start another thread for things that aren't broken or inconsistent, but that I consider misfeatures.]

  7. Missile weapons would be fun if they hit more often and did useful damage more often. Maybe if dexterity or archery skill increased missile damage rather than just hit chance? IMO it shouldn't be as cost effective as strength is for melee (the long range is a big advantage already). But as things are, an archer with 20 dexterity, 20 archery, a magic crossbow and magic bolts, and maxed out bless level, is practically useless compared to a fighter with 8 strength, some iron weapons, and maxed out bless. The balance is just really, really bad.

  8. Wow. Have I mentioned I love this scenario? The Magites really are the absolute worst.

    Edit: OMG

     

    Spoiler

    Not only are they magical slave-owning racists, they murdered the Orc hermit lady and then murdered everyone in the Gumby sanctuary.

    The worst. Just the absolute worst.


    Anyway yeah I'm pleasantly surprised by how well this scenario has aged, the usual early 2000s video game flaws notwithstanding.

    Edit 2: okay have to say though, if I'd known ahead of time how the lich in Balinport has to be dealt with (and that this quest is not optional), I probably would have avoided the scenario. That part is about the lowest low point I can think of in any BoE scenario I've played, and it's made all the more gratuitous IMO by the amount of filler in that part of the game (and also just feels like reaching for extra edginess to justify the R rating).

  9. So because I have a bunch of free time from now until two weeks after my second vaccine dose, I decided to complete this hugest ever of BoE scenarios... 

    I'm at the part where I just had to take Sister Elysia to Tel'moria, and General Vargas got back to me on the talking crystal saying basically "Come see me immediately once you're back in Zenith." So I went back to Zenith... and he wasn't in his office. Nobody at all behind his desk. The soldier at the front desk still talks about him being there and gives me an appointment though, so... bug? I think? I also checked the League of Zinlasian Nations and the Governor's mansion, he wasn't there either. Is there somewhere else I have to look, some way I can refresh the town, or am out of luck?

     

    [Edit: decided to remove OT stuff on characterization]

  10. @Celtic MinstrelI know the archived Lyceum had the final version of Falling Stars, but AFAIK it disappeared when Truesite went down, and the Wayback Machine didn't catch most of the HTML let alone the zip files. The version in the scenario archive was always earlier than the one from the archived Lyceum. If there's still an archive of the Lyceum floating around though, it might still have the final version. (And if anyone sends that my way, I'll update the one in my own archive mirror.)

    Edit: yes, the Lyceum is still archived!

    http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/blyceum/index.html

     

    The links did not get modified so it takes some manual changing of URLs to navigate, but it looks like everything should still be there. Thank you profoundly!

    Edit 2: grabbed all the final version Alcritas scenarios, thanks. This command worked:
     

    wget -r -np -l 1 -A zip http://truesite.openboe.com/SWArchive/Geocities/alcritas/


    Going to put those in my Google Drive archive momentarily.

    Edit 3: or not. That grabbed a bunch of Javascript files? Weird. Anyway grabbing them manually worked ok.
     

  11. At the Gallows - last I checked, the version I have archived has a rather amusing bug where an important item is right on the floor in front of the wizard you're supposed to give it to.


    Falling Stars - the archived version doesn't have the completed hall of contributors (in the starting town) or the Denmark quest.

     

    The Shadow of the Stranger - archived version doesn't let you turn off tree climbing, final version did.

  12. Nope. Not possible in original BoE or CBoE. I suppose you could utilize the kill/resurrect bug plus stat boosting nodes to create a "new PC" as long as the original party was small enough, and just provide a note that the player should change the name and graphic manually; but I think that's as good as it gets. It'd be pretty kludgy.

    NPCs joining the party has been a thing for a while, but that's done with normal friendly NPCs and special nodes, and the ability to actually command them is... limited at best. The usual thing for making them more effective has been to limit their capabilities to useful things; e.g. I know at least one scenario where "spellcaster" ally NPCs have high AP and powerful breath attacks and abilities, instead of level-whatever spells (and the resulting tendency to clog the battlefield with summons, or try to poison portculli etc).

  13. Now that I'm revisiting BoE because lockdown yay.

    IMO...

    Sanctuary. And Mass Sanctuary, but especially the level 1 version if you habitually play singletons.
    - It's pretty useless against casters, but prevents a lot of melee and archery attacks from hitting at all
    - IDK about original BoE, but in CBoE spellcasting only breaks it for attack spells
    - With a few levels and a little spending on INT, it can last several turns...
    - Allowing your fighters (or singleton) to close the distance to enemy spellcasters more easily
    - Also allows singletons a bit of extra time to buff in surprise combat situations

    So overall it's actually a really impressive asset, esp. at low levels.

  14. 15 hours ago, Celtic Minstrel said:

    OpenBoE.com is back up now. I have no idea about the magnet link, though - how does that even work? I do still have it set to seeding in my torrent app.


    Yay thank you! I'll update my sig to indicate my link is a backup.

    The magnet link: lemme try again.

    Edit:
     

    % aria2c 'magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d5356f060c104e9fd1dbf7a23fe348c6c26897da'
    
    11/17 12:40:48 [NOTICE] Downloading 1 item(s)
    
    11/17 12:40:48 [NOTICE] IPv4 DHT: listening on UDP port 6952
    
    11/17 12:40:48 [NOTICE] IPv4 BitTorrent: listening on TCP port 6961
    
    11/17 12:40:48 [NOTICE] IPv6 BitTorrent: listening on TCP port 6961
    [#5f2fca 0B/0B CN:0 SD:0 DL:0B]       


    I think the problem may be on my end. N/M.

  15. So... openboe.com is down, the zip files are not archived on the Wayback Machine, and the magnet link is also down. Anyone got backups? I figure I might as well just host everything on my Google Drive, since I started paying for it and now have like 100 GB of space.

  16. So kind of belated, but I took a look at the CBoE (legacy Windows) source code recently and the issue seems to be fixed. Throwing weapon hit chance checks throwing weapon skill in CBoE.

     

    Defense skill is probably still a better investment though. :)

  17. 16 hours ago, marnick said:

    Im sorry but that kind of american exceptionalism doesnt work on me (or most other non-americans). From where Im sitting, freedom is the one thing americans fear more than anything.


    It's a definition thing. "Freedom" to sensible people includes things like freedom from fear (as FDR described, though this country has never lived up to any his Four Freedoms). But "freedom" to a lot of USians also, or sometimes only, means "power" - the ability to do what you want without consequences. When a USian tells you "It's a free country!" they're probably not asserting their right to one of FDR's Four Freedoms, but rather their privilege to bully or endanger you in some way.

    Source: my life, constantly on the business end of "It's a free country!" when getting insults, punches, and bigotry thrown at me.

  18. Voted for Biden because he's not a raging fascist. Glad he won. Not so glad to see the Democratic party's center already throwing its left under the bus.

    I have been feeling a lot of things the last few days, but mostly just very, very, very tired. This year has been hell beyond anything I've experienced before, and we all deserve so much better right now than "returning to the status quo that was already killing hundreds of thousands of people a year" and "apologizing to Republicans for existing because they're not actively trying to kill us anymore".

    Edit: also, hi again all. Been a while.

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