ex post slarto

Whoops. I missed an adjustment, too! There's a huge one though that both sides can get.

I think you got all of the ones in outdoor scripts...

How exactly is using a skill 5000 times supposed to be less tedious than killing an enemy 500 times? I don't like the combat experience system either, to be honest, but a skill-use experience system is a giant step in the wrong direction.

Definitely better than I expected. The interface largely works extremely well for the Nethergate scenario, and is cleaner and somewhat easier to use than the original. The new skill system, the thing I expected to dislike the most, seems to work fairly well also. NR gets my vote for an excellent refurbishment.

Actually, not so lucky. You missed one adjustment Randomizer, and it's a big one, enough to tip the scales and allow powergaming of both rewards.

*facepalm* Read the post. I'm not talking about all of Lufia II, I'm just talking about the Ancient Cave. The rest of Lufia II clearly has nothing to do with roguelikes by any stretch of the imagination.

Quote: Originally written by Surprised by Joy: I'm pretty sure that party and roguelike don't go together. —Alorael, who considers ASCII fairly important but not essential to roguelikes. You could make a very strong case for Diablo as a direct descendent of Rogue. Roguelikes tend to offer far more choices, though. When was the last time you carefully created and destroyed walls to arrange the perfect chamber for killing an enemy slightly slower than you in a non-ASCII game? Agreed about Diablo. There are some intermediaries that cleave closely to roguelikes in almost every way aside from the graphics. Dragon Crystal was an early, console-based graphical roguelike. Dungeon Hack was a first-person dungeon-crawl roguelike that used (I think) a variant of the Eye of the Beholder engine, and AD&D ruleset, but with all the rogue trappings we expect. There are, however, party-based roguelikes. One of the earliest (and most unusual) is the Ancient Cave, actually a subgame of the SNES RPG Lufia II. It uses the characters, items, spells, etc. of Lufia II, but everything about it screams rogue. More recently, there is the Mysterious Dungeon series of games, many of which haven't been released in America. It began with Torneko's Mysterious Dungeon, a Dragon Quest spinoff that was basically just graphical rogue, but more recent offerings like Pokemon Rescue Team have incorporated multiple PCs. Sure, these aren't traditional roguelikes, but they have far more in common with the roguelike than with any other genre of RPG (or any other video game type).

The most characteristic feature of a roguelike is that it generates random dungeons on-the-fly. For most other elements, you can find examples of roguelikes that treat them quite differently. That said, the Avernum engine is really not an obvious choice for a roguelike.

FWIW, the term "ego items" in Angband comes from the AD&D term, whose meaning is more specific. Ego items were magical items imbued with an ego, that is, an intelligent personality. So a sword +1, +4 vs. undead would be a talking sword, presumably good aligned, obsessed with slaying undead. Angband borrowed the term because Ego items were allowed to have extra and multiple powers, and Ego items in Angband were a step above regular magic items but below artifacts.

One extremely annoying feature -- this is a carryover from the G1-3 AP systems -- is that you only get the chance to move again if you have at least 5 AP remaining after the attack. Note that item-based attacks are exceptions. Thus with 9 AP, you can use two crystals and then shoot something, but if you shoot something first, you can't use even a single crystal, despite still having the AP to use both!

Xian Trall? The Vahnatai Creationists are gaining ground... I'd better double up my mooving prayers.

Because it does. While all the battle creations have standard melee attacks, the gazer and eyebeast have special melee attacks with higher dice and ancillary effects. They do 1-6, or 1-8, and cause fear -- something like that. I forget the specifics. You won't use them much as their missile attacks are still better, but they're there.

Quote: Originally written by Student of Trinity: throwing rocks is just lame Quoted for paradox. I think it's worth being realistic. The shaping system is not going to get drastically redone for G5. Fyoras will still be the first creation available. This is just the way Jeff does things. Creation balance can certainly change though. There's been noise here about weak battle creations for several games now. I had previously been hoping for non-combat, non-PC slot creations, like a bag of holding creation. Some of the engine changes in G4 make these less necessary though. And in case anyone is still confused, there will never be a Blades of Geneforge.

It is worth pointing out that ALL melee attacks did nearly twice as much damage in G1 and G2. G3 reduced creation melee attacks from 1-8 dice to 1-4 dice. It is true, though, that G4 has way more swarms of melee critters. I'm not really sure what would make the best balancing factor, as it's a thin line to walk. I do think it would make the game a lot more interesting if melee and missile attacks both had strategic value, which would require making melee attacks a lot stronger to keep up with the missile attacks that ramp up to 1-12 and even 1-14 in the endgame. But increasing attack too much would be dangerous. The other option is to increase HP, or resistances. But I fear that this would make battle creations annoying without actually making them interesting or valuable. I like the double hit idea, and not in the form of Quick Action but in the form of bonus AP a la plated bugs. Battle creations with 10-11 AP then get a great increase in deadliness, but one that doesn't kick in until the turn after they reach their target. This makes them more dangerous as enemies, but they can be responded to before they kill things, and since their HP isn't getting bloated, they can still be dispatched with strong attacks, daze, and the like. It also makes them more useful as allies since it is easier for the player to manipulate how close they are to their target when combat starts. I'd say Clawbugs, Battle Frat guys, Glaahks, Rots, and Tralls all deserve the extra AP. Give plated bugs high resistance. Give Thahds and Tralls additional HP. Give Alphas and Tralls some kind of neat ancillary effect. And let the Tralls have high Quick Action too. Why can't the biggest baddest battle creation be deadly close up? The other thing this does is make stunning more useful, which is great in my book.

One other possibility that jumps to mind is that at some point in the code after the section you copied, you get stuck in a loop.

Quote: Originally written by DevilinDupriest: Interesting. Plated clawbugs appear to have an ability that was commented out: //cr_natural_armor = 8; This is how Geneforge 1 dealt with NPC and creation armor. Geneforge 2+ use resistance 0 for armor. I would guess that cr_natural_armor no longer has any effect, but it's possible the code for it is still there. However, I'd recommend just using resistance 0 instead. Quote: 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. Not quite. Attack ability level is the equivalent of a weapon level or spell skill level. The basic formula for the power and accuracy of ANY attack is: (Base Stat) + (Skill Stat) + (Specific Stat) Base Stat = Strength, Dexterity, or Spellcraft Skill Stat = Melee Weapons, Missile Weapons, Battle Magic, Mental Magic, Blessing Magic, or Healing Craft Specific Stat = Attack ability level, item level, or spell skill level Each level in this formula grants you one die roll (which die is used depends on the attack) and a 5% bonus to hit. Each attack also has base damage that is added (usually miniscule) and a base chance to hit (normally between 50% and 100%). Also the "+X levels to damage" ability adds die rolls, but not hit chance. Luck adds to hit chance at 2% a pop, but not damage. Strength of ancillary effects is determined similarly, using the "effect_" part of the attack definition. Quote: Interestingly, I can't see any reason the ur-glaahk didn't have stun when the glaahk does. Are you sure the Ur-Glaahk doesn't have a stunning attack? You're right, the definitions file gives it exactly the same attack as the Glaahk. Quote: 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. SW games tend to not delete old material if it isn't necessary to. Most famously, a few dialogue panes from Exile II have been in nearly every SW release since then, hiding unused. Quote: I'm not sure exactly where the Rot's double-strike is handled. It may be internal. It's handled with Quick Action just like for every other character. I forget what stat number QA is, but the rot has it, I believe 6 or 8 points, which is roughly a 1/3 chance of a second strike. Damage type 3 is used only (AFIAK) by the Discipline Wand. It needs its own damage type since it only harms creations. Damage type 7 is mental. Note that all the 4th and 5th tier creations have heavy resistance to it, as well as every boss type character. The creation statistics, which work the same way as item stat bonuses, are listed out somewhere in the G or G4 forum, I think. They mostly go in the order on the character sheet, but there are a few exceptions. So 0-3 are Str Dex Int End. IMHO, G4 is on the whole pretty decently balanced, and I don't think it's crying out for a mod. But hey, go for it. If nothing else you could make Battle Shaping worthwhile for the first time ever.

Yeah. All the creation/item/floor/attack characteristics are in those definition files, but everything else is hardcoded. So you can't add creation types, change the maps or the locations of characters and items, etc.

No line breaks? What do you mean? There are line breaks after every line. If you aren't seeing line breaks the problem is with your text editor. Although there are no real comments, the definitions format and the names of the variables involved are all very simple to understand. I don't know for sure which creature definition is which, but it's usually easy to guess. If there isn't one labelled as PC-created creations, it's probably the first definition. Just look for one that has the appropriate starting level (which is not multiplied by a fraction in G4) and stat bonuses and so on. Note that some differences between PC creations and NPCs are hardcoded in the game, so don't rely on those. For example, PC creations never drop items even though every possible definition includes item drops (I think Gazers are like that).

I made a modified defintions file like that for G3. It was fairly extensive, making numerous minor tweaks to creations, spells, and items to balance things. (G3 was much less balanced than G4.) It even included a symbiotic vlish arm melee weapon in honor of DV, which I believe I replaced Koerner's Blade with. Unfortunately, the computer died before I got around to uploading it.

Didn't most of the ungrateful Blosk people die before the adventurers got there?

That's an acid baton against a Brain Rat. Brain Rats don't have armor, and acid batons do 1-6. That ramps our damage estimate up to 84 with the normal formula, only 17 points below your result. Your sword strikes also did more than the formula suggested, so it's likely there is another element, maybe a random factor in the multiplier rolls, that pushes things higher on average. (Meanwhile, the Oozing Sword would be expected to do 99 damage against a Brain Rat, from the formula.) Missile damage ramps up faster because missiles ramp up multipliers and weapons don't, while missiles have significant base damage and spells don't.

Quote: Originally written by Delicious Vlish: As far as actual damage numbers go, with, say, the oozing blade, I do about 60 to 80 damage with an attack, a little more if blessed, and on a lucky hit, a double strike. Compare that to doing 100 to 150ish damage straight up with the venom baton. Hmm. This is somewhat odd. Both Venom Batons and the Oozing Sword do 1-5 damage per level of damage. What's more, the sword is 6 levels higher than the baton and you also have 3 more points in Melee than Missile. And they both do physical damage. This is *really* odd. Well, let's do the math the way we'd expect it to look: Weapon level + str/dex + melee/missile Sword: 12 + 9 + 12 = 33 Baton: 6 + 9 + 9 = 24 Multiplier average of 3 Sword = 99 Baton = 72 Monarch has 40% armor, so multiply by .6 average: Sword = 59 damage Baton = 43 damage Luck, or some other factor, might push damage up a little, so the sword damage is about what we woudl expect. But clearly, something is making the baton do damage very, very differently. 43 damage is nowhere near the 125 or so average you're reporting. I'm honestly a little befuddled, because I've never seen missiles do damage so drastically different. Certainly not in G3 when I ran a missile agent. I don't think the thorns are a factor at all since you can fire a baton with the same results with or without a thorn item in your inventory, and without the thorn item, there's no chance of using its multiplier or anything else. What's amazing is that you are reporting damage three times above what the formulae predict. Doubling the impact of dex AND missile skill AND the item bonus doesn't cover it. Doubling the multiplier doesn't cover it. Maximizing the multiplier results doesn't even cover it. It would have to be some combination of these kinds of effects. And I'm skeptical, because as far as we have seen, these parts of the attack are dealt with uniformly for every single attack in G4. They're handled the same in the item defs, too. Jeff would have had to hardcode in a different way of handling missiles. Vlish, are you sure about those numbers?

There are so many different opinions... I think a wiki would be a disaster. A collaborative project might work great, but it would need someone to moderate it.

I'm not entirely clear how this stun exploit works either. I understand DV's math, but your opponent gets a turn right after you strike and will presumably attack you then. That said, in G3 I used the Stunning Blade for a VERY long time with my Melee Agent. Under G3's system, it could stun twice (once for the ability and once just for being a damage-dealing attack), which with Quick Action meant up to four stuns per turn. Most enemies could be incapacitated in a single hit if they were alone. It stopped being useful late in the game due to most enemies having stun resistance or extra APs, or appearing in large groups.