Features for DSB

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Lunever
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Lunever »

Probably there are more dungeon tinkerers than people actually playing them. But that means, that I can contribute something to interface improvement and debugging without currently tinkering some dungeon by myself. It'd be great if DSB could at some point achieve being able to do everything that RTC was able to do too, and more stuff in addition.
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Gambit37
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Gambit37 »

I'm pretty sure it already can :-)
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Lunever
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Lunever »

Well, yes and no. The engine is certainly powerful enough to surpass RTC, but it lacks yet some details, and also it was probably not as thoroughly tested as RTC.

Character import and a working DM2 are 2 important features imho.
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Sophia
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Sophia »

I am not sure what the issue with experience is.. if it's a discrepancy with RTC, then, fine, because I don't care what RTC does.
I started CSBwin and DSB and did the following tests.
I used a level with an experience multiplier of 4, in order to not spend a huge amount of time.

Casting light spells with no wizard levels, in CSBwin, it takes 4 to get to Neophyte, 3 more to get to Novice, and 6 more to get to Apprentice.
It takes the exact same number in DSB.

Brewing vi potions with no priest levels, in CSBwin, it takes 3 to get to Neophyte and 2 more to get to Novice, and 4 more to get to Apprentice.
In DSB, once again, the same results appeared.

Throwing daggers with no ninja levels, in CSBwin, it takes 16 throws to get to Neophyte.
In DSB, it took 18. This was due to the fact that I was using "range" and not "impact" to compute the experience bonus. I've corrected this error, but I don't think it could've accounted for your problem, considering how minor the discrepancy was, and only for Ninja.

Swinging a sword with no fighter levels, in CSBwin it takes 125 "SWING" methods to get to Neophyte.
In DSB, it takes 84. Another discrepancy I need to look at, but opposite of what you're saying.

So I don't get it...
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Lunever
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Lunever »

Then I don't get it either. I casted several wizard spells, and Ya potions, and killed all screamers and mummies on Level 1, by a mixture of missiles and melee, and no character got anything in regard to levels, neither fighter, nor ninja, nor priest, nor wizard.
Might have been less than 125 swings, that would account for fighter, but not for the rest.

So it seems on my machine something different is happening than on yours.

I'using DSB-51 and the DM dungeon from Joramund linked at the download thread.
On the computer I'm playing it I never had any earlier versions installed before.

I assume XP is engine-based and not dungeon-based?
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Lunever
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Lunever »

I just repeated the experience: I casted once more several LoFul spells. Even if I only count the successful castings it has been much more than the 4 spells you listed above, but no advance in level occured, not even to neophyte.

EDIT: I just threw some more missiles on a door in level 2, and finally I got a ninja level. Still it was a lot more than you listed. Maybe it's just a dungeon-level-based XP-multiplier that causes the discrepancy? What dungeon did you use for your test?

EDIT2: I repeated the tests. Well, I do get levels with some patience, but it took more of everything than you counted above, not sure why though.
My first impression might just have been a felt difference with RTC, still I think even in vanilla DM it didn't take that long, but I'd have to try that again for comparison.
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Lunever
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Lunever »

Right, I guess my impression was mainly because I played more RTC than CSBWin, and RTC levelled quicker, probably due to taking damage inflicted differently into account than CSBWin.

To make sure I'm not judging DSB solely based on some RTC memory, I just installed the old MS-DOS DM1 and found the following:
Test character: Tiggy Tamal, reincarnated.
Test spell: LoFul

Result DM1: Every second spell was successful, levelup to neophyte wizard after 5 successful castings (5 successful, 5 unsuccesful).

Result DSB: About every third or fourth spell was successful, levelup to wizard after 14 successful castings (so 14 successful castings and about 30 unsuccesful castings).

So while my first impression might have been exagerated, there IS a discrepancy.

Since I do not know the formulae of either game, I have to rely on impression, but I think wondering what's happening after playing through a level without gaining a level is not entirely wrong.
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Sophia »

I used an experience multiplier of 4 because I was impatient, in order to make my tests quicker.
However, it seems like issues manifest themselves at lower levels of multiplier that I will need to investigate.
Lunever wrote:I just threw some more missiles on a door in level 2, and finally I got a ninja level. Still it was a lot more than you listed. Maybe it's just a dungeon-level-based XP-multiplier that causes the discrepancy? What dungeon did you use for your test?
In both cases, I used a test dungeon that I constructed myself. It had no distinguishing features except for an experience multiplier of 4.
The reason it would take a lot longer at level 2 is that the experience multiplier is much lower than 4.
RTC doesn't use an experience multiplier so its formulas probably have nothing to do with DM or DSB.

Also, let me reiterate my request: please edit your posts. It really is less confusing for me.

EDIT:
Maybe the formulas changed between CSBwin (which uses version 2.x of the engine) and the DOS version (which uses version 3.x), or they made the version of their engine they packaged with CSB more hardcore, or something, because I ran the same Lo Ful test in CSBwin on a level with an experience multiplier of 1, and I got similar results to the DSB ones. I used a character with high wisdom so casting failures didn't occur as much, but in both engines, 13 successful castings and one failure seemed to be about the usual.
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Sophia »

I noticed DSB did have a problem where it didn't give enough experience for a failed casting, and for low level spells sometimes gave none. So, I've corrected that. It's now consistent with CSBwin. However, it is not consistent with DOS DM, because, as best as I can tell, DOS DM no longer gives bonus xp when you've recently been attacked by monsters. Instead, it grants this bonus all the time, which results in much faster advancement.

My thought at the moment is to add a game flag called "fast advancement" or the like that a dungeon designer can set that will toggle this behavior.
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Lunever »

Well, I'll stick to the editing of my latest post then, even when I'm not adding posts while playing, and I'll rely on that you'll adress them although you won't get noticed about my editings. Though if due to simultaneous posting something I asked for remains unplied, I just gonna bump it in my next post.

I'll continue playing then in V 0.51, knowing that the XP issue will diminish during the course of deeper dungeon levels.
I'll just won't do so today but at some other time when I'm not in such bad mood (just lost my job).

Interesting, I never knew that DOS-DM didn't distinguish between combat and not-combat. But I agree - its a good feature, and I too would rather stick to Amiga-DM. And during an early game stage XP for unsuccessful spells are very important. Regarding XP for unsuccessful spells - what exactly does the engine do? Does it give XP only for unsuccessful existing spells, or does it also give at least a minimum of 1 XP for menaingless rune combinations? If it was for me, I'm for such an absolute minimum of 1 XP.

Regarding RTC-XP - correct if I'm wrong (after all I never actually designed a dungeon, just kept talking about it) - from some old threads I gathered that RTC does have something like an XP-multiplier, just not dungeon-level bases, but being assigned tile-wise by the dungeon maker? I dunno anymore whether this is true, or whether it was only something someone talked about at sometime?

Regarding levels: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Sophia »

Lunever wrote:Well, I'll stick to the editing of my latest post then, even when I'm not adding posts while playing, and I'll rely on that you'll adress them although you won't get noticed about my editings. Though if due to simultaneous posting something I asked for remains unplied, I just gonna bump it in my next post.
Yes, that's fine. :)
Lunever wrote:I'll just won't do so today but at some other time when I'm not in such bad mood (just lost my job).
:( Sorry to hear that.
Lunever wrote:Regarding XP for unsuccessful spells - what exactly does the engine do? Does it give XP only for unsuccessful existing spells, or does it also give at least a minimum of 1 XP for menaingless rune combinations? If it was for me, I'm for such an absolute minimum of 1 XP.
Here's a basic summary. :) This applies to CSBwin, DSB, and presumably DOS DM as well.

The game engine determines a "minimum level" of a spell based on an internal "difficulty" plus the spell's power level. For simple spells, this number is 2, because the difficulty and power are both 1. More flashy spells have a higher difficulty; this is something defined by the designer and has to do with how useful or powerful the spell is, whether they want only higher level people to cast it, or whatever. For example, fireball has a difficulty of 3, so a lo fireball has a "minimum level" of 4. This minimum is compared with your actual skill level + 1. If it's equal or better, then you cast the spell without a problem. If it's less, there is a wisdom-based chance of pulling the spell off anyway, and if you fail, you get experience divided by 2^(levels below minimum). That is, if you're an apprentice (level 3) and you fail casting a spell with a minimum level of 5, you get half experience, because 2^(5-(3+1)) = 2. If the minimum is 6, you only get 1/4 experience, because 2^(6-(3+1)) = 4, and so on.

Because the calculation requires a built-in "difficulty," casting random combinations of runes doesn't give any experience at all. Trying to give XP for meaningless spells would also mean we'd have to figure out what skill and subskill to actually give the XP in, somehow, too.
Lunever wrote:Regarding RTC-XP - correct if I'm wrong
I can't correct you, or even really say anything useful, because I have no idea how RTC handles experience points.
Lunever wrote:Regarding levels: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0012.html
Hehe! yes. :mrgreen:
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Lunever
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Lunever »

RTC - I assumed you'd know because if there was such a thing as an XP-multiplier by area in RTC, a dungeon designer would know, and you did design some dungeons.

XP-multipliers: Mainly coming from P&P-games - whatever the engine does, the important thing is that no multiplier ever gets "0".
After decades of different DM versions and engines, memories blur regarding to what engine/version did what exactly, but I am absolutely sure - there was some original pre-clone engine/version that allowed me to make Halk a Neophyte Priest by holding Tiggy's Wand and keep casting "Lo" (an Lo behold!). From the blurred memory I'd think it was some early version of MS-DOS-DM1, but actually I cannot tell anymore after all that time without verification (to be acurate - my first DM experience was on Amiga, though probably not with the final Amiga version).
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Gambit37 »

Lunever, very sorry to hear about your job. I hope you get something soon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you.

My understanding is that RTC has a XP multiplier on a per level basis, as original DM had (all versions). The deeper you go, the greater the multiplier. However, this is not exposed to the designer as something editable, and only GG would know how it works. So you can't arbitrarily change it on a tile by tile basis, but you can give extra experience to a player using the ACTIONS mechanics.
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Lunever
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Lunever »

Well, it's been time to start something new jobwise anyway.

Does DSB allow a tilewise XP-multiplier? So a dungeon desinger can declare something like "south is safe, but the north is a pretty dangerous region"?
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Gambit37
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Gambit37 »

You can change the XP gain anywhere you like using a simple function in Lua :-)
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Lunever
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Lunever »

Fine.

I would like to have more savegame slots.

EDIT: Just an impression, but stamina drain seems faster to me than I'm used to.
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Sophia »

Lunever wrote:Just an impression, but stamina drain seems faster to me than I'm used to.
You might be right about it being too fast. I found some code that increases the stamina drain too much.

CSBwin adds a random amount (around 4) to stamina costs, while DSB randomly increases the stamina cost by some percentage, around 50%. For something costing 8 stamina, this results about the same-- and, indeed, for low-cost attacks, the results feel the same. However, for attacks that use a lot of stamina, DSB will consume a lot more.

I think I did this because at the time I couldn't figure out where the extra stamina drain came from so I just guessed at the algorithm. In the meantime more of CSBwin's secrets have been revealed, and I understand it better, so I'll fix it now. :)
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Lunever
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Re: Features for DSB

Post by Lunever »

Very well. I just noticed at first that stamina did drain pretty fast, and next I noticed that I didn't have the surplus food I was used to being a quick player knowing the standard DM dungeon very well, so something just didn't seem to fit.
Glad to hear, that code checking confirms my vague impression.
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