Features for DSB

[Lunever]

Can you post a list of the hidden skills and what default items boost what hidden skill? That might ne very useful in order to discuss whether some aspects of the hidden skills could be improved.

Quiver/scabbard: The behaviour I got used to from RTC is fine I think. Draw ammo til it is out, then draw a weapon from the scabbard. Drawing it into the left hand to have it in your off-hand is also better than doing nothing. A player could also utilize this later on to have a wand or staff handy. Of course still better would be to swab the firearm with the scabbard weapon once all ammo form true quivers and quiver slots is out.

Playing with exploits currently. My fighters are to weak for heavy armor, but Ku-potions wear off to quickly - unless you drink a few gallons of them for 999. Might work for a while.

EDIT: Bug report: The fireball launcher in the Void level does nothing. Takes the challenge from that level. I remember that several early RTC version had that bug too.

[Sophia]

Can you post a list of the hidden skills and what default items boost what hidden skill? That might ne very useful in order to discuss whether some aspects of the hidden skills could be improved.

As far as I know, it's exactly the same as DM. Here are the skills straight out of the code, in the order fighter, ninja, priest, and wizard:

Code: Select all

SKILL_SWINGING = 1
SKILL_STABBING = 2
SKILL_BASHING = 3
SKILL_DEFENSE = 4

SKILL_CLIMBING = 1
SKILL_MARTIALARTS = 2
SKILL_THROWING = 3
SKILL_SHOOTING = 4

SKILL_LUCK = 1
SKILL_POTIONS = 2
SKILL_FEAR = 3
SKILL_SHIELDS = 4

SKILL_FIRE = 1
SKILL_AIR = 2
SKILL_DES = 3
SKILL_POISON = 4

The "SKILL_LUCK" is used only by the coin flipping attack method, which gives 0 xp, so priests essentially only have three hidden skills.

What provides a hidden boost should be the same as DM, too. The Sceptre of Lyf and Gem of Ages give +1 to Potions, the Ekkhard Cross gives +1 to Shields, and the Moonstone gives +1 to Fear (also called Influence)-- apparently only priests get hidden bonuses, because that's all I found. The other skill boosting items give an overt boost, like the Firestaff.

Quiver/scabbard: The behaviour I got used to from RTC is fine I think. Draw ammo til it is out, then draw a weapon from the scabbard. Drawing it into the left hand to have it in your off-hand is also better than doing nothing. A player could also utilize this later on to have a wand or staff handy. Of course still better would be to swab the firearm with the scabbard weapon once all ammo form true quivers and quiver slots is out.

I considered that approach, but fairly often I'm dancing around a monster and pick up a few arrows from the ground that I've shot previously, to keep my back row archer(s) supplied. It'd be no particular inconvenience to move, put away, or throw a sword that automatically got drawn into the off hand, but it would be more annoying to have to pull the bow back out again. I think in this case the simpler approach is better in a general sense.

Playing with exploits currently. My fighters are to weak for heavy armor, but Ku-potions wear off to quickly - unless you drink a few gallons of them for 999. Might work for a while.

The DM designers seem to have anticipated that Ku potions would be the most exploitable, because the effect of the Ku potion is less than any other potion. It uses a special, less-powerful formula compared to the other stat-boosting potions.

The fireball launcher in the Void level does nothing. Takes the challenge from that level. I remember that several early RTC version had that bug too.

The problem was actually much more severe. The launcher worked fine, but there was a bug in the AI code that caused monsters to frequently just stand around when nothing interesting was going on, instead of occasionally moving around randomly like in DM. So they just plain weren't stepping on the trigger. I've fixed it.

[Lunever]

Fireball trigger - you might consider something else there in addition: In RTC monsters ran around individually, while in DSB they usually are encountered in grouped, more like vanilla DM. When I entered the room with the trigger I found the monsters grouped. I guess that would make them only rarely step on the trigger, even if they wandered about a bit.

Have you had a look on the DM2 item / hidden skill list and checked what might be implementable in DSB too?

Coin flipping does 0 XP? I always assumed coin flipping would raise that skill. I mean, why shouldn't it?

[beowuuf]

Because you can do it infinitely as it has no time component nor stamina component

[Lunever]

Yes, but you still require time to do it. I doubt whether anyone would have the patience to coin-flip himself to archmaster.

[beowuuf]

Check octopus's thread - he auto-triggered attack actions. In DSB you could do the same with a hot key, then leave it running overnight without any actual consequences whatsoever.

[Lunever]

Hm right, I forgot about that. Don't you use up at least a little food anyway so you'd have at least to feed your party from time to time?

Maybe that skill could be utilized for a broader application in custom dungeons though, encompassing all kinds of thievery, forgery and ledgerdemain. EOB used thieves skills to operate lockpicks, a dungeon designer could use this skill for something like that too I assume.

EDIT: So rust monsters don't cause rust in DSB. Since I think they were intended to rust originally, I think they should rust stuff, like they do in RTC. Otherwise they are just to weak to be good for anything.

EDIT2: Just watched a Vexirk commit suicide. I injured him with a fireball, he cast a poison cloud and stepped forward, right into the poison cloud. Shouldn't non-stupid monsters consider their remaining hit points before entering a poison cloud?

EDIT3: What is undefoot is soon overhead doesn't work, no fireballs, just double floor trigger sounds.

EDIT4: There's a small bug in the rune keys - if you accidentally press 2 of them you get 2 runes from the same tier, like PalMon.

EDIT5: You can rotate characters only clockwise, like in vanilla DM. I'd prefer the RTC solution, that you can rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise, depending whether you click the character icon on the left or on the right side.

[zoom]

EDIT: So rust monsters don't cause rust in DSB. Since I think they were intended to rust originally, I think they should rust stuff, like they do in RTC. Otherwise they are just to weak to be good for anything.

While this idea is good, still then there should be a way to repair rusted items somehow or forge anew. enchanting items that have been forged by the party would also be awesome. Else it would be very frustrating! or protect the best items in game from rustmonsters, a sword can probably rust and be destroyed without much regret(if you are in the lower levels of a dungeon, losing the first real weapon can be frustrating nevertheless. A puzzle comes to mind, where you have to lure rusters on platforms by sacrificing weapons. Resistant weapons could be placed in the lair of rusters, indicating the items resistance properties)

[Lunever]

Zoom: For a custom dungeon yes, but introducing whole new puzzles into DM1 changes to much of the game. In RTC the rusting worked fine. Items have a "rustable" flag and mostly metallic armour and weapons can be rusted. There are enough weapons and armour in the game so you can afford the loss. Plus, this mainly makes you tread carefully when rust monsters are near and avoid being hit - which isn't very difficult, since you encounter never more more than 1 rust monster at a time, there are few of them in total (4 alltogether) and there are no rust monster generators. You'd really have to play very inefficiently if you lose more than a couple of armour pieces.

Rust monsters look like rust monsters from DnD, they are named rusters, and as far as I know they were supposed to rust in DM1 to, but that part didn't make it into the code finally released (mainly because the risk was to high to allow unsolvable savegames if you didn't invest much time to finetune this).

EDIT: Traps around the Diamond Edge don't work, an error text line appears instead. "Error: Untriggered Nil!"

The same error occurs in the small zoom circle at the ruby key.

One of the alcoves in the coin room at the end of the wasp levels should contain 2 more coins, but it is empty.

[Sophia]

So rust monsters don't cause rust in DSB. Since I think they were intended to rust originally, I think they should rust stuff, like they do in RTC. Otherwise they are just to weak to be good for anything.

This is too big of a change to just put into the standard code, I think, but a demonstration of how to make a rust monster that rusts (probably stored as an importable archetype) would be another good example, I think.

Just watched a Vexirk commit suicide. I injured him with a fireball, he cast a poison cloud and stepped forward, right into the poison cloud. Shouldn't non-stupid monsters consider their remaining hit points before entering a poison cloud?

I'll look into this.

There's a small bug in the rune keys - if you accidentally press 2 of them you get 2 runes from the same tier, like PalMon.

Oops! Fixed.

You can rotate characters only clockwise, like in vanilla DM. I'd prefer the RTC solution, that you can rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise, depending whether you click the character icon on the left or on the right side.

I'll keep this one in mind...

Some of the DSB-DM problems are caused by engine or base code bugs that will be fixed in the next version. The rest will require corrections to the DSB-DM dungeon itself, which I'll get around to once all the upgrades to the game itself are done...

[Sophia]

You might be interested in the new test_dungeon included in DSB 0.41. It includes several of the things that we talked about in this thread like poison darts that actually poison, rusters that actually rust, quivers, and so on. They're stored as importable archetypes so they can be easily "plugged into" just about any custom dungeon, too.

[Lunever]

Wonderful! I'll be away for a couple of days, but when I'm back I'll continue to help debugging and lowering your sanity.

[Adamo]

I don`t remember if I already asked about that: in DSB, all monsters moves the same speed, no matter the level and distance of the player?
http://www.dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/doc ... Level.html
If so, although it`s different in original DM, I think it should stay like it is; slowing the monsters movement was due to save Atari`s CPU (~7 Mhz). Now we`ve got faster machines. But I`m just curious

[Sophia]

In DSB, monsters away from the party on the same level and monsters +1 and -1 level from the party move at the normal speed, and all other monsters don't move at all. I'm not sure how I came up with this behavior, but it's not the worst thing, so I guess I'll keep it...

[Lunever]

A problem in current DSB is that monsters don't move randomly if there's no party about.

Early RTC also had this problem, which only disappeared in several steps.

Fixing this might be important for giggler driven riddles, not only in CSB, but also if one day someone does DM2.

If you are about to fix this, make sure that monsters in a large hall don't run in circles along the walls all the time but randomly change direction occasionally (in random intervalls) so they will eventually step on all floor triggers in a hall.

EDIT1: Seems like DSB adds up action times linearly, like vanilla DM. So if you cast a series of spells you are pretty out of order for quite a while. RTC did something nonlinear there, probably logarithmical, so casting a series af many spells wouldn't inhibit you to much longer than casting a few spells.

EDIT2: Just encountered a materializer, without any fireshield on, without extraordinary anti-fire-stats. It hit me with a couple of fireballs that only did very little damage. Might be due to having played RTC often, but to me the materializers seem way to harmless in regard to the damage they inflict.

EDIT3: Poison bolts should go only through grates, not through wooden doors. A materializer just hit me through a completely closed wooden door.

[Sophia]

A problem in current DSB is that monsters don't move randomly if there's no party about.

Unless there's still a bug that I missed, I think you mean "was a problem in version before 0.41." I have already fixed this, I think. You're using 0.41, right?

The room in level 8 of DM now works, for example, and fireballs will go flying about randomly as the mummies and skeletons step on the trigger.

EDIT1: Seems like DSB adds up action times linearly, like vanilla DM. So if you cast a series of spells you are pretty out of order for quite a while. RTC did something nonlinear there, probably logarithmical, so casting a series af many spells wouldn't inhibit you to much longer than casting a few spells.

Not a bad idea.

EDIT2: Just encountered a materializer, without any fireshield on, without extraordinary anti-fire-stats. It hit me with a couple of fireballs that only did very little damage. Might be due to having played RTC often, but to me the materializers seem way to harmless in regard to the damage they inflict.

My test character wearing ordinary clothes and with 50 anti-fire took around 150 damage from materializer fireballs, so I think the fireballs themselves are strong enough. What kind of damage were you suffering, how is your character equipped, what is your anti-fire, etc.?

EDIT3: Poison bolts should go only through grates, not through wooden doors. A materializer just hit me through a completely closed wooden door.

No, doors stop poison. However, doors do not stop materializers themselves. Maybe it fired and then retreated back behind the door? Or it could have been in the same tile as the door, but on a sub-tile that was obscured by the door.

[Lunever]

Now that's a release frequency!

Actually I'm finishing my current DM1 game in V0.40 and then switch to V0.41, so the rest of this thread might be partially redundant.

Fireballs: Antifire 52 to 67, armour ranging from between plate and mithril. I cannot tell anymore how much the damage was, but I think the last hit was 26 damage for everyone (which is odd).

Door-subtiles: Probably it was on a door subtile that is "behind" the door. Can you make a monster that attacks through a door become visible for the moment of the attack?

Knights and other monsters suffer the same old AI weakness that takes the challenge from the game once you know how to handle it: If there is space, you can kill every single monster by walking in circles. There is one thing I would like to see to take this weakness from monsters: Let monsters break cycle walking not by turning every now and then - let them break the cycle by having them sidestep into attack position!

EDIT: I know the YaIr should have a duration like in vanilla DM. Yet I just cast a series of them (several hundred mana) and only a short while later they were gone. Subjectively I have the impression they lasted longer in vanilla DM.

[Sophia]

Actually I'm finishing my current DM1 game in V0.40 and then switch to V0.41, so the rest of this thread might be partially redundant.

I'm trying for some degree of backward compatibility in DSB, so your 0.40 save should load in 0.41 without a problem, by the way.

Fireballs: Antifire 52 to 67, armour ranging from between plate and mithril. I cannot tell anymore how much the damage was, but I think the last hit was 26 damage for everyone (which is odd).

There were some damage bugs in 0.40 that I fixed. Let me know if it's still a problem in 0.41.

Door-subtiles: Probably it was on a door subtile that is "behind" the door. Can you make a monster that attacks through a door become visible for the moment of the attack?

Not easily... I guess I could move the monster around or something, but I'll admit it's not a hugely high priority.

Knights and other monsters suffer the same old AI weakness that takes the challenge from the game once you know how to handle it: If there is space, you can kill every single monster by walking in circles. There is one thing I would like to see to take this weakness from monsters: Let monsters break cycle walking not by turning every now and then - let them break the cycle by having them sidestep into attack position!

Solving this limitation has been one of my biggest AI priorities in DSB. They already do attempt to break the cycle in some ways-- DSB monsters can turn+attack in a single action (this was originally a bug, but I like it so I've kept it), they will randomly walk in a different direction at times, or linger to wait for you to step into their attack range. Groups of monsters will disband, in an attempt to surround you. And, in 0.41, I've added the "pounce" attack, which lets some monsters perform an immediate attack after moving. Because turn+attack can be a single action, giving a monster "pounce" is basically the same as what you're suggesting.

EDIT: I know the YaIr should have a duration like in vanilla DM. Yet I just cast a series of them (several hundred mana) and only a short while later they were gone. Subjectively I have the impression they lasted longer in vanilla DM.

See how this feels in 0.41, too. I smoothed out the curve that controls how long they last and it might give a better impression.

[Lunever]

Well, since last time I played I was almost through, I gonna finish this one in V0.40 and have a fresh start in V0.41

Circle-Breaking: That would probably work fine, if the new pounce flag was given generously to many monsters. Is it?

Is only the engine updated, or have the DM and CSB dungeons also been updated?

EDIT: In the Oitu nest I found a Lo-Ven-bomb, I think it should be a Mon-Ven-bomb.

[Sophia]

Circle-Breaking: That would probably work fine, if the new pounce flag was given generously to many monsters. Is it?

Worms, couatls, rats/hellhounds, scorpions, and dragons have it. To me these felt like the monsters who would most benefit from a "pouncy" attack.

Is only the engine updated, or have the DM and CSB dungeons also been updated?

Just the engine. I haven't been able to fix the dungeons yet.

[Lunever]

I hope monster melee damage has been corrected too - a stone golem repeatedly hit me for an averagy 15 to 20 damage, that is a bit low.

Knights should have it too. Of course you could say "no they "wear" heavy armour and don't get pounce", but without pounce they stay a little helpless (that's why my first thought was sidestepping knights).

EDIT: Found again Lo-bombs instead of Mon-bombs near the tomb of the firestaff.

EDIT2: There's a bug from vanilla DM also in DSB: The dragon spit doesn't have a spit (fireball) function, you can still only swing it. I suggest changing that one for DSB.

EDIT3: Question - how are durations of multiple freeze life handled? Are they added up?

EDIT4: In the tomb of the firestaff I found a firestaff already fully activated (as if it had touched the powergem).

[Sophia]

I hope monster melee damage has been corrected too - a stone golem repeatedly hit me for an averagy 15 to 20 damage, that is a bit low.

I'm pretty sure it has. Let me know how it works out, of course.

Knights should have it too. Of course you could say "no they "wear" heavy armour and don't get pounce", but without pounce they stay a little helpless (that's why my first thought was sidestepping knights).

I'm not sure how "helpless" they are-- they were always pretty tough in vanilla DM and that is all retained, plus their more sophisticated DSB AI. You're a pretty skilled and hardcore player, so you might be a bit biased. We don't want to make the game impossible for normal people.

The idea of a knight 'pouncing' seems a little odd, anyway. What I can do, and what I don't think will break the game too much, is if a knight occasionally gets an instant retaliatory attack when they are attacked in melee. This suits their persona as skilled melee fighters more, and the net effect is the same.

There's a bug from vanilla DM also in DSB: The dragon spit doesn't have a spit (fireball) function, you can still only swing it. I suggest changing that one for DSB.

I think it's debatable whether this was a "bug" or just something that was not finished and/or left out of DM. There is a spitting dragon spit in DSB, it's not just placed into the DM dungeon by default.

Question - how are durations of multiple freeze life handled? Are they added up?

Yes, added up. Due to the way it's handled, doing it any other way would be rather difficult.

In the tomb of the firestaff I found a firestaff already fully activated (as if it had touched the powergem).

This is because liberating the powergem uses some rather weird mechanics that currently don't work in DSB. So the 'hot fix' for Paul was to swap the inactive firestaff for the fully active one-- applied when he'd already gone down there. It is a little strange if you've applied it from the beginning, admittedly. It's not a bug in the dungeon, though.

[Lunever]

Just killed all the demons and fused Chaos.

Since they largely stayed in their corner of Chaos's lair and also the damage was low, it wasn't difficult.

Top of wishlist - I know the current sequence is supposed to be funny, but honestly it really is just to silly after playing through this game. Can you please exchange the ending sequence and use the ending sequence of PC-DM1 instead?

[Sophia]

Meh. It's supposed to be silly.

[Lunever]

I know.

How about first the real ending sequence and then the silly end? That is, one sequence tied to the dungeon, and the silly one as a general ending after the dungeon sequence?

[Sophia]

What do you mean by the "real ending sequence," anyway?

[Lunever]

I mean the sequence you get when fusing Chaos in the original DM1 PC version.
Would be great to see it in DSB.

[Lunever]

So, downloaded DSB V0.41. Since the DM1 dungeon hasn't yet updated, I'm going to play through the CSB dungeon next.

Can you post your current to-do-list for V0.42?

EDIT: So now there are many new shortcut keys. Can you also allow <CTRL + Something> as a choice for keys? (Like STRG+S for quicksave for example).

EDIT2: Something that always annyoed me in all DM versions and clones so far - can you make it possible to "re-sort" champions? That is, if I want my forth (rightmost) character to appear as the first (leftmost) character, I can somehow swap them? So if I'm used to have my strongest fighter on the first position but have to choose a different character first in order to open the door to one of the hidden characters, I can arrange the preferred character order later on?

EDIT3: I would like to test a bit levelling up and stat raising (and compare it to DM1 and RTC). Can you somehow enable a quickload function for me for testing purposes? Quitting and restarting is normally fine, but to compare multiple parallel stat rolls it still takes to long.

EDIT4: I like the worms. Moving and instantly attacking makes them worthwhile foes.

EDIT5: Missing the "Creature" scroll.

EDIT6: I have the strong impression that food and water drain are much faster than in vanilla DM.

[Sophia]

So now there are many new shortcut keys. Can you also allow <CTRL + Something> as a choice for keys? (Like STRG+S for quicksave for example).

No problem.

Something that always annyoed me in all DM versions and clones so far - can you make it possible to "re-sort" champions? That is, if I want my forth (rightmost) character to appear as the first (leftmost) character, I can somehow swap them? So if I'm used to have my strongest fighter on the first position but have to choose a different character first in order to open the door to one of the hidden characters, I can arrange the preferred character order later on?

I'll look into how hard this would be.

I would like to test a bit levelling up and stat raising (and compare it to DM1 and RTC). Can you somehow enable a quickload function for me for testing purposes? Quitting and restarting is normally fine, but to compare multiple parallel stat rolls it still takes to long.

Can't you just fireball yourself or something? That's pretty quick.

I like the worms. Moving and instantly attacking makes them worthwhile foes.

Good.

Missing the "Creature" scroll.

Yeah, I never got around to making this one. I'll do it eventually; it shouldn't be that hard.

I have the strong impression that food and water drain are much faster than in vanilla DM.

I'm not sure how or why, if this is the case.

So that brings us to...

Can you post your current to-do-list for V0.42?

My to-do list for 0.42 is currently pretty much just whatever I've agreed to do in this thread:
Make knights have a quick retaliatory attack
Allow ctrl (and probably alt) in keyboard shortcuts
Change rotation direction of champions based on side clicked on
Add a creature naming scroll to the standard archetypes
Maybe be able to move champions around
Maybe do something about materializers attacking from doors

[Adamo]

Resurrect vs. Reincarnation docs:
http://www.dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/doc ... arnate.png