Features for DSB

[Lunever]

Ninja combat - EOB allowed a thief to use his backstab damage when attacking a creature from the rear. I don't find it anymore, but I think I remember some years ago GG replied positive to this, but I can't remember anymore to what extend this was implemented in RTC. Still, doesn't really matter, I suggest increased ninja-level-dependant damage when attacking from the rear.

XP - Fighter XP usually depend on damage inflicted. Just a thought, but maybe DSB checks actually inflicted damage (after subtracting armour) instead of dealt damage? That way you'd get little xp to none from opponents like rock piles though you fight like hell. Also, the missing fighter xp would explain why my fighters don't hit anyhting (the ratio really was significantly below 1 to 10) - lack of levels, lack of hits. lack of hits, lack of xp. lack of xp, lack of levels. Probably takes a while to break from this cycle. After half of the choose-your-door-level with doing fighter combat majorily (instead of my usual fireball-heavy style), I still only now got my first neophyte fighter level. Even leaving RTC comparisons aside, in Amiga-DM or PC-DM I'm pretty sure I'd levelled much earlier and more too. I refrained from fireballs since I use a lot of Ma-Potions. Is the stamina drain original (not sure, very subjective)?

Warcry - I know that and I tried to get at least a neophyte level with Halk, but I gave up after a while (I warcried rockpiles and trollins a lot, the trollins even ran often). Aside from that, warcry should add to a fighter and to a priest internal skill, once they are fully implemented.

And a meaninglessly mumbled spell really should give a minimum amount of wizard and/or priest xp. After all you learn from your mistakes and I'm pretty sure some of the original versions did do this.

Door switches - yes, but you could in RTC. I think its improving the interface and thus I strongly advocate it.

[Sophia]

Ok, we were on the right track. There was a definite problem with the damage done if your initial attack was completely absorbed by the monster's armor, which frequently happened in the case of weak/unskilled characters against rockpiles. Both DM and DSB would recompute some "bonus" damage, but unfortunately I somehow got the sense of a comparison with a random number between 0 and 3 backwards in DSB-- the DM version succeeded on a nonzero value, the DSB version only succeeded on zero. This means that this bonus hit would succeed 25% of the time in DSB and 75% of the time in DM. Furthermore, the result of this bonus hit was itself added to the monster damage, which meant that since DSB succeeded on a zero, this factor was never applied. I'm sure a lot of little 2 and 3 damage hits on rockpiles were averted because of this, and after applying these fixes, rockpile combat feels much more like DM. As for the other xp issues, you're probably right about the cumulative nature of the problem. For the sake of my sanity, I'll assume that combat with all monsters suffered from this problem to some extent or other, and this tended to cause the number of levels gained to be reduced, which in turn reduced combat effectiveness and so on...

I'll think about backstabbing, etc. Trying to tweak too much at one time is probably how messes like this one show up in the first place.

[Lunever]

Have you checked whether the stamina drain (for mana regeneration) ist true to the origiginal code (as I said, I have the feeling it is stronger that in the original, but it's just an impression and might be subjective after much playing RTC with higher-level characters)?

There's not much to be gained from EOB in respect to engine except for a couple of things. Have you played through the original EOB and/or the RTC adptation?
A Main difference are weapons - you just click a weapon in EOB (I think from memory it was a rightclick on the weapon icon) and get an attack, which made 2-weapon-fighting easy to handle. The different combat actions of DM are much more sphisticated. Still, have a weapon release its most powerful attack on a right-click would be cool.

Um, can you comment the XP for meaningless spells issue?

How about door switches being always operable?

EDIT1: There's something broken in the drain calculation. When I threw around a couple of clubs with wuuf, in order to see how long it would take to get a neophyte level by training, a few throws quickly brought him to stamina 0 (which is not the main problem), and a few moments later he was at food zero and water zero. Being out of stamina should drain health, not zero nutrition. EDIT: Checked this closer - once you are at stamina 0 and do something that drains stamina, like throwing a sinlge club, water is set to zero and food is set to a fixed value near zero.

EDIT2: YaBro - according to the game's original manual, this should create a spellshield effect, not another YaIr effect just bottled. The original game has a bug there imho, which is, why it was changed in RTC (and Nexus also does a spellshield there). Please consider this for DSB too.

EDIT3: BTW, might be obsolete once you changed the default savegame-name anyway, but currently often when selecting the savegameslot a letter from my movement keys makes its way into the initial savegame-name. When you are about changing this anyway, you might also add a short "game saved - ready to continue <OK>" confirmation.

EDIT4: Can you make the dungeon directory selection upon starting DSB memorize the last path?

[Sophia]

Have you checked whether the stamina drain (for mana regeneration) ist true to the origiginal code (as I said, I have the feeling it is stronger that in the original, but it's just an impression and might be subjective after much playing RTC with higher-level characters)?

As far as I can tell, the stamina drain during mana regeneration is accurate to the original. While I was looking at the food/water bug mentioned below, I read over the code that handles mana regeneration and the stamina drain that comes with it, and found the flow in DM and DSB to be the same, at least to my eyes. It's in sys_update in base/system.lua if you're interested.

As an aside, on the topic of stamina drain, the stamina used throwing objects around will be greater in DSB than in many (older) versions of CSBwin. This is not a bug in DSB, but rather in CSBwin. See this thread: http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... 46&t=28490

There's not much to be gained from EOB in respect to engine except for a couple of things. Have you played through the original EOB and/or the RTC adptation?

No, I haven't.

A Main difference are weapons - you just click a weapon in EOB (I think from memory it was a rightclick on the weapon icon) and get an attack, which made 2-weapon-fighting easy to handle. The different combat actions of DM are much more sphisticated. Still, have a weapon release its most powerful attack on a right-click would be cool.

I could see it being handy, but the greater variety and sophistication of DM's combat actions makes deciding which is the "most powerful attack" a bit of a sticky issue. Should a club throw or bash? Should something like fury shoot a fireball, or do its most powerful melee attack ? How about a wand, what should it do? (these questions are rhetorical, you don't have to answer them if you don't want to and my point is I think the answer isn't very clear)

Um, can you comment the XP for meaningless spells issue?

I'm not very fond of this idea. I don't think it was in the original DM at all-- vague memories of it being there sort of belong in the "I knew a guy who knew a guy who made ful bombs" realm as the DM engine is quite complex under the surface and it was quite easy to perceive mechanics that weren't there due to the complex interactions of the ones that were. Even if we take it as a new tweak, I think it rewards bad behavior, because you can just randomly click out meaningless spells and get rewarded for it. Which is another problem-- would it give wizard or priest xp for doing this?

How about door switches being always operable?

Eh, fine.

There's something broken in the drain calculation. When I threw around a couple of clubs with wuuf, in order to see how long it would take to get a neophyte level by training, a few throws quickly brought him to stamina 0 (which is not the main problem), and a few moments later he was at food zero and water zero. Being out of stamina should drain health, not zero nutrition. EDIT: Checked this closer - once you are at stamina 0 and do something that drains stamina, like throwing a sinlge club, water is set to zero and food is set to a fixed value near zero.

Yes, this was broken. The problem was that when your stamina was exactly zero, the loop that normally regenerates a bit of stamina and consumes a bit of food and water ran for way more iterations than it should, using up all of your food and water. I've fixed this, of course.

YaBro - according to the game's original manual, this should create a spellshield effect, not another YaIr effect just bottled. The original game has a bug there imho, which is, why it was changed in RTC (and Nexus also does a spellshield there). Please consider this for DSB too.

Which manual? I distinctly remember that the DM manual on the Amiga didn't give you any spells, just the runes, and the adventurer's handbook just says it's a "shield potion." It does seem like it'd be more useful if it did something unique, though, rather than just a bottled version of a spell that you already have, and isn't even as good (because it only affects one person), so this change makes a lot of sense. I'll change it.

BTW, might be obsolete once you changed the default savegame-name anyway, but currently often when selecting the savegameslot a letter from my movement keys makes its way into the initial savegame-name. When you are about changing this anyway, you might also add a short "game saved - ready to continue <OK>" confirmation.

If this problem is what I think it is, then no additional thing to click is necessary; all I need to do is clear the keyboard buffer just before taking the game save input, which I'll do.

[beowuuf]

YaBroDain is the spellshield in DM2, which seems logical. Bottled spellshield which leaves your mana free for fireballs seems like a good tactical choice. After all, really the spellshield only is needed for the first two in melee combat anyway.

[Lunever]

The spellshield change is welcome - however, as a reference: Adventurer's handbook, 2nd Edition, downloaded pdf from the Encyclopaedia, spell description text:
"spell shield potion: This potion creates a shield against spells ... a dashed light-blue line will sourround your champions ..."
Though in the table you are referring to only "shield potion" is listed, but since it is the only shield potion in the game it should be the one meant.

Most powerfull attack - I mean "most damaging close-combat attack, and only throwing attack if the item has no melee attack or other action, and only the bottommost other action if it has neither a close-combat nor a throw action". So you don't cast stuff accidentally, but you can always strike.

XP for meaningless spells - I'll check other original versions.

[beowuuf]

Yeah, the adventurer's handbook isn't 'canon' though. There might have been a simple mis-communication.

[Lunever]

I know, it's just a hint book, and Nexus also isn't canon. Still, the change is a good thing, no matter the source.

[beowuuf]

What should YaBroDain become?

Edit: Sorry, that should be YaIrDain

[Lunever]

Um, not sure whether we mean the same thing. YaIrDain is a DM2 spell. While I would love to see all later canon spells in DM1-DSB too, that's not the case.
The change referred to above is having Ya-Bro - the shield potion - creating a light-blue dashed line spellshield, like in the adventurer's handbook and RTC and Nexus, instead of a dark-blue-lined physical shield like in original FTL-DM, which I consider to be a bug.

[beowuuf]

I understand, I'm just asking since I assume someone will do DM2 at some point - no reason not to with the flexible DSB engine. The fact Ya Bro is still available in DM2 and a spellshield spell is available points to it not being a bug though.

[Sophia]

My thinking was as follows:

I'd rather not add a completely new spell found only in DM2 to DSB (being primarily based on DM1 and CSB), so adding Ya Ir Dain wouldn't be my first choice. However, there is, in vanilla DM/CSB, no way to get a spellshield other than using items. This isn't inherently bad-- there's no way to make a Ful bomb either-- but since there is this potion that is more or less useless, having the same effect as a spell only not as good, I figure I might as well take advantage of this and fill in the gap in the ability to create shields. I suspect the designers of Nexus thought along similar lines, and George too.

Your first encounter with Ya potions says "Drink these to gain magical defense," which sounds more like a spellshield to me anyway, though I guess this is balanced by the fact that there are no monsters that the potions could possibly be useful against for quite some time. To be realistic, though, I wonder how many people didn't just chug the potions to gain use of the flasks anyhow.

[Lunever]

Beo: Ah, now I know what you mean. Well, as we all know, YaIrDain creates a shield for the entire party, while YaBro creates a bottled spellshield for one character. Of course you could say, well, both are useful - but if you did, you could say, that a physical shield potion and a physical party shield would then too both be useful. The difference in DM1 is, as Sophia points out, that in DM1 - on contrary to DM2 - there are 2 ways of creating a physical shield, but no way (except using an item like the Theowand) to create a spellshield. The way the adventurer's guide and Nexus (and RTC) handle it is more reasonable, than what the original game engine does, so it's a good choice for DSB too.

Of course, once we walk in the halls of castle Skullkeep in DSB, it's not important, since using the party shield is just more handy than imbibing potions.
Still, to keep the bottled ones meaningful, they should be stronger / longer lasting that the party ones.

[Lunever]

BTW - how does DSB handle shield spells?

While some early RTC version just made a shield spell be a short-term digital state that lessened damage a bit, later versions handled it logarithmically, which is best imho and probably is what DM also does (though I don't know that for sure). That is, casting more shield power upon previously cast shield power will never be completely useless, but the effect addition considerably lessens with each iteration. And the shield effect vanishes over time like the voltage curve of a a capacitor de-loading via a resistor (being rounded down to 0 at some point, I'd say at about 4τ).

EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings: The only thing I know about RTC is that in somce conversation GG said that he did stuff like that logarithmically. The idea of having it decharge with an e^-(t/τ) function is a suggestion from me now.

How does DM / CSB / DSB handle this?

Is there a difference between the 3 shield spells and just having higher armour / anti-fire / anti-magic?

[Sophia]

Early RTC was closer to getting it right, then. In DM/CSB (and DSB) there is a "shield strength" that is stored, based on the formula of (spellpower * 4) + 1, so a Lo shield creates a shield of strength 5, Um creates one of strength 9, and so on, up to Mon, creating one of strength 25. This shield lasts for the square of its strength, so a Mon shield will last for 625 ticks. The shield lasts at full strength for its entire duration, so a Mon shield will have a strength of 25 for the full 625 ticks, and then disappear completely. There is no attenuation or anything.

There is nothing too fancy done with the cumulative strength of multiple shields, either. If the total shield strength is greater than 50, any subsequent shields are applied at 25% power. A good tweak (and something I was considering early in DSB development, but never did because I sort of forgot about it) would be to at least smooth out this curve a bit, as the sharp drop-off isn't so nice. Further tweaking could introduce some fall-off of the strength of shields in use, but it'd have to be balanced so that the shields didn't seem a lot weaker, because their strength was falling off.

The main difference from higher armor/anti-magic/anti-fire values is that they scale damage done where shield strength is simply subtracted from damage done. That is, while adding 5 anti-fire knocks a percentage off of the fire damage done (about 3%), adding 5 to a fireshield simply reduces the damage done by 5 hp.

[Lunever]

I remember that casting a lot of YaIr in DM would result in a shield that would last very very long, while in RTC it only lasted long (which was absolutely ok imho). Funny, I always assumed (without knowing) that the shield strength would deteriorate in DM, seems I was wrong. But then as a player who did not look at the formulas coded you don't have any indication. With many things I think it is good the the player has to guess (like XP or internal skills), but in this case it might actually be nice - if you smooth out the curve - to change the dashing if the shield box lines (long lines, short interruptions for a strong shield, short lines with longer interruption for a weak shield).

What maximum is there for the shield strength? Once past 50% you bascially get +1,5 (*4) per MonYaIr, but certainly there is some limit?
And adding linearly - isn't a good idea when you can regain mana faster than the shield you get for that mana drops in strength, so making this a bit more of a curve instead of a rough curve consisting of just 2 lines would be an improvement - some 3 to 5 lines might be enough, but then this isn't a a paper and pen game with a need for easy rolls, it utilizes a computer and might as weill utilize log and e functions and curved attenuation.

Being attacked does not deteriorate the shield strength then I gather?

I always wondered, whether it wouldn't be better for spell or fireshields to show up as a higher amti-magic- / anti-fire-stats. Might not be as easy then without changing its effect if they work differently. How's the damage percentage calculated, what maximum percentage do you get at anti-something 255?


Stats: It was already mentioned somewhere that in DSB potion-boosted stats drop to quickly. When you change that, think carefully whether the duration - while it should be a little longer than it is now - really should be as long as in DM1. Basically, once you had developed an adequate priest level, you could easily run around with values all near 255 almost constantly. You increased wisdom and got out more (faster) mana, boosted vit with the newly gained fast mana (and helped out with an occasional ma-potion), boosted strength next so you were always unencumbered and did lots of damage, and finally boosted dex so you hit more precisely and dodged very well. With the long duration of the potions and the shields, you could easily get nigh invulnerable and knowing this you either got a game to easy or had to force yourself to play inefficiently. Nexus also featured a somewhat shorter duration than DM1 and capped the maximum to 170, probably for exactly that reason. I recommend something like this for DSB too - you don't have to stick to exploits and loopholes of the original.

[PaulH]

Could a spell editor change some of these variables? This would allow the original to stay true if need be, yet the designer to implement what he feels is right for his dungeon.

Regarding missile speed - could the game be sped up, but everything else slowed to compensate?

[Lunever]

Missile speed - would be good. Currently I really have to get used again to avoid walking into my own missiles and get hurt.

EDIT1: Stats - The stats raise rather quickly to their new maximum after a level-up. That makes it difficult to see the changes (and keep to them in mind in order to compare to other clones). Can you store changes on levelup until the eye is clicked next, so that on that next click there will be a "+x" displayed behind every raised stat, and have the raised class hughlighted on that next click?

EDIT2: The worms also seemed rather easy to me. Might be because I got used to accelerated worms from RTC archmaster. I think though that DM1 worms sometimes used to do a sudden attack right after a move, couldn't find that behaviour in DSB.

EDIT3: The autosort doesn't sort items into containers in the backpack (RTC did). Might sound minor when you just think on food and chests, but becomes more important once someone does DM2-like quivers. Also, ammo is not drawn from containers in the off-hand. If you change both now, you won't have to later if someone starts a DM2 dungeon or otherwise wants to utilize DM2 stuff.

Also, can you let more action items (staffs and other weapons) be scabbard-compatible (no matter what vanilla DM did or didn't) Example: Sling? I also think of wands there (no reason why you couldn't put a wand into a scabbard) or a couple of other items that might not really fit in a scabbard, but are normally worn on the waist anyway, like the horn of fear (think or Boromir).

EDIT3B: Same goes for small items and containers. Why wouldn't a wand fit in a chest? RTC even allows shields in chests. Would like DSB to be more versatile there by default (if someone wants to create different containers like a moneyback that only takes coins and gems he still can do so).

EDIT4: Especially weak monsters should attack once when caught under a door (and blocked by the party) and then backstep quickly. Monsters should only stay under a door and keep fighting if an average door slam costs them only a small percentage of their current health.
EDIT5: Can DSB-monsters in theory utilize backstep and sidestep for combat moves?

EDIT6: Just moved into a position where I couldn't move much when standing before a swamp slime, so I started to whack it in melee. It didn't do anything but bite me for 6 points of damage, no poison. Which makes me think - right, monsters like swamp slimes and wizard's eyes do have a melee attack. Since it it is utterly useless compared to their spells and only would make sense if they were out of the mana they don't have as a trait - maybe something like dragonbreath in DnD (usable every 1d4 rounds) could be used, or maybe they could at least AI-wise be made to fire once at least before resorting to melee. In a nexus-like thinking bite could be their L1 attack, and posion bolt their L2 attack (if you ignore that this kind of attack pattern applies to charactes only and monsters in Nexus are much more dumb than any monster that DSB makes dumb with a deliberate "stupid" flag).

EDIT7: Seems like DSB monsters ignore fake walls altogether, no matter what the party did. I know it's not easy, but a more souphisiticated behaviour might be interesting there.

[Sophia]

it might actually be nice - if you smooth out the curve - to change the dashing if the shield box lines (long lines, short interruptions for a strong shield, short lines with longer interruption for a weak shield)

This would be easier to do if the shield graphic was dynamically drawn instead of just being a static bitmap, of course.

certainly there is some limit?

Not currently, no. Whether or not this is good is of course open to discussion/debate.

Being attacked does not deteriorate the shield strength then I gather?

No, it doesn't.

How's the damage percentage calculated, what maximum percentage do you get at anti-something 255?

This is one way DM and DSB diverge. In DM, values of anti-fire over 170 would (or, rather, were supposed to, anti-fire is broken) completely absorb fire damage. In DSB, I made the anti-fire formula more harsh to account for what DM players are used to seeing in practice due to DM's broken anti-fire. So, in DSB, the magic number is increased to 200, and fire damage is never allowed to drop below 20% of its base value due to anti-fire. In addition, if the total damage done is under 10, damage is set to a random number between 4 and 10, never allowed to be completely 0. This is to simulate the fact that no matter how good your anti-fire is, you're still actually getting hit by a fireball, and that'll sting a little. Only by using fireshields can you completely avert fireball damage.

Nexus also featured a somewhat shorter duration than DM1 and capped the maximum to 170, probably for exactly that reason. I recommend something like this for DSB too - you don't have to stick to exploits and loopholes of the original.

Good thought. While I want to remain quite faithful to the original, this applies mostly to "normal play," not using tricks to completely remove the game's challenge.

Missile speed - would be good. Currently I really have to get used again to avoid walking into my own missiles and get hurt.

To be fair, DSB is more authentic to what DM really does, but people have gotten used to the RTC behavior where things move faster. First of all, RTC runs at 6 ticks/sec, which is, honestly, way too fast for how DM really ran. DSB runs at a more accurate 5 ticks/sec. In addition, RTC handles the first tick of thrown objects differently-- in both DM and DSB, an object thrown in between game update ticks isn't moved until it has been in the square directly in front of the party for one full tick. In RTC, it is moved as soon as whatever partial tick has elapsed, causing thrown objects to get a sort of "head start."

The stats raise rather quickly to their new maximum after a level-up. That makes it difficult to see the changes (and keep to them in mind in order to compare to other clones). Can you store changes on levelup until the eye is clicked next, so that on that next click there will be a "+x" displayed behind every raised stat, and have the raised class hughlighted on that next click?

Showing which class got the level up in green seems like a good idea. That's easy enough to do and to fit into the current interface, so I'll add that. But, the "+x" thing seems like it'd change the interface more and I'm not sure where I'd put that information.

The worms also seemed rather easy to me. Might be because I got used to accelerated worms from RTC archmaster. I think though that DM1 worms sometimes used to do a sudden attack right after a move, couldn't find that behaviour in DSB.

Right now, it doesn't exist in DSB. I don't remember this from DM strictly speaking, but on the other hand, it doesn't seem that un-DM either. Perhaps I could add a "pouncing" monster flag that would allow the monster to occasionally make an immediate attack after a move.

The autosort doesn't sort items into containers in the backpack (RTC did). Might sound minor when you just think on food and chests, but becomes more important once someone does DM2-like quivers. Also, ammo is not drawn from containers in the off-hand. If you change both now, you won't have to later if someone starts a DM2 dungeon or otherwise wants to utilize DM2 stuff.

I don't think ammo should be drawn from containers in the off-hand. The idea of having a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other hand is that you're holding the bow with one hand, and pulling back the arrow to shoot it with the other hand. If you're holding a chest full of arrows in your left hand, you're not going to be able to shoot a bow! Auto-sorting items into containers might be better and make more sense, but, it's going to be a bit difficult for me to implement flawlessly because DSB's approach to containers is so flexible. At this point I will say only that I will think about it.

Also, can you let more action items (staffs and other weapons) be scabbard-compatible (no matter what vanilla DM did or didn't) Example: Sling? I also think of wands there (no reason why you couldn't put a wand into a scabbard) or a couple of other items that might not really fit in a scabbard, but are normally worn on the waist anyway, like the horn of fear (think or Boromir).

EDIT3B: Same goes for small items and containers. Why wouldn't a wand fit in a chest? RTC even allows shields in chests. Would like DSB to be more versatile there by default (if someone wants to create different containers like a moneyback that only takes coins and gems he still can do so).

In reality, it's even simpler, because according to the DM encyclopedia, wands do fit in chests, and I just got it wrong. Same goes for slings and the horn of fear. I'll take another look and make sure the carry locations match DM-- right now DSB is erroneously more restrictive. Then we can revisit this issue and see if it's so bad anymore.

EDIT4: Especially weak monsters should attack once when caught under a door (and blocked by the party) and then backstep quickly. Monsters should only stay under a door and keep fighting if an average door slam costs them only a small percentage of their current health.
EDIT5: Can DSB-monsters in theory utilize backstep and sidestep for combat moves?

Yes, they should. I tried to resolve the situation that plagued RTC back when I still used it (not sure about now) where a monster trapped under a door would start dancing the Twist. There was also a problem with early version of DSB where monsters were initially too cowardly when under a door. Maybe I went too far in the other direction..

EDIT6: Just moved into a position where I couldn't move much when standing before a swamp slime, so I started to whack it in melee. It didn't do anything but bite me for 6 points of damage, no poison. Which makes me think - right, monsters like swamp slimes and wizard's eyes do have a melee attack. Since it it is utterly useless compared to their spells and only would make sense if they were out of the mana they don't have as a trait - maybe something like dragonbreath in DnD (usable every 1d4 rounds) could be used, or maybe they could at least AI-wise be made to fire once at least before resorting to melee. In a nexus-like thinking bite could be their L1 attack, and posion bolt their L2 attack (if you ignore that this kind of attack pattern applies to charactes only and monsters in Nexus are much more dumb than any monster that DSB makes dumb with a deliberate "stupid" flag).

Monsters like swamp slimes and vexirks do tend to fire their spells even when they're close to the party anyway. Maybe they don't do it often enough, but they are designed to do it, that's what the "prefer_ranged" flag is for.

EDIT7: Seems like DSB monsters ignore fake walls altogether, no matter what the party did. I know it's not easy, but a more souphisiticated behaviour might be interesting there.

It is more sophisticated, or should be. They only ignore fake walls that the party has been through, and only if they've seen the party recently. "Stupid" monsters are even more restricted in their actions.

[Sophia]

Could a spell editor change some of these variables?

There is no "spell editor" but by hacking around in the Lua you can change everything of course.

could the game be sped up, but everything else slowed to compensate?

Not easily. It'd have to be an integer of the current speed to keep any of my sanity intact, too, which would mean missiles would move twice as fast as they do now, traveling at more or less 10 ticks/sec-- that's significantly faster than even RTC.

[Adamo]

- PaulH: could the game be sped up, but everything else slowed to compensate?
- Sophia: Not easily. It'd have to be an integer of the current speed to keep any of my sanity intact, too, which would mean missiles would move twice as fast as they do now, traveling at more or less 10 ticks/sec-- that's significantly faster than even RTC.

Do you think about multiplying the actual game speed, say, by 2, and decreasing every monster`s "quickness" factor by 2 to compensate? That would cause all flying objects, like boots or chest thrown (not only regular missiles) to travel two times faster that way. The door would also open 2 times faster. It would give an illusion of increasing speed of flying objects in the dungeon at the cost of eating two times more CPU resources. But that doesn`t mean the game would be 2 times harder if only you`d fit monster`s speed. That could be good.

[zoom]

in both DM and DSB, an object thrown in between game update ticks isn't moved until it has been in the square directly in front of the party for one full tick.

I think there are/were grave differences in Amiga and Atari ST versions.
I realized that when I played csbwin and ran into my own projectiles. Was not possible in the Amiga version, I am quite positive about that.
Sophia, you played the Amiga version as well? Some prefer missiles to be slower than the party bcs of old school etc.
I would say that running into my own projectiles is not good, but you can probably get used to it.
same goes for activating door buttons with an item in hand, in amiga it worked in atari nope.
there was a thread somewhere about this differences. As said, we all probably prefer what we know or got used to ...so
hope this missile speed issue gets resolved mutually

btw, quite some action in the dsb forum lately

[Lunever]

Hmm, or you don't do the integer and loose some sanity. Aren't dungeon keepers supposed to madly laugh and giggle and drool anyway?
But 10 ticks might actually be good. Can other game elements like doors etc. be also slowed down? Oh, and if it was for me, you can leave the monsters speed uncompensated

Shields. Yes, there should be some limit. Or at least a limiting function. Instead of the pseudo-curve now (full till 50 and quarter past 50) a similar-minded pseudocurve that dynamically breaks down into more linear segments would be best imho. I mean, full til 25, half til 50, third til 75, quarter til 100 and so on. The duration would extend by the effective spell levels squared only (after the application of the percentage above).
In addition to this you could still curve out the shields' end a bit. A small percentage of damage absorbed could be deducted from the shield strength.
I know that the dashed boxes are bitmaps - but maybe there can be several bitmaps for them?

Stat-potion duration. I found that to be one of the couple of things they got pretty right in Nexus. The duration is long enough that you can boost yourself a little without having to reboost all the time, but just not long enough to boost everything to maximum with a normal character's mana (resting in between to get more mana would reduce the first boosted stats quite a bit. Resting/boosting was kinda equilibrium. The first stats before bosting were still somewhat above their unboosted state, but a good deal away from the boosting maximum - so I could either boost the other stats significantly, or reboost the first ones a bit (the boost got somewhat weaker results the nearer you got to the maximum). Also, 170 seemed a good choice for maximum. Of course, if there was to be a maximum, I would not necessarily take a fixed value. I would take something related to the initial value, so it still makes sense to boost rather Halk's strength for melee than Tiggy's.

Summa summarum the DSB maximum should be somewhere between the latest cap from Nexus of 170 and the original vanilla exploit of 255, and it should somehow consider the inititial stat, so I'd propose: Let potions work normally (as before) until they reach 170 (and only let them boost until 170 at first), and let give them a very low boost once past 170 (but leave the maximum at 255, applicable for stats of 169 or greater)). The low boost could be (spell level div 6) * (initial stat div 5), total minimum 1. The drop over time should be fast like now (DSB 0.40) as long as above 170, but slow like DM1 if equal or below 170.
Optionally, the slow drop can be curved out smoothly.

Funny, I never knew anti-fire was broken. If it's a bit different in DSB anyway than in DM1, I would suggest to have fire- and spell-shields rather show up as increased anti-fire / anti-magic values (with a smaller boost than stat potions, similiar to the aura spells of DM2).

Levelup: Maybe you can in addition to the green highlighting of the class also highlight the raised stats' name.

Pounce flag - good idea.

If you rework chest/scabbard fitting to closer match vanilla DM, leave out a couple of vanilla DM oddities - like a torch not fitting into the scabbard etc..

Doors: As long as even the weakest monster (as long as it doesn't have a "lurk" behaviour) attacks at least once it's ok. To cowardly is only a problem when you can make them retreat without harming you at all (the RTC twist). And of course, they should not turn under a door (like in RTC), but always just quickly backstep.
BTW: Haven't tried yet - are swamp slimes aware that they can fire through grates?

Shooting from containers - Um, you know there is a reason I ask this? That's what DM2 does. You put a filled quiver-container in the offhand, and a missile-shooting weapon in the main hand, and then you can fire from the container. You can put a second quiver-container in the scabbard slot. Since the quiver holds 8 arrows, you can hold 8+8+3=19 shots, which is reasonable. At least more reasonable than just 5 shots for an archer. RTC-DM2 does this too and additionally autosorts ammo into these quivers (hand first, scabbard second, backpack last). As I said, everything that makes ninjas be less idiotic will be welcome.
So having a default container who allows all of this would be a start. Of course it'd look better to just add dm2-like quiver-items to the missile-firing weapons.
Modern dungeons can use this for ammo magazines of course.

Fake walls: I met (Encyclopaedia) Couatl Nr. 13 not on Encyclopaedia x13/y10/z04, but on Enc. x14/y09/z04, so must already have passed 1 fake wall.
Looked in ESB - why is it that Encyclopaedia 13/10 is in ESB 13/11?

EDIT: Regarding poison bolt spells, and poison darts - can you actually poison monsters in DSB in a sense that they will loose HP over time? Vanilla DM only made poison hits damage monsters. Back then on Amiga it took me a few tries until I got disappointed and found out that you can't soften up monsters by poisoning them.

EDIT2: Since some items like the Staff of Manar not only gave bonus mana, but also increased the mana regeneration rate, RTC generally gave a mana regeneration acceleration to all mana-boosting items (more acceleration for higher mana boosts). Does DSB consider something like this too?

EDIT3: Oh my,now I found something really broken. The current stat maximum in DSB isn't 255 at all, it's 999 ! I wanted to catch up a little in wizard/priest levels with Halk, so I let the other characters brew some wisdom potions. However, you should think with wisdom 999 Halk would be casting like hell. He doesn't. Neither his mana regeneration rate nor his spell casting failure chance seem to be much impressed by his wisdom. To me it looks as if wisdom didn't do aynthing in DSB.

EDIT4:
First floor triggered skeleton generator:
FATAL LUA ERROR: Lua Function monster_generator.msg_handler[100000]: base/util.lua:203: dsb_3dsound requires Sound in param 1
@@@ LUA STACK @@@
[N:0][N:1822][N:100000][N:0][N:1777][S:base/util.lua:203: dsb_3dsound requires Sound in param 1]
@@@@@@
Gotta check the other thread to see how to fix that.
Right, edited the startup.lua and also added all other fixes from the other thread.
Where do I get the new monster_ai.lua ?

[Sophia]

Do you think about multiplying the actual game speed, say, by 2, and decreasing every monster`s "quickness" factor by 2 to compensate? That would cause all flying objects, like boots or chest thrown (not only regular missiles) to travel two times faster that way.

But 10 ticks might actually be good. Can other game elements like doors etc. be also slowed down? Oh, and if it was for me, you can leave the monsters speed uncompensated

All of this can be done, but I'm not sure it should. Look, the bottom line is that DM runs at a certain speed. RTC runs faster, but that's RTC. DSB is an attempt to be like DM, not like RTC. Part of DM was the slower missiles. I'm not going to arbitrarily speed up one thing or another because that wasn't how DM-- the original DM, the real DM-- actually played.

If you just want a global speed increase, like playing oldschool DM on your 68040 Amiga 4000 or something, you can mess around with "ClockDivide" in dsb.ini. Add "ClockDivide=2" under "[Settings]" to get a turbocharged DSB. The default value is 7, lower = faster. But, take note, I am not sure if this won't at some point in the future break some timing-based puzzles in some weirdly designed custom dungeons if you decide to play like this all the time. Caveat hax0r, and all that.

Shields. Yes, there should be some limit. Or at least a limiting function.

I've played around with it a bit recently and I've got it on a natural-log-based curve now, so you very rapidly hit a point of diminishing returns trying to cast huge numbers of shields. It still has the general "feel" of the original, though, as shields cast at low power still add most of their strength. I don't think any sort of hard limit is necessary with this in place.

Stat-potion duration.

There's a lot here and I'll have to think about it a bit more and try a few things. My basic aim, and I think yours too, is trying to be (mostly) true to DM while making the whole mechanic less exploitable. Of course, this stuff is all accessible in the base code-- stat boosts are handled by the various potion_effect functions in objects.lua, and stat draining by the sys_update function in system.lua, so feel free to play with it yourself, too.

Funny, I never knew anti-fire was broken. If it's a bit different in DSB anyway than in DM1, I would suggest to have fire- and spell-shields rather show up as increased anti-fire / anti-magic values (with a smaller boost than stat potions, similiar to the aura spells of DM2).

That's pretty different from how DM did it, though. I don't really see how something being a bit different automatically justifies making it a lot different.

Levelup: Maybe you can in addition to the green highlighting of the class also highlight the raised stats' name.

Good idea, I'll do that.

If you rework chest/scabbard fitting to closer match vanilla DM, leave out a couple of vanilla DM oddities - like a torch not fitting into the scabbard etc..

Oddly enough, I got this wrong too, and DSB torches already fit there. I guess I won't fix it.

Haven't tried yet - are swamp slimes aware that they can fire through grates?

Yes they are.

Shooting from containers - Um, you know there is a reason I ask this? That's what DM2 does. You put a filled quiver-container in the offhand, and a missile-shooting weapon in the main hand, and then you can fire from the container. You can put a second quiver-container in the scabbard slot. Since the quiver holds 8 arrows, you can hold 8+8+3=19 shots, which is reasonable. At least more reasonable than just 5 shots for an archer. RTC-DM2 does this too and additionally autosorts ammo into these quivers (hand first, scabbard second, backpack last).

DSB already supports taking ammo out of quivers and autosorting ammo into quivers might be a worthwhile addition a part of a generally more versatile "putting stuff away" function, which is something I want to add anyway. I'm still not sold on holding a container in the off-hand: it seems weird to me and if DM2 did it, that's great for DM2, but DSB isn't a clone of DM2. I mean, maybe a quiver, and that's a big maybe-- but holding a chest full of arrows in the left hand and shooting the arrows out of it just seems ridiculous. How are you going to draw the bow? It's another case where if you (or dungeon designers, or whoever) really want it, it's not that terribly hard to hack into the Lua yourself, either. Take a look at method_shoot_ammo in methods.lua.

Fake walls: I met (Encyclopaedia) Couatl Nr. 13 not on Encyclopaedia x13/y10/z04, but on Enc. x14/y09/z04, so must already have passed 1 fake wall.
Looked in ESB - why is it that Encyclopaedia 13/10 is in ESB 13/11?

I'd assume because it's wrong in RTC, too. Joramun's DSB-DM is more or less a direct conversion of the DM.txt that came with RTC.

Regarding poison bolt spells, and poison darts - can you actually poison monsters in DSB in a sense that they will loose HP over time? Vanilla DM only made poison hits damage monsters. Back then on Amiga it took me a few tries until I got disappointed and found out that you can't soften up monsters by poisoning them.

Not by default. Of course, custom Lua code can do this, too...

Since some items like the Staff of Manar not only gave bonus mana, but also increased the mana regeneration rate, RTC generally gave a mana regeneration acceleration to all mana-boosting items (more acceleration for higher mana boosts). Does DSB consider something like this too?

If the Staff of Manar increased the mana regeneration rate, that's news to me. There's no mention of that anywhere I've looked, and the mana regeneration code (or at least, the update code) of CSBwin doesn't suggest a property like this, either. Are you sure this isn't some kind of RTC-ism?

Oh my,now I found something really broken. The current stat maximum in DSB isn't 255 at all, it's 999 ! I wanted to catch up a little in wizard/priest levels with Halk, so I let the other characters brew some wisdom potions. However, you should think with wisdom 999 Halk would be casting like hell. He doesn't. Neither his mana regeneration rate nor his spell casting failure chance seem to be much impressed by his wisdom. To me it looks as if wisdom didn't do aynthing in DSB.

Well, wisdom values of 144-999 are essentially the same. This is straight out of the original DM, and it doesn't bother me because only horribly excessive potion abusing can make you go over 144 anyway. However, take one character with 144 wisdom and another with something like 10, and watch their mana regeneration rate. The high-wisdom character regenerates mana much faster then!

Where do I get the new monster_ai.lua ?

I'll email it to you in a bit.

[Lunever]

If the general speed would be setup - wouldn't everything go faster meaning you'd still walk into your own missiles? I checked again the Amiga DM1, and actually you can't walk into your missiles in Amiga-DM1 - which for me means, it should somehow fixed in DSB too, no matter by what actual method.

Right - the suggestion to allow generally to draw from containers was only meant as a poor subsitute for true quivers not being there. Since you consider to maybe add true quivers - please do so and gorget about the chests.

Leaving the coordinates aside - what about the Couatl met beyond the fake wall containing it?

I'm not sure where I got the Staff of Manar info from (I'm certain I ididn't make it up) - might be from the item extraction threads way back (Someone - might have been Suule - extracted a lot of item properties, mainly DM2, but also some DM1 stuff). I'l research later and report back when I've found the source.

Hm, so if 999 doesn't differ much from 255 or 170 or 144 - you might consider to display 170 only and use the higher stat internally only a a kind of duration extension.

[Sophia]

If the general speed would be setup - wouldn't everything go faster meaning you'd still walk into your own missiles? I checked again the Amiga DM1, and actually you can't walk into your missiles in Amiga-DM1 - which for me means, it should somehow fixed in DSB too, no matter by what actual method.

CSBwin does it too, actually, by forbidding you from walking (well, actually, delaying, the move did get queued up) in the direction that the missile is flying before the missile has cleared. It's not the best way, but it's not the worst way, either. I could do something like this...

Right - the suggestion to allow generally to draw from containers was only meant as a poor subsitute for true quivers not being there. Since you consider to maybe add true quivers - please do so and gorget about the chests.

True quivers are already pretty much doable, they just need the graphics. I tried to keep the object set that is included wtih DSB by default confined only to things that were actually found in DM and CSB so things like this tend to fall through, unfortunately. At some point I should probably redo the test_dungeon into less of an obnoxious mess and more of a showcase of DSB's DM-like and beyond-DM-like features, and something like that would fit in quite well.

Leaving the coordinates aside - what about the Couatl met beyond the fake wall containing it?

Something's bugged, most likely. I'll look into it.

I'm not sure where I got the Staff of Manar info from (I'm certain I ididn't make it up) - might be from the item extraction threads way back (Someone - might have been Suule - extracted a lot of item properties, mainly DM2, but also some DM1 stuff). I'l research later and report back when I've found the source.

Oh, yeah, it could have been a DM2-only thing, too. I certainly don't remember anything like it in DM1.

[Lunever]

Maybe something can be implemented that will skip impact if you walk into a missile from behind.

Quiver grafix - can't you just take the ones from DM2?

DM2 general - While it was not received that well by DM1/CSB fans because of the unhandy double-step movement and the much to small dungeon (couldn't get myself arsed to actually play it for years), it contains a lot of improvements that are good assets to any DM clone utulizing them. RTC profited a lot of twisting it into making almost everything there is in DM2 possible. Now DSB can always say about anything it is already possible because of lua - still taking a little from DM2 as default might be useful for DSB DM1 and CSB too.

Staff of Manar - since there are lots of staffs in DM2 but no Staff of Manar, it must have been about DM1. A quick search here only made me find a quote from myself when in the past I already said somthing like this about the Staff of Manar http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... nar#p18996
Memory says it was from a long list of item properties someone had extracted back then. I'll let you know when I've found it.

Found a forum mentioning saying the moonstone would increase the mana rate http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... idden+mana

Still not what I'm looking for but maybe worth mentioning

Some DM2 hidden item properties are found at http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... tem#p55798

Still, I hope I can dig out somewhere the source I was taking that from earlier for that RTC archive thread - to bad I didn't mention the source in that thread. I think I got it from some information about that time in another thread or Encyclopaedia ressource, but right now I can't find it anymore.

Does anyone have an idea?

[Sophia]

Maybe something can be implemented that will skip impact if you walk into a missile from behind.

I thought about this but it seemed messy. It might seem odd, too, to walk into this missile and then have it go zooming past you. I experimentally implemented the simple method used in ST and Amiga DM, of just queuing the move if you try to walk into a missile, and that works well enough.

Quiver grafix - can't you just take the ones from DM2?

The main issue is the inventory bitmap (the subrenderer, to use the DSB parlance) because DM1 uses a different look and a different layout from DM2. For example, DM2 has that weird marble-ish background. Using the DM2 quiver as-is would be weird so I'd have to make a new graphic. Still not a huge deal, but just something I'd have to do.

Staff of Manar - since there are lots of staffs in DM2 but no Staff of Manar, it must have been about DM1. A quick search here only made me find a quote from myself when in the past I already said somthing like this about the Staff of Manar http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... nar#p18996

Ok, well, that doesn't really back it up, just proves you're consistent. I really can't find anything in the CSBwin source code that would support something like this. As I stated before, the DM engine did have a lot going on under the surface, and players couldn't possibly grasp the real patterns of what was going on from just looking at the way things worked on the surface. So are you sure this wasn't just an old folk tale?

Found a forum mentioning saying the moonstone would increase the mana rate

Same goes for this one. Just because an old post says something doesn't really mean much, as this was before a lot of the work that had been done in analyzing the DM engine.

Now, on the other hand, I want to say I'm not opposed to the idea. Would "boost mana regeneration" be a useful option to add to new objects, so that custom dungeon designers could make use of it without massive hacks to the rather monolithic regeneration code? Absolutely, and something that I will add. It'll be simple to go back and apply the bonus to the existing objects if we want, then, too.

[Lunever]

Can the queuing be conditional - that is, it's queued only if you step forward, but not if you sidestep, turn or backstep? If so, that'd be great. Fixing the self-mutilation, but still able to sidestep-fire-sidestep.

Manar - a generic easy implement is always good. No matter whether I'll be able to find the source I was taking that Manar info from way back - there are a lot of hidden stat boosts for a lot of items in the DM2 item extraciton thread referred to above. Since many of the items also exist in DM1/CSB (some swords have just their names changed, as it was with DM1->CSB too), and you intend to implement all the hidden skills (with a couple of additional fixes I think) anyway, you might consider to utilize that list for DSB. Especially all those staffs influencing various priest/wizards skills give a good idea how items subtly can be made very interesting.

EDIT: Suggestion: Some shortcut (light rightclicking on an empty hand) to draw from the quiver/scabbard?

[Sophia]

Can the queuing be conditional - that is, it's queued only if you step forward, but not if you sidestep, turn or backstep? If so, that'd be great. Fixing the self-mutilation, but still able to sidestep-fire-sidestep.

Yes, that's how it works.

you intend to implement all the hidden skills (with a couple of additional fixes I think) anyway

I should clear this up because there seems to be some misunderstanding. Hidden skills are already in DSB and have been since the beginning. Items that boost them, attack methods that rely on them, etc., are all already possible and existent. The only thing that wasn't implemented was the ability to restrict attack methods based on one's level in a hidden skill. That is, in DSB 0.40 and before, a given attack method appeared at a certain (displayed) level, regardless of what level you had in the various hidden sub-skills. For 0.41, I've changed it so it now works like DM where the level you get attack methods is tied to hidden skills in many cases.

Suggestion: Some shortcut (light rightclicking on an empty hand) to draw from the quiver/scabbard?

I think there has to be a balance between the admittedly somewhat clunky (by modern standards) interface that vanilla DM offers and shortcuts for absolutely everything. Shortcuts for quickly putting away items and keyboard macros for commonly clicked on-screen buttons are quite handy, but there comes a point when adding too many shortcuts and automatic actions starts to infringe upon the fine balance of combat, running around, inventory management, etc. that you have to do all in real time that makes DM what it is. This is why I'm against a "cast last spell" option-- having to type out the spell runes every time you want to cast a spell is part of the experience of playing DM. In some ways, quickly going into the inventory and frantically switching out your weapons when you want to change tactics is, too.

What I can do is to change some of the existing mechanics. For example, in the default mechanics, if your quiver contains a sword and three arrows, once you've shot the three arrows, you have to go grab the sword manually. I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to automatically grab the sword as well, so that all you'd have to do if you wanted to melee fight would be to swap the two hands.