Conflux III discussion thread - potential spoilers

[Phoenix]

Ok, I figured out the problem. What I thought was a v was actually a u.

[Zyx]

We don't have much feedback about the maps. Do you find them useful? Do they add to the immersion? Your comments are welcome.

[Gambit37]

Yeah I was always a bit disappointed no-one ever commented on the maps. I spent bloody ages on them!

[beowuuf]

I commented on them, didn't I? I get the feeling I got to see the first versions?

They are the perfect balance of informationand atmosphere, with each section having its own scheme and feel depending upon who might have written the map, and the conditions. I seem to recall the temple map being qwuite funny, and the sewer map being wonderfully hinty and water-damaged.

[Gambit37]

Cool, job done Thanks.

[yossarian161]

The maps are great. I'm hoping to find more passwords so I can see more of em.

[Phoenix]

I think that the maps are amazing! When I first got the scroll with the password for the Sewer map, I expected the maps to be the simple graph paper box type map. So I was completely shocked when I went to the map site and found such quality images. Great job Gambit37, your time and effort shows!

While I've only collected the Cellar, Sewer and Mines maps, it was only from the Sewer map that I was able to figure out that I had closed off key pits to the Mines. I'm not sure if they add to the immersion, but the definitely reduce the frustration of not knowing where I am. They certainly help with finding things I missed.

This is my first time through the dungeon with the four initial guides, and it has been challenging even with information from the wiki and this thread.

[Phoenix]

I'm not having much luck getting the lost wand for some reason. I know I haven't blocked off the passage as the audio clue goes off if I walk over certain floor pads.
I've followed the map into a pit that drops me next to the time machine, but can't find the wand. edit. Ok, I found out what I was doing wrong and now have the wand.

I'm also stuck getting the hexen mage out of his prison in the ye old king under the mountain. I've killed the scorpion, salamander, wraith, and the skeleton there.
The only switch that will still work is where the skeleton reanimates.

Aside from that, I've gotten 123 points in the challenge with the four guides and collected all maps except for Sudden Death, Clockwork Knights, and The Emerald Forest .

Are the special powders good for anything? The portal out of the cursed armory only transports party members and not objects(lost the darc plate this way). Also, on the Emerald level, the ashes trap counted black powder as ashes.

[Zyx]

Are the special powders good for anything?

Some alchemical recipes use them.

The portal out of the cursed armory only transports party members and not objects(lost the darc plate this way).

I'm not sure about this one. Do you mean the portal below the cursed armory where you awake the darc armour? You can't follow the knights, you'll have to find them again.

Also, on the Emerald level, the ashes trap counted black powder as ashes.

A bug. I'll fix it when I'm back from Turkey. Cheers!

[Phoenix]

I'm not sure about this one. Do you mean the portal below the cursed armory where you awake the darc armour? You can't follow the knights, you'll have to find them again.

Yes, in that area I defeated all the knights and one dropped the darc plate, but I didn't know strength potions at that time, so I threw the plate through the exit portal and it went somewhere else. That same portal dropped me in the spider level. If this is by design, as long as I can find it again, I don't have a problem with it.

After poking nearly every single pillar, I did manage to find the switch to access the hexen preist/wraith in the Ye old King area. Took a tour of Inferno, and I'm now exploring some sort of zoo. I now know what I previously thought was a wraith was actually a feyr.

I like how the cerberi move around in your inventory. I haven't figured out the eye color changing yet, but I understand the attitude relationship. My current Zed's fiery cerberus curls up against him.

[Phoenix]

I'm fighting my way through a forest of water monsters trying to recover the "Essense of Water". Sometimes I can just get in reach of the gem monster, but most of the time the game crashes with:

"System error 65402
Illegal MonsterAI Timer"

There are a ton of monsters here.

Also in the "Fighting Wing" I'm getting errors on all the portaits.

Missing section id=299 in CSBGraphics.dat type=portrait
Missing section id=300 in CSBGraphics.dat type=portrait
bitmap file error - filename = [] cannot find portrait
bitmap file error - filename = # cannot find portrait

I had to revert to a previous save to get out of this area.

[Paul Stevens]

"System error 65402
Illegal MonsterAI Timer"

I think this is an error that occurred while
deleting a single monster within a group
of monsters. This can happen if one is
killed or if a DSA asked that it be deleted.

If this error can be reproduced, we would
like to have a copy of whatever files are
required to cause the error to happen.

[Phoenix]

I've had a stint in QA, it's definitely reproducable. Let me know where to send the save game. To get the error just, click on the portal switch and try to survive for a few minutes.

I do have an earlier save game that has an interesting event. Ever since my party travelled to the bottom of the dungeon, my light levels have been off. Casting either light spell causes a momentary increase in light which quickly dims by two to three levels. This is sometimes accompanied soon after by the entire viewport shaking.
My party doesn't take any dammage or anything, nor does it affect combat like some of the poisonings. If I move my party to the Apprentice level and go down the stairs to the darkness room and wait, the darkness on that level will stop and the room will go to full brightness. If I just wait there and do nothing, Zed will go up a wizard level. The darkness will return if you move to certain places in the room, but if you return to the stairs the light returns. For this I have a save game and log. I didn't expect Zed to level that quickly as it makes him a second level archmaster wizard.

[Paul Stevens]

I'll let Zyx have the first look at the crash.
I'm not very good at 'trying to survive' in Conflux.
I'll need a savegame and a playfile if I am to attack
this without him.

[Phoenix]

I have a savegame and three playfiles showing the crash. After several more attempts with this savegame, it's become obvious that I cannot complete this quest. In my last attempt, I snapdragoned all the members of my party to well over 100 in stats, and after entering the portal, I got the explicit warning: excessive number of monsters. So, at the very least, the monster generators on that level need to be toned down.

For now, I've reverted to an old savegame and revived Gothmog instead of Mophus.

[Zyx]

Thank you for reporting. I'm sick and moving out, and preparing a big travel, I won't be able to adress the issues before a couple of weeks. Sorry for the inconvenience!

[Zyx]

I should have a few spare hours this weekend, I'll try to fix the known bugs.

[Phoenix]

I have the savegames and logs of my previously reported bugs, I just need to know where to send them.

I started a new game with just Zed to get all the guild endings and I got the same crash that Adamo previously reported. I also had an error come up in my previous game and current just after unlocking(picking up the scroll) the "energize dead spore spell":

DSA & PARAM @ non-existent parameter
DSA at 16(8,24)
row=1; col=0
DSA programming error
DSA variable [0] used without having been assigned a value

There is no crash with this error and the game seems to go on without any problem.

In this run through I avoided going to the inferno level before completing Mophus's quest and I was able to get all 4 elemental essences and complete his quest. I was also able to complete Gothmog's quest without the party bones disappering if someone died.

I'm currently trying to complete Halk's quest, but a battlestar galactica cylon with two swords is kicking my current party's ass. There are a bunch of flasks on this level that don't give any points for collecting them.

I followed the hints from Leyla's quest at the start of this game, but I haven't been able to find the entrance to Deathtrap Dungeon. I'm also at a loss as to how to get credit for killing the mother's of the egg chamber.

Is 190 the maximum number of points for the challenge?

[Zyx]

please send the savegames to prieu-+-/-*/*+at-+-+-+****--yahoo.+-*//*-+.com

[Adamo]

Which version of Conflux is most current? Paul holds
http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Conflux_3.5_B8.7z
on his site, while on Conflux Wiki Pages
http://dmwiki.atomas.com/wiki/Conflux there`s still
http://cyberskald.com/repository/Conflux_3.5_B6.zip

[Zyx]

B8, on Paul's site.
I'll update the link.

[Christoph]

Hm, I'm apparently stuck on level 10. I went down a series of pits from the crypt level, opened a gate with a button in a somewhat bigger room on level 10, fought quite a few skeletons and a robed figure dropping some Blast Spores. In the opened room there is a strength draining Leviathan axe. Taking it from its alcove seems to summon a ghost-like almost invisible monster, which can be killed easily with a Vorpal Blade. Now I cannot get out of there any more: a button opens the door again, but a pressure plate just in front of it closes it before I can get through. Putting weight on the pressure plates other than yourself seems to have no effect. The dead Black Flame spots seem to be useless as well. Dropping all my stuff to be lighter doesn't help either. Tricks like walking backwards or looking for fake walls or hidden teleports haven't succeeded as of now.

[Zyx]

Are you wounded or with low stamina? A healthy party should be able to pass. Did you try using the keyboard to move?

[Christoph]

Thanks, works now. When I dropped my things before I simply wasn't quick enough. I did try with the keyboard, but I was fully loaded (yellow coloured) with stuff most of the time. Since wielding the leviathan made the whole party slow, I think someone having a "yellow load" also prevents you from coming through.

I didn't think it was possible at all to cross a closing door when the plate triggers it when stepping onto it (the entrance plate on the other side closes the door when you leave the plate, and the doors hit you nonetheless).

The solution is here to collect all the things in the room you want to have outside, open the door with the button, then to go behind the plate without going over it first, then throwing non-exploding heavy things through the open door, and running through it with the keyboard not before the load of all party members is shown in grey, not yellow or red.

[Paul Stevens]

Just a reminder of the great resources available at the
Dungeon Master wiki. For example:

http://dmwiki.atomas.com/maps/view/Conflux/0/

A lot of work has been done there. If you don't mind spoilers.

[Zyx]

I just had a look and it's very good. I like the way a designated area can be highlighted.

[megar]

Thank you. Today I added :
- a tileset selector
- highlight of related cells in the tips (this is very useful, see http://dmwiki.atomas.com/maps/view/Conflux/21/ for example)
- Paint mode in Editor (shift key)

More things to add. (keyboard shortcuts, level selector, inline level note editor, cell description, etc.)

About the wonderful maps by Gambit, they are absolutely GORGEOUS. I loved when I first found my first password scroll ! Unfortunately, they are now mainly useless, because the maps are available on the dmwiki project, annoted, and don't require password. This is a concern since it drains the need of the beautiful maps. Furthermore, I think that many users does not have the passwords to see them. But they are so gorgeous, hand drawn, Gambit probably put HOURS and HOURS of work into them, that I almost feel sad you did not receive many feedback.

[Christoph]

Thank you. Today I added :
- a tileset selector
- highlight of related cells in the tips (this is very useful, see http://dmwiki.atomas.com/maps/view/Conflux/21/ for example)
- Paint mode in Editor (shift key)

There's a bug in the current highlighter, example on {1,9,9}.

1. Coordinates starting with a "0" are misinterpreted.
2. The tooltip appears at the last highlighted tile, not at the current one, which might be on purpose to avoid covering a highlighted tile with the tooltip.

Tileset questions:

There is a map element which seems to be unused (totally black square to the left of the editor.) What is its purpose?

Another question:

How did you get the new things in saying "Initial import from Conflux 3.5", and especially "Upgraded to Conflux 3.5"?

Can you merge existing maps with automatically generated maps (from the game files)? There seem to be things in there which cannot be seen normally, for example


You also were mentioning in an email the possibility of having more map tiles, like a pit and a fake wall together on the same square. It would be also good to have something for switches, locks, writing on the wall, as well as to distinguish between teleporter types.

There seem to be the following types of teleporters (apart from their visibility or ability to switch them on and off):

1. for monsters only (mostly uninteresting for the maps)
2. for items only
3. for the party (the normal one)
4. ladders and elevators (transport between levels, but are only technically teleporters, for the player they are more like non-vertical stairs)
5. force fields (transporting you one tile back, so that you cannot enter the square)

At the moment there are many "teleporters" on the maps which don't seem to do anything from a player's point of view.

A really cool map feature for the party teleporters would be a link to the coordinates they transport you to like the stairs and pits already do have.

[Paul Stevens]

I think it is quite marvelous just as it is.

I would like any effort to be put into providing
more helpful 'hints and tips'. Editing them is a
bit of a chore but they are the most valuable
part of the maps. I can draw the maps from the
saved game files but the physical construction
of the dungeon is only a very small part of what
I need to know to proceed successfully.

The hint file that comes with Conflux is a rather
overlooked resource in my opinion. It is a
work of art all by itself. Would it be reasonable
to try and incorporate it into the maps so as
to be used to better advantage?

[Christoph]

Of course it is marvelous; I'm just considering things to make it possibly even more marvelous.

The hint file is difficult to incorporate automatically, I think, most of the tiles would have identical or no hints. One possibility would be to display the hint texts for the cell the mouse pointer is over below the general level description to the right of the map. But some are quite long; I remember the CSBwin issue with too many hint menu choices, where each can have several of those small text pages.