First solo win

[jayrshaw]

I went ahead and voted - I actually voted for Zed instead of Hissa since I thought Zed would be the least similar to the two characters you just completed the game with....


--Jay

[Paul Stevens]

So I believe there would be situations where monsters would be allowed to cross fake walls. Am I wrong

Stupid me! Of course you are right. I take advantage
of this fact all the time in the fake wall dragon maze.
And we all know that the worms in the opening of CSB
will happily follow you into the hidden hallway containing
the Mail Aketon.

On the other hand it seems to me that the dragons in
the fake wall dragon maze do not wander around until
I get very close.

The code is a bit complex; I plan to find out exactly what
is going on here. I'll report back someday unless someone
else beats me to it.

[Ameena]

I always just assumed that monsters don't know about false walls unless they see you using one, at which point they become aware of it and can follow you. But I hadn't thought about it in terms of actual game mechanics so it's probably nothing quite so complex .

[RogerS]

I went ahead and voted - I actually voted for Zed instead of Hissa since I thought Zed would be the least similar to the two characters you just completed the game with....


--Jay

Thanks for your vote

Now there's a 3 way tie though

[RogerS]

I always just assumed that monsters don't know about false walls unless they see you using one, at which point they become aware of it and can follow you. But I hadn't thought about it in terms of actual game mechanics so it's probably nothing quite so complex .

That's what I assumed too.

None of the dragons in the den had seen me use a fake wall though.

Looking at Sphenx' video there was no dragon in the west room, meaning it must have wandered off to a different room before he even entered the dragon den.

[ChristopheF]

The code is a bit complex; I plan to find out exactly what
is going on here. I'll report back someday unless someone
else beats me to it.

I don't have any time now so I'll let you check. But I think that the ability of monsters to enter fake walls depends on their 'behavior': wandering randomly, or chasing the party when they have detected it.
You may check in my ReDMCSB code in file GROUP.C, in function F0209_ (the last one). This monster AI function is, by far, the most complex function in the whole program and the variable names and comments I put there may help you understanding how this works.

Oh and the answer to your question about the Amiga version: all versions of the game use the same code here, no difference between Amiga, Atari ST and all others.

[Paul Stevens]

all versions of the game use the same code here, no difference between Amiga, Atari ST and all others.

Thank you very much. That makes life easier.

the ability of monsters to enter fake walls depends on their 'behavior': wandering randomly, or chasing the party

This is consistent with my experience.

[Paul Stevens]

I made an attempt to examine the code. Christophe appears to be quite
correct. The monsters wander randomly until they can 'See' the party.
Each type of monster can see different distances. Low light levels
can decrease the distance. Some can see in the dark, I believe.

At any rate, once they 'See' the party they switch from wandering mode to
chasing mode' and now they can pass through fake walls. I did not check but
I assume that once the party is invisible, they switch back to wandering mode.

CSBWin has a Monster AI Trace which would make the study of algorithms
somewhat easier. But you have to know a lot to understand the traces. I did
not use the traces.

[RogerS]

So if they are in chasing mode, will they pass through a fake wall to get to you even if they haven't seen you use that fake wall? If so, that would explain the behaviour I've seen in the dragon den if they happened to see me through the gates.

It still wouldn't explain how the dragon in the south east room got out though, unless seeing another monster use a fake wall makes that monster aware of the fake wall as well.

Maybe another possible explanation is that somehow in the Amiga dungeon file, the fake walls in the dragon den are somehow only marked as fake walls "visually" but not treated as fake walls for other intents and purposes?

[RogerS]

I did the dragon den again today, and 3 of the dragons ended up congregating in the north west room.

I killed all of those dragons with Mon level poison bolts through the gates, resting and replenishing my buffs and stamina in between.

When I saw no more dragons in the north west room and checked that there were also no dragons visible in the south and north east rooms, I blasted open the north west gate and entered. I found that the dragons in the south west and south east rooms had remained in place.

When entering the den I walked along the north wall and started camping in the north west corner, only strafing to the front of the north west gate to fire a poison bolt at a dragon whenever I noticed one behind the gate, then quickly moving back to the north west corner again to ensure it didn't try to blast open the gate.

[Paul Stevens]

I killed all of those dragons with Mon level poison bolts through the gates

We must be playing different games. I hit that dragon with
at least 100 poison bolts through the gate. He never lost
one hit point. Nor did any other dragon move from his
initially assigned cell.

[Antman]

The dragons moving through fake walls after becoming 'aware' of you is what I've seen too. If you happen to sleep nearby it's much more likely they will wander out. If you fight them one at a time with melee in the central room (but ensuring you don't wait in front of the doors so they don't get blown open) the chances of the others wandering out is lower, because they keep 'seeing' you I guess and stay closer to the doors instead. I could also be completely wrong.

Also for the muncher room in Dain where Halk died, poison clouds are your friend!

[RogerS]

I killed all of those dragons with Mon level poison bolts through the gates

We must be playing different games. I hit that dragon with
at least 100 poison bolts through the gate. He never lost
one hit point. Nor did any other dragon move from his
initially assigned cell.

They can definitely be damaged by Des Ven spells in the Amiga version.

I found a save state from just after I had killed the first 3 dragons (before blasting open the gate) and took a screenshot. You can see all the dragon steaks from the dragons I killed with poison bolts through the gate.

[Paul Stevens]

They can definitely be damaged by Des Ven spells in the Amiga version

How about that? They cannot be hurt in the version of the graphics.dat
that I am using and I think it is from the Atari version. The Poison Bolt
has an attack power of 64 and the Dragon has an armor value of 110.
110 is greater than 64 and so does not succeed. A short-distance
mon-level fireball has an attack power of several hundred, much
greater than 110 and almost always succeeds.

So it appears that Atari and Amiga are very different. I have no idea
whether the difference is in the graphics.dat or in the code or even
if the difference is in the dragon or the poison bolt.

[ChristopheF]

Here is a short extract of my ReDMCSB source code:

Code: Select all

                                if (P0452_T_Thing == C0xFF86_THING_EXPLOSION_POISON_BOLT) {
                                        G0366_i_ProjectilePoisonAttack = L0484_ui_KineticEnergy;
#ifdef MEDIA020_S10EA_S10EB_S11E_S12E_S12G_S13FA_S13FB_S20E_S21E_G14ED_G20E_G21E_A20ED_A20E_A20F_A20G_A21E_A22E_A22G_F20E_F20J_X30J_P20JA_P20JB
                                        return 1;
#endif
#ifdef MEDIA720_I34E_I34M_A36M_A31E_A31M_A33M_A35E_A35M_F31E_F31J_X31J_P31J
                                        return (L0484_ui_KineticEnergy >> 4) + 1;
#endif
                                }

The value returned by this code is multiplied by 64 elsewhere in the code to get the actual attack value, which must be greater than the creature defense (110 for a dragon, same in all versions) to expect a (random) poison effect.
Paul is right that in many versions including the Atari ST versions, the returned value is 1 so the attack value becomes 64 so it cannot poison a dragon.
However, in versions 3.1 and above (DM for PC/Amiga 3.6, CSB for Amiga/FM-Towns and X68000) the returned value is 1 + the kinetic energy of the poison bolt projectile (computed when launched, and it takes into account the spell power so Mon would be higher) divided by 16, so the returned value may be 2 or more, which becomes an attack value of 128 or more and in that case it can harm a dragon.

Note that Amiga versions 2.x behave like the Atari ST versions, version 3.6 is the only Amiga version that behaves differently.

[Sphenx]

And DM2 code has this:

Code: Select all

	glbPoisonAttackDamage = 0;
	Bit16u di = ref->EnergyRemaining();
	...
	if (recordLink == OBJECT_EFFECT_POISON_BOLT) {	// oFF86
		glbPoisonAttackDamage = di >> 1;
		return (di >> 4) + 1;
	}