Invincible monsters

Post by **PaulH** » Wed Nov 03, 2004 7:38 pm

I have edited the Grey Lord using CSBuild153 and give him 1hp, but he remains invincible. Is this a byte I have to alter in CSBEdit, and if so which one? I am sure I have killed him before...

Thanks

Post by **Zyx** » Wed Nov 03, 2004 11:26 pm

I don't think you can make him killlable with CSBedit. this monster invincibility seems to be hard coded. Note also that grey lord moves by default with the graphics.dat shipped with CSBwin.
You may have killed the grey lord by falling on him or teleporting him to a level where he's not supposed to be.

Post by **PaulH** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:25 am

Ah, bugger. That may just have put a spanner in the works of the mechanics of my new dungeon. Best not to assume these things I suppose, but thanks for the quick reply.

While I'm here, a quick question about graphics. I like the idea of new ones, especially monsters and wall objects and have seen some very nice ones in the Team dungeon that I could use. Is the artist contactable to ask permision to use/modify their graphics? My artistic skills are very limited, so if anybody would like to contribute to a new dungeon in the making by drawing some new stuff it would be much appreciated!

Post by **Zyx** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:59 am

I think the only graphic artist who worked on the Team dungeon was Drake aka Cowsmanaut.
He also worked on the Conflux dungeon together with Charlatan. You can pm both on this forum.

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 1:34 pm

I have some nice new graphics in progress for a CSB Win dungeon, and given that I have very little time to work on that and the hundred other personal projects, it might be better for me just to release them as a 'resource pack'.....

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 3:58 pm

That may just have put a spanner in the works of the mechanics of my new dungeon.

Don't give up without asking that something be changed. I think we
could change ssome of these hard-coded limitations if it would be useful.
The recent CSBwin has provision for arbitrary variables/flags that can
be added using a DSA and which do not affect forward/backward compatability
in the sense that newly added features are not supported by older versions
but yet they do not affect the format of the files.

Post by **PaulH** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 7:10 pm

Gambit, a graphics pack would be a most welcome contribution community, I for one one would be interested in your work.

Grey Lord: well I dont want to give too much away, but a quest involves shielding the Lord through a maze of fireballs to a safe haven. It just so happens that I decided to use the Grey Lord for this, rather than editing another monster specifically for this. The Grey Lord was just rather handy for this until I realised he wouldn't croak. I think it would be a worthwhile addition to have the option of removing invulnerability from Chaos/Order/Grey to add some more flexibilty.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 4:22 pm

Well, I removed the 'Invincible' bit from the Grey Lord's descriptor record
in the graphics.dat file, I added him to my dungeon with one hit-point,
and killed him with a single kick. So it is not hard-coded.

Look at the AsciitDump file and you will se that he is marked as Invincible.
Remove the bit, verify that it is gone by looking at the AsciiDump and then
try klling him again. If that does not work for you, then ship me the dungeon nd
graphics file and I will see what is going on.

Post by **PaulH** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 5:10 pm

Thanks Paul... Just need to know how you removed the 'inVincible' bit from the the Grey Lord's descriptor record in the graphics.dat. Is this possible using CSBEdit? I can't see a way of altering this bit

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 7:57 pm

Oh, dear. I have no idea. I did it in the runtime engine after
loading the data from the graphics.dat file.

I have never endeavored to fiddle with the graphics.dat file itself.
It frightens me. It seems like so many things are inter-related.
Look in an AsciiDump.txt. You will find a record for each monster type.
That record has things like size, material, levitating, whether it absorbs
daggers, and one bit that declares it to be invincible. That bit is
0x2000 in word 2 of the record.

Post by **PaulH** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 8:09 pm

The 'monster edit' suite in CSBEdit, whilst very useful, is not complete and is confusing. Just looking at some of the check boxes for certain monsters contradicts what we know about that certain monster. Some words do not seem to be editable from here. Maybe experimenting and checking the asciidump.txt will eventually allow us to understand this more.