Attack Methods & Two-Handed Weapons?

[ShaggyDowns]

Greetings all,

I have a few questions that I need some help finding answers to:

1. If I give a monster the attack_method_scare does it have any effect or work on the party members? I tried to have the monster do a war cry for a close range attack but it didn't seem to have any effect on the party.

2. Is there an attack method which would allow a monster to cause a party member to drop their weapon/item that they are holding on the ground? It would be cool if I could have the party member drop any items that they are carrying in both their hands. If not, at least the right hand would be fine. The steal attack method comes close to this, though I don't want the dropped item to become part of the monster's inventory.

3. Is their a way to have an equipped item be used as a two handed weapon? What I mean is, have the left hand shaded out so you can't carry or use any other item in that hand while you are wielding the two-handed weapon in your right hand?

Thanks in advance, any help is much appreciated!

~SD~

[Ameena]

Regarding 1 - I think giving a monster the "War Cry" attack means it does war cries, which, since it's normally just a party attack, presumably means it only does what it does when a party member uses it, ie have no effect on the party but scare any nearby monsters susceptible to fear attacks. So if a monster with an attack method of "War Cry" used it, presumably he'd end up just scaring his friends away .

[beowuuf]

1. Party attacks usually affect monsters not the party

2. Yes, infact tonari did that very thing in his dungeon. You can use converts with equip and unequip to have other items created when you equip and unequip the weapon, and you can create items that cannot be removed by checkig the 'unremoveable' checkbox in that item type's properties - hence a greyed out box for the left hand.

[ShaggyDowns]

Ahh...

Okay then, I saw the attack_method_warcry under the attack method options when I clicked on "Monster" so I was wondering if it worked on the pary or not.

Yes, infact tonari did that very thing in his dungeon. You can use converts with equip and unequip to have other items created when you equip and unequip the weapon, and you can create items that cannot be removed by checkig the 'unremoveable' checkbox in that item type's properties - hence a greyed out box for the left hand.

Excellent, I will give this a try then!

Still stumped on if there is an attack method which would allow a monster to cause a party member to drop their weapon/item that they are holding on the ground?

Thanks for the help everyone!!

~SD~

[ShaggyDowns]

Yes, infact tonari did that very thing in his dungeon. You can use converts with equip and unequip to have other items created when you equip and unequip the weapon, and you can create items that cannot be removed by checkig the 'unremoveable' checkbox in that item type's properties - hence a greyed out box for the left hand.

Okay,

I am still having trouble getting this method to work correctly. I made a new icon (a big red X symbol) which is unremovable and would be created in the left hand when the two-handed weapon is placed in the right hand. Still, I am not sure how to create the X in the left hand when I place the 2H-weapon in the right? If I edit my 2H-weapon I click on the "CONVERT" tab and I see the "EQUIP" tab. I tried inputting tons of different selections under the fields but none of them had it working correctly!

What would I put in for the following fields:

*Convert on event*

New Object:

*Additional Action*

Action:

Object 1:

Object 2:

Strength: (Would I even have to put anything in this field?)

Thanks again, I really appreciate all the help!

~SD~

[beowuuf]

You need to use an activation action in the equip to target a unique wallitem_action type. Creater that, put an instance anywhre in the dungeon, and have its action be placing your cross in the left hand

[ShaggyDowns]

You need to use an activation action in the equip to target a unique wallitem_action type. Creater that, put an instance anywhre in the dungeon, and have its action be placing your cross in the left hand

Can you explain this in more detail? I need to know exactly what actions I would have to put and into which fields? I tried messing around with this and it doesn't work at all. The only thing I can seem to do is convert my 2H-weapon into my red X symbol when I place it in my right hand. Although then, my 2H-weapon is gone and the red X is in the wrong hand.

I don't see an action where I can create an object specifically in the left hand. The only action that I can see that would be close is "action_swap_character_hand_left", but that doesn't seem to work for me.

Thanks!

~SD~

[beowuuf]

Sorry, was away all weekend, I can try to look into it, but I think you would probably be able to keep experiementing and crack it yourself before I get back into it!

[ShaggyDowns]

Hey Beowuuf,

No worries, but I am not sure if I will be able to crack it anytime soon. Tried some more methods and now RTC crashes whenever I pick up and equip the 2H-weapon. So I cleared that and back to the drawing board I go!

Any help or advice with this would be much appreciated. This sure is bugging me! I can't seem to make myself proceed any further until I figure this out.

Thanks again!

~SD~

[beowuuf]

On phone again, no time to check this out. I will point out that actions don't seem to work if you don't have an object being coverted in the equip/unequip

[ShaggyDowns]

Beowuuf,

It would be a lot easier to figure out if I knew what action would create an object specifically in the left hand. I tried the action_swap_character_hand_left, but that action seems to require an object already in the left hand to swap. It would be impossible to figure out what the player would have in his/her left hand at the time of equipping the 2H-weapon.

From what I can tell that "swap left hand" action is the only action out of the list that specifically targets the left hand. That leaves me with a huge list of actions to choose from and most of them I have no idea how they work.

I will point out that actions don't seem to work if you don't have an object being coverted in the equip/unequip

Yes, I was wondering about that. So, would I just recreate the 2H-weapon for the object that I would be equipping? Basically I would pickup the 2H-weapon and equip it in my right hand and have it recreate itself so that it would trigger the action? Again, not sure how what the action would be to create another object specifically in the left hand.

~SD~

[beowuuf]

Beowuuf,

It would be a lot easier to figure out if I knew what action would create an object specifically in the left hand. I tried the action_swap_character_hand_left, but that action seems to require an object already in the left hand to swap. It would be impossible to figure out what the player would have in his/her left hand at the time of equipping the 2H-weapon.

From what I can tell that "swap left hand" action is the only action out of the list that specifically targets the left hand. That leaves me with a huge list of actions to choose from and most of them I have no idea how they work.

Create new in hand will create in the hand, and if it is activated from an object in the right hand, then the only place to put the object will be the left.

The trick is to filter the effect to ensure it only happens if the left hand is free, couldn't quite see how to do that from the brief look, I couldn't tell if null as the comparison worked or not.

I will point out that actions don't seem to work if you don't have an object being coverted in the equip/unequip

Yes, I was wondering about that. So, would I just recreate the 2H-weapon for the object that I would be equipping? Basically I would pickup the 2H-weapon and equip it in my right hand and have it recreate itself so that it would trigger the action? Again, not sure how what the action would be to create another object specifically in the left hand.

~SD~[/quote]

It's an inelegant solution, as you lose special properties of that particular weapon.

I think GG might have broken that code, or it needs to be upgraded so an equip generates an action without needing a converting object aswell.

Personally, I would want to equip the two handed weapon (version one which sucks) taht sends out an activate through a relay. If the left hand is filled, then nothing happens - you have a sucky weapon. If the left hand is empty, then version two (the cool weapon) is swapped in, and an unremoveably X placed in your left hand.

When the version two weapon is unequipped, the unequipped convert should be back to sucky version one weapon.

The relay filter didn't seem to work, but the adding new to hand worked fine if I dismissed that step. Actually, it worked every second time, then I had no more free time to mess around.

Good luck with it, hope that helps a tiny bit

[Gambit37]

This seems to me to be one of those things that would be better to have in the engine by default, rather than trying to fudge with mechanics.

You'd have a flag you can set on your item to say "two handed" and when equipped in either hand, the engine simply disables use of the other hand, or won't allow it to be equipped if one hand is already holding something.

Why not put that as suggestion in the suggestion thread -- I think it's the kind of thing that's probably quite quick for GG to implement; far easier than supporting MNG.

That leaves me with a huge list of actions to choose from and most of them I have no idea how they work.

This is the double edged sword (pun intended) of RTC development. It's fun experimenting, but highly frustrating when you want to do something that (a) no one else has done (b) nobody knows how to do and (c) GG is nowhere to be seen to give the necessary insight.

I still would love to know what all the numbered monster attacks actually *DO*.

We need to collectively start documenting things better.

[beowuuf]

They simply do larger amounts of plain vanilla damage

[Gambit37]

Yeah, but based on what? How much damage? It's bloody difficult making balanced monsters weighted towards party progression without knowing this basic info. It's also f*cking tiresome having to test out a monster for playability by switching between RTC and the editor 30 or 40 times.

If we knew the figures upfront, so much more time could spent actually building instead of aimlessly tweaking and experimenting.

[beowuuf]

Ah, I see what you mean. Other than finding out what attack values the known terrors an lighter weight monsters have, that is a tricky one

[Lord_BoNes]

@Gambit: The numbered monster attacks (I'm fairly certain) are strength n^2 so ATTACK_METHOD_MONSTER_4 = 16 strength, ATTACK_METHOD_MONSTER_7 = 49 strength, etc.
There's a degree of randomness added to the output value, so ATTACK_METHOD_MONSTER_5 may be 23 - 27 strength, and then damage multipliers are applied (including critical-hits), so the target may take (23 to 27) * 5 damage.

I agree with you on having a "two-handed" flag for weapons. I've got two-handed weapons working as desired in my dungeon, it took a whole lot of stuffing around to figure out, though. You need to STEAL_CHARACTER_HANDS, followed by a CREATE_IN_HAND twice.

[Duckman]

1 and 2 are easy to do wit' a bit of relay use, 3 is possible but very hard.

1:make a relay targeted by the attack method to target two actions, one to damage an enemy and the other to frighten it

2:same as above, but make the second relay to steal ye'r weapon

3:make the "equip" action to increment some counter and steal a shield from ye, and make the shields when equipped to activate a relay which steals the weapon if counter has been incremented. And make the two-handed weapon to be considerer wielded only when rite-hand. I am not sure about how to exactly do 'tis, ask someone wiser tham me,