Killing ghosts with fireballs (0.12)

[Big-J-Q]

I was playing the original_dm.rtc with arch-Iaido (doesn't crash anymore!), I threw a MON-fireball at a ghost. It hit the wall behind the ghost, but the ghost was destroyed!

[George Gilbert]

This is actually the behaviour in DM and it was a previous 'bug' that RTC didn't kill them!

Ghosts recieve about 1% of the intended damage from explosions; if they only have a couple of points of health to start with a full power one can kill them. It's a matter of debate as to whether this 'feature' should be removed or not.

[Lubor Kolar]

I think it is a good idea to get damage from eplosions or nearby tiles. But I think it's a bit unfair if monsters DO get damage from fireball exploding on the next tile but party DON'T.

I think only spells like fireball and lightning bolt should cause damage from explosion.

[Big-J-Q]

But the explosion occured on the same tile as the ghost. I think if something stands on a tile NEXT to explosion, nothing gets damaged.

But if the explosion occurs on the same tile as the monster/party, pain will be experienced.

[beowuuf]

I think it was a bug that explosions caused general damage that could harm anything...I think it should be changed so that explosions, etc cause the same type of damage that they did, so non-corps would be immune
Maybe explosive spells also do 1% blunt damage too, so that it is still possible to get harmed in an explosion for things that otherwise would be immune to fire, etc

[George Gilbert]

I'm with you beowolf on this one. I changed the code to let ghosts get damaged (as is the case in DM) against my better judgement. The more I think about it the more I believe that the effect in DM is a bug so I will probably remove it in the next version unless there are any violent objections...

[Gambit37]

Yup, it does seem silly that they take damage in DM.... I agree with you George and beowuuf. What about black flames absorbing fireballs though - I haven't played that far yet, so can't tell if it's been implemented...

In DM, they absorbed fireballs and that was it - nothing else. However, in the CSB hint oracle it suggests that Black Flames actually get stronger when they absorb fireballs, but I have yet to test this out. I'll check it, if it helps.....?

[George Gilbert]

If you could check DM with some judiscious use of DMute or something that would be great. I can tell yoiu what RTC does (read "is supposed to do"!).

Every spell should pass through the flame except DesEw and Fireball. DesEws cause damage; Fireballs cause negative damage (i.e. a fireball that should do 100 points of damage will *increase* a flames health by 100 points). Note that the fireball actually explodes when it hits the flame as if it was hitting an "ordinary" monster; this is because, believe it or not, it's actually harder to make it not explode...

[Gambit37]

I have just checked this in Amiga CSB and PC DM using DMute, and discovered that the behaviour is <b> <i> the same</i></b> in both DM and CSB. The reason I hadn't noticed before is that when I compiled the damage chart from PC DM, I had set all the creatures to have 1000 HP. Guess what.... the DM engine won't allow a Black Flame's health to go above 1000...

Casting a LO fireball at the black flame adds approx 5 points of health, whilst a MON fireball adds approx 10 points. The variation either side seems only to be between 1 to 3 points, so the amounts added are pretty low. You therefore might want to reduce the amounts you've set in RTC....

Is there no way you can <b> not</b> create an explosion for this.... it's nice for the fireball to disappear with no effect, causing the player to wonder what happened...

[George Gilbert]

Fixed for V0.13