Features for DSB

[ian_scho]

EDIT3: I would like to test a bit levelling up and stat raising (and compare it to DM1 and RTC). Can you somehow enable a quickload function for me for testing purposes? Quitting and restarting is normally fine, but to compare multiple parallel stat rolls it still takes to long.

When testing, you can skip the whole intro (including the giggler) with:

Code: Select all

function sys_game_intro()
  return true
end

HTH

[Lunever]

Sustenance impressions: When I played DM1 in DSB V0.40 I played it the same way, I have been playing it often for testing purposes in various versions and clones, that is kill everything loot everything go everywhere. As always, I deposited leftover food and loot at the winged lock. I noticed that the food pile was much smaller than I'm used to from other DM1 games. I attributed this to 2 factors: I've not been running around with boosted vitality most of the time (which has an effect on sustenance drain I think), and I've "wasted" quite some time experimenting with potion and shield durations. Still the impression was there, that the drain was a bit faster than I'm used to from memory, but I can't support that with hard facts.
When I started CSB in DSB 0.41 I chose Buzzzzz and Petal and then went to kill all the mummies and rock piles in order to get Lor and Kazai. That used up a bit of sustenance. While I could regain a bit of food from the worms, now the characters are almost at zero water, which makes it a bit more difficult to get at all the supplies and gather some worm food (what use is food if you are dehydrating). I never had this problem in vanilla CSB. So again, the impression of a to fast drain might be due to the fact that normally you start with replenished sustenance when importing characters from the prison to the dungeon - the in-game teleport neglects to replenish sustenance (but might be a thought to fix this).

Creature name scroll - will you also implement the magic map? And the famous gibberish scroll?

Seems adding the genuine DM1 ending didn't make it into you to-do-list. Still I'd suggest to add it and the CSB intro and outro movies (I'd prefer the Amiga ones over the ST ones).

EDIT1: When entering the room downstairs from the supplies for the quick and throwing a couple of sticks unto the tile where the teleporter to the junction of the ways will appear, there was a line above of the characters "1 LUA error - see log text" which then changed to 2 and then to 3 LUA errors.

Don't see anything so far in the log.txt:

INIT: Parsing configuration file
INIT: Using gamedir D:\Spiele\DM\DSB\Dungeons\Chaos-Strikes-Back (base:0)
INIT: Starting fullscreen mode
INIT: Using color depth of 32
INIT: Starting FMOD
INIT: Triple buffering unavailable or disabled.
LUA: Lua initialized
Parsing base/global.lua
Parsing base/graphics.lua
Parsing base/inventory_info.lua
Parsing base/util.lua
Parsing base/triggers.lua
Parsing base/conditions.lua
Parsing base/monster.lua
Parsing base/monster_ai.lua
Parsing base/methods.lua
Parsing base/damage.lua
Parsing base/xp.lua
Parsing base/magic.lua
Parsing base/msg_handlers.lua
Parsing base/hooks.lua
Parsing base/system.lua
Parsing base/render.lua
Parsing base/startup.lua
Parsing D:\Spiele\DM\DSB\Dungeons\Chaos-Strikes-Back/startup.lua
Parsing base/objects.lua
OBJ: 404 system archs
OBJ: 404 total archs
DUNGEON: Attempting to load
Parsing D:\Spiele\DM\DSB\Dungeons\Chaos-Strikes-Back/dungeon.lua

EDIT2a:

When I first looked into the log.txt the game was still running. Looking again after quitting I found:

LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:886: dsb_msg requires int in param 3
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:886: dsb_msg requires int in param 3
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:886: dsb_msg requires int in param 3
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:886: dsb_msg requires int in param 3
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:886: dsb_msg requires int in param 3
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:886: dsb_msg requires int in param 3
SHUTDOWN: Shutting down...

EDIT2b: Happened again when I stepped unto the trigger left of the teleporter tile.

EDIT3: Can't place the compass into the pouch.

[Sophia]

Sustenance impressions

I'm really not sure. I think I've copied the DM code exactly but I can't ever be sure, of course.

Creature name scroll - will you also implement the magic map? And the famous gibberish scroll?

The magic map is something that has been sort of up in the air since the very beginning. It is certainly doable, but I've always been sort of busy with other things and never quite got around to it-- it's kind of a big task. So call it a definite maybe. The gibberish scroll is just an ordinary scroll, so anybody can put that anywhere.

Seems adding the genuine DM1 ending didn't make it into you to-do-list. Still I'd suggest to add it and the CSB intro and outro movies (I'd prefer the Amiga ones over the ST ones).

Those animations are fairly complex and not in any form that could just be inserted into DSB. They look nice, sure, but there are other (easier) ways to view them. In short, it didn't make it on there because I just can't see any way to make the time:benefit ratio work out to anything even close to favorable.

LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:886: dsb_msg requires int in param 3

I think I know what's up. I'll fix this.

Can't place the compass into the pouch.

This one's easy. I'll fix it too.
If you want to fix it for yourself, just change "fit_chest = true" to "fit_pouch = true" in the obj.compass_n table in your base/objects.lua.

[Lunever]

Sustenance - well, the only thing that is more than an impression is, that in order to stay true to original CSB the prison-dungeon-teleporter should replenish sustenance.

Gibberish - As an homage to the greates red herring ever I would like to see it in the DSB-CSB download (rather than adding it to my own personal CSB dungeon).

Movies - RTC featured the Atari CSB intro (shorter than the Amiga one) - can that somehow be utilized for DSB-CSB?

EDIT: I just cast a couple of PalOhVen to fend of a bunch of munchers. The clouds disappeared after just a short moment. Shouldn't they last a little longer?

EDIT2: There is a series of doors in Dain leading to a room with the pendant feral (corridor z06/x04/y17 to y21). These doors are supposed to be passed by destroying them. However, no MonFulIr or chopping seems to harm them.

[Lunever]

How can I make these doors blastable?

EDIT: Seems fixing the 2-runes bug brings another problem - now if I type runes quickly half of what I typed gets lost.

EDIT2: Trying to launch a fireball from the Ra Blade got me a crash:
FATAL LUA ERROR: "Lua Function FIREBALL: base/util.loa:639: dsb_get_charge requires int in param 1"

log.txt:

DUNGEON: Attempting to load
Parsing D:\Spiele\DM\DSB\Dungeons\Chaos-Strikes-Back/dungeon.lua
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1339
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1337
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1339
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1337
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1339
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1337
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1339
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1337
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1339
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1337
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1339
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1337
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1339
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1337
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1339
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1337
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1339
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1340
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1337
FATAL LUA ERROR: Lua Function FIREBALL: base/util.lua:639: dsb_get_charge requires int in param 1
@@@ LUA STACK @@@
[{@_G}][{ resume yield status wrap create running }][{ sub upper len gfind rep find match char dump gmatch reverse byte format gsub lower }][{ setn insert getn foreachi maxn foreach concat sort remove }][{ log max acos huge ldexp pi cos tanh pow deg tan cosh sinh random randomseed frexp ceil floor rad abs sqrt modf asin min mod fmod log10 atan2 exp sin atan }][{ __index __gc }][S:base/util.lua:639: dsb_get_charge requires int in param 1]
@@@@@@

EDIT3: Beneath the DDD, entering the floor trigger (Enc. z02/x22/y22) that trigers the skeleton generator (so you can scare a skeleton into the teleporter in order to open the door) gets me a crash:

FATAL LUA ERROR: "Lua Function monster_generator.msg_handle[100000}: base/util.lua:203: dsb_3dsound requires Sound in param 1"

log.txt:

DUNGEON: Attempting to load
Parsing D:\Spiele\DM\DSB\Dungeons\Chaos-Strikes-Back/dungeon.lua
FATAL LUA ERROR: Lua Function monster_generator.msg_handler[100000]: base/util.lua:203: dsb_3dsound requires Sound in param 1
@@@ LUA STACK @@@
[N:0][N:1571][N:100000][N:0][N:1620][S:base/util.lua:203: dsb_3dsound requires Sound in param 1]
@@@@@@

EDIT3B: Right, of course the latter bug it's the same bug as in DM1 and can be fixed in the startup.

EDIT4: If you bump repeatedly into a wall the damage displayed increases cumulatively, though the damage calculated is just the normal damage is subtracted from health.
Also, YaIr seems to have an influence on how many fireballs my party can take. If I normally want to commit suicide I need 2 MonFulIr, if I am YaIr-shielded it takes 4 to 5 fireballs. Just tried three times, same each time.

EDIT5: I tried multiple times to get teleported from the JoW to the upper reaches of Dain. The random teleporter doesn't seem to work - I always get teleported to the lower reaches. Similar with Neta - I always get transported to the Vexing Vexirk.

The screamer/oitu room seems to generate oitus constantly, instead of just when a screamer falls. Maybe it counts screamer slices in the backpack too.

The mummy generator in Neta doesn't generate the mummies you need to scare into their cells. You can bypass this riddle (without the loot) though - the door to proceed is bashable.

The turqoise key (flying through a room in Neta) does not appear, which will make the game unsolvable.

[Sophia]

RTC featured the Atari CSB intro (shorter than the Amiga one) - can that somehow be utilized for DSB-CSB?

It could. It's not a high priority for me at this point.

I just cast a couple of PalOhVen to fend of a bunch of munchers. The clouds disappeared after just a short moment. Shouldn't they last a little longer?

I don't know, what's a short moment? Poison cloud duration is influenced a lot more by skill than by spell power, so if you're using reincarnated champions, their poison won't be very good.

How can I make these doors blastable?

Set a fire_power exvar. That reminds me, I should probably add a dialog for this in ESB, though you can still get it by directly setting exvars.

Seems fixing the 2-runes bug brings another problem - now if I type runes quickly half of what I typed gets lost.

Ok, I'll try a new approach for this one.

Trying to launch a fireball from the Ra Blade got me a crash:
FATAL LUA ERROR: "Lua Function FIREBALL: base/util.loa:639: dsb_get_charge requires int in param 1"

This is actually a base code problem, I'll fix this.

If you bump repeatedly into a wall the damage displayed increases cumulatively, though the damage calculated is just the normal damage is subtracted from health.

This is just how DSB displays damage. If you don't like it, you can set "CumulativeDamage=0" in your dsb.ini. Note this has no effect on the amount of damage you take, just how it's displayed.

Also, YaIr seems to have an influence on how many fireballs my party can take. If I normally want to commit suicide I need 2 MonFulIr, if I am YaIr-shielded it takes 4 to 5 fireballs. Just tried three times, same each time.

Yes, Ya Ir shields absorb some fire damage. This is taken directly from the DM code.

I tried multiple times to get teleported from the JoW to the upper reaches of Dain. The random teleporter doesn't seem to work - I always get teleported to the lower reaches. Similar with Neta - I always get transported to the Vexing Vexirk.

That's because the teleporter is always on. Whatever giggler-machine that turns the teleporter on and off apparently doesn't work in DSB. I don't understand the mechanism, though, so I can't fix it.

At present, I'm not too worried, though. As before, I'd rather fix the problems with the engine/base code before worrying about the problems that have come out specifically in this dungeon. So, feel free to point them out, and I'm not ignoring them, just that I won't get to them right now.

[Lunever]

What value do you recommend for the fire_power exvar?
Will setting this in ESB also affect current savegames?

Cumulating damage if you get hit by 2 fireballs makes sense - however, having a damage of 70 displayed if you run into a wall some 15 or 20 times looks a bit strange tome, so I gonna switch this feature off.

YaIr - interesting. I never knew that YaIr also absorbs some fire damage, I always assumed that only FulBroNeta would do this.

OhVen - Also Interesting - I always assumed that power level was the main factor for duration.

JoW-teleporters - I don't understand all those giggler stuff either - I hope that some solution can be found anyway, since the JoW is an important central part of the game.

Other CSB riddles - well, even if they are low on the priority list, it'd be good to insert just a couple of workarounds that return the game into a solvable state. Like just inserting a turquoise key on the floor and so on (I'll do that for my DSB here now, but the download should get some basic fixes too. Should I manage to get my game into a state you can play at least through I'll upload it of course).


EDIT: Hmm, the said mummy generator says "0 hp". Maybe changing that to a positive value will help. EDIT Doesn't seem to change anything. Any idea why it isn't producing mummies?

EDIT2: How do I transfer the turquoise key from the non-functional shooter to somewhere else?

EDIT3: A sound volume control ingame like in RTC would be handy.

EDIT4: The coin shop before the DDD doesn't seem to work.

EDIT5: Once past the Neta poison shooter ring, returning there ans stepping unto a trigger gets a lua error message above the champion names.

EDIT6: Crash (near the dexhelm): ERROR: "Monster's can't agree who is boss. This is more than likely a bug in DSB. See log.txt for details"

LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:886: Invalid instance 1834
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1834
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1834
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1834
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:864: Invalid instance 1834
LUA ERROR: base/triggers.lua:886: Invalid instance 1834
AI: Boss 2888 thinks 2899 is boss!
AI: 2899 thinks 2899 is boss
Error: Monsters can't agree who is boss.
This is more than likely a bug in DSB.

Creepy - AI that THINKS it is boss ...

EDIT7: When trying to open the onyx lock near the dexhelm: CRASH
PROGRAM CRASH!
Location: 8 30 15
Reason: Segmentation Fault
Stack Dump:
DSBmain
DSBgameloop
got_mouseclick
objinst_click

EDIT8: Due to the half-functioning JoW I currently can't access a major part of Ros (cloak of night).

EDIT9: Another door that should be blastable: Enc. z06/x23/y20

EDIT10: The fireball trap guarding the green gem in the Ros scorpion cage (neat "Death Row") doesn't work (lua error message). The shooter fires, but the first spinner is off so the fireballs harmlessly hit a wall.

EDIT11: Don't have the lockpicks yet. Can't use regular keys to operate the secret lock linking the Ros scorpion cage's green gem room with the starting room. I don't know whether it's supposed to be lockpick-only or should be operable by iron keys too.

[Sophia]

What value do you recommend for the fire_power exvar?
Will setting this in ESB also affect current savegames?

20 is what a standard wooden door has. This will let almost any fireball destroy the door. Unfortunately, exvars are stored in the game save, so it won't affect your savegames.

However, what you can do, as a hack, is add a line like "obj.door_wood_swindow.fire_power = 20" or something like that directly to an objects.lua file in the CSB directory. This will make the fire_power of the "door_wood_swindow" archetype 20. This will change all doors of that archetype until you remove the line from your objects.lua again, but it won't require a restart then.

JoW-teleporters - I don't understand all those giggler stuff either - I hope that some solution can be found anyway, since the JoW is an important central part of the game.

I looked at the RTC original version, and figured it out-- the teleporters have a probability less than 100%. This aspect wasn't converted by Joramun's program, because DSB didn't support triggers with a probability back then. I can fix this. I wonder how it worked in authentic CSB, though...

EDIT: Hmm, the said mummy generator says "0 hp". Maybe changing that to a positive value will help. EDIT Doesn't seem to change anything. Any idea why it isn't producing mummies?

The problem is the 0 hp. It's producing a mummy that instantly dies because its hp is 0. Just changing in ESB won't change anything because that won't change the value for your savegame. You can hack in a fix for your savegame with adding something like the following to your dungeon's startup.lua:

Code: Select all

function sys_game_load()
  exvar[2530].hp = nil
end

EDIT2: How do I transfer the turquoise key from the non-functional shooter to somewhere else?

You can use the sys_game_load trick here too, add a dsb_move to move the key wherever you want it to be. You can find out the key's id by searching for turquoise keys in ESB (View -> Find insts) and then do something like "dsb_move(id, level, x, y, tile)" which will put it on the floor wherever you choose. Once it's moved, save your game and delete that dsb_move or the key will get moved every single time you reload.

EDIT3: A sound volume control ingame like in RTC would be handy.

Probably.

EDIT6: Crash (near the dexhelm): ERROR: "Monster's can't agree who is boss. This is more than likely a bug in DSB. See log.txt for details"

Ooh, this is messy. I have some vague concept of what is doing this, but it's not the sort of thing I can consistently reproduce, so fixing it will be somewhat tricky. It has to do with screwy things happening when teleporters causing monsters to all pile up on one square, which might be a bug in itself.

EDIT7: When trying to open the onyx lock near the dexhelm

I fixed the crash, but the mechanism is an RTC-ism and is still bugged. I'll have to rebuild it in a more DSB-friendly way.

[Paul Stevens]

I looked at the RTC original version, and figured it out-- the teleporters have a probability less than 100%. This aspect wasn't converted by Joramun's program, because DSB didn't support triggers with a probability back then. I can fix this. I wonder how it worked in authentic CSB, though...

If RTC does it with probability then it ain't authentic.
Perhaps better......but not CSB.

There was nothing whatsoever random about those
teleporters. They simply went on and off. It is very
easy to time yourself and get teleported to the exact
place you want to go. I always did it by placing some
worthless item on the floor, waiting for it to get
teleported, and then take the proper number of steps
forward before stopping and waiting for the next
teleportation cycle.

[Lunever]

Right, seems everything can be fixed at least as a workaround. I'll look around a bit more in Ros and Ku first, then I'll implement all the fixes as suggested and see, whether the result will be a solvable game.

EDIT: BTW: Old RTC bug: When walking through Dain and Neta I could close the pit leading to the emerald lock although at that time I didn't have crossed the Ros dragon maze.

EDIT2: When using a gold key for the gold lock in the small room above the DDD:
PROGRAM CRASH!
Location: 1 11 21
Reason: Segmentation Fault
Stack Dump:
DSBmain
DSBgameloop
got_mouseclick
objinst_click

It's one of those locks that is trapped against lockpicks.

EDIT3: When leaving and restarting the game suddenly there was the sound of a giggler laughing. Probably escaped from the game and now roaming free


EDIT4: In the big Zoooom in the Ros DDD, there should be an alcove containing elven boots and a storm ring. According to ESB it should be there, but ingame it isn't. Possibly the alcove's and the items' direction don't match.

EDIT5: Just went through the rest of Ros and got the 2 corbums.

EDIT6: The sekeleton lock near the Ros exit to the FulYa-pit also produces a crash. Probably all locks trapped against lockpicks will do this.

EDIT7: Using the "Fireshield" from the Staff of Manar gets me
FATAL LUA ERROR: Lua Function FIRESHIELD: base/util.lua:639: dsb_get_charge requires int in param 1
@@@ LUA STACK @@@
[{@_G}][{ resume yield status wrap create running }][{ sub upper len gfind rep find match char dump gmatch reverse byte format gsub lower }][{ setn insert getn foreachi maxn foreach concat sort remove }][{ log max acos huge ldexp pi cos tanh pow deg tan cosh sinh random randomseed frexp ceil floor rad abs sqrt modf asin min mod fmod log10 atan2 exp sin atan }][{ __index __gc }][S:base/util.lua:639: dsb_get_charge requires int in param 1]
@@@@@@

Probably the same bug as with the Ra Blade.

EDIT8: Does DSB handle poisoning vanilla-DM-like, or RTC-like? That is, can you just be poisoned or non-poisoned and a LoViBro will do the same as a MonViBro, or can you be poisoned multiple times and need stronger ViBro to be cured?

EDIT9: If I quickly qalk over a trap door that is closed only a short moment (the one between th starting room and the stairs to the JoW), but can't get across quickly enough because of a yellow load, I first see the view of from the tile I would be at if I got over the pit and then fall down. Only a very very minor detail though.

EDIT10: The Dragon Fang is not there. According to the editor it should be, but in-game it isn't.

EDIT11: The door to the vexirk room in Ku also lacks blastability.

[Lunever]

After several days of pausing due to being busy - resume.

Ku - mummy generator et Enc. z08/x17/y24 does not generate mummies.

[Sophia]

Oops, missed some edits.

When using a gold key for the gold lock in the small room above the DDD:
PROGRAM CRASH!

This should be fixed as of DSB 42.

Using the "Fireshield" from the Staff of Manar gets me
FATAL LUA ERROR: Lua Function FIRESHIELD: base/util.lua:639: dsb_get_charge requires int in param 1

This one too.

Does DSB handle poisoning vanilla-DM-like, or RTC-like? That is, can you just be poisoned or non-poisoned and a LoViBro will do the same as a MonViBro, or can you be poisoned multiple times and need stronger ViBro to be cured?

I don't know if it's exactly RTC-like because I don't know the formulas used in RTC, but it is like RTC in that there is a poison strength as opposed to just a boolean on or off. Poison strength controls how much damage you take and how long the poison lasts, and stronger Vi Bro potions are required to remove more poison strength. Mon Vi Bro is special and will cure any amount of poisoning no matter how great.

If I quickly qalk over a trap door that is closed only a short moment (the one between th starting room and the stairs to the JoW), but can't get across quickly enough because of a yellow load, I first see the view of from the tile I would be at if I got over the pit and then fall down. Only a very very minor detail though.

It's actually not minor at all, I was able to get to the bottom of this and it's actually a pretty severe trigger actuation bug. Thanks, I'll fix this.

[Lunever]

Custom dungeons - is Zo just boolean, or can you edit a door to require a certain amount of Zo to be opened?

[Lunever]

Even with V0.42 it seems all monsters completely ignore all illusory walls, no matter whether the party has passed them or not.

Example - the Dragons after passing the Ku-DDD.

After the dragons ate me I restarted from the death screen and suddenly the mouse pointer was invisible. Had to restart the program.

[Gambit37]

I was just reading this immense thread, I missed it first time around -- some cool stuff in here!

Can you make it possible to "re-sort" champions? That is, if I want my forth (rightmost) character to appear as the first (leftmost) character, I can somehow swap them? So if I'm used to have my strongest fighter on the first position but have to choose a different character first in order to open the door to one of the hidden characters, I can arrange the preferred character order later on?

This would be a very cool feature, would it be possible to add it?

[Lunever]

Haven't been following DSB for quite a while, you just made me curious how far DSB has developed so far and whether it is still being further developed.

[Gambit37]

Hey Lunever, good to see you still around. Yeah, Sophia is still adding new bits and pieces and fixes the bugs I seem to find. It's a pretty sweet engine now that I finally got over my aversion to having to code stuff. Luckily, I can just use clever things built by real coders (Ian Scho, Joramun, Parallax, Sophia) and tweak as necessary My main task at the moment is building a library of graphic replacements which is a huge job, but once that's done, I can build my game in earnest.

[Lunever]

Well, right now I'm downloading DSB V0.51 and see what has changed since V0.42

[Sophia]

Can you make it possible to "re-sort" champions? That is, if I want my forth (rightmost) character to appear as the first (leftmost) character, I can somehow swap them? So if I'm used to have my strongest fighter on the first position but have to choose a different character first in order to open the door to one of the hidden characters, I can arrange the preferred character order later on?

This would be a very cool feature, would it be possible to add it?

This is actually somewhere on my very long "would be nice" todo list.

[Lunever]

Hey Sophia, good to see that you're still around here.

So, from quickly browsing through the release threads and starting the game just once for a short moment my impression is (compared to my last memories of V0.42):

- some bugs and glitches have been removed and the game has been made more stable
- some minor handy features have been added (like more shortcut keys)
- there are no major new features (like a working DM2, options to emulate DM2like or Nexuslike weapon functions and similar stuff I used to unnerve you with)

Is that right or did I miss something important at that first quick glance?

[Sophia]

Good to see you're still around, too, Lunever.
Yes, your summary of the changes sounds about right.

Of course, opinions of "minor" and "major" new features can vary.
There have been some large improvements to the way DSB displays graphics with alpha channels, which is pretty major if you're creating a dungeon with updated graphics, but is otherwise minor.

[Lunever]

First suggestion with the sortcut keys:
I absolutely like the weapon shortcut keys.
However, they could be even more handy with a minor tweak:

Set "Pass" to Char 4 (instead of Char 1) ,
Set dynamical "Lowest usable attack method" to Char 3
Set dynamical "second-lowest usable attack method" to Char 2
Set dynamical "highest usable attack method" to Char 1.

So if in a close combat I accidentally doubly hit the key for Char 1 on that stupid tiny netbook keyboard, I woudn't "pass" but instead use the highest strike (like Berzerk) with my firs melee fighter, and if accidentally doubly hit the Key for Char 2 (instead of 2-1), I'd still use the second highest attack.

Can you do that? Pretty please?

[Lunever]

Rightklicking on character icons:
- Can you make character turn counter-clockwise if they are right-clicked on their left side (a feature that was added to RTC too on my request).

[Sophia]

So if in a close combat I accidentally doubly hit the key for Char 1 on that stupid tiny netbook keyboard, I woudn't "pass" but instead use the highest strike (like Berzerk) with my firs melee fighter, and if accidentally doubly hit the Key for Char 2 (instead of 2-1), I'd still use the second highest attack.

This is actually not a bad idea, but it is actually a good bit more involved.

The reason it is the way it is right now is because the keys actually just simulate the pressing of the four clickzones that are associated with the attack methods area. Initially, these four clickzones are one for each character's weapon. When a weapon is clicked, the four clickzones become pass and the three methods. So to do anything other than that would actually be a good bit more work for me.

Of course, this would also break if someone heavily customized the process of choosing an attack method (or did some DM2 style stuff ) but maybe that's not as big of a deal.

Can you make character turn counter-clockwise if they are right-clicked on their left side (a feature that was added to RTC too on my request)

This one is on my todo list, too. I will hopefully get around to it.

[Lunever]

Well, as always I just suggest what I'd like to see from a player perspective and leave it at your discretion whether it is to difficult to implement.
If it is to difficult, than I'd suggest for now to simply invert the order (Char 1 = Attack 3, Char 2 = Attack 2, Char 3 = Attack 1, Char 4 = Pass), for most of the game time you want your front characters to do powerful close combat attacks.

Had a look into the SFCMOD. Nice, but unfortunately in Kanji.

That makes me think: There already are several sets of extracted graphics around for various versions of the game (like DM1-Amiga / DM1-SNES, or DM2-Amiga / DM2-PC). How about an "override" directory that will make the engine to use the graphics of that directroy (matching filenames) instead of the default ones?

Oh, and speaking about grafics - I'd still like to see the original intro and outro movies implemented.

I guess the feature I'd like to see more urgently than ony other tweak is not yet available?
Character import?

Very minor bug: If I make "space" a shortcut key for "freeze game", the game will freeze without generating a space when entering a character name during reincarnation.

When clicking quiver-items unto the character status bars, small quiver items should go preferably to the small quiver places (so if you recollect an assortement of a club and 3 knives, everything will end up where it belongs to).

In Original DM the initial levels in a class could be achieved easily by a little door bashing. Doesn't seem to work in DSB though.

Minor issue: Magic Boxes can't be placed in the pouch, but should so.

Major issue: Something is totally broken with experience. I just played through the entire first level of DM1 (by Joramund) with reincarnated characters, and I didn't get a single level in any class with any character. That makes the game totally unplayable.

[Gambit37]

Having only tinkered with building my own stuff, I haven't played a full game of DM on DSB yet, so I haven't seen the XP problem. I hope Sophia can fix it.

[Sophia]

Lunever, if you want to add to a previous thing, please edit your post, instead of making many new posts. It makes it a lot easier for me to follow.

[Gambit37]

Or better still, write them all down as you discover them and make one post at the end with everything in it

[Sophia]

That too.
For now I've just done a bit of editing.

[Lunever]

Right, I was just posting along while playing. If you prefer, I'll rather edit my last post again til there is a reply.

Currently I'm not ging to continue to play anyway, at least not until some light is shed on that XP issue.