Magic box immunity

[Soaponarope]

I know Lord Chaos is immune to the magic box's freeze life, but I believe this is because he is marked invincible. What I want to do is make a creature type completely immune to all magic, including freeze life effect.

I thought it would be simple and made the attack method trigger a relay to freeze life with my monster type excluded in the parameter.

For some reason it won't work and continues to freeze everything. I must be overlooking something, but not sure what it is.

[beowuuf]

I think freeze life might be hard coded as an effect to exclude chaos, rather than chaos being coded as a creature. Also, freeze life doesn't target anything, it just happens and freezes the whole game's population.

I haven't played with this, apologies if I haven't realised some options.

I wonder if you can work in reverse, and clone Lord Chaos for your monster, then somehow remove the invincibility to normal effects.

Actually, maybe it would be easier to just clone Lord Chaos, and instead work on the problem of faking damage to the creature on normal melee attacks?

[Gambit37]

Invincibility is not related to freeze life. Freeze will freeze all creatures, regardless of their type or stats.

I don't think it's possible to make any creature immune to freeze, without having it added as an engine feature. And that won't happen anytime soon, if at all, as RTC development seems to have stopped. You'll have to forego this feature I'm afraid.

[zoom]

couldn#t you clone a monster and set its speed(move) to 0?
Just an idea, no clue about RTC!

[Gambit37]

Yes, but that's completely the opposite of what Soaponarope is trying to do

[beowuuf]

I assume zoom meant fake the freeze life box effct by cloning other monsters with zero attack zero move versions of themselves?

[Gambit37]

Oh, OK! Seems like a road to ruin though -- you'd have to have tons of mechanics for that and it could cause all sorts of other issues. I'd prefer to just ignore the problem.

[zoom]

beo: yep, that is what I meant.
(why do you suggest to clone all monsters and not just the one in question, then set its magic resistances to insane?)

anyway if it works it looks like much trouble

[Gambit37]

Freeze life is supposed to affect *everything*. So if you only want ONE monster to be immune, you would need to:

1) Create clones of EVERY type of monster -- these should have no attacks and 0 move. You'll need to set an expiry rate so that they expire after a certain amount of time, and the expiry conversion to convert them back to the original monster type (the one which moves and attacks)
2) Create a new Freeze Life Attack method
3) The new Freeze should activate a cloned relay
4) The cloned relay should then activate as many actions/relays that you need to swap all the currently active monsters with their cloned versions.
5) Because you set the clones to expire back to he original type, after a while they will basically start moving and attacking again

This simulates the freeze life effect but allows you to selectively ignore monsters that have "freeze immunity".

In theory it works, but I personally don't like the idea of swapping all my monsters types for static versions and then back again, it's possible this might have some unforeseen problems.

[Soaponarope]

Yikes...

I am still a newb editing, and I have already set my sights quite high for a first project, so this looks like another cool idea I will have to forgo.

The dungeon I am making is quite large and complex. A common mistake to overshoot, I'm sure, but I'm adamant on finishing.

It's going to be a bit larger than the original DM, but with complex puzzles (and thus lots of relays,triggers, etc.) like CSB. I'm also altering the monsters, items, and spells( some have minor changes, some redone). No custom graphics though.

[Gambit37]

I'd recommend you scale it back a bit. Bigger than DM is, well, quite big! I can vouch for being over ambitious, I have way too many projects that are unfinished because they were too large and I simply didn't have the time to finish, or got bored.

Start small, get a simple 3 or 4 level dungeon finished and get people playing it. If the reaction is favourable, you can enlarge it and release the "upgraded" version.

[Soaponarope]

Yes, I have been considering this.

I have been working on it a while now though, and am already past a simple 3 or 4 level dungeon. The way I have it outlined, requires it to be pretty large and it may be a chore to scale it back too much. I might end up doing some scaling though.

[zoom]

gambit, thanks for elaborating this. I would not do such a thing since the best it can do is slow down the game considerately ...not to speak of worse cases! Hefty that freeze life affects everything o-O

soaponarope: maybe you can give tips on outlining dungeons in general? Seems like your project runs rather smoothly , maybe we can learn a thing or two from your approach on building dungeons...
thats an if you feel like you have something to say about it at all. Just an idea.

[Sophia]

Invincibility is not related to freeze life. Freeze will freeze all creatures, regardless of their type or stats.

If it freezes Lord Chaos too, it's a bug. You can't freeze life LC in DM-- would make fluxcaging way too easy. If it doesn't, you can make a clone of Lord Chaos and edit the clone into a normal monster solving the problem.

[Soaponarope]

Wow, that worked! I don't know why I didn't try this before, a Lord Chaos clone is immune even without invincibility. Thank you.

[Soaponarope]

soaponarope: maybe you can give tips on outlining dungeons in general? Seems like your project runs rather smoothly , maybe we can learn a thing or two from your approach on building dungeons...
thats an if you feel like you have something to say about it at all. Just an idea.

I'm not sure if these are good tips or just what most people do, but I can tell you my approach.

My dungeon progress is going smoothly now, though it's a chaotic dungeon at the same time (though that is intentional.)

At first I didn't plan ahead and had to redo some things, but what I should have done and am doing now is to outline my ideas first, then do the entire dungeon on a step by step basis, while keeping those later ideas of what else will be there in mind.

For example placing items and monsters as I went along turned out to be a bad idea for me. This was partly in the fact that I decided I wanted most of them cloned anyway, but also just a matter of spacing them throughout the dungeon and not having monsters interfere.

My advice is to complete the full layout first, but that doesn't just mean placing a bunch of walls. All doors, teleporters, pits, obstacles, and puzzles that block your path need to be done first. Later you can fill in what key you need to open the door, or expand on the puzzles, but the groundwork should be there.

Leave room for places you want secret or optional paths, heavy monster zones, etc. This way your dungeon will flow from start to finish, even if it becomes very non linear, like mine.

While your doing this, no doubt you'll be thinking about what you'll fill each zone with, but I just take note of it instead of doing it yet, and get the mechanics of the place working before adding non essential placables and items. Then I can make little changes to the dungeon as I revise and add in the next step but not have to worry about it messing up what has been done.

Now I will go through the dungeon adding in the rest of the puzzles and mechanics from my list of ideas, followed by monsters, then treasures, and non usable placables.

When making custom monsters and gear, I think it's best to make them all first. That way you can make a list of scalable power levels for these to help with placement.

Hope that helps, or what you had in mind.

[beowuuf]

God luck getting him vulnerable to melee stuff now!

[Gambit37]

Doh, I forgot the obvious cloning of Chaos! *slaps head* -- though he has a teleport ability. Make sure the player can't make him use it!

[Soaponarope]

God luck getting him vulnerable to melee stuff now!

My new monster is quite vulnerable and all works well as is. By just using Chaos as a base and changing every single thing about him, nothing about my monster relates to Chaos save the freeze life immunity.

As for the teleport ability, it is an attack method and can be removed easily.

And yes.. I'm slapping my head too.

[zoom]

soaponarope, thanks for the breakdown.
This was what I was looking for...if I eventually get back to dungeon building, I will refer to that. interesting approach.
Guess it is truely important to leave some space for later corridors. I do not think that there is one way of doing it, but
some things might work better than others

[beowuuf]

Really? Ah, that's cool! It's good when you can have something you want for your dungeon instead of being blocked an apparent limit. I recall discovering fun DMute tricks that got around apparently DM limitations back in the day!

[zoom]

yeah, it is cool it turned out that way. and sorry for this thread hijacking..could not help it

[Jan]

Soaponarope, I'm really looking forward to playing your dungeon. It sounds better and better!

Your approach is the same as mine. The only difference is that I'm only talking about it, whereas you're practising it.

[Soaponarope]

Thanks, I hope people enjoy it.

[Trantor]

Heh, I'm actually very different in my approach. You could call my work "short-sighted" I guess, as I do the following:

1. Build an area; this could be a few corridors, a single room, or a large outdoor area that leads to somewhere, whatever is needed.

2. Incorporate all the needed mechanics, doors, pads, triggers, teleporters etc.

3. Apply the correct wallset(s) and decorate the area with floor-/wallitems, monsters, equipments, other goodies etc.

4. Test the hell out of it; if you are satisfied, go back to 1.

This approach means that I sometimes have to find ways around stuff I already built; for example, some stairs don't fit where they would be good because they would interfere with rooms that are already finished. It's a price I'm willing to pay, as sometimes, out of the need to do something differently, new ideas arise.

I think your approach, Soaponarope, is more efficient and should be followed by most people. I prefer my approach myself because I often have a very distinct vision when I build an area, and I want to nail that vision right then and there. I fear that I would lose that vision if I were to fill the area later when the basic layout stands. Also, I think you get a better feeling if an area works as intended when you immediately see how it will turn out in the finished dungeon.

Oh, and count me in on those looking forward to your dungeon!