Anyone interessed in adding spells?

[Lunever]

Although it is not in the DM or CSB dungeon of course, you akready can create no-magic zones in RTC via Mana-draining tiles.

[Paul Stevens]

There seems to be some confusion about how the spells are
implemented. They are strictly in the code. Not a very flexible
system in one sense of the word (like dynamic or modifiable) but
extremely flexible in another sense of the word (anything is
possible). Of course, the word 'possible' has a rather wide range
of meaning, too.

Anything that changes monster state, character state,
or dungeon state should be relatively easy. Teleport,
Heal, Curse. These are the 'static' variables in the game.
Temporary effects are not too difficult if they apply to an
object that never goes away. The engine is built around
a queue of timers and it would be easy to add a new timer
type to 'undo' the temporary effect at the proper time.
But if the object of that timer might disappear then it
gets more complicated.

Anything that changes monster behaviour will be rather
difficult. These are the 'dynamics' of the game and are
implemented in very tangled code.

Some things like Freeze Life are already present in another
form like magic boxes and so the programmer has something
to copy.
==============================================
Now, as to my 'veto' power.
Firstly, I am not going to do the work to implement **ANY**
additional spells. My CSBwin will remain virgin. I fell off the
fence to the right after reading all your comments.
Secondly, I will cooperate and provide advice to anyone who
would like to try adding to the game. I will even help debug
if you get really stuck. It should be fun....no problem.
Thirdly, I would like any modified games to have a different
name. Without the words DM or CSB except in the credits.
This is not for my sake but for the sake of the original authors.
You are clever. Think of some clever names.
Fourthly, it goes without saying that it is up to Christophe
whether he considers your revision worthy of space on the
Encyclopaedia.

[sucinum]

1 thing i liked about dm was the fact, it wa easy. i played it as a 7year-old boy...most of these spells are very complicated and many would indeed spoil the fun.
and if you weaken/drwaback etc them, whats the use of them? just add spells simply for the fact they are added?

* Teleport : Was used in Black Crypt, though there spell system was very different. Could be limited by the level of caster, success ratio, random teleportation destination, limited range, etc.
Receptacle: Tech eyes?
+i simply sont want to teleport only 1 single step. wheres the fun of been trapped by a monster when u can simply teleport out? think of the fighters charge in csb...
* Heal : Used in one of the first DM clones Knightmare. It worked by fireing a bolt into the back of one of your party. Unfortunately you could also miss your party member and fire it at an opponent and heal them! I personally think the current Vi potion in DM is a bargain for the points and should be made a lot harder to cast.
+the vi potion may be cheap to cast, but u still have u wield a flask and drink the potion, thats how dm was designed to and a part of the fun of it.
* Seal : Black Crypt/EoB. Useful spell. Could work in DM if say it only lasted for a sixth of a second per power level, and had a high failure rate.
+of course useful...but destroying too many traps, like the run and run in prison II, what is under your feet... in dm, the scorpion/fireball are in csb and any other shooter-trap
* Mane: Black Crypt. I could see why problems may be had using in DM if your dungeons revolve around finding food and water. But not everbodies do and continually feeding characters MAY get tedious for some.
+you have lots of space to carry food around and i think feeding the characters is also an essential party of the game, giving it some timelimit.
* Bless : EoB. Very limited effect. Similar to Enchanted Blade in Bane. Was a mysterious spell so you cast it anyway.
+i didnt veto that ;)
* Curse : Knightmare. Reduced some opponent stat.
+it sounds nice, especially against knights/golems, which are still hard enough to fight. sounds like some defense in addition to the ya-ir shield.
but...you can dodge monsters and you can make them walk to open spaces to dodge them there. if there is no open space, you have to fight them toe by toe...the result of this spell would be that monsters would be simply created harder, so once you face them, you have to cast curse...this would inbalance the game in that way that you depend more on goof priests.
* Uncurse: EoB. If you picked up a cursed item (it stuck in your hand)
+i agree that cursed items should be stuck in your hand and should also decrease some stats (like str etc) and you need to uncurse them. thats fun :) you should also add an identify spell then to avoid that.

[sucinum]

* Theft: Bane. Could work in DM. Give Lord Librasulus or Chaos an item that you need. Get my idea?
+first, you should not allow to steal the weapons of the monsters...second, if you steal them items they wouldnt drop else, this would again inbalance and make mages much more important. third, this would again destroy many of the fun. what if you steal items from a monster which was designed to be defeated? like mongor? simply cast some stealing and rob it^^
*Pew Bomb (confusion): Bane. Great spell. Adds variety.
+some monsters, like screamers are simply not designed to be frightened away. for any others, you have the warcry. it IS dm to unwear your weapon to frighten a monster away instead of casting a spell. there u got your confuse-spell, even with a nicely balanced drawback AND the option to cast it with a pure melee-dude (less effective of course). that game shall be able to be completed without mages like it was designed to.
* Alter Time : The only thing I can think of is REM from knightmare which increased the benefit of sleep. I think this is a good idea if limited, high cost and doesn't last long.
+why spend 50 mana to the advance of about 2 blows on a monster? or whats the matter of this spell? if it slows missiles, i veto it as hard as i can...
* Dream : Interesting idea, but I agree that it may spoil certain traps. I wouldn't go as far as saying it was 'crap' though, I have more tact.
+no, simply no. you should be responsible for any step you take. thats like saving and reloading...
*Equilibrum : I have seen this before but can't think where. Time to dust down the A4000 I think.
+this would make fighters all of a sudden too mighty mages. why should you want this? stamina is 1 attribute, mana another, they have nothing in common and should not be mixed.
* Suffer : Same goes for this. Might have been Knightmare.
+didnt veto this
* Freeze Life: Used pretty much in them all. Again, can be limited THINK ABOUT IT MORE!
+that spell is simply too mighty.
* Auras: Why not? Used in most RPGs.
+not in dm and for a good reason. depends on the aura id say.

^^i DID think about any single spell. i imagined walking through dm, csb and my dungeons with these spells ready. they would change too much, and they would increase the importance of mages to an incredible and total inbalanced amout. atm, fighters and mages are equal, with these spells included and dungeons designed for these spells, sole fighter-parties would not have a chance, neither have soloadventures nore timetrials.

[beowuuf]

Some suggestions for D. Lacouture (provding you aren't scared by all the posts this simple idea generated!)

a) game balance - keep the low level spells as they are, for example you need a flask to gain priest spells before playing arpound with the more powerful spells such as fireshield, etc, magic torch then fireball are relatively expensive wizard spells so learning that path has it's price in time and need for mana
try to keep new additions, unless they are for variety (a missile like spell or shield/new potion) in the higher band, four rune catagory, maybe even requiring higher levels to cass
b) play DM 2 - some things you were thinking about in terms of additions or spells are present in DM 2. Not to start another debate, but i don't like it as much because half the additions just knocked the feel rather than enhanced it...yet on paper describing them they would all sound good. It might let you see why some of us get so worked up about additions, and let you figure out what you think works and doesn't with creatures and mechanics so you save youself work - altering somethign then findign you yourself hate it in DM!
c) Rather than add spells then hamstring yourself with giving them drawbacks (no DM spells have any apart from losing a flask for ZO VEN, which is more the nature of the spell) add options to counterbalance them in the engine. For example a teleport blocking 'teleporter' square that does nothing apart from block that square as a teleport destination. Add a short range to the teleport spell, and a designer can stop certain traps and ambushes from being escaped from by having these blocks outside the door/area. Increase the monster defenses accordingly so that the original monsters are still as tough or easy as before within reason.
d) See the natural order in DM for ideas on what checks were there already . For example heal through the staff gave you little healing for the mana you put in, chaos could teleport only for a few squares while DM 2 limited it to needign to be on pre-defined squares. You could actually stave off the effects of starvation with stamina potions, but obviously it was a constant mana drain.

[PaulH]

I still believe that the spells mentioned, if constrained, will be good additions and will create new puzzle opputunities without harming original ones. It just takes some thought on implentation. Every seems to be looking straight at the negative aspects (negative open to interpretation)
and not how they may be restricted. Theft is still a good example: make the monster immune, or very nearly immune. Spells do not neccesarily have to be all good, or easy to cast or work on everything.

I think more emphasis should be put on wizards and priests (and ninjas for that matter), because being able to complete games without them is a bit silly.

Paul: If I understood the code, I would do all I could, but the last time I studied code was 'c' for my Acorn Electron in '83. I was 5.

[Paul Stevens]

PaulH: If you are serious and have access to the compiler - start
a thread in the CSB for Windows forum and begin asking questions.

[Lunever]

Beowuuf: Teleport-resistant tiles are not enough: While this would enable the designer to protect certain areals within the dungeon, this spell would still spoil most dungeons, because you still could pass obstacles that way, which you wouldn't be able to ignore without it. Rather, in the Engine, there should be kinda teleport-blocking "lines", consisting of adjacent tiles and/or walls, that do not allow to teleport through, so a destination can only be reached, if a path to it without crossing the line is within it's range. For example the 4 pathes of CSB should be separated against each other in this manner.
Besides:

Only spells I would like to have as an addition are the DM2 spells and the following:

FulBroRa: Ful Bomb. A FulBomb would do more damage than a FulIr-fireball of the same power level, since you have to sacrifice a flask, as it is with the Ven-bombs and the DesVen-poison bolts. Wizard spell

FulBroGor: Ful-potion: Increases Anti-Fire equivalent to other attribute-boosting potions. Priest spell

ZoBroGor: Zo-potion: Increases Anti-Magic, equivalent to other attribute-boosting potions. Priest spell

Other thing: IF someone adds this "Dream" (I'd prefer "Spirit", or, since YOU play the spirit of Theron, I think I'd call it "Theron's Quest" ;-)), it should NOT be able to other creatures. Non-material beings in DM can pass doors, but not walls and other creatures, this should also apply to non-material characters. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a spell simply turn the party non-material for a very short duration, like the faders.
DesYaKu it should be, I believe, while a spiritual scout detached from the party would be ZoEwDain.

[beowuuf]

I imagine a teleporter a) needing a destination tile set, as was suggested, only one...so you can only teleport backwards, and b) it would only be a two - six tile range, increasing with level, but make teleport an adept or expert level spell at the least. Or even have the teleport to square have a fixed duration, so you set your marker before you get into trouble

Bro should be beneficial potions, GOR has always been stated for dangerous potions - FULGOR, FUL GOR RA, FUL GOR SAR< etc should be the choices for FUL bomb, but yeah, a fireshield potion seems a strange omission from the potion range - i'd say FUL BRO RA (since ra is als easily bottles, i believe)


All these spells discussions, to me are a bit to next generation - something to see in RTC or DMJava rather than the original engine...i would still like to see how they work in an engine though, and then maybe make a case for any of the good ones in RTC. Personally I don't know if I would like to see Heal or Teleport, for instance, in RTC, but it would be interesting to see them in action all the same.

[Lunever]

I wasn't sure in the first place about what of the two spells having Gor or Ra anyway. Ok then, FulBroGor for Ful-bombs (Wiz), FulBroRa for Ful-potions (priest) and ZoBroDain for Zo-potion (priest), maybe ZoBroNeta for a spellshield (priest) and DesYaKu for incorporality (Wiz) and ZoEwDain for spirit scout (Wiz).

[PaulH]

Paul: Unfortunately I do not have access to a compiler at the moment, therefore have stumbled at the first hurdle. I will see what I can do...

[Christopher]

Since adding new spells seems to be possible, would it also be possible to make the spell Des Ven actually work? In other words, make it poison the monster it hits. Those that also think this would be blasphemous, don't bother saying so. I'm aware that since it wasn't programmed in any Dungeon Master game originally, many of you would, without a doubt, not like this feature added to the game. I'm just curious to know if it's possible.

[Lunever]

To improve DesVen would be a good thing. Certainly it is SOMEHOW, possible, the question is, if anyone around here is able to do it.

[Paul Stevens]

First you would have to specify exactly what 'poisoned' means.
For example, I might ask 'How do you know that it does not
work?' Should the individual monsters be poisoned or the group?
Are they supposed to heal?

I don't think it would be too hard to deduct a few hit-points from the
monster every so often. This is one of those cases where the
target of the action might disappear for other reasons and so the
timer entries would have to be searched out and deleted.

The monster business if very delicate. When the monsters are
on the same level as the party there is a great deal more information
kept about them. When the party moves to a different level a lot
of the information is lost. I assume that this was a memory-saving
approach because it made everything a lot harder and no better.

[Christopher]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. It should be very obvious as to how poison would work. It would work the same for monsters as it would for champions. The target that is hit is the target that becomes poisoned. Why would it be any different? The monster either dies from poison damage, or the poison gets cured on its own after awhile. How do I know poison doesn't work? I have tested it many times. I can't show any data on this, however I think it is safe to say that everyone is quite aware that monsters don't die from poison damage in Dungeon Master.

[Paul Stevens]

Given the following specifications:

"The target that is hit is the target that becomes poisoned. Why would it be any different? The monster either dies from poison damage, or the poison gets cured on its own after awhile"

The problem is solved. In DM, when you hit a monster with poison
he becomes poisoned, he does not die from poison damage, and he
gets cured after a while (in a couple of microseconds, depending on
speed of your machine).

QED

[PaulH]

That is a very good answer. Even if 'monsters' did get poisoned from a spell, am prety sure I would not stand around to find out. The only way we could possibly know that a monster had become poisoned is if it died for no apparent reason.
So, as per Paul's ,message, we need to get these 'couple of micro seconds' to be a lot longer for the poison effect to be noticable. Unfortunately, at present, I do not know how to implement this.

[Christopher]

So does the monster take any additional damage from being poisoned? If you are right about the microsecond thing then it is quite obvious that the spell Des Ven doen't work properly. After all, Champions don't get naturally cured from poison within microseconds. So in other words, the problem is not solved.