Dungeon Master Forum

I've been fiddling around a bit with adding new monsters, and in doing so have thought of a couple of things that would be good to add.

1) TARGET on Death. When a monster is killed, how about activating the specified TARGET? This could have loads of possibilities.

2) SOUND on Death. Says it all really; I'd like to be able to play a specific sound when a monster dies. Could be left off by default for most monsters, but it might make "Boss" type creature more interesting?

3) SPEED=(XXX). Not sure how this would work, but at the moment if I want a superfast Oitu I have to clone a giggler, replace all it's bitmaps and change give Oitu attacks instead of Giggler attacks. Would be much simpler to avoid all this and just give it a Speed attribute.

Also, can creatures "drop" flooritems or wallitems on death as well as standard objects? Lots of clever stuff is being done using this tehcnique in FTL DM, so I wonder if it's possible in RTC, either at present or in the future? For example could a creature drop a trigger?

I second the dropping of any object. The engine is much more versitile in the case of floor tiles that FTL DM - there are walls and not walls - I definitely want to take full advantage of that : )

How far could you stretch this? Assuming the dungeon designer was careful, a) could you drop a pit? b) would things activate when dropped? eg, if you dropped a pressure pad and an apple, would the apple activate the pad, or would another event have to occur. Similarly would a teleporter instantly work if dropped in its on state?

Gambit - Currently the compiler will throw an error if you try to give a monster a non-standard item; perhaps it should only give a warning? The engine itself can sope with dropping anything.

Beowuuf -

- Far ;-)

- a) Yes; you would have to be very careful though as if the pit was dropped over a wall on the level below then the behaviour when falling through it would be undefined. If the monster ended up on the bottom level (e.g. by falling down another pit / being teleported) then RTC would probably crash ;-) Although possible to do, I'd be sorely tempted to disallow it.

- b) The ordering of items in the monsters HOLDS parameter would be critical to the behaviour. For example If the apple is specified first then I think (but would have to check) the trigger falling on the apple *wouldn't* trigger it. If the apple was specified second, then the apple falling on the trigger would definitely trigger the trigger.

a) no! we can handle it! Maybe give a warning though
b) ok. So similarly if an apple fell then a teleporter, the teleporter wouldn't move the apple until something else triggered the teleporter?

Cant' you add some code, that, when the party steps into a pit without
defined target (wall or beyond dungeon confines), simulates the party
falling through a pit directly upon an activated teleporter the transports
the party back to where it came from before entering the pit, but with
applying falling damage first, and then closing the pit?
So a clever dungeon designer could make use of dropping pits for tricky
puzzles by confinfing creatures carrying pits to areas without walls
beneath, and yet RTC would not crash should that dungeon designer make a
mistake. It's code again, but the dungeon format would be unaffected.

would not it be more usefull to have the monster drop a teleporter and a dammage tile?the teleporter being triggered to send them back to the start of the section? or if you want them to stay where they are it could drop a dmamage tile. Ie an alien that leaves a pool of acid blood.

your idea, Lunever, seems just a bit to overly complicated.

moo

I'm not sure whether I understand your suggestion right (or you mine).
The intention is not simply to damage the party by monster remnants, but to enable monsters to leave behind full-grown pits when dying, pits that block your way and through which you can fall down a level. A clever dungeon designer could use this, to create very tricky puzzles. That's what Beowuuf wants I think.
The problem is, that this could cause RTC to crash, if such a pit is created over a wall or in the deepest level. That's what George doesn't want.
I think you could create lovely puzzles with it that don't crash by confining such creatures to areas that have only defined floor tiles beneath, so I would leave that option in. But since a dungeon designer might make a mistake, I suggested for the sake of game stability to make RTC behave in some acceptable way if the party should occur to fall into nothingness or solid walls through such a pit. So I'd say this shouldn't happen by design, but if it should happen by accident, it should appear as if the party was falling into a 1 tile secluded chamber, getting falling damage and being teleported back and RTC closes that buggy pit afterwards. It's a compromise suggestion.

yes, I suppose you could contain them. Force them within an area using monster blocking walls. or perhaps simply setting up some kind of aception that RTC checks the spot below and then disables the pit drop if it might crash. Not sure how simple that would be or not.

moo

A check like you suggest is also ok and would be probably much more easy to implement than my complicated suggestion (although I still like it).

Monsters dropping pits? Sounds pretty weird to me... I can't think of anything that would be useful for, unless you wanted to simulate a monster exploding and taking out part of the dungeon with it....

or as mentioned.. acid blood could melt the floor. Or perhaps it could open a vortex.. it's all in the delivery.

Implemented sound on death for V0.27