Dungeon Master Forum

When the dungeon is compiled from the text file, trying to replace the default attack methods for a character works properly.

However, when loading a compiled RTC, they always show up as the standard "PUNCH" "KICK" "WAR CRY."

Hmmm - there must be something else subtle going on here that's actually causing the problem rather than what you think it is as I can't reproduce it as described above.

In fact, the DMII demo RTC file that came with V0.40 has alternate default attack methods, and that works fine!

Err, what alternate default attack methods is the DM2 demo supposed to have? For I wondered already that FTL-DM2 does not have the warcry, but RTC-DM2 does have it, yet I was not able to actually scare away a monster; in that moment I just assumed that DM2 demo monsters would have just high fear resilience to reflect the fact that FTL-DM2 didn't have a warcry, but reading this thread makes me wonder whether RTC-DM2 is actually supposed to offer a warcry action at all.

You're right, there's more to it. The bug only happens when I attempt to replace one or more of the attack methods with a cloned attack method (that is, one defined in the dungeon file), rather than one of the built-in ones.

I've emailed you a .txt and .rtc.

That's perfect thankyou - now fixed for V0.41.

BTW, Lunever - The attack methods for the empty hand of characters are (unsurprisingly) a property of the character. As you're using characters from DM / CSB and importing them into DMII, then they have different methods to those characters in DMII if you played it "properly"...

...which is an interesting point, and possibly yet another reason why importing should be blocked in custom dungeons (i.e. to prevent cheating by importing characters with strong default attack methods).

If people want to spoil a dungeon for themselves by cheating they will ... I think blocking people cheating before time (eg lockign the dungeon so they can't see the puzzle so they take one last crack at it normally) is fine since many people would succumb to that.

Whereas people who want to create an uberchampion and blast through a dungeon will do that no matter what probably, so no reason to go to the effort of stopping them.

Indeed - I wasn't suggesting that they should be blocked by the engine; merely that it's something that dungeon designers should consider (and then manually block it by putting the import location to point at a duff location).

BTW - the engine tracks these kinds of changes anyway so I can tell if something fishy is going on for the purposes of the high score table...

After a long an interative process of balancing the difficulty adaption it would become pointless if now every import was blocked. I think the adaption does work fine, even if you make your custom dungeon with all stats 255 archmaster of all arts characters with natural berzerk to import from - you cheat, the engine cheats too, that's only fair.

But please do not remove the import facility from RTC-DM2. I remember I was pretty annoyed when I started FTL-DM2 for the very first time and realised it was completely cut off from its predecessors, and I was very happy when RTC-DM did allow characters coming from DM/CSB to save the world once more. And, to be honest, of all games using high level characters I did in RTC I got my ass kicked most when importing into the DM2 demo, so I can't say it brought me any advantage, it merely allows me to continue to develop a party I grew fond of in a fresh environment. Besides, as mentioned before, I never actually succeeded in warcrying while playing DM2.

So all in all, please don't remove it, I only tried to help in removing a bug, although the bug apparently has been something entirely different.

As I said in the post directly before yours (!) I wasn't proposing doing any blocking - only that it's something others should consider.

To take a pathalogical example, consider a magic only dungeon where even punch and kick didn't exist - then you'd not want to let imported characters in, because they would have an "unfair" advantage.

As already pointed out, the difference between the attack methods available to DM / CSB / DMII characters are negligible so there's no need to do anything there. As and when some dungeons exist for RTC whos authors want a high score table; then they can let me know what constitutes "fair" and therefore what scores are admissable...