Dungeon Master Forum

I want to give out an experience boost to the whole party when they defeat a certain boss monster. So I cloned a relay and made the monster target that relay. The relay then activates an ACTION_GAIN_EXPERIENCE and something else, as there is more stuff going on once the monster dies. Here is the problem: No matter how I try to fiddle around with the relay, I can't let everyone gain experience. Only the party leader will gain the experience bonus. I tried to set the relay to trigger on certain characters, on party members not equal to someone who can't be in the party etc., but no luck. It seems I am missing the OpBy-trigger EACH_LIVING_PARTY_MEMBER. How can I achieve this?

In theory, you'd simply have the relay target an action of ACTION_BOOST_PARTY_BYOBJECT, and then specify an object which has an experience bonus attached (for example, The Firestaff adds two to all your levels.)

In practice however, I can't get this to work. I don't know if I'm doing it wrong or possibly it's buggy...?

It seems that this method only works for updating the 6 stats like Str, Dex, etc, on a temporary basis -- but it doesn't work for skill experience levels

EACH_LIVING_PARTY_MEMBER is only available as a floor trigger. So you need to find a way of having the party trigger a floor item on Boss death. Try this:

1) Create a PARTYS_TILE item somehere hidden in your dungeon (you can only have one).
2) On this same square, create a FLOOR_TRIGGER with Opby EACH_LIVING_PARTY_MEMBER that activates your ACTION_GAIN_EXPERIENCE. Set the trigger to be inactive.
3) Your boss death should trigger your Relay that then triggers the FLOOR_TRIGGER in #2 -- which makes it active.
4) This trigger will only fire once the party turns or moves, so you won't be able to force the experience gain immediatlely, but most players are moving a lot so it should happen pretty soon after the Boss death.
5) You should also have another trigger set to disable the trigger in #2 once the experience has been applied or you'll keep adding experience every time the party moves....!

Theoretical, but I believe it should work.

Could you trigger a push attack as if the party have been blown backwards by the boss's death? Would that auto-trigger the movement and experience gain?

No idea, sounds neato though, could work!

I've just been looking at the Bonuses part of ACTION_BOOST_PARTY_BYOBJECT and I think it's a bug that it doesn't support Skill Experience. It also doesn't support Health, Mana or Stamina, yet plenty of items boost max Mana, so it's odd you can't invoke the Mana boost using this Action. Probably an oversight, I'll report it as a bug.

Wait, did I imagine it or didn't GG add an attack that drains player levels? Didn't it allow for a level gain by putting a negative value?

Yeah, there's a whole set of gain fighter, etc actions in the list,

Oh, and also a further steal set of actions for Lai (that was another question....hot dogs burning, brb)

Don't actions designed for monsters only work when invoked by monsters?

That's where I originally looked, but it's actually a general action. The monster draining version is different.

Doesn't detract from the fact that I think you discovered a bug, but it would help Trant with his monster death bonus.

I tried it -- you *can* use those damage attacks directly from a trigger, but unfortunately setting negative values doesn't ADD experience, it's still removed and RTC complains it's a Critical Error. Plus the action creates an "Oof" sound which isn't really ideal either...!

I'd use the 5 step solution I posted earlier, pretty sure that's the best (only?) way.

but there are action_gain general effects down from that, aren't there?

Yep, but that's where Trantor started and he couldn't get them to apply to the whole party because EACH_PARTY_MEMBER isn't available to Relays or Wallitems. Pretty sure the only way you can do it is by using a floor trigger.

i test this way, cant understand why it doesnt work:

the boss have to drop a unique item #A
the area where the boss could die have every singel tile 2 triggers:
trigger#1are active: operatet by "item #A",on trigger only,activate target-> trigger#2,disable self
trigger#2 deactivatet:opertate by "each living party member", activate target->action_gain,disable self
action: action_gain_experience_skill

its nearly analog to build this with a switch.

cause i want to build that, i realize that triggers cant destroy items...thats a pity

Whoa, I go to bed, get up again, and my thread has a dozen replies. Thank you everybody!

Gambit, your idea sounds neat, but I still have trouble. First, I'd like to give out these bonuses on several occasions in the dungeon, while everything involving PARTY_TILE only works once. Also, if I set the floor trigger to "disable self", only the party leader gains the experience. If I don't do it, all members do gain the bonus, but as you said, my characters gain experience every time they move... I'll try Lai's idea when I have time, as I have to go now.

everything involving PARTY_TILE only works once

Where did you get that idea? Anything on the party's tile is activated every time they move (including turning). You can do billions of things continually throughout your game, simply be piling up all sorts of triggers onto the PARTY_TILE and activating/deactiviting these triggers at points of your choosing... I have lots of things going off and on in my dungeon in this way. It's especially useful for turning on special effects such as full screen view-port filters (underwater, etc) or full screen spells. I also used it in BloodBane Rising for a grass item at FRONT_0 that was semi transparent and made it appear that any monster standing in front was walking in tall grass (as you couldn't properly see it's feet.) Think creatively

As I said in my demo, you also need a deactivate to prevent the permanent experience gain. The steps above were just a guide, you'll probably want to modify it a bit:

1) The trigger on the party's tile should activate the ACTION_GAIN and also another RELAY
2) The relay should be set to DEACTIVATE the trigger in #1 - or if you're sure you never need that trigger again, DESTROY it.

Simple!

...Cool, I was going to ask how the PARTY_TILE worked but you bet me to it.

I'll have to try using that for my underwater damage instead my complicated way, it would make it easier to to have special items turn off the damage. Does the tile know what your party is carrying? or does it just effect the party?

The tile doesn't know anything. It's just a pointer: "Wherever the party is, the items on this tile are also at the same place". It's the only way you can get a floor trigger to follow the party around.

Creative use of PARTYS_TILE opens up massive possibilities. Just be careful not to overload it with triggers that are being fired on every party movement -- this really slows RTC down. It's best to use it for one-time triggers that turn other things on and off.

Interesting new avatar by the way, Trego. Looks like a cool monster!

...the avatar is a combo of an evil tree, with a normal tree and a merchant face...making the side and back images won't be that hard I'll put them on the wiki when i'm done. I wanted an Ent-ish looking avatar.

It is indeed very cool!

It's possibly one of the coolest avatars I've ever seen!

That's because you haven't seem the beowuuf licking ice cream like ahnk one. Still, christmas will be here soon!

Sigh. I really shouldn't mention things like this. That makes the OT my fault. That's supposed to be Beo's job!

So basically the problem, trant, is your avatar. Perhaps make it more tree-like, and the experience allocation should all fine.

Gambit, you struck on something in your 1st post in this topic... you CAN use BOOST_PARTY_BY_OBJECT to trigger each party member individually, 1 after another. Clone a VI_POTION, use the Convert/Consume screen to activate a relay (using ACTION_OBJECT_ACTIVATE).

You can even use conditional relays to check which member is currently being triggered (use "TRIGGERING/MEMBER", it'll be a number from 1 to 4)

What's the difference between 'Triggering/Member' and 'Party/Members' in the relay?
Could setting it to 'Party/Members' sellect all the party rather than 4 relays selecting them individually? Edit:(unless you set it to 'less than or equal to')

(ps Ents are now on the Wiki)

@Lord_Bones: That doesn't help though? The bug I mentioned earlier means only some stats are copied over during the Boost. Not sure how your observation relates to the problem in hand? BOOST_PARTY simply copies bonuses from an object to the party, it doesn't actually Consume the item, so I'm not sure what you're talking about....

@Trego:
Triggering/Member returns a number form 1-4 -- so if your second champion is the leader and you test Triggering/Member, the value passed to the relay is "2".
Party/Members simply tells you how many members are in the party.

Using BOOST_PARTY_BY_OBJECT, effectively creates the object for each party member then applies the "boost". In my above example, I was meaning a VI_POTION with "NO BOOST". Its only purpose is to trigger the relay 4 times, nothing more. From that relay you could have 4 WALLITEM_ACTIONs that give your desired experience using ACTION_GAIN_EXPERIENCE_FIGHTER/NIJNA/PREIST/WIZARD (100 strength is a full level, irrelevant of current level.... it's 100% not 100 points).

IE:
Relay_1 - triggers Action_1
Action_1 - BOOST_PARTY_BY_OBJECT, as described above

Relay_2 - triggered by object in question, fires once for each party member. triggers Action_2
Action_2 - GAIN_EXPERIENCE_WIZARD (strength 100)

Upon triggering relay 1, the entire party gains a wizard level.

Aha, right, very cool! Is this theoretical or have you tried it? I didn't think that a Boost action would activate the Consume event of the Vi Potion -- which is what you're relying on to crate the effect?

That pretty much it. It's actually pretty useful.