New Skills

So... I have an attention span of a goldfish and started to mess with the skill system now in my free time. I have done basic stuff so far but I'll get more into the files to learn more about it.

Here are two examples of the skill sets I have edited:


Changes:
-Different icon for the lvl 1 skill Offensive Maneuvering.
-The Not Drizzt skill is lvl 4 instead of lvl 3 and adds 4 in counter chance instead of 5.
-Added new skill as lvl 3 that reuses the previously replaced icon, Akimbo Style. It adds 1 in counter chance and 4 in enemy dodge reduction.
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Changes:
-Added new skills, Bloodlust, Sacrifice and Summon Blood Minion.
-Bloodlust adds transmutative damage to both melee and ranged attacks and grants Blood Power when attaking enemies with melee.
-Sacrifice costs a blood debt to cast instead of mana. Enhances your spells and mana pool but it has 5% chances to cast Down the Road, which grants extra power but leaves you bleeding for some turns.
-Summon Blood Minion lets you create an ally at the cost of a small blood debt.
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Changes:
-Different icon for the skillset icon and lvl 1 skill Blood Sucker.
-Added new skills, Tainted Touch, Veil of Shadows and Dominate.
-Tainted Touch has 65% to trigger when hitting an enemy. It decreases 1- Burliness, -1 Nimbleness and -3 HP. It can stack 3 times.
-Veil of Shadows teleports you where you click and makes you invisible for a limited time. It has its own sound effect.
-Dominate adds 3 to enemy dodge reduction and lets you charm a monster for 20 turns, it has a side effect for the duration of 20 turns too.

I guess I'll add the other ones I have made one of these days and I will upload the files if people like them, that is.

 

Added a new one just now. There's something going on with the way Blood Magic works... I can't understand how Spirit Stealer and Sould Collector skills work with their respectives spells. I tried adding this new skill at a lower lvl but it makes it all work wrong... Oh, well.

 

Pretty sure those are hardcoded. I've looked all over the xml for that as well. That's something. I'm assuming that would be moved to the xml for the modding support.

And what do you mean it makes it all work wrong?

Though this seems like it'll be nice. I was planning (and was making some spells for) a very similar thing. In that case I'll probably make mod plan B.

Also: Smoke Cloud that gives stealth while you walk in it. You know you want to have it now.

 

Well I believe he meant the two buffs that come for levels 2 and 3. Those have no xml in the spell, nor skill nor tweak that define them.

You really should just move those to the skillDB, something like

Code:

<targetKillEffectBuff  percentage="100" name="Soul Collector"/>

That's keeping with intuitive names there, though unless there's an attribute that's say spellpoints="2" then it would require being in another skill. Having it be in a skill would only really add 1 overall, for the first level and would keep it consistent.

 

@Null: Well, the spells are tied to the lvl 1 and lvl 2 of the Blood Magic. So if I put my new spells in the slot for lvl 1 for instance, The spell for Spirit Stealer will run. Also, the Smoke Cloud stuff sounds interesting... xD

@dbaumgart: Aww... Well, it's not really a problem, though. I can just use the next Skill Slots in Blood Magic. Thanks for clearing this out, I was starting to think I was missing something that was pretty simple... I tend to do that sometimes.

Also, new skill: Sacrifice added to the list in the OP.

I have the icon and the description ready, though I think it has a gramatical error... Anyways, I'm currently trying to add a spell to that skill. I have been failing to make it work so I'll try to reverse engineer another spell.

 

Well what part is difficult? The spell should just be a type of self, with damage (asphyxiative is the most thematically fitting) and the spellpoints (or whatever you're giving, that's just what I assumed but it might be better to give a buff considering the other two give bonuses other than mana). The damage obviously has to have allowcaster so that it can damage the caster. Or you could use triggers in some way if that doesn't work.

 

Well, the spell just doesn't appear in the spell tab. I just got back from work so I'll give it another try. And yeah, I'm using asphyxiative damage in both, Bloodlust and Sacrifice.

The bonus I'm adding for Sacrifice is Haywire... don't know if I should add something else yet. Maybe Magic Resistance.

 

Does Haywire actually do anything besides trigger Mr. Announcer Guy?

 

I have tried it with spells and it does make spells do more damage. Also, I have managed to make the spell work now. For some reason, it triggers Haywire on yourself sometimes, lol. I'll probably have to use Triggers and stuff. One of the triggers I'm thinking I should add is a bad side effect. 10% chances to cause Bleeding.

 

I've heard also that it lets you summon duplicate minions. I'm not sure what else it will affect and haven't looked into it. I could imagine healing, drain obviously as that's pretty much the same as damage, but maybe I'll test a few things.

And why would you need triggers to do that? I don't see how you'd have a 10% chance to cause bleeding also. Neither trigger nor bleed take percent chances afaik. I don't think the player can bleed anyway.

 

Well, I have made some tests and I have discovered the following things.
-Using drain will not do anything other than make the character wear his pain face because the life drained will go to the caster = player.
-The player can be affected by "Bleeding Out" but it does piercing damage which the character blocks sometimes.

And yeah, I tried using

Code:

  <targetHitEffectBuff percentage="80" name="Bleeding Out" />

in both SkillDB and SpellDB but it doesn't work... I think it only works for like melee attacks or something because Bloodlust works with a similar code in SkillDB.

Edit: I found a way for it works like... partially.

Code:

  <triggeroncast percentage="80" name="Bleeding Out" />

It does trigger the spell but only when the character dies... and not always, even if I set it at 100%

 

Well I wasn't talking about using drain to hurt the player, as that was obvious it wouldn't do any damage. I was talking about haywire. But anyway.

Bleed doesn't affect the player, bleeding out is a dot though that isn't related to the actual bleeding.

And neither of those are solutions. The first you obviously know why. The second, just have that on then cast some spells other than bloodlust. Watch what happens. Unless you put that directly in the spell and it worked and was not a buff or anything (in which case that is awesome that it did). Not sure why it wouldn't activate properly though, it should activate 80% of the time when you cast a spell.

If you do manage to get a percent chance for a debuff, I really wouldn't use bleeding out, you could just have a dot of asphyxiative damage (which would be much less commonly resisted).

I really wish they would have some kind of typeless damage. Maybe I'll suggest it.

 

I agree. Maybe they should add a code to allow damage to ignore blocking/resist.

And I think I know what the problem is... I think the "triggeroncast" code is somehow hardcoded to be always on 5%
There's only one skill that uses that code so that's why I think it's working like that. The side effect I added, Down The Road, does work after many tries.

5% is good for a bad side effect anyways.

 

Those were unused spell icons in the skills folder. And down the road is the new lingering weakness icon.

 

Well yeah, I'm just editing them.
The Bloodlust Icon was taken from one of the achievements icon, Bloody Mess.


And the Sacrifice Icon was taken from one I found inside the skills folder.

 

I know it's not related to coding but I noticed that in the "Down the Road" debuff text - the phrase you're looking for is "on the bright side" not, "in the bright side".

 

Thanks, lad. English is not my first language so I appreciate help with my grammatical errors. I just fixed it now and changed the description a little.