Thanks Essence and Fax! Updated my list and named the section Buffs instead of stats as stats can be misleading. And I'm thinking of removing the list of items from the handbook, can I get some feedback if people actually want a complete list of items in the handbook or are you guys ok without it. My only reasoning for not adding the rest of the list and even taking out what is done is because the wiki provides a much better detailed list of items than what I would plan on doing.
What range of stat bonuses should we expect from artifact level 1? Does it scale linearly with further artifact levels? Does the item's level affect anything beyond the number of stars displayed in the item mouseover?
Item level determines on which floors the item is most likely to spawn. The further down you go, the better the loot, though there's still a random element and off-level items happen. Plus, levels 11-15 are broken and mostly generate level 10 items. (That's why I added an extra weapon of each type at level 10 in my mod.) Artifact quality (as Fax said) determines how many abilities the item can get if Kronged or spawned in a way that generates it with abilities. The "range of stat bonuses" from artifact level 1 should be exactly 1 point of random additional stats.
Aquaman, the Rooms.pdf still has bad intel in it. This section is wrong: No offense intended, but those are pretty much all wrong. "i" is the only one that's correct on your list. Not your fault, they're tricky and it takes a lot of trial and error and analysis to figure them out. I'm 100% certain of the following meanings to those symbols: i - This one you've got correct. It definitely makes a sales pedestal, and puts a random item on it. Using this without an "S" and "s" in the same room gets a little wonky. P - Treated as a wall section. However, if certain nouns are in the name of the room, it will have a painting or tapestry hanging on the wall. Examples include Queen which has a painting of a royal woman in red (I'm pretty sure it's Queen Elizabeth I as it mirrors a famous painting in color and composition) , Cod and Lutefisk which have a cartoony fish drawing, Storms and Shocks which have a tapestry with a lightning bolt, etc. Any staircase appearing there is just random luck and has nothing to do with this symbol. @ - Treated as normal open floor. However, if certain nouns are in the name of the room, it will have a statue on that space. Examples include Blocks which has some square stone blocks; Pillars which produces stone pillars of roughly the color of the walls from the initial floor; Books which produces a stone book on a stone pedestal; Gears (and something else) that produce gears on a pedestal; Portals which create a square frame somewhat reminiscent of the nether portals in minecraft, etc. Any dimensional portal or uberchest appearing there is again just a matter of random luck having to do with how random blockers, elements, and treasures are placed scattered about each floor after the rooms are generated. Such items do not spawn on the spot if a noun-based statue is generated. ^ - Treated as normal open floor. However, if certain nouns are in the name of the room, it will have a non-blocking image applied to the floor. The only example in the main game that I can recall at the moment is Lava and Magma, both of which produce three red horizontal lines that the files call a "lava grate". As per the @ symbol above, any displacement glyphs appearing there are just a random coincidence. ! - Creates a wall that looks normal, but can be blown up by just about any area-affect, such as black-powder bombs, bottle bolts, Psychic Shove, just about all of Pyromancy, and even things like Norwegian Axenado. The game uses these destructible walls to make secret passages. X - Creates an impassable space that looks like open floor. Used to make customblockers that look like they fill two spaces actually block two spaces despite being just a single image file. Most notably, the tombs on the catacombs level. You put the gravesite blocker in one "." space via <customblocker> and then put an "X" in the space just north of it. I have thoroughly tested all of the above, and make extensive use of them in Interior Dredmorating. They definitely do what I describe.
Also, never use <horde> in the room definition of a shop. It replaces Brax with a random non-boss monster, that is boss-colored. Behaves and dies like a normal monster, but over-writes Brax. Which means the player can just take the items on the pedestals without consequence. (Though I haven't ruled out the possibility that other Brax shops elsewhere might detect the theft.) Using <monster> inside a shop works just fine. It behaves as expected and doesn't do anything to Brax. Though I suppose you could argue it's a little mean to anyone with area affect powers. Luckily, this is a roguelike.
Has anyone actually seen scrolls spawn? I've only beat the game once, but there were no scrolls in that run. Since then, I'm typically only on the lowest levels if I'm in debug mode and testing something specific, so I don't tend to search all that thoroughly. Are scrolls just really rare, or do they not even spawn at all? The wiki doesn't even mention them.
To be honest I have never seen a scroll... Also, I apologize for the rooms handbook, I had made those changes ages ago, I never updated the link it seems. I personally use the one stored on my comp and hadn't realized the versions were not the same, however the link now directs to the correct rooms handbook.
I can definitely vouch for Item Level only determining the Rarity on each floor, not necessarily the floor you find it on. I've gotten the Crownstar Addendum, with it's usual massive amount of enchantments, out of a Fountain on the first floor before. I've also found some Ring with the maximum amount of stars on the first floor before, but that only had +2 on it. Both of those runs ended in disaster, but on my last turn before I died, I sent the Crownstar Addendum to the museum and got something ridiculous like 240,000 EXP out of it. That was with one or two extra Krong enchantments though.
No apologies necessary, you're doing us all a favor, after all. That said, I hate to be a nag, but while you did update the file, it still doesn't have the correct information in it. And, yes, I realize that's largely my fault because I had drawn some wrong conclusions and passed bad intel on to you back at the start of this thread. Please re-read post #25 in this thread, as it has the correct details of what those symbols actually do.
I'm fairly certain that the item level=" " is used to determine the stars aka, rarity. I'll clarify that within the guide upon the next update. I dont believe there is a way to set which level an item will spawn on unless it is hardcoded into the room database. I'm aware of a few errors/things that I'm wanting to change but I will be updating rooms to have a complete scripting section along with those fixes at the same time. I
I have a really nooby question and it's how do you create an xml file. I know I'm a total nub but I'd appreciate it if any of you could tell me.
It's just a plain text file which has had its extension changed to .xml. You can edit it in notepad or any text editor you have on hand.
Ok.. a hair off topic... Regardless of how close this is to being finished, I would like it to be stickied now. Put "WIP" or "[WIP]" in the title. I looked for this thread a solid 5 min before I could find it. .02 Daynab! Derek!
Aquaman and I actually had a discussion about stickying it a while ago (when he only had one done) and I figured we may want to wait until there's a few more. You still writing these Aquaman? If so I'll sticky it right now.
If he's not, I'll pick up the slack. At one point he asked me to help him with it, but I was inundated with big reports (that mostly turned out to not be mine) and couldn't spare the time.
I definitely haven't stopped working on these. I have been, and am just extremely busy, so finding time to work on any of my mods/handbook is a bit hard. It's looking like after the next week or two, I will be less busy.
Wow, I cannot believe I did not see this until now. Thanks Aquaman for all of this, I'll sure use it next time I want to tinker with the code
Glad to hear it. I was worried because you hadn't done much with it lately, and I never got back to you when my workload finally thinned out. And, well, you know, mass hysteria and all. Yeah, that's my excuse. It was... umm... other people's fault.
