Mhm, I see. Thus basic buff cost is 16, 32, 48, or 64 lutefisk... I'll just finish working on the buffs then, and then we'll try to balance it.
Monsters shouldn't be a problem, I'll take a few I can have something out in about an hour or two at most. I'll ignore the ones i have no clue what to do for. Here's what I suggest we do, prepare the spellDB, craftDB, skillDB, itemDB, etc etc, so that people can contribute to them. Mark what you changed with a comment header (make it fairly visible where you made the changes) and allow others to fill the parts they need.
If we're tossing around potential d&d/nethack monsters then I'm going to have to suggest the mimic. While I doubt the whole "pretend to be a treasure chest" thing could even be translated into Dredmor code, they're still one of the silliest monsters ever. It's a creature that has adapted to fit an ecological niche in which people are expected to leave treasure chests sitting around. It's a predator who's main prey is adventurers, if that doesn't scream Dredmor's style of humor I don't know what does, plus the sprite work could just edit the existing chest graphics, so it's win/win. The rust monster would be neat for the same reasons, although there's no equipment destruction, maybe a really harsh, long lasting debuff on an otherwise non-threatening monster would suffice.
Oh, It would help if you would give me a general idea of what level you want those monsters to be found on, as well as maybe the elemental affinities and what not, otherwise I'll just wing it. That and possible the taxonomy of the monster too, otherwise I'll randomly assign one based on what I think would fit them best.
You can make a few variations for the different floors. And right now it's more important to get the general feel of the creature types and their special abilities; fine-tuning them for different levels can be done later. Personally I think it would be best if you begun with two monsters of each class, with damage and resist types from innate element changed to "random" (it'll be easy to change that way). Monsters that are supposed to be weak would have level 1 and 6/7 versions, mid-power ones level 3 and 9/10, and those on the end of the spectrum level 6 and 14/15. But that's just my opinion (though you can go with it if you like it).
As Kazeto said, the floors of monsters will likely be subject to change. What's important is getting them working so we can fiddle with the exact numbers. Which monsters are you planning on working on? I can start messing around with sprites for those. I had an idea last night for a room/series of rooms: Sokoban-style block puzzle. We would have to keep the player consistently silenced in a no-monster area and give him some knockback thrown weapons. Probably a very large room with a ring of hallway surrounding it so a player who fails the puzzle can just walk around. If it's possible to trap yourself inside the puzzle, we could include switches to teleport the player out.
While I do agree that you can't tweak every item to have a different Lutefisk value.. but some appear to break the system. The most extreme is Burglary's lockpicks, its a second level skill and it can easily give the player 300 or more Lutefisk in a level. I really don't see a way to work around that just with balancing.
That is a problem, I do admit, and there's really nothing we can do to completely alleviate that issue. But then again, in the long run every skill that gives you items without limit, no matter the waiting time, is impossible to balance because it can give you an unlimited amount of stuff. We will try to do something with it, but that's a call to the players.
We'll wall ourselves into a corner if we try to balance against the abusive gameplay options available to a player. Lockpicks simply break the game if abused; if desired, the player can max out every Lutefisk Shrine with 500 lutefisk and purchase every single item in Brax's shop, even stuff that's way out of depth. In practice, a given player is either: going to do that sort of stuff anyway, in which case giving them a new way to break the game makes them happy and doesn't change much not the kind of player who does that, so we can safely pretend that lockpicks either don't exist or aren't being abused As such, the only balancing concern I'm worried about is trying to guess how much lutefisk the average player gets normally, without cheaty gimmicks, over the course of a game. That's a pretty hard number to come by, though, with a lot of variance for build and random chance. It might be best to just assume 500 per floor, or something.
I can have all the monsters with the exception of the three that I have said I have no idea what you meant.
Silly me, I completely missed the notes you put underneath each monster when you quoted me. Below are my responses, with monster name and your notes above. If I didn't mention the monster at all, that's because your notes were dead on. Giant Spider Would you want webs to be cast when the monster is aware, like most monsters, or cast when successfully hit on melee? Cast when aware, more likely. Placing a spell mine of a web would be best, I think. Unicorn Is a unicorn horn a drop item? or is that suppose to be a spell or something. I suggest a Narwhicorn as a name, you can use his mighty horn as either a weapon or an ingredient in a narwand Unicorn Horns in Nethack are infinite use items that, when activated, have a percentage chance of removing negative status conditions. I was thinking the Unicorn (or Narwhicorn, which is a great idea for the name) could drop a horn which functions as a potion or status removal. A weapon would also work, though. Nethack Unicorn Horns could be used as weapons, as well. Gnome Not quite sure what the Gnome-with-a-wand-of-death is so I'll skip this one Gnome-with-a-Wand-of-Death was a oddity of the random number generator in Nethack, which could spawn Gnomes with the mentioned item. Since they had the AI to use wands and Gnomes appeared long before players could gain access to relevant resistances, it usually meant you either killed it before it saw you and got a wand of death or you started a new character. I'm not saying we should make something that extreme, but Gnome variant with a low chance of doing something necromantic and frightening could be an option. Quantum Mechanic (is he a construct type enemy? I can do the blink thing, but you're gonna have to explain what Shrodinger's Cat is suppose to do and not just say Shrodinger's cat) Quantum Mechanics aren't explained much in Nethack. I've only played Nethack in ASCII, so it shows up as a Q. As a result, I'd probably create an image somewhat similar to whatever google images turns up. I'd assign it the "Other" creature type. Schroedinger's Cat was a concept proposed that includes a cat in a box with a mechanism that has a 50% chance of killing it. Since nobody can know if the cat is alive or dead, quantum mechanics states that the cat is both alive and dead. Schroedinger was essentially challenging the interpretation of quantum mechanics, since it's impossible for the cat to be both alive and dead at the same time. In Nethack, the Quantum Mechanic monster has a 5% chance of dropping a large box, which has a cat inside. The cat has a 50% chance of being dead, which is determined at the time the box is opened. This has little application to Dredmor and the Schroedinger's Cat thing was more of a personal note, since it was a cute Easter Egg. We could have Quantum Mechanics drop something like Schroedinger's Catnip, a consumable item with a 50% chance of positive and negative outcomes. Trolls (dunno how to do this to be honest) Could we set up a percentage chance of triggering a delayed Witchy-style corpse reviver spell that targets itself? Owlbear (hmmmm, I think a missile type spell when the monster is aware would work, a long range lockdown type spell) The Owlbear movement restriction was from a hug. Sorry, I forgot to include that in my notes. Since this is Dredmor and all that, it could easily be a Hero-Seeking Hug Missile or something, though. Succubus/Incubus (no idea how to do this one to be honest) I only included it because they were a very interesting part of Nethack; if they're cut for complexity, that's fine. I suppose we could make a Diggle Gods style permanent effect, which could be removed with status-removal effects. We include one such effect as a craftable item from deific favour. As a side note, Succubi and Incubi had a chance of giving both positive and negative effects, such as increasing/decreasing constitution, wisdom, and level. Hope that helps.
It could be possible to do a mimic, I have an idea as to how to get it to work, however those more familure with room building would hopefully beable to tell me even if the idea is possible. Basically have a special mimic chest/s that are placeable, but have scripts that either; A) spawn a monster (in this case the corosponding mimic creature), and remove the chest when you get within one square of it, or B) have a trigger, that when you 'open' it, the chest is removed and replaced with the mimic monster, similar as to how evil chests spawn monsters. Currently I cant find any info in the rooms for how chests are spawned and handled
That's the problem with it. For all we know, chests are hard-coded. Still, since mimics are silly and some people do play with their keyboard for walking/opening chests, it's not like we can't make a room with chest-like monster there that only detects you once you get very close. Heck, I reckon half of DoD players (if not more) will fall for it. Hmm... I wonder if it'll be possible to make a breakable that will look like a chest and spawn a chest-like monster on hit. Though making a chest-like obstacle and scripting it to become a mimic monster when you get close to it (and thus meaning it would be invulnerable before that) is feasible, and should not be *that* difficult.
while modding for the monsters (i've finished a few already, just coding spells associated with them now) there are a few stats I'm not familiar with, and would be great if I can get them clarified: I know that xpValue is how much xp they give when they are killed, but what are the other two? <stats numFig="3" numRog="1" xpValue="90" /> As for the following, I realize that it means how likely they are to chase after you and how long they will chase you for, but what's the scale? is aggressiveness based on how many tiles away from you before they notice you, or is it kind of arbitrary? Same for span, is it the number of turns they'll keep chasing you till they get bored? <ai aggressiveness="4" span="10"/>
numFig and numRog are their warrior and rogue levels respectively, giving all the stats they would give to the player to the monster. numWiz similarly is the wizard level. span is that I believe, not sure about aggressiveness.
oooo, so I guess that means we can make them a real bitch to fight by raising these stats really high hahahaha. Sweet. Aight. That gives me plenty of ideas, thanks Null.
There are multiple ways I can think to go about it without needing to access the chest code, afterall it just needs to look like a chest. The only downside with placeables is the fixed nature once you get to know rooms. Though with Item droping being implemented in 1.0.10 it should be easy enough to create some good mimic style creatures. If I could figure out what determines the perception range of a creature (hopefully it's the aggressiveness for ai, like Ryvian suspects) it will be fairly easy to do, though would likely cause players to try and zot every chest in the game to try avoiding them. Playing with keyboard movement myself I have no idea what most targeting an enemy with movement on would do, worth testing out though
