Creating a "It belongs in a musem" + "map markers mod" need pointers

DISCLAIMER: Erronous version of 0.2 file has been uploaded, proper one with flags set up up now.

Beta test version up - room redecorated, made more functional and all that

Current version - 0.2

NEW: Made it look like a proper shrine, with candles and blacjack and hookers... Well candles and a statue anyway. And lava. And 2 furnaces.
NEW: Layout designed to make you run into a book (2 now) before you instinctively pull the lever and mess it up)
NEW: Reduced the number of doors to not have it pop up in crossroad areas and have you instinctively pull on the lever befor you know what's going on.


COULDN'T DO: Make it work any way but using the lever - which is fiddly.
COULDN'T DO: Make it work like an actual shrine, iow by placing the artifact onto the statue and getting an instant ibiam - stuff needs to have ID from within a room, which means it could work only on stuff that spawns in the room and not stuff you take in. This is a mayor annoyance, maybe someone knows of a workaround.
COULDN'T DO: Give the "shrine" a way to show on the minimap. Would REALLY appriciate if anyone could crack this, it would open up modding design space soooo much. If going hentai on the code is the only option, I'm going hentai, just hand me the tentacles.

NEEDS DOING: Depending on feedback, the shrine might need a terrible price of using - potential debuff scheme ideas appriciated.


The room appears 1 or twice per floor and is one shot with a chance to ruin it unless you put the right artifact in the slot befor you pull the lever.

You put the artifact in the designated slot, and pull on the lever. Bam! You IBIAM the artifact.



Feedback on how it affected your game expirience appriciated.

MY OWN FEEDBACK: It's making me consider the random junk I find and actually look at it. I seem to be finding more usefull things now, and am certanly in no rush to get rid of it all as soon as I find it. As far as increesing joy from getting a new piece of procedurally generated junk it's a total sucess

Thank you

 

Well, shame about the quest markers, allthough I found a way to do the "less classy way" for makingthe IBIAM effect more widespread. Still gonna put an effort into it, not making it sloppy. Ty for reply

Could use a pointer though: Any way to make sure that the use of an "It belongs in a museum" through a wand and an actually ability share a cooldown?

How about making a specific debuff with 72 turns which muted only that one skill? (I dug up the template for muting and it seem to have an "ammonut" but no documentation on wheter I can actually do what it want, and prevent the same person from chaining both effects?

 

The "easy" way for IBiaM would be to create a room (a small one with a 'special="1"' is likely to spawn and only spawns once per floor), and do the following:

• Make its "shrine" tile trigger a spell that would polymorph you into a monster.
• Give the polymorphed form free access to IBiaM.
• Make the exit tiles remove the buff that polymorphed you.

The second point might require some additional changes to the core files (I can elaborate on that if you want), but it is possible and you might like the end result.

 

There is no way to give a polymorph access to IBIAM without putting into a skillset and giving the player that skillset, sadly.

The limitations you're facing are simple and unavoidable:

1) Only skillbar skills can target items in your inventory.
2) There's no way to give the player a skillbar skill without putting it into a skill line.

Thus, my suggestion in the Balance thread: just build IBIAM into one of the skill lines you're choosing at the start of each game. It's not difficult -- if you're interested, I'll explain how.

 

You can target items on the floor with any item spells with the appropriate targeting scheme. So you could just have a place your artifact here shrine.

 

Seriously? I never knew that! That's awesome! If that's the case, we can totally make the 'sacrifice an artifact for XP here' shrine a thing.

Should it be one-use, or resuable? Maybe reusable on a timer?
Depending on how large it is, it may appear frequently or almost never.


Damn...I may have to break down and make a mod with something other than skill lines in it.

 

Which is why you could just give it to every core skill tree (the "some additional changes to the core files" thing I mentioned), and make it only accessible for the polymorphed form.

But it doesn't matter much, because Null beat both of us there.

 

So what's the targeting scheme? Where do I dig for code?

I'd make it a one use thing, and depending on how big it is spawn it once or twice per floor - just to make the actual IBIAM still have distinct flavor. If this is managed (by me or whoever) then I/we test it out, and see from there.

 

The type used is 'type="targetflooritem"'.

And you might want to check this site (unless you have already done so), you can find quite a bit of info there since it was created to help people with creating mods:
http://dredmod.com/wiki/Main_Page

 

Checked it many times allready Was just wondering about whether I've missed something. Ty.

 

Hmmm, looks like the wand idea isn't going to work, due to what Essence said. Kazetos polymorph idea might, though. Would be worth asking one of the devs to bother with expanding our modding options (I suspect this wouldn't be exactly easy). It's probably far from the only application this would have...

Havin an ability to target inventory with wands, having the ability to target stuff on the floor with a "sacrifice artifact" type effect (with minmal range ofc to prevent island artifact abuse), or having a way to set formulas for XP gain instead of fixed numbers would each on its own make the whole thing possible. Heck, this would allready be in testing mode if any of those were possible.

Or maybe I'm just doing something wrong, I don't know.

2 ways to make it work so far, both inellegant, but would do do:

1) Granting a player a temporary "It belongs in a museum-like skill" in a certain area. Breaks so many unwritten rules about how the game works from the user perspective, but would still do the job.
2) Make a variant of the "pull lever - destroy artifact - get fixed xp" for each floor with fixed XP. Very hard to balance, though.

 

Unfortunately, Polymorphs don't innately have skills; you have to have a skill level from somewhere that adds a skill to the polymorph -- and at that point, it's easier to just add it to a skill line w/o bothering with the polymorph.

 

Easier to code, yes, but that's not the issue - I don't mind work But! If I create a non-spawning monster which has this as an activated ability and looks just like the protagonist, and then pollymorph the protagonist into it? Or something like that?

If I wanted it to work even if I have to code for ages, what should I do?

EDIT: What about a skill granting buff?

I mean, I could add it to the core files under every possible skill tree and give it a trigger to activate only in rooms with a shrine etc etc, but that would make the mod unuploadable since it fiddles with the core files

 

Before we go off into crazy town, let's talk about this shrine idea.

If you have a spell that looks like this:

(spelDB.xml)

Code:

<spell name="Sacrifice Artifact" type="targetflooritem">
<effect type="trigger" spell="It Belongs In A Museum"/>
</spell> 

And you attach it to a lever in a room, thusly:

(rooms.xml)

Code:

 <room width="6" height="7" name="Sacrifice Room" >
  <row text="######"/>
  <row text="######"/>
  <row text="#.1..#"/>
  <row text="d....#"/>
  <row text="#....d"/>
  <row text="#....#"/>
  <row text="#D####"/>
  <flags minLevel="1" maxLevel="15" noblockers="1" special="1"/>
  <element at="1" type="lever" id="lever1"/>
<customblocker name="Rocky Altar" x="4" y="3" png="dungeon/pile_of_stones.spr" description="There's a broken-to-rubbles altar here. It bears a legible discription: 'Put an artifact just south of this rock, and pull the lever.'  How...fourth-wall-breaking." visblock="1" />
<script repeat="0">
  <condition condition_type="activated_changed" id="lever1"/>
  <action on="success" action_type="spell" casts="Sacrifice Artifact" targetX="4" targetY="4"/>
</script>
</room>

Does that work? (Why or why not?)

 

Tested it and it doesn't work. Also managed to delete my ROTTG skill XML by accident, if anyone'd be good enough to send me one, please?

It doesn't work if you put a simmilar spell effect on a wand, and I suspect that "sacrificeartifact",err, handle, that It belngs in a museum uses can't target stuff that isn't in your inventory. I might be wrong though.

 

You can force the game to download its data again (assuming you are using Steam) from the game library. Just move the files you are working on to some other location (I'm keeping them on my "desktop") so that the update won't overwrite them.

 

Ty, just did it

Oh, and care to share how exactly (no need to go into code too much, that I can handle) your polymorphy way would work. Was fiddling with it when I accidentally arsed up with the source file.

Also, any way to give monsters "ability" which they wouldn't be able to use ofc, but would be available to the player if he gets pollymorphed? Aynone know of anyone who did this (i know for sure Essence fiddled with polymorph, and that monster spells seem to be listed as "spells")




I'm asking, because the way to do this is to use the pollymorph suggestion, but give every single skillline a "pollymorph = 1" secret IBIAM skill variant, and have the room pollymorph the player. That would requer a ton of copy pasting, which I don't mind, but it's also fiddling with the core files which the mod workshop doesn't and which would be a hell to update which I do mind.

Anyon know a workaround to the problems of THIS approach?

(Because I'd only need to pollymorph to avoid having everyone stuck with the IBIAM in the skill line - not everyone wants it to be up in his face all the time, and this would give the room uniqueness within the dungeon and all that.)

 

In about ten hours, seeing as I'm currently going to work.
I hope you can wait that much (and there is a chance that someone else will help you with that before I'm back).

 

It's np at all. Hf.