Hello everyone, I've put together what I hope is the first of many mods for DoD, and even though I've run it through the Mod XML Validator and it comes up clean, I'm still running into some rather annoying errors which I can't seem to fix. Thanks to everyone for their help. My final version is now available on steam. You can also direct download it from here: http://www.strangecult.com/sa/dredmor/Drama Queen.zip (version 1.0.5) Here's the description of the finished skills: Here were the problems I originally had: Problem #1: A weird graphics glitch on the "Choose Your Skills" page. Status update: Just a minor graphics hiccup of the game itself, when you select an ability lower than what it seen on screen. Problem 2: Custom sounds do not play. Status update: Apparently, custom sounds are not supported for mods. Too bad. Though I guess I'll leave them where they are in case that ever gets added in a future update. Problem 3: Can't get custom items to spawn in inventory. Status update: Fixed! I had multiple items using the same icon. I gave each of the awards new icons, and used spawnitematlocation instead of spawn, and it's now working just fine. Problem 4: Can't get buffs to trigger from triggerfromlist. Status update: Fixed! I didn't realize that you can only trigger spells that have been previously defined in the spellDB.xml. I changed the order, and now my triggers are working. Problem 5: Random buffs keep getting reset on each hit, rather than triggering a new one from triggerfromlist. Status update: Fixed! I was lazy and reused the same icon for multiple buffs. As suggested, I tried it with some uniquely named .png files and it worked flawlessly.
1: I haven't modded skills myself, but I'll take a guess that your skill icon has the wrong dimensions or something. 2: So far as I'm aware, the devs never bothered to implement custom sounds for mods. At all. 3: Try changing the effect to spawnitematlocation and see if that works? 4: TargetHitEffectBuff (and similar buff triggers) will only work on spells that have been written in the xml file ABOVE the buff that's using them. Don't ask why, just roll with it.
Don't worry at all about that, it's nothing to do with your mod. When you scroll your mouse over a skill you've selected, it highlights it in the list of all skills there. It's highlighting your skill, behind the skill bar, which is causing rendering issues. That's a glitch the devs needs to fix, everything is right there. By the looks of it on the bar there, your icon is perfectly fine. I've never tried adding custom sounds. If I were in your position I would try copy/pasting the game's original sounds over to your mod (renamed to avoid duplicated) and try using those, just as a test. That will tell whether it's possible or not. If it works, your sounds will probably work if you mimic the exact specifications of the game sounds, that is, sample/bit rate, format, perhaps even filesize limits. This problem is also hindering my mod. It was in my to-do list of fixes, but i'll make it my next thing and take a look at how the Lucky Pick skill works to give you lock picks. I'll let you know if and when I find a solution. You need to move And Action below Maximum Carnage, and Maximum Carnage below the rest; in most cases I've worked with, spells can only trigger spells that are already written above them in the code, not below.
This one is only a problem with "triggerfromlist" and automatic triggers, triggering them as a normal part of the spell works fine even if they are below them in the code. But yeah, your advice is a good one.
1-3 have already been adequately answered above, so I'll tackle #4. I can guarantee you it's not about whether or the spell your'e triggering is a buff or not. Have you run your code through an XML validator? In all likelihood, there's some sort of minor XML foulup that's keeping the triggerfromlist from operating correctly. OR there's a slim chance that the "--" in your description for And Action is causing problems; XML really doesn't like to see "--"s outside of comment tags. I write using "--" basically all the time and I've encountered problems with it from time to time. If you just upload the full file, I'll be happy to take a closer look at it.
Custom sound is working for this mod. I've tried it in the past versions and I could hear the custom sound.
Wow. Thanks for the incredibly awesome and speedy responses. I literally slapped myself in the forehead when OneMoreNameless pointed out the XML order thing. It wasn't anywhere on the wiki, but makes perfect sense... in hindsight. Of course, now that I've got that part fixed, I've moved on to a different problem, where Maximum Carnage does choose a random mini-buff, but keeps retriggering the same one (either resetting the timer or attack number) every time I hit something, rather than randomly choosing another buff from the list, and another, and another, until the 15 turns are up. My goal was to create a power that wasn't terribly useful in one-on-one fights, but paid off in true action hero style when facing a huge hoard of enemies, by allowing you to stack up a number of random mini-buffs cumulatively (theoretically up to 15) assuming you managed to hit something on every turn, but that may not be possible from the way I have things structured. I also still can't get the individual awards to drop, regardless of whether I use spawn or spawnitematlocation. Though I'm beginning to think that the latter version may only work with type="target" rather than type="self," except of course that I'm using the exact same effect type="spawn" syntax as Make Puffballs in the original game's SpellDB.xml file, and it still does nothing.
Are you using the same buff icon for all of the mini-buffs? I've heard that can cause weird problems, so maybe try copy/pasting/renaming for each mini-buff if that's the case. Otherwise I've got nothing. If neither spawn effect is working, the problem is presumably with the item itself. Double check the formatting etc., or try posting the code here for us to check.
I did some messing around. I CAN get custom items to spawn via spells, however, not any item. I tested it on a single item that was included in the skill's loadout to make sure it's a valid item. I changed the item to different kinds of armour, a weapon, food, and a component/reagent. Every time I tested, it was included in the loadout, either on my character or in my backpack, but it would not spawn when the spell was triggered. The only thing that DID spawn was when it was a weapon. I looked through the game spellDB.xml file, and there was a crap-load of spells commented out that were intended to spawn items. There were some working item-spawn spells, but most of them were randomgem / randomring / randomBUTT in fact, only two or three actually spawned specific items: The level 3 Blood Mage skill 'Create Haematic Phylactery' spawns a potion item named Haematic Phylactery The item Odious Puffball casts 'Make Puffballs' which spawns a Puffball The level 1 Burglary skill 'Lucky Pick' spawns 3 Lockpicks That's it. In my cases the items were valid and usable, and existed in my loadout or inventory, but were still denied being spawned from a spell. I didn't try the effect that spawns items at the target location, but I have little hope for that either. I think one of the first things you can do to test this is add this to your skillDB.xml inbetween your <skill ... > </skill> tag Code: <loadout type="reagent" subtype="Spammy Award" always="1"/> That should make you spawn with the item, just to see if it will actually spawn at all. You'd better hope it doesn't spawn, because if it does I don't think there's any hope left for a fix until the Dredmor developers change something... Thankfully, my findings do reveal but one possibility; in theory it will work if you make the statue a weapon, and in your case I think you could get away with it if it were a mace. I could see myself bashing people over the head with a small golden statue. EDIT: Double post Code: <item name="Ouchy Award" iconFile="items/award.png" overrideClassName="Award" type="2" alchemical="0" special="0" craftoutput="1" > <price amount="100"/> <weapon crushing="2" righteous="1" /> <description text="It's a shiny gold man awarded by the Academy of Wizarding for Best Performance by a Human Doormat."/> </item> <item name="Spammy Award" iconFile="items/award.png" overrideClassName="Award" type="2" alchemical="0" special="0" craftoutput="1" > <price amount="100"/> <weapon crushing="2" righteous="1" /> <description text="It's a shiny gold man awarded by the Academy of Wizarding for Outstanding Achievement in the Perforating Arts."/> </item> <item name="Spazzy Award" iconFile="items/award.png" overrideClassName="Award" type="2" alchemical="0" special="0" craftoutput="1" > <price amount="100"/> <weapon crushing="2" righteous="1" /> <description text="It's a shiny gold man awarded by the Academy of Wizarding for Finest Performance in the Flailing Arts."/> </item> <item name="Fatty Award" iconFile="items/award.png" overrideClassName="Award" type="2" alchemical="0" special="0" craftoutput="1" > <price amount="100"/> <weapon crushing="2" righteous="1" /> <description text="It's a shiny gold man awarded by the Academy of Wizarding for Best Girdle in a Supporting Role."/> </item> <item name="Krunky Award" iconFile="items/award.png" overrideClassName="Award" type="2" alchemical="0" special="0" craftoutput="1" > <price amount="100"/> <weapon crushing="2" righteous="1" /> <description text="It's a shiny gold man awarded by the Academy of Wizarding for Outstanding Performance by a Human Liver."/> </item> Try that.
That is because he asks people to paste the sound file and script in the core game folders. People at the Steam workshop are too lazy to do that.
Bingo. I was using the same icon for the mini-buffs, and thinking along those same lines, you just solved problem 3 for me! The moment I gave each of the award items it's own unique icon file and switched over to using spawnitematlocation, the ability immediately started working like I wanted it to. The only thing which it doesn't seem to like at this point is the overrideClassName I put in the itemDB.xml file. This is a bit odd, since I swear it was working earlier, but I figure it could be a side effect of me adding the items into the craftDB.xml file (so you can now use the ingot press to recycle them down into bars of gold) I'll probably play around with restructuring the mini-buffs tomorrow, and see if I can give each award item a spell scroll effect, so they aren't just inert lumps of metal taking up space in your inventory with no real purpose.
So it was just a case of item icons, eh? I feel stupid. Apologies for my retarded research of failure. Glad to see your problems are all solved now. Good luck with the mod, it's interesting and is full of very good ideas. I'll be downloading it when (if) you release.
Everything's fixed now, and I've uploaded the mod to steam. Thanks to everyone for their help, and hopefully the rest of my mods turn out to be less problematic.
Thanks. I'm afraid I didn't draw any of them freehand or anything. Mostly I just took bits and pieces of previously existing icons, and then repositioned and swapped around elements in photoshop, before going back over everything to clean up and darken the outer edges. Right now, I'm working on my Bowiemancy ability set, which I actually *am* having to draw from scratch, because well... at 64x64 pixels it's damn hard to make something which fits the DoD style but is still instantly recognizable as David Bowie. EDIT: Day one, and I've managed to get four icons done.
Uhh...no. My icons are obvious hack jobs pieced together from bits of existing material. Yours are much, much better than mine. Even if they are based on existing assets, they're not obviously so -- they look excellent.
You filthy scum... Doing such a great work! It doesn't matter to me how did you managed to create your art. It's really well-made. Here it awakens again the little girl inside everyone.
