Interior Dredmorating version 1.2.6.4

I think you may be watering down what ID adds. It is great just the way it is, AllurlewtsRbelongtome.

If you disagree, what would you suggest be added, specifically?

 

These guys already said what I was going to. The lack of skills in this mod is quite intentional. Think of this mod as a DMG2, not a PHB2. It's new challenges and treasures and a distinct voice behind the GM's screen, not another splatbook full of character classes.

Given that the mod loader can handle a ton of mods now regardless of platform, I see no reason to add skills here. If and when I do release the skill mod I'm tinkering with, it will almost certainly remain a separate package from ID.

 

What everyone else has said, plus: I really don't like mods that add a whole bunch of items (and by items I mean consumables that I will feel compelled to manage and clutter my inventory, I'm OK with new equipment as that's very easy to decide on) to my game. I usually yank the item DB from mods I load unless they include part of a skill rollout. As a result, I like skills to be separate from mods that do other things, as picking apart what I can safely yank is difficult when everything is crammed together.

 

Generally speaking, I like the pokemon stuff, even though I feel that RR is too obvious about quite a few of them. Rest is very much so opinion, which I respect, but completely diverges from my own. We agree to disagree on that.

My argument is that +100 room and assorted items, just by themselves, aren't quite as big as they used to be back when it was the only way to get extra rooms. Admitedly, +100 rooms and assorted items IS STILL PRETTY BIG, esp. since its strom we're talking about. It's still relatively less good as a standalone.

Personally, I feel that having a single go-to pack for everything produced by X is a good thing. Generally, I like the work ethic behind all the content that you, fax, iccorp and the other prolific modders have added into the game. Even though there might be balance issues (which we can chip in and Iron out), i would still rather use everything you made rather than the bits and pieces I like. Being able to "unselect" a part I don't like... Well you wouldn't do it for a part of the main game (i did do it way back when, but that was mostly me attempting to mod), why would you do it to a mod? For me a well executed mod becomes a part of the actual full game experience, and that a lot of the mod packs i've seen qualify/almost qualify for that imo. Being able to pick and choose from what they have done based on what I like doesn't do all the hard work they have put in justice Imo.

Also curious to see some bergstrom skills. Actually the original post I made was meant as a friendly nudge in that direction
That being said, while i agree that specialized packs have an appeal of their own (you could argue that, since this pack does only this, it's better than a pack that tries to do everything or that simply cramming everything you made into one pack does not make each individual thing better and what have you), i think that most modders FOR THIS GAME prize their megapacks enough that it improves the overall quality of everything in it. E.g. Iccorp2 has two more skill trees in the work, both of which are open for independent use/testing, but specifically said that they wouldn't be added to RR until they are deemed "complete". That alone tells you something about the relative quality of the two skills that are in RR.
Also, any one adjustment changes the game experience across the board. For example, big open space rooms makes life easier for ranged characters, whereas smaller rooms will tend to favor melee. More obstacles, depending on how projectile based you are, can be either a strength or a weakness. A well-executed megapack will typically try to round off these new room layout by including skill trees/monsters/items and what not. In the context of modding DoD, therefore a mod that does only "X" limits the number of tools it has to create a well-rounded experience.

The main reason why i stopped using ID (that was a few versions back) was because, room variety aside, the game changed balance in a very meaningful way - the shop size went down while the item number went up. So essentially i took that as meaning - OK, you want me to go for a craft-heavy playthrough. However, the mod didn't give me more crafting skill trees and what not, so I eventually dropped it. My reasons for not using now are different though (see my next post)

Generally, I feel that ID adds a lot of extra challenge to the game, but does not include "modder-approved ways" (i.e. skill trees) to deal with them. Once strom gets those out there, I will very happilly pick up ID, and make a few runs that revolve around the abilities he's included, much in the same way I am currently doing Radiant Wizard/Blood Knight centric runs on RR.

Edit: Because I took so long to post, Lorelian was able to sneak something in and my megareply one short of nabbing everyone.

 

The thing about ID is, it feels very much like vanilla DoD. It's almost impossible for someone who hasn't memorized the RoomsDB (I.E., who isn't Rolf Bergstrom) to tell you which is which sometimes. I recall Daynab actually once thought a crazy huge monster zoo he found was part of ID when it was, in fact, just a core game zoo with a very small chance of spawning. You don't need mod skills to handle ID at the same level of proficiency as you handle vanilla DoD, because Bergstrom has gone to great efforts to keep the mod as true to the original game as possible, with a balanced slate of room sizes, contents and challenge.

 

Sigh, so much for answering everything in one big post (see my edit above). You're doing this on purpose aren't you? Let us fight like gentlemen! Lawl.

Ahum, I did go for a run with the latest version of ID recently. The I took an evil chest spawn to face on floor 12 or so. Lutefisk avatars are painful. That being said, I do agree that ID can standalone, but that is only because strom is very bloody good at what he does. Which is also why I want to see the skills that would go with this. Given how well rounded ID is room wise atm, it really whets my appetite for the "full package", with assorted well-rounded monsters/skill trees to boot.

Also, this is not so much a debate about ID by itself, but ID relative to RR. Conceptually, ID is about expanding your game experience (i.e. giving more of the same, but more variety) whereas RR is about taking your game strange places. As such, both tend to be mutually exclusive dungeon packs, because their themes are so different.
However, because RR has extra monsters and abilities, it currently feels like the more complete experience of the two to me. Which is the other big reason why i'm waiting for strom to pump out his skills before going back into ID

 

This discussion is a bit interesting, so I'll weigh in with my two cents.

*Part of the reason for me putting everything in RR was partly for my own convenience, I'll admit. Initially, I just wanted to pack in Radiant Wizard into the room mod for the convenience of mac users, who back then couldn't load more than one mod at a time. Over time, I saw more holes in the game which needed to be filled (such as mages in general having an easy time, CoE glass cannon rogues, prometheans facerolling everything on floor 1 after getting rune of exploding) and just filled them in.

Then I found I could synergise between the various aspects of my mod. For example, the Mana Hunter was the first monster I modded in, designed to give mages who hurled fireballs from range some actual resistance while taking extra damage in melee (due to my earlier testing with Radiant Wizard, one point of negative armour makes you take one extra point of on each attack). Once that was done, I thought of making Mana Hunter-themed rooms, making rooms in which the monsters could better get the drop on unwary wizards, so on an so forth. If I'd kept my monsters and rooms separate, this wouldn't have been possible. The same goes for my items - the main purpose of Obsidia shrines and groves is to dole out important crafting materials for powerful, one-time crafted equipment.

Just because I went the way of FAXPAX in this aspect doesn't make Mr. Bergstrom's decision wrong or bad; I can see where he's coming from and respect that. I just personally feel more satisfied when I see all the pieces coming together and working to achieve a good level of fun, as well as sometimes throwing off ideas of their own accord.

*I'll agree that ID feels a lot more vanilla than either RR or FAXPAX does. There aren't too many out-of-the-way references, but it is still possible to distinguish Mr. Bergstrom's rooms from the base game - he does have a good sense of humour, and it shows. Nevertheless, ID is the closest to the base game - for example, it doesn't have its own diggle gods (yet), while FAXPAX has diggle gods of mediocrity and booze, while being the fan of dragons that I am, I modded in deities like Obsidia and Selzauide.

Nevertheless, as I've stressed before, it's important that most major room and item mods are going to need good compatibility, since players are going to generally want more in a game where randomisation and variety are the lynchpins of replayability. I pretty much do all my test runs with ES complete pack, FAXPAX, ID and CK in addition to RR. I have to check whether Fax's liquors break my rooms and monsters, whether my monsters cause problems when they spawn in Mr. Bergstrom's rooms, and whether the rooms from ID and RR are diluting each other out when there are special ones that ought to be spawned. I've never particularly felt there was a huge disjunct between mine and Mr. Bergstrom's rooms, but that may just be me seeing it through rose-coloured glasses. With this, I can also try and figure out which problems with the base game my fellow modders are already addressing, and stay away from those since they've called dibs on it first.

*With regards to the consumables/pokemon stuff: I'm not perfect, but it's been a learning process as I go along. My first potions simply shortened durations for better effects, but it was only when Daynab went and directed me to somewhere else that I learnt that people didn't quite like the simple mechanics, and instead far preferred my addictive substances because it was something new and interesting. The same thing went with the buff foods; instead of small, beneficial well-fed buffs, players liked the far more flashy and obvious Temporal Pike instead, even though it was actively harmful.

It's a sobering realisation: generally, players want radically different. They want flashy, and to be able to see obvious effects. I hence made a number of my upper-end consumables craft or vending-only (so players who didn't want to see them wouldn't), and went back to the drawing board for some new and interesting consumables. I still have yet to receive feedback on the Atomic Energy Drink, but if Fax's liquors are any indication of what's to come hopefully there won't be any complaints. ID doesn't add that many consumables, while FAXPAX makes them radical and interesting; both approaches seem to work, so I'm going with the latter.

With regards to pokemon: I've already gone over the history of RR, so I'm not going to launch into it here again. Suffice to say that I am not an artist; I've already purged a number of icons, descriptions, some items and rooms. If I could draw my own scope lens sprite, I wouldn't use the one from pokemon. But I can't, and that's why it's still there, even though the description's now far more generic and if you didn't play the games, it shouldn't be obvious that it's a reference to pokemon. There's a lot less of it from where it used to be, and I am going to stand my ground on a couple of items. If I can get it down to reasonable levels (and I believe that they're already almost there), I don't see why it should be more obtrusive than, say, Star Trek or LoTR or Monty Python references. I'll admit to wondering sometimes whether some of the complaints are because it's just that Pokemon is "kiddy", as opposed to actual immersion (in DoD?). I've never had a complaint over a Skyrim reference, for example, even with the Eyebrahkiin room. Maybe one of the most amusing comments I've found was when someone failed to recognise Obsidia as a direct expy of Onyxia (I mean, with WoW so proliferate in this day and age...) and called her a "pokemon goddess" instead.

*I will add that one of the problems of megapacks like RR and FAXPAX is that as they grow, it can be hard to keep track of everything inside. FAXPAX has had some problems with icon pathing, and just recently in the 0.42 version when I revamped the directory structure for the icons and sprites to organise them better; however, I neglected to change the paths for the thrown item in-field sprites. This essentially would cause a crash whenever anyone tried to use one of my thrown items, and I didn't catch it until a week or so later when I went and made a ninjitsu character. That's why feedback from people who play our mods is important, and why I ask for it in each of my changelogs and patch notes. I also try not to move around stuff when I've deemed it complete for fear of breaking others, which was my main reason for resisting taking out the pokemon stuff at first. I've been revamping the xmls and documentation to make things more modular, but it'll always be an issue.

All right, rant over.

 

The notion that new rooms need skills to go with them strikes me as a little silly. I believe the inverse concept is more likely to be true - that a skill may need additional rooms to get the most out of them.

In particular, a room that's designed to get the most out of some particular main-game skill, as many of mine are, is only going to be weakened by throwing in a bunch of non-main-game skills. Getting the most out of main-game assets was one of the initial concepts behind ID, and continues to be so as I develop it further. An example would be teleports. The game has several of them, each functionally different in theory, but other than the once-per-floor artifact island, they are almost only used for bailing out of a horde of monsters to catch your breath for a few turns and pop some consumables or fire a few ranged shots. ID adds rooms that specifically make teleports do for you the things one imagines a teleport would normally be useful for. It gets you to places where you otherwise couldn't go. It saves you time when the road ahead is long and winding. Since the main game mechanics already just about force you to have a teleport for a safety valve, I figured I might as well introduce elements that make you appreciate having that teleport outside of the moments when a named boss just counter-crit-crit you.

What would you do if I added some skills to ID and they were really sucky? Or brokenly powerful? Or all my rooms were rebalanced so you couldn't win the game without my new skill? Some of the skill mods out there are very over-powered. They turn an already exceptionally-fair-and-sporting-for-a-roguelike game into a cakewalk, and don't offer any larger challenges to offset the insane combo power they provide. Frankly, the minor inconvenience of having to download one file and check one more box in the mod loader is significantly less troublesome than all the things that could go wrong if I packaged a mandatory skill with this mod.

Personally, I'm constantly setting aside ideas from ID for other mods on the back burner because some things may take the mod in directions not everyone would like. A couple times I've started down a path with a series of rooms and then realized it would dominate the mod in ways that aren't necessarily ideal for play after play, but should instead be seen only once in a blue moon. There's a lot of extra half-finished content you guys have never seen that will hopefully make the light of day relatively soon, in a series of smaller mods you can pick and choose from.

If there's a consensus on some element being out of place or game-breaking, or a really compelling logical reason to change it, I'll do so. But if it's just "I like or don't like X" then that's just a data point to consider. And frankly, not everyone should feel compelled to install every mod. If someone is complaining that ID doesn't match their tastes, then maybe ID isn't the mod for them. That's okay. More power to you. That's kinda the point of modding. If you're automatically installing and using every single mod, that means you aren't tailoring the game to your own tastes and preferences... but that's okay too if it's what makes you happy.

In general, you can't do everything, and you can't make everyone happy. You'll drive yourself crazy trying to do the later. I'm crazy enough as I am.

That is a valid criticism of the earlier versions. However, it's one I responded to and fixed long before you reported it.

The two-pedestal four-door shop is gone. Several larger shops have replaced it. I have a far-clearer understanding of how rooms spawn these days, and can better control the frequency of their appearance. That sort of thing won't happen again.

A few items have been set to spawn less often, or not appear until deeper in the dungeon. Whenever I add a new item now, I ask myself "is this item justified? What desired niche does it fill? What problem does it solve?" because simply being 'cool' isn't enough at this stage. (Though not being cool is reason enough to cut something.) Things I put in a couple months ago when it was the only mod of it's type just wouldn't make the cut today. As I revise the mod further, I wrestle with those notions - do I cut the old content, minimize it's frequency, or leave it grandfathered in?

And yes, back when I first started modding, I was crafting a lot. Then I went through a serious fungal arts phase. Both impacted my room designs and overall mod concept.

A certain sub-set of the community wants radically different, flashy, etc. But not all of them. Some people actually play the game because they like the original game, and install mods that match the theme and maintain the balance. Some people mod to win, some mod to experience something new, and some mod to just emphasize the existing elements of the game that they like best and want to experience more of. Different people have different tastes, and I suspect that certain personalities that want "more! bigger! splashier!" are also the people who express themselves more forcefully or more often on the forums, so their POV gets represented disproportionately.


Frankly, I think RR would be better if the four or five major themes were each broken off into their own separate mod so the end-user could have greater control of what content they were using in any given play-through. A lot of people have sounded off about the pokemon stuff, but I personally would also like to turn off the kitchen-variants next time I play. I'd love RR split into a Pokemon mod, a kitchen and food mod, a dragon mod, and a fourth mod focusing on puzzles and minigames. Admittedly, I'd probably only run the Pokemon version once, and only for a few floors. But the other three I could see myself turning on and off from game to game as the mood struck me.

When I first saw your mess halls and such I thought they were awesome (and I was flattered since you'd borrowed my concept and art), but as I progressed deeper my fondness for them wore off. Eventually I realized they were too numerous. They vastly exasperated the inventory headaches of the game, and essentially eliminated the 'war of attrition' element. I would use this content more often than the pokemon stuff, but still only with specific characters.

I'm on floor 11 now in my current run, and starting to feel somewhat similarly about the dragon stuff. By having dragons on nearly every floor, the game has become less diverse. Things like the mana-hunter also really change the feel of an entire floor, and might be better appearing in just one or two rooms instead of being scattered throughout a floor. I could see myself using this content once every other play through, maybe 2 out of 3 games.

The puzzles and minigames really make me smile. They too might one day not be a good fit for me, since they so strongly alter the feel and dynamics of the base game, but since most are set up such that you can just walk past them if you're not interested, it's rare that I'd feel compelled to disable such a mod.

Because all these themes are wrapped up in a single mod, I can't easily turn them on or off individually. If I want the dragons and obsidian items, I have to take pokemon and minigames along with them. If I'm just interested in just the puzzles, I'll have witcher references I don't understand, monsters that change level dynamics, and more food than I want to deal with. I would use the individual components more often than I would the whole package as it currently stands.



To be fair, similar criticisms can be aimed at ID. You can't have my room designs without diggles sometimes shouting "Mecha-Shiva!" or talking like a pirate. You can't get the expanded room names and squad names without being annoyed by Hamm's. That one hallway with the vending machine and "pull" lever shows up on way too many floors, as do a few other rooms. I'm working on changing all of that.

For a long time, I thought as you do that it was better to put as much as you could in a mod, because a large subset of the audience could only load one mod at a time. Those days are over. Everyone can load multiple mods now, and the mod launcher remembers which ones you were using. The only reasons not to theme each individual mod more narrowly now is time and energy, or fear that you won't have enough content to interest people. I've already proven myself and built up an audience, so all I have to worry about is finding the time to implement the changes I have in mind.

 

Fair points. However, the world demands your skill mods. It is your destiny to release mods that become everybody's pet favorite. Bow to the inevitable. Accept your fate. Remember, you cannot hide behind 'ID don't have no skillz" forever.

 

Pulling this bit as out as a quote as it fits what I look for out of mods exactly, bravo.

 

I would hope you would inform the author of such an issue if you came across it.

 

This. I would love mods to be more modular, particularly now that they don't have to be all lumped together. RR and FaxPax both have ideas that I have liked but I just don't like to leave them on. I have some of Fax's individually released skill mods from old threads, ditto for Radiant Wizard, but I'm not sure they're up to date anymore. I'd also love to have the ability to add minigame rooms to the game without having to turn pokemonism and The Draconomicon on as well. I tried taking a cleaver to FaxPax once and breaking it into parts, only to have Fax release two new updates in the time it took me to get the job half done. That's not bad, Fax is a prolific and skilled modder, but I didn't want to try and work out the differences myself and quickly realized starting over just made the whole process an exercise in futility.

More isn't always better. Sometimes it's just more. (Name that movie!) I can understand grouping some kinds of content together. Essential Skills Compleat is something I use just about all the time. But it only adds skills, not a whole lot of other content (some thematically appropriate items, but that's carefully restricted to the skill abilities and rollouts on the whole). Debacle of Diggles can increase my diggle fighting enjoyment immensely but be turned off if having an overabundance of the Animal taxa will make a run easier or harder (Vegans, anyone?) And so on. It's something for modders to think about. Sure, "the complete play experience" is swell, but mods are about building your own play experience in the first place, no?

 

How should I split it, then?

 

Don't get the wrong idea, btw - I like the concept of a bigger DoD that doesn't change anything dramatic to the game. I also like something that takes the game to strange places. And I like both equally, i'd say.
For me, Faxpax and RR take the game in the MOAR CRAZY, so I run both together. Essence's trees, now that they've been rebalanced one million times, are getting to the point where they are almost essential in any playstyle. "essential" in this context doesn't mean because they are OP, but because they all fill a specific gap.
However, aside from Essence's stuff, there really aren't many trees that are in keeping with how Vanilla DoD actually works. Clockwork Knight is one of the few, even though a few others are starting to qualify. ID gives you more Vanilla variety, but only in terms of rooms. As such, if you are looking for A DoD+ experience, right now, you can only have extra rooms, and a few trees. Admitedly, anyone could start angling for such mods, but if I had to bet on anyone making a tree-pack that gives us "more of the same" in terms of abilities, bergstrom is the no-brainer pick. Alternatively, you can wait for Essence to pull another rabbit out of the proverbial hat.

 

Keep in mind that I haven't actually loaded FaxPax since I think V.4, so I'm not entirely sure what all is in there now. But before, I was basically splitting it as follows:
Just The Fax Ma'am - For your skill lines. I don't think any of them involved custom items (at least, their rollouts didn't), so I'd just let the skills stand alone.
Fax's Department of FDP (Food, Drink and Psychedelics) - All consumable, food, booze, shrooms and potions would go here. There are times when I'd really like having this mod, but I don't think I'd want it nearly as much as the skills, monsters or items.
The Vaults of Maslech - While I never got to this point, I had intended to package all equipment, rooms and monsters in their own separate mod. Looking back on it now, I think splitting monsters from items, keeping whatever rooms are necessary to maximize each, might be a better way to go, mainly because, as I noted above, the Vegan skill (which I like a lot) and the Vampire skill (which I don't) both change drastically when monster taxa balancing changes. While I don't think FaxPax has that many monsters, that could change, particularly if you merge Debacle of Diggles into it.

 

Since AllurlewtsRbelongtome keeps demanding I do skills, and my own immediate projects are causing that to be at least a few weeks away, I'll drop a couple spoilers about what I've had sketched out since the dawn of (my modding) time...

First off is a totally standalone skill called "Aztecthletics". It's the skills you've learned via your athletic scholarship at the Mayincatec-nical Institute. Rogue skill (so it works with an Archaeology build), but more about terrain-control than misc sneakiness. Sort of the rogue-equivalent of Golemancy, sans the actual golems. The dropping of mysterious olmec spheres from the sky. Blowgun dart traps. The ripping out of still-beating hearts. Etc. Will include new equipment themed (in-)appropriately.

The other skills will be part of a skill-pack called "Dirty Jobs" (or maybe "Ye Olde Dirty Jobs"). These are an assortment of skills based on some of the least-pleasant occupations of the Medieval and Renaissance Eras. Barber-Chirurgeon, Ale-Conner, Gong-Farmer, maybe a few others (Charcoal-Burner, Herald, Piss-Prophet, Playwright-Spy, etc) if I get on a roll. Dialed up to 11 and made even more ridiculous than they were historically, of course. New items, and a handful of rooms relating to the jobs as well, of course.

I started on these a while back, then got distracted by ID, not to mention frustrated when the Ale-Conner's Pants wouldn't spawn in the load-out. In the intervening months quite a few new code options have opened up in DoD that make me excited to revisit them, but probably also means I have to rework them significantly to make use of the new features. Plus my skill and spell coding is pretty rusty. Don't hold your breath, 'cause it's gonna be a while.

There will almost certainly be at least two new ID downloads before I get back to hammering on the skill mods.

When I do get around to it, I'll probably start with Aztecthletics. It's releasable as a single skill, whereas the others all-but-require me to finish three before unleashing them.

And there's some desire to revamp the weapon skills as well, which would also be quite a distraction (though perhaps a good way to get my feet wet on skills again, hmm).

So much work to do. So little time. Maybe I should hire a crew and set myself up as an editor-in-chief.

 

Keep up the great work Berg, I love the mods you do :3

 

Thank you.

Also, "Thank you" to everyone who's provided constructive criticism, and to those who came to my defense when the constructive criticism read on the page more harshly than the spirit in which it was intended.

We have a really great community here.

 

Not too sure whether or not i should be happy or sad about this. On one hand, the strom skills are coming, and i have some idea what they are. On the other, they aren't coming tommorow, and I know that for fact. Maybe not knowing they were coming, not knowing what they were, BUT being free to think they could come tommorow was better.
Oh well, between knowing and not knowing, the former is always better.