Monstrous Megapack (monsters/items/rooms) 1.2.2 released

02-18-2014 UPDATE: New beta version 1.0.6 is now available
(the file name is the same, so you can overwrite the existing zip file if you already have it)
Not much of a change between version 1.0.4 and 1.0.5, but I discovered I left the maxlevel off for one of the harder miniboss rooms, meaning it could spawn on any level past 11, (which would really suck if you ended up fighting both him and Dredmor at the same time), and I've also tweaked the minlevel and maxlevel settings for some of the more generic rooms to decrease their generation rate, and hopefully increase the generation of the larger more interesting rooms.

Substance-wise, this version now has 4 different wizard pubs (I still need to work on the Wizard country-western bar with the mechanical diggle), an extra wizard gallery, and a couple of new items.

 

I think mobs ignore removebuffbyname and requirebuffontrigger.

 

I've finished up the artwork for my Roamer monster, though my hopes of making him an indiscriminate death-dealing machine that occasionally targets other monsters are somewhat stymied by the fact that his friendly fire blast, which has <ai hint="ally"/>, so far seems to only target himself.

The attack is a missile attack, and damned if I haven't had nothing but trouble with those before, but does anybody know if "ally" automatically includes "self" as a potential target as well, or is something else weird going on?

Here's the full spell if it makes a difference:

<spell name="Roamer Friendly Fire" type="missile" icon="skills/placeholder32.png" wand="0"> <!-- scales on Warrior Level -->
<ai hint="ally"/>
<effect type="damage" blasting="4" blastingF="1" secondaryScale="24" affectscaster="1"/>
<effect type="damage" conflagratory="2" conflagratoryF="0.5" secondaryScale="24" affectscaster="1"/>
<anim sprite="sprites/sfx/solo_blaster/solo_blaster" frames="2" framerate="100" sfx="atomic_blaster"/>
<impact sprite="sprites/sfx/roamer_blast/roamer_blast" frames="4" framerate="120" />
</spell>

Otherwise, once I finish this monster, the skull boss, and the last three wizard galleries, I'm going to release it up on Steam, and any additions after that are just gravy.

 

Ehh... I have no clue why the Roamer's friendly fire blast doesn't work, so unless somebody else can point me in the right direction, I've eliminated it as a spell option, and upped the AI aggression and sight cone modifier in a way that (I think) makes it slightly more aggressive in it's pursuit of the player than some of the other monsters.

Other than that, other changes I've completed in the past week or so include:

• Roamers now have different animations for melee and ranged attacks. I especially like the new 'phaser to the nads' melee one.
  
• Minor room tweaks (mainly shrinking them) in the hopes that fewer over-sized rooms will let some of the more interesting ones spawn more often.
• Fixed some sound issues. Since custom sounds aren't available, I've made changes to some of my earlier items and monsters to only use the stock sfx available)
  
• Two more shop designs. For some reason I still occasionally get shops that spawn completely empty, with no Brax or sales pedestals, though it doesn't seem to be tied to any one particular design (it does seem to be restricted to the larger non-square shops for some reason.).
  
• Unique wizard galleries for all 15 floors!! Plus an extra for floor 4, since the first gallery I created is somewhat "special."
• Kobro Hatcheries for Kobro levels! These rooms have between 4 to 9 Kobro Egg custom breakables that require 2 or 3 hits to crack open, with a 50/50 chance of spawning either a level-appropriate Kobro or dropping a deep omelette. (the variance in hits should hopefully eliminate the probability of AoE attacks cracking an entire room full of Kobro eggs, intentionally or otherwise)
  
• An alternate version of the Mad Computer mini-boss for level 13 that spawns more powerful Roamer minions instead of Unfriendly AI, and gives it's own unique prize for guessing the right combination. (Since the combination is still a randomized 1 in 6 pattern, the only real changes are cosmetic ones, and dammit, I put a lot of work into that room, I want to see it spawn more often!)

 

And thanks to a long weekend without much else going on, I've been able to complete:

• Two versions of the new Giant Skull mini-boss room. I had a bit of trouble at first since the Giant Skulls have an attack where they can summon up to 4 mini-skulls, but the amount limit doesn't seem to apply to template spells (or maybe it only applies to player summons) so I had to come up with a way to prevent the player from getting hopelessly walled in by a room full of skulls. Necessity being the mother of invention, the Giant skulls now occasionally cast a large AOE taxa-specific spell that drains a small amount of health per skull, before killing them. I also made sure they also cast the AOE kill spell upon death, just in case the player was trapped in a sea of skulls when he landed the kill shot.
  
  
• A few additional items. Mainly an attempt to balance out the number of new weapons added to the game so staff, polearm, and axe users don't feel left out. Also, I'm tired of getting to level 15 and finding shops that stock nothing but Schrat's Helm and Mirror Darkly shields, because there aren't enough late game items.

• Expanded the Dredmor family to 4. In addition to the Dredmom optional miniboss, you can now fight Dadmor, Dratmor, and Dredmiss. A bit like the Koopa kids in Super Mario 3, each has his or her own area of expertise, and holds a magic bauble that encompasses a part of their power. (Actually an overrideClassName shield with a targetHitEffectBuff, but same difference) Now I just need to work on disguising the entrance to their tombs, like I did for Dredmom.
  
  
• Stink Gardens. I had half a mind to create a bog of eternal stench room back when I was working on Bowiemancy, but I think these will work better. Stink Garden rooms are a unique feature of the Fungus and Forrest levels, containing patches of earth that very slowly grow mushrooms (Currently once every 200 moves per 6-square rectangular patch), but also give off random bursts of noxious fumes that deal a small amount of toxic/putrefying damage to anybody passing by. They also have a 50% chance of causing a "Stench Blind!" debuff that reduces perception/nimbleness/health regen and makes the victim more vulnerable to subsequent toxic/putrefying damage (and since the effect stacks, you'll want to head for the exit pronto if you get tagged more than a couple of times). I'm currently in the process of fencing off the gardens so you do have to venture inside the toxic perimeter if you want to harvest any of the goodies.

 

Man... nearly a week, and I'm finally done tinkering with the stench gardens.

Creating fences that lined up properly was a nightmare, and I initially made it way harder for myself by trying to create versions that were closer to the outer edge, meaning each piece had to have a left-right top-bottom variant. In the end, it just made it harder to judge which square you could actually walk on, so I went back to the drawing board, and got it pared down to only 7 sprites.

For the spell animation, I started out using a glints effect, but there doesn't seem to be any way to limit the top or bottom of where the glints appear, so it was making it visually confusing to determine which square had spawned a mine.

So I switched to a mineSpritePNGSeries instead, but for some stupid reason, those animations get drawn at a lower level than custom engravings, which left me scratching my head as to why my spell effects were suddenly "invisible." Unfortunately, the only solution was to remove the patches of earth entirely, though visually, it looks way better now than it did with the old glints.

Finally, I just this evening noticed that the mine effects weren't actually procing unless you walked onto or stood on the space one turn after the initial animation. That's the problem with a triggerfromlist calling a trigger calling a spellmine calling a trigger. Thankfully, adding a copy of the damage and debuff trigger to the trigger before the spell mine, had the desired effect.

On the plus side, all this playing around with animation and manual templates has given me the idea for a new "flash maze" room, where the player has to very carefully watch the 8 squares around him to chart a path through an invisible maze that flashes briefly every few seconds to show which squares are safe, and which will deal a minor electrical jolt and teleport the player back to the beginning.

 

You seem to use custom sfx, do they work?

Also;
#1188: <primarybuff id="2" amount="-0"/> <!-- Burliness -->

 

No they don't, and I'm in the process of switching over to only using existing sfx in the forthcoming update.
I'm leaving the sfx clips themselves where they are, just in case they ever do release an update that supports it, but the soundfx.xml file in my main directory is essentially garbage at this point. (Technically, you could cut and paste that information into the main game's soundfx.xml file and move the .wav files, and it would work... at least until I release my next update, that is.)

 

02-18-2014 UPDATE: New beta version 1.0.6 is now available
(the file name is the same, so you can overwrite the existing zip file if you already have it) This version includes the Toupee, Kobro, Goop, Skull Golem, and Roamer monsters, an assload of new rooms, plus over 100 new items!

Okay, this is the final beta version before I put it up on Steam. The last couple of revisions will include creating crafting recipes for items, and trying to balance out the number of weapons added to the game. I may also reduce the size of the goops so they don't get partially cut off when standing next to engravings and create a few more special rooms, if the muse takes me.

What's new in this version:

• new Roamer monster.
• Two Giant Skull boss rooms.
• Four uniquely themed boss rooms for Dredmor's extended family:
  
  • Dredmom - Torture Room
  • Dadmor - Stench Garden
  • Dredmiss - Dojo
  • Dratmor - Zoo
• Kobro Hatcheries (Contain between 3-7 giant breakable eggs which may contain a Kobro or a tasty Omelet.)
  
• Stench gardens. (Slowly grow mushrooms over time, but watch out for the toxic vapors)
  
• Sinks/Bathrooms. (Sinks allow the player to wash away any negative status effects, but are one-time use only, like fountains)
• Reworked sound effects to use available sound library. (My original .wav files are still there, in case a future update allows me to use my own soundfx.xml)
  
• Added a few additional special flavor rooms. (Electric chair room, Executive Pissoire, etc...)
  
• Tweaked a few existing rooms for size and/or revised graphics. (I shrunk the Computer Lab yet again, and it's definitely showing up more frequently now.)
  
• Toilet stalls and closet doors no longer appear as breakables. (You still see the red outline and the player's attack animation when you interact with them, but it doesn't pop up a "Break" or "Beat It")

 

03-30-2014 UPDATE: Official version 1.1 is now available
(the file name is the same, so you can overwrite the existing zip file if you already have it, or just download the version from the Steam workshop to get any future updates automatically)
It's been over a year since I first started this project, but I'm officially signing off this sucker as "done." I may go back and add more to it later, since I do still have a few room ideas kicking about, but for right now, I think it's plenty strong enough to stand on it's own.

As for what's different since beta version 1.0.6-- Not much, but I've added a few items (mainly weapons for balance), reworked the artwork for a few more that I wasn't 100% satisfied with, made a handful of room tweaks, added some recipes, and generally took one final stroll through the game to see if there was anything broken I hadn't yet detected.

 

I am so proud of you having finished another piece of art for this game.
Downloaded as fast as I could, as the other versions, I'll try this in those days.
Gratz man! Cheers!
:edit: so the wizards paintings were from this mod! I had one very hilarous moment when I discovered them I thought GLG added those and I never found one before... you are a freaking genious.

 

Well, this is awesome and unexpected:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/05/11/mod-of-the-week-monstrous-megapack-for-dungeons-of-dredmor/

Of course, I love that the very first comment I received on both this article and Steam, was somebody bitching about the artwork.

 

You worked so hard and so well that you deserve it yourself, your mod is great and I've always said that.
A must like some other big pharma mod of this forum, those puts together so many good things that are basically new DLCs.
And yours add bosses, man. PUZZLE BOSSES.
You godly animal!


PS: now it's time to make a ubermod putting in your classes, so the whole could really look like a 360 degrees work (if that doesn't make a problem).

 

I'm back to working on a short mini-update for Monstrous.

v1.2.0 will add a new reoccurring dungeon feature, the Hall of Monty, a few new items, and whatever else I decide to throw into the mix.

The Hall of Monty is one of those great ideas that I wrote down one night on a post-it note, forgot about, and then rediscovered while I was cleaning up. Like the Computer Boss, the results will be randomized every time, and if you haven't already guessed, will be a play on the old Monty Hall problem.


EDIT: Bam! One complicated room done in one night, and it worked flawlessly first time! Which is quite the relief, since I had a mini panic attack the first time I fired up XML validator and it kicked back an entire page of errors saying that you can't create levers.

I even had time to program in a special "surprise" for anyone who decides to be clever and teleport behind the curtain. Now I just need to work on a few extra "Zonks" for choosing the incorrect option. (I already have the obligatory goat & lifetime supply of Diggle Wax)

 

Gosh man, you are incredible.

 

With the Hall of Monty out of the way, I've decided to tackle another script-heavy room idea that didn't quite make it into the previous version-- the "Flash Maze." I eventually plan on having 3 or 4 different variants for different levels of the game.

It's a pretty simple room in concept. Basically, you've got a grid of identical looking customengraving "nodes" some of which are safe, and some of which have electricity arcing between them. The arcs are only visible every 3 frames out of 45, and the squares all flash slightly out of synch, so you have to be careful and really watch where you're putting your feet while traversing the maze. Stepping on an electrified square zaps you with voltaic damage and sends you back to the beginning (that's what happens when you run your Voltaic Accumulator at 1.21 Gigawatts.) Successfully worming your way to the center of the maze will earn you a random artifact... and then make the nodes explode for no adequately explained reason.

EDIT: Slightly changed the layout to include some massive electrical coils, just to hammer home the concept that this is a special electrified area. It also gives me something a bit more visual to blow up when the player beats the maze.

EDITx2: I now have 6 different variants across multiple levels. Hopefully that means the player stands a pretty good chance of encountering at least one per play-through.

 

Quick question-- Does anybody know whether floorScaleF actually works for damage? It doesn't appear to be.
For reference, here's the spell in question:

<spell name="1.21 Gigawhat?" type="self" icon="skills/placeholder32.png" >
<effect type="damage" voltaic="4" floorScaleF="0.5" affectscaster="1" burn="1"/>
<anim sprite="sprites/sfx/voltaic_loop/voltaic_loop" frames="5" centerEffect="0" sfx="elec"/>
</spell>

 

Hi!
I've installed several mods, but one of them is causing a crash when i trigger a new effect from a fountain, and i don't know which one it is!
The text reads "Transmutative energies wash over you!" or something about a second before it crashes.
Is that this mod? Do you know which mod it is?

Thanks c:

 

At a guess, I'd check Roguish Renovations or the More Fountains mod. Fountains are one of the few things I haven't messed with.