Monstrous Megapack (monsters/items/rooms) 1.2.2 released

I figured I'd also make another post to smooth out a few problems people have been having with this mod, partially to generate goodwill and partially to encourage people to use this mod and not fear the issues others seem to have with it. I'll also address some general issues that I hope people will be able to use to enhance their modded Dungeoneering experience!

Now I've seen comments on this thread and several others about saves being corrupted because of the Monstrous Megapack. First off, I've never had this problem. I have, however, had issues of the same type with other random mods that nobody else seems to have trouble with, and by that logic I've come to the conclusion that it's just the modded game and very possibly Steam in general that corrupt saved games. I believe the corruption stems from the game tripping up on recovering any number of possible bits or sections of data buried in the game when trying to load a save that has mods on it, at any random point, and simply chooses a mod out of random that it gets stuck on, for whatever reason. It's quite possible that just because the Megapack has so much going on with it and adds such an expansive amount of code the glitch just happens to land on part of its code and blames it when the game encounters this hiccup. Perhaps proving my point, one example I've had this corruption happen with was on a saved game that blamed the 'Wind Magic' mod, which only adds a new skill class to the game, and the character it corrupted wasn't even using the class to begin with!

To help fix this and other potential issues I've put together a list of advice that it would be prudent for any Dredmor player using mods to follow, and I've hidden each one in collapsible spoiler tags (sorry to the people who just have those open anyway!) to keep this from looking like a massive text dump:

#1: Create backups of your saves!

Spoiler

This is crucial when using mods in just about any game, because it gives you things to fall back on in case something screws up along the line! Personally I try and keep two different backups of each character, in sequential saves, cycling through and removing the earlier of the two saves every time I backup a new one.

A good and easy way to do this is to just make a new folder inside the Dredmor folder (C:\Users\[name]\Documents\Gaslamp Games\Dungeons of Dredmor for Windows 7). Don't worry, the folder's presence won't do jack to the game; it'll completely ignore it. Name it 'Backup Saves' or something, and drop in whatever saves you make in the folder to keep them from being corrupted or deleted or whatever. Make sure to delete the old save(s) before copying a new save into the backup folder; don't merge/replace anything! It can potentially screw up how the game reads the save! Also make sure, if you're doing two backups per character like I do, to differentiate between the folder names so that they don't try to merge or whatever, but make sure you change them back to the normal name of the save folder if you need to replace them in the main game folder!

continued in two parts because the post length is so big-hooj

 

#2: Turn off Steam Cloud Sync!

Spoiler

Arguably this could be the most crucial thing to do for Dredmor if you play it through Steam, since it will solve multiple issues as well as the fact that even creating backup saves won't do diddlyspunk if the Steam Cloud is still lording itself over the game!

First thing to know is this: The Steam Cloud is a diva, and it overrides all other game protocols to do what it wants. This includes not allowing the game to manage its own saves! If you're connected to the internet and the Sync is active, whenever you load up the game the Cloud will not only utilize only its saved data for the game, but it will actively overwrite data inside the game folder! This means that you can't replace regular saves with any of your backups, because they'll be automatically overwritten when the Cloud syncs to your game again! This also means that if you play offline, then go back online and the game hasn't synced with the Cloud again yet or something before you start the game back up, all the stuff you did offline will get overwritten anyway!

It's generally known that Dredmor has an issue with Steam's Cloud Sync system, and Gaslamp can't do anything about it. There's also no way to turn off the sync properly from Steam, because there's no automatic button to do it like on some games, and doing it via messing with the preferences of the game through the Steam console (like in your library) doesn't seem to work for whatever reason. (We all know how great Steam is at fixing issues for their games that aren't triple-A releases or gaming journalist-backed hot topics don't we?) Therefore, you have to cut out the ability for the game itself to sync up to the Steam Cloud.

Surprisingly, this is quite simple! There's a file in the Dredmor folder (the one in My Documents that I posted above) named "config.xml" (if you don't see it, you'll have to mess with the view options for your folders to reveal all file types, which you really should do anyway). Open this .xml file in Notepad or some other appropriate editing program (just right-clicking and then Edit will open it up in Notepad or Wordpad or whatever) and find the line <setting name="enableSteamCloud" value="1"/>. It should be right near the top of the list. The "1" is basically coding shorthand for "yes, do this" for pre-baked commands, so all you need to do is change the 1 to a 0, which is basically "no, disable this command." This will keep the game itself from communicating with the Steam Cloud, and only the Steam Cloud, so that the self-important wanker can't screw up your game files. You'll still be able to get mod data from the workshop regardless (that's what the line "enableSteamWorkshop" value="1" is for) and everything else associated with Steam, but that shouldn't matter because you should also do the following...

#3: Create standalone copies of all of your installed mods!

Spoiler

If you load in mods through subscriptions from the Steam Workshop then the game won't be able to load them in if you ever try to play offline! This alone is good reason to use this workaround, since it will allow you to play with your mods anytime, anyplace! More relevant to this topic however is the fact that this also cuts out the possibility of any glitches or corruption happening if the workshop gets a random hiccup or whatever. I've had multiple problems before I did this where the Workshop just randomly deactivated all my mods sometimes, and I had to keep rechecking them all myself when I launched the game to reactivate them! However since implementing this workaround I've noticed three changes, all of them positive: 1) The game launcher no longer lags when it's trying to retrieve the mods from the Workshop every time you load it up (they always load instantly because they're embedded in the game directory itself now!); 2) My mods never get deactivated for no reason anymore; 3) On top of all that I've only had one corruption happen (which I dodged the bullet on by restoring a backed up save!), so it obviously works pretty well!

The first thing to do is to make sure you have either Winzip or Winrar or whatever other compressing/unpacking program you prefer that can utilize .zip files. Next, go to the Dredmor folder (same one!) and find the folder labeled "steam_workshop". Inside that folder there's a folder labeled "subscribed" that contains the files for all mods you're Subscribed to in the Workshop (I think in .bat format or something; doesn't matter). Copy all of the files in the "subscribed" folder en masse, go back to the main Dredmor folder and create a standalone folder simply labeled "mods" (not sure if it's case-sensitive, but I didn't want to experiment so I just did it with all lowercase). The Steam version doesn't have this folder (not sure if Desura version does) because it believes you'll only be using the Workshop, so it doesn't create the folder on installation, but the game will still recognize it as a viable folder to retrieve data from because it's programmed to do so.

Go into your new "mods" folder and paste the mass of mod files inside of it. Next, go through each file individually and specifically rename each file's extension (again, if you don't see the extensions you may have to mess with your folder viewing options) to .zip (I'm not sure if it works with .rar or not, but you should be able to open .zip files with any of those programs). Just say okay if your computer tries to warn you it may make the file go batshit or whatever; it'll be fine. Do this for every single mod file you pasted in. It should turn them into a compressed .zip file instantly when you okay the change.

Now because the mods should all be labeled as a bunch of garbled characters, and you can't tell which one is which, the next step should be to open them with the program that opens .zip files. Somewhere inside each set of files in the .zip should be a file labeled "mod.xml". Open/edit (it doesn't matter) this file and somewhere in its lines of code you should clearly see the name of whatever mod it is, and you can rename the .zip file accordingly to simplify finding it on your own in the future. Regardless of if you do this or not it should still show up as the normal mod name and description in the game launcher, just like if you were loading it from the Workshop.

Your final step should be to go to your Subscribed files in the DoD Workshop (in the Steam console itself) and Unsubscribe to every mod you've got. This will keep Steam from trying to load in the mods again alongside the ones that are now inside your game files proper and potentially cause issues. After that, delete all the files that you originally copied inside the "steam_workshop" folder. Alternatively to Unsubscribing from all those mods you could disable the "enableSteamWorkshop" command in the "config.xml" file in the same way I described with the other command in item #2 above to keep it from trying to sync in things from the Workshop from now on. I did both for good measure; either way, you still need to delete the files in the "steam_workshop" folder.

Now when you open up your game launcher all the mods should be there permanently, and you can even play with them when you're not connected to Steam!

I hope these pieces of advice generally help everybody!

 

Depending on the exact details of the mod you might have to also edit roomsdb to remove spawns of the monsters and any 9tems that cast spellsnthat summon those specific monsters

 

Oh birby jebus... I don't even know know what roomsdb is ono

Also I highly doubt any of them are summonable... except for the skulls by the skull golems themselves?
So are you saying I'm basically screwed on this venture?

 

I believe you can adjust the animation times to make them shorter, too.

 

Well that would generally solve my problem, but I imagine that would require manually shaving off frames, wouldn't it? I don't know how to mess with art assets either...

 

I meant "rooms.xml" (i forgot that that's one of the few xml files in the game that doesn't end in "DB"

I'm not sure if he actually did add any rooms that specifically require the new monsters. If he didn't then the new monsters can be removed simply by removing monDB.xml from the mod file

EDIT:
Any items that use spells that summon the new monsters (though, again, I don't know if there are any) may have to be removed or edited (in itemDB.xml) as well. Again though, I'm not sure off hand if there even are any, and if there aren't just remove monDB.xml (BTW theoretically Any summoning spells should themselves be fine so long as nothing tries to use them)

 

I don't think I'd have any issue with the rooms, but I know for a fact that there's spells that create the monsters (for example, like I said before, the Skull Golems can 'cast' Skull monsters) but the other issue is that I think after looking through the files I've discovered other assets in different folders that are linked to the monsters. I don't know exactly which ones are which, since the files are named oddly and I don't really want to go through each one trying to make a massive trial-and-error search, but I also don't know if I can just leave some files that are tied to the monsters and just have the game ignore them (i.e. not sure if it looks for the files and their compatibility regardless of if they're used or not). I'm very unconfident in my ability to play around with mod files, so I'm paralyzed in fear of what I might do on accident that would require starting from scratch every bloody time x_x

Really wish Bluehinter was here. Not that I don't appreciate the help you guys are trying to give me, but he'd probably know exactly what files I'd need to take out if I could do this .n. Y'know since he built them and all...

Edit: So yeah there is at least one room that spawns monsters for this mod that I'd forgotten about; one that spawns a giant Skull that in turn summons more skulls so yeah if I want to get rid of the monsters I'd have to dissect this mod from top to bottom methinks xnx

 

Have you tried increasing the game's animation speed? (press "+")

I find that even the unmodded game is painfully slow on the default speed.

 

Strangely enough I did not even know I could do that. But after trying this for a bit I think that while I it would be useful when used during fights where the turn times are getting out of hand (especially if you have, say, a summon out or something) or when you want to backtrack around a floor a bit, keeping it on all the time is... ridiculously fast to a fault. I can always switch it on and off whenever I need though, so besides the occasional overload that makes my game freeze up I guess it'll work. For now, I suppose, it's the best solution I'm going to get. Thank you!

Edit: So it turns out that even with the qualms about speeding up the game I've started playing it only on upped speed now... and now after doing so I can no longer play it on normal speed because it's even slower than I remember. Thanks Bohandas. Thanks a lot.
(that was both serious and sarcastic just to clarify :V)

 

I'm having trouble with the Lava Lamp recipe. I've got the ingredients, toolkit, and skill level, but when I hit craft it doesn't do anything

 

I think it may result from a capitalization error in the recipe. Where it says "Alchemy" it should say "alchemy".

 

I like this mod, but the use of invisible walls under already impassable blockers (such as under the stocks in the mini torture room) is really bad form

 

What was the Disturbing Codpiece a reference to? Because I have a bit of an idea.

 

Some feedback on the mod... didn't get to see much of it. I liked the new tiles/decors I got to see, spruced the dungeon up.

Then I ran into a coffin tomb and I broke the coffin. Out came a zombie! But when I whacked it I got an error message saying a certain zombie sound file could not be found, then the game crashed. *sad face*

The game also has performance issues. I suppose people with a recent core i7 wouldn't have problems but I have an older i5 2600k and I definitely felt the slow down. Normally the game is buttery smooth but with this mod on things felt herky jerky.

Turned if off until I figure out the zombie sound file and upgrade my processor (which isn't happening for a few more years I think haha).

 

It's a reference to Sting's extremely disturbing taste in genital formal wear from Dune.

I know it's a few years late, but I will try to fix this.

I went back and looked at my code for Monstrous this afternoon (yeah, it's been 2 and a half years since my last update, but it's been a rough couple of years) and couldn't spot anything in the mod itself that would cause that problem. Breaking the coffin does trigger a spell that plays a wood breaking sound, but one of the most annoying things about modding Dredmor is that you can't use your own sound files. This particular spell uses the generic "breakable" sound effect from the core game. Though since the zombie actually spawned (and it's just a standard monster, not a custom) it's more than likely that the sound file it's missing is one in the Steam\steamapps\common\dungeons of dredmor\sfx folder.

I'm sure you've probably just started over by now, but if for some reason you're still stuck, I'd recommend checking the file integrity of the game files through Steam, or going into your Steam\steamapps\common\dungeons of dredmor\sfx folder and see if any of the four humanoid .wav files are missing or showing zero file size.

 

I don't know how or why, but the presence of the bucket of truth room in a level somehow causes the player character's walk animation to drop frames