So after some nightmarish bug hunting, I figured out the crashes were caused by using existing art, thus this alpha test uses skill_placeholder.png and skill_placeholder_small.png for all icons, sorry about that. It's a combat oriented rogue skill, with both melee and a bit of throwing, a nice get-out-of-surrounding ability, and capstone has a teleport. Requires: YHTNTEP Skills: Juggling: 5. Juggle ability. For 3 attacks your melee and thrown attacks do an additional 1+(1x ) damage. Cooldown 15. Clown Combat: 2. Has an array of 3 effects that trigger procs 50% on hit, 30% on dodge, 20% on block. Does either 2+(0.1x ), 2+(0.1x )+blind and a 3 turn -3 dodge/block/counter debuff, or 2+(0.1x )+knock. Person Vault: 4. Attack an adjacent enemy and teleport across to the other side of it. Nice if you got surrounded. Cooldown 4. Wheel of Daggers: 21. 5 attack buff that gives 31, and also spawns 5 throwing knives. Cooldown 40. Fire Dancing: 21. 10 turn buff that gives 315 -20. Also your melee and thrown attacks do an additional 3 (0.2x ) and puts a 10 turn dot on the player that calls on a template 20 spell that does 3 (0.2x ) for the duration. Also for the duration there's a 30% chance of procing on playerhit an attack+3 (0.2x ) 3/4th of the time, and 3 (0.2x ) hit on the player 1/4th of the time. Cooldown 50. Human Cannonball: 125. Targeted teleport + Beam that does 8+(2x )+8+(2x) to intervening enemies and knockback, and 10+(0.7x ) to you. Cooldown 50. EDIT: Changelog 0.3.6: Wheel of daggers buff is now attacks instead of timed, Human cannonball does substantially more damage. Changelog 0.3.5: New skill icon. A flipped and edited skill_stealth.png. Changelog 0.3.4: Custard pie now given its own custom animation (recoloured ectoplasmsplatA). Changelog 0.3.3: Fixed a custard pie animation that had too many frames assigned, ooops. Changelog 0.3.2: More animations for clown combat, pie in the face now adds a small debuff to enemy, clown combat now scales with savvy instead of magic power, and the juggle buff has better descriptive text of what it does. Changelog 0.3.1: Proc text fixes(being clever!) Increased cooldown on Fire Dancing. Changelog 0.3: Non-validator bugfixes, additional effects of Fire Dancing, improved functionality and graphics of Human Cannonball. NOTE: Now requires YHTNTEP. Changelog 0.2: Big bug fix update. Changelog 0.1.1: Juggling and Fire Dancing procs now work for both melee and thrown, but unfortunately the proc text will show up wether the buff is up or not due to the necessary workaround. Changelog 0.1 Added Juggling, rearranged skills, Fire Dancing now more potent. Changelog 0.0.6: Icons are back. Changelog 0.0.5: Stole some animations and soundeffects for Human Cannonball, this made it execute much faster. It no longer is laggy. Changelog 0.0.4: Fixed game hang when using Human Cannonball across water/lava. First stable build. Changelog 0.0.3: Fixed buffs, and fixed crash upon casting Human Cannonball. Changelog 0.0.2: Fixed a bug in Wheel of Daggers that caused a crash when used(icon path was faulty). Known issues: Person Vault can go over doors and bars.
Anyone know a way for a type="beam" spell to trigger other spells _once_ rather than for every step the beam travels?
You can trigger the beam from a tile which has the effect already, or if you want it to only hit the first target then have a missile which triggers the beam and then the effect (from the missile).
My first variation was a targetfloor spell that first triggers the beam, then teleported... it crashed the game. So the current one is a beam that has the teleport built in(at least it works). Putting after="1" on the teleport stoped the game from hanging when you use it over water/lava, which was the main concern. Now all that's left is getting rid of the default teleport animation...
How I wish that default teleport animation wasn't hardcoded in...if you figure a hackaround, please share -- I'd love one.
Looks interesting, and thematic. Could really benefit from some appropriate icon art, I bet. Good to see rogue's getting some love and attention, it's my favorite of the three archetypes. I'm excited to try these out. I see that both this and your hitch-hiker's skills start with teleports, and here you mention that it's specifically to avoid getting surrounded. I suspect that starting with a teleport is a bit overpowered in general. The first floor is supposed to be challenging, and require careful play. Getting surrounded should be dangerous to a starting character. At least, those are my opinions based on observations of how the game is currently balanced. The only first-level teleports in the main game involve a random component, so sometimes they're just a waste of an action. Your hitchhiker's version does have a random component (but it looks more reliable than Froda's Jump Discontinuity or Love Will Teleport Us Apart). Person Vault isn't random at all, can be used every fourth turn (more about that below) and even gives you a free attack. I'd say it's strictly better than Knightly Leap, an ability that was so good at level 2 that the devs moved it to level 3 and put total junk in front of it. So, while I haven't tested this thoroughly, at first glance Person Vault looks too good for level 1. Note as well that all the level-one teleports in the main game cost mana. Which means either you won't be able to do them very often, or you'll be playing a squishy mage. Here, this is totally splashable on any archetype if what you really wanted was the free mobility. Only Clown Combat and Human Cannonball require any sort of build for the scaling. The lower damage on Human Cannonball for having a low actually makes it arguably better for wizards instead of worse, as it won't be likely to kill them when they need an escape hatch after draining the manawell. While damage on Clown Combat won't be much if used on a warrior, the high proc rates and exotic damage types means it's not a wasted skill even for a character in heavy armor. So, again, that means that you could take it on any character type, and it neatly sidesteps the other big drawback that every starting teleport has in the main game. I'd vote for moving Person Vault further up the tree, most likely slot #3. Given that your existing skills are above the power-level of most level 1 skills (and, to be fair, except for the actual level 1 skill, they should all be more powerful than the typical level 1 skill), it's not as simple as just swapping the placement of two skills. I see at least two ways to do it: You could break Clown Combat up into 2 different levels and put the weaker one at level 1 and the stronger at level 2, with Person Vault moved to 3. You could add a new "sword swallower" skill at level 1, and just bump Person Vault up to level 3. This new "sword swallower" level would provide maybe 1 and either 3 or 1 , and a weak starting sword (probably Crude Iron Sword since wooden sword doesn't really fit thematically). Alternately, you could just really ratchet up the cooldown time on Person Vault and leave it at level 1 for a teleport attack with about a 30 to 40-turn cooldown. I can't say that I like the man vs boredom conflict that would create when snatching items from behind bars or on islands, but at least it wouldn't be unbalanced. However, it would be a shame to not be able to spring over monsters repeatedly in the middle of a fight once you're a high enough level, as that really fits the circus/acrobat theme. So, ultimately, I think the better solution is to move the teleport up a few levels. One more thing: Fire Dancing strikes me as more powerful than Wheel of Daggers, based on damage types (monster resistances and weaknesses, specifically) and cool-down/buff durations, so I'd consider flipping their place in the line. So new line-up might go: Sword Swallower, Clown Combat, Person Vault, Wheel of Daggers, Fire Dancing, Human Cannonball. Looks like a ton of fun, by the way. Really love the idea of a circus-themed rogue skill.
The reason fire dancing has better buff than wheel of daggers is that wheel of daggers spawns 5 throwing knives. But I get your point. If I move fire dancing to lvl 5, I'm going to substantially improve it though(like adding scaling procs, with burn). I'll have to come up with something for level 1... but I might just make person vault a lvl 2 skill, instead of 3, I hate waiting a long time for teleport ability(you might've noticed). Not a fan of useless levels, but I could make a weaker skill for the starting skill. Btw since human cannonball self-damage is affected by armor, mages still hurt more than warriors with it. It's meant more as an offensive move than a defensive though(it hits every enemy between your start location and destination btw, so if you point it deep into a zoo...)
Not that 2 level ups is a terribly long time, since you can get ~5 level ups from the first floor. But yeah, I was very saddened when the low-hanging fruit of Knightly Leap was moved up a level, so I understand the temptation even as I resist it. Prior to that, nearly every build I played had Artful Dodger. Looking back, my sword-swallower idea was woefully underpowered. First level powers seem to be the hardest to balance, and most mods start out too strong out the gates IMHO. It's hard gauging what amount of weight should be given to the starting equipment, and I didn't really have a specific sword in mind when I started typing it (edited that in after the first pass). There's a couple of mis-steps in the main-game as well (dual wield obviously, promethean maybe, axes and maces kinda arguably, and it's hard to reconcile the level-one differences between shield bearer and master of arms), which just muddies the waters.
I usually get 4 levelups on floor 1. The first one ALWAYS goes to lucky pick(I always get burglary, for lucky pick). My main beef with late teleport is backtracking to get items I couldn't reach before, thus wasting time. Ideas for a first level power I'm kinda mulling over are Bouncer(a push ability), Lion Tamer(a fear ability), Juggling(a brittle/attacks buff with procs).
Hmm, thinking more on the juggling idea, is it possible to scale a buff's attacks by skill level? IE: At lvl 0, it gives attacks="3", and then it gets an additional for each level of the skill(to a max of 8). So the more you invest in Circus Freak, the more balls you can Juggle.
Added juggling, moved person vault to slot 3, moved fire dancing to slot 5, moved human cannonball to slot 6, and improved fire dancing.
This feedback is based on version 0.1.1. I don't believe that's the latest version, and I'm not yet certain what's changed. So if I complain about something you've fixed, please disregard. If I praise something you've since altered, I'll leave it to you to figure out whether or not it's worth restoring... Love the knife-throwing level. Of the various infinite-ammo mod skills I've seen, Wheel of Daggers is the most balanced and best-thought-out of the bunch. It's late enough in the tree and makes a modest enough weapon that it doesn't feel broken to never run out of them. The associated buff and long cool-down timer encourage you to actually use it intelligently instead of just spam-clicking for fiskables. I'm very impressed with the knife thrower level. Good job! Also, I really appreciate how the sight boosts from knife and fire power-ups have such good synergy with each other as well as ranged attacks in general, and make perception's eye-lasers better. Good design. I've been recently playing a circus-poisoneer-perception-throwing character, and having a lot of fun managing the power-ups for maximum effect. Well done. The person vault and human cannonball are very enjoyable (and aggressive) teleports without being game-breakers. Thank you for moving person vault up to slot 3, that changed it from "too good" to "really useful in a non-guilty way". It could probably still stand having another turn or two on the timer and still be very viable. By contrast, Juggling and Clown Combat both leave me confused and not so impressed. The juggling throw proc when the buff isn't active is really confusing. The buff itself has no explanation of what happens (in version 1.1 anyway) so there's no help there. I'd be okay with the proc text showing up when it's having no effect, as long as the buff gave me some indication that juggling wasn't working when that happened. As-is, a player is more likely to assume the buff is broken then assume it's cleverly coded for the proc to trigger all the time but only do damage when the buff is active. Please, if you haven't already, add text to the juggling buff that gives some indication of how it works. Clown Combat is just weird. There's three different effects, but I can't quite figure out in-game what they do, nor can I tell them apart when they trigger. If I hadn't read here that there were three effects, I'd assume there were only two. There's no way to see the amount of damage they do, and no clue thematically what they represent. One of them affects a huge area, but mainly just results in dozens of "Resist!" messages popping up on screen. When it does so, even corpses are resisting. Not sure if that's intended behavior or not, but it's downright mystifying in-game. Would it be possible to add 1-turn do-nothing self buffs (or target buffs) to the Clown Combat effects, so that when they trigger an attentive player can look over at the side of the screen (or hover over a monster) and read a brief explanation of what just happened (such as "pie in the face" or whatever). That would go a long way towards demystifying the power. In closing: (Though sometimes confusing, this is a) Fun Mod! Thank you for making it.
Will add some explanation text. The proc text doesn't show anymore since 0.3.1 because I was really really sneaky (I made the spell name all spaces). I added an animation to one of them in 0.3 and intend to add animations to the other two as well, I just didn't find a fitting one at the time. None of them should affect a huge area though... weird. And I guess I can add affectscorpses="0" to them. Good idea, I might just add a visual debuff to the pie in the face effect, maybe with a slight stat malus attached(it already blinds, so I guess a minor dodge/block/counter/ debuff would be suitable). I intend to add animations to them all to make them stand out more as well. Update to 0.3.1, there's been a lot of fixes and stuff. And thanks for the feedback!
