Magic Mod: Curtain of Fire. Help me get it released! See first post.

[Mirathei]

Just adding my voice to the balancing issue. I downloaded the mod and set up my merchant character on it. I managed to get 15 troops and a load of ale on it's way to Khudan when the summoners showed up. First they (on foot) overran my mounted party...then we got into battle (they can't be payed off) and things went to hell. I counted at least 10 summonings during the match - a huge issue sense an individual hell knight is a match for almost anything a mercenary merchant like me can field. In the end, I was forced to stop running away and die before my computer crashed. I've managed to avoid Dark Summoner parties for the most part since then (partly I suspect since they bankrupted me I don't look like much.) The Vaegirs are having a horrible time with them. While 33-45+ parties of Dark Summoners don't take into account the summons (since they auto-resolve AI conflicts) in thier constant ambushing of caravans, the Vaegir homeland can't get any caravans through it. The Summoners eat them all.

Bandits can be tough, but they shouldn't be able to raze a country to the ground by themselves.

I've cut the number of knights summoned with each summon down to 6, and cut the number of summons down to 4. The summoners are still nearly invincible. That's how I want them to be. You have spotted the first element of the plot I hope to implement at some point. They are not bandits. They are organized, they have a leader, and they have a base of operations. In future versions, all Calradia will be initially divided into to sides: those who are against the summoners, and those who have succumbed. Once I implement the plot line, the players quest will be to defeat them by attacking their resources and cutting off their ability to fight. If the player manages to do this well, he will have the opportunity to raid their base of operations, which is protected by a curtain of fire (hence the title) which the player can only pass using a certain talisman. Thus the player will have to go alone into the base of operations and raid it. Do the summoners make more sense now that you know this?

EDIT: This plot line won't be in the next version. I'll most likely start it once I'm content that I've got enough magic in the mod.

 

[Wandersoul]

Did some testing since the creator of mod was nice enough to release the source code. I set the number of summoned knight to 1, gave myself a death fruit (Yeah I know, cheating) and cut the number of summoners per war party by 1/2. I created a new charcter and my first opponent happened to be a party of 10 summoners. They only summoned a single hell knight versus the five I used and the battle was a massacre. The last survivor, their hell knight eventually died five minutes later when the other hell knights boxed him in and hammered him into the ground mericiously. The game-breaking moment was when I got to the loot. I got my hands on a fire staff and a wounding staff. I like to call the wounding staff the Semi-automatic crossbow of death. You can dozens of rounds per seconds just by clicking - but only 2 or 3 of them will fly anywhere near the enemy. Used properly, it makes for a fun calvary crossbow. The fire staff is evil...I gave up on the death fruit and started terrorizing the entire map with the Fire staff. It worked great i the opening parts of battle before the armies engage in melee. It's a hazard to anyone and everyone (including yourself) if you shoot it in a melee. On at least one occasion I blew myself a good 15 feet into the air by aiming to low in front of the horse . I eventually met my match when I engaged a Nord Lord with 76 nords in his army. I took out 23 of them before I ran out of ammo for the firestaff and 20 more in the preceding engagements. Each time, some nords got lucky with an axe and nailed me as I rode by. It was pretty fun half hour, though. 

I think the problem with some of the items stems not from the items themselves, but the lack of low-power equivalents. Other than the wounding staff and a couple cantrips, you really can't get much in the way of magic access when you are below level 20. It would be nice if maybe there was lower-power forms of the really cool weapons available for PCs and NPCs. Maybe the murading summoners could have lower levels summons that summoned other types of troops or fire staffs with limited charges. I can't say I agree with the death knights being almost invulnerable - I hate moments in games where I feel like I've been smacked by the hand of God and there's nothing my character can do to save itself - but maybe if the Hell Knights were restricted to the summoner's home base or just a couple of slow war parties it wouldn't be so bad..they can be killed after all, it jsut takes magic to do it right now.

In the end it's your mod, so feel free to use/discard/laugh at the suggestions at whim. I am curious, though. You realsed the source code, are you making this open-source or just showing the code off?

 

[fisheye]

Spell ideas. You can probably see what I'm thinking of just by the description, I'll let you know the operations I'm thinking of if you want and you can tell me if it's possible or not.

Lord of the Dance:
All affected enemies stop fighting and start dancing and cheering uncontrollably.

Curtain of Fire / Firewall:
A static wall of fire is raised at the location (perpendicular to the line between the caster and the location). the wall is passable but any who pass through it suffer damage.

Earthwall:
Same as above but made of imprenetrable rock instead of fire.

Icewall:
Same as earthwall but translucent so you can see the enemies approaching.

Ice prison:
Raises a hexagonal cell of ice around the targetted location, imprisoning (and protecting) any troop within the area.

Creeping Rot / insect swarm:
Fills the air with a fast-spreading infection which hovers in the location momentarily and dissipates. Any enemy within the are is infected (and will have a hovering black aura around their heads). Infections last 10 seconds; Enemies can pass infections to other enemies within 10' who have not been previously infected in this battle. Infected troops take small amounts of damage repeatedly and rapidly over the course of the infection.

Parma Magica / Globe of Magical Impenetrability:
Creates an translucent globe which prevents all magical effects from penetrating. Physical attacks and enemies (including magical summoned creatures) can pass through as normal.

Mass Charm:
Turns opponents to your own side temporarily.

Meteor Swarm:
Several huge rocks rain from the sky and blow **** up in the general targetted area.

Shockwave:
A wave of force issues from the caster in the direction he is looking. Affects all troops friendly or unfriendly; troops hit with the shock wave take no direct damage but are catapulted into the air and fly away from the caster, taking falling damage.

Stampede:
Summons a swarm of hell-horses which run in the general direction of the enemy (spawn troop+invisible rider, kill after 5 seconds)... infantry is stomped by the horses. For extra fun the horses could be cows.

Needleworm:
Spawns a hideous looking organic sluglike weapon which spits out needles as fast as you can click the mouse button.

 

[arcka]

Wow just wow cause i am a noble but i try my skills at being a summoner and boy does that fire staff kill i just go around the map looking for parties to slaughter it is really fun hope we get the next release soon.

 

[catking2003]

I think the problem with some of the items stems not from the items themselves, but the lack of low-power equivalents. Other than the wounding staff and a couple cantrips, you really can't get much in the way of magic access when you are below level 20. It would be nice if maybe there was lower-power forms of the really cool weapons available for PCs and NPCs. Maybe the murading summoners could have lower levels summons that summoned other types of troops or fire staffs with limited charges. I can't say I agree with the death knights being almost invulnerable - I hate moments in games where I feel like I've been smacked by the hand of God and there's nothing my character can do to save itself - but maybe if the Hell Knights were restricted to the summoner's home base or just a couple of slow war parties it wouldn't be so bad..they can be killed after all, it jsut takes magic to do it right now.

That's exactly what i want to say. I think your magic types should be quite enough after taking into account all the suggestions posted in the thread. You can diversify the them by creating magic with different power under the same magic type. for example, summoning several hell knights are high level summoning magic and deamon the highest, you can also think of creating lower level summoning magic by allowing people to summon skeletons, zombies, goblins, or even peasants. Different level magic should have different costs. BTW, i strongly suggest that player can use magic only when he has certain "magic ingredient" and different magic type will need different kinds of ingredients while different level magic will require different amount of them. Every time player use one magic (one magic rather than use magic in one battle, so it is very costly to use magic) corresponding ingredients will be lost and magic ingredients can only be looted from wizard troops so that people won't be able to buy one fire staff and start killing everyone on the map. (maybe from certain merchants player can also buy certain ingredients with very high cost) It is fun to use magic but if player can use any powerful magic any time, they will get bored sooner or later. So it is good to retain the fun of this mod by placing some restrictions on using magic. 

P.S. I have not yet played your mod 'cause my computer sucks     if you have not already done so, you can think of placing wizard troops in a certain part of Calardia and dont let them run out of that place so player can level themself up before they are strong enough to confront the wizards and start enjoying using magic

at last, thank you for bringing up such an incredible great mod to us and keep up the good work 

 

[Willie_Feo]

I can see many applications for your spells in other mods.  With slight changes in sounds and graphics, for instance, Fire Staff would make excellent artillery and Tsunami would make a great flamethrower.  This is a revolutionary moment in M&B!

 

[Wraithcat]

I'd love the mod, I'm sure, if only every major battle didn't come down to a beat up between stupidly large number of Hell Knights. Seriously, you might want summoner parties to be nigh on invincible, but this spell make having a warband a useless extravagance. Why bother, leveling up a bunch of nords, or anyone else, when they aren't worth squat in the Hellknight bash? At the moment, I don't see any need to level up anything except apprentices into summoners.

You've said that you have limited it to 24 hell knights per summoner, but that is still way out of wack, when it still means that there will be at least 100 summoned per battle. Every other character will still end up irrelevant, and success, or failure will still be entirely dependant on the Hellknight bash. Of course, a party without summoners becomes useless and IMHO, this makes as much sense as making any other random class (Nord Champions anyone?) so super powerful, so that no party without them will ever win against a party with them.

Also, this game is in great need of a readme. What spells do what? How are they activated? For example, I can't for the life of me figure out what the banishing weapon does and certainly haven't been able to figure out what item it is that summons the Hellknights. If it is in this thread I've missed it.

Honestly though, this is probably going to end up as my favorite mod, alongside the Firearms Mod. You've done excellent work.

 

[Mirathei]

I think the problem with some of the items stems not from the items themselves, but the lack of low-power equivalents. You realsed the source code, are you making this open-source or just showing the code off?

You are right about the low-level equivalents, come to think of it. I'll start making less effective versions of the same basic spells. The mod is fully open source, as long as I am credited.

Spell ideas. You can probably see what I'm thinking of just by the description, I'll let you know the operations I'm thinking of if you want and you can tell me if it's possible or not.

Lord of the Dance:
All affected enemies stop fighting and start dancing and cheering uncontrollably.

Curtain of Fire / Firewall:
A static wall of fire is raised at the location (perpendicular to the line between the caster and the location). the wall is passable but any who pass through it suffer damage.

Earthwall:
Same as above but made of imprenetrable rock instead of fire.

Icewall:
Same as earthwall but translucent so you can see the enemies approaching.

Ice prison:
Raises a hexagonal cell of ice around the targetted location, imprisoning (and protecting) any troop within the area.

Creeping Rot / insect swarm:
Fills the air with a fast-spreading infection which hovers in the location momentarily and dissipates. Any enemy within the are is infected (and will have a hovering black aura around their heads). Infections last 10 seconds; Enemies can pass infections to other enemies within 10' who have not been previously infected in this battle. Infected troops take small amounts of damage repeatedly and rapidly over the course of the infection.

Parma Magica / Globe of Magical Impenetrability:
Creates an translucent globe which prevents all magical effects from penetrating. Physical attacks and enemies (including magical summoned creatures) can pass through as normal.

Mass Charm:
Turns opponents to your own side temporarily.

Meteor Swarm:
Several huge rocks rain from the sky and blow **** up in the general targetted area.

Shockwave:
A wave of force issues from the caster in the direction he is looking. Affects all troops friendly or unfriendly; troops hit with the shock wave take no direct damage but are catapulted into the air and fly away from the caster, taking falling damage.

Stampede:
Summons a swarm of hell-horses which run in the general direction of the enemy (spawn troop+invisible rider, kill after 5 seconds)... infantry is stomped by the horses. For extra fun the horses could be cows.

Needleworm:
Spawns a hideous looking organic sluglike weapon which spits out needles as fast as you can click the mouse button.

Lord of the Dance: Funny idea. I think I'll do it.

Curtain of Fire: I'm on it.

Earthwall and Icewall: I'm not so sure I like the idea.

Ice prison: I think I'd rather do it with water, but I like the idea.

Creeping rot: How?

Parma Magica: No. I'd have to redesign every spell I've made thus far.

Mass Charm: Good idea. I think I'll make it change the side of any summoned troops.

Meteor Swarm: Sounds like the mother-lagger. If you can think of any reasonable way to do it, I'll consider it.

Shock wave: Yes.

Stampede: I'm not sure I want to go to the effort, but its an ok idea.

Needleworm: No.

Thank you for the suggestions, Fisheye, they are good, helpful ideas on the whole.

BTW, i strongly suggest that player can use magic only when he has certain "magic ingredient" and different magic type will need different kinds of ingredients while different level magic will require different amount of them. Every time player use one magic (one magic rather than use magic in one battle, so it is very costly to use magic) corresponding ingredients will be lost and magic ingredients can only be looted from wizard troops so that people won't be able to buy one fire staff and start killing everyone on the map. (maybe from certain merchants player can also buy certain ingredients with very high cost) It is fun to use magic but if player can use any powerful magic any time, they will get bored sooner or later. So it is good to retain the fun of this mod by placing some restrictions on using magic.

I'll be working on balance issues, but I'm not going to make the magic permanently run out. It would simply cost too much to continually refuel.

I'd love the mod, I'm sure, if only every major battle didn't come down to a beat up between stupidly large number of Hell Knights. Seriously, you might want summoner parties to be nigh on invincible, but this spell make having a warband a useless extravagance. Why bother, leveling up a bunch of nords, or anyone else, when they aren't worth squat in the Hellknight bash? At the moment, I don't see any need to level up anything except apprentices into summoners.

You've said that you have limited it to 24 hell knights per summoner, but that is still way out of wack, when it still means that there will be at least 100 summoned per battle. Every other character will still end up irrelevant, and success, or failure will still be entirely dependant on the Hellknight bash. Of course, a party without summoners becomes useless and IMHO, this makes as much sense as making any other random class (Nord Champions anyone?) so super powerful, so that no party without them will ever win against a party with them.

Also, this game is in great need of a readme. What spells do what? How are they activated? For example, I can't for the life of me figure out what the banishing weapon does and certainly haven't been able to figure out what item it is that summons the Hellknights. If it is in this thread I've missed it.

Honestly though, this is probably going to end up as my favorite mod, alongside the Firearms Mod. You've done excellent work.

I personally have never seen more than five summons in one battle. That would make 30 total hell knights. The version of the mod I have on my computer allows the Hell Knights to be influential in the major engagements without being the only thing that actually matters, trust me. As for the summoner parties, they are so named because they summon their way to victory. In this next version, however, there will be more summoning spells (summon daemon and summon phantom at least), which will summon only one uber troop. That way there won't be so many Hell Knights. As for a read-me, see the first post. It gives the name of every magical item along with its purpose and use.

 

[QuailLover]

Another suggestion: the user in either creation or via the storyline chooses an alignment between water or fire.

Then split all the spells around such as the teleporting to water and the defensive blast to fire.

the stampede idea was almost the same idea for my apollyon idea, except that it was one horse with the grim reaper, and could only go straight

 

[AvaRice]

It would be great if the spellcaster tree was branched out a bit more. Based on the spells that you've got and that you're planning, it seems to me that there are 3 different branches of magic:

Light- this would include the healing and buffing spells such as heal, shield, charm, defensive blast, levitate.
Dark- this would include the damaging spells such as water staff, fire staff, wounding curse
Summoning- this would include the conjuring spells such as fruit of death, horse conjuring, the walls, magic stone, banishing sceptre.

Maybe you could create 3 different skills for these branches of magic and put requirements on the spells.

Some spell ideas, may have been mentioned before:

Heal other/mass heal?- heals your troops, never tried fruit of healing, don't know if it does this.
Lower level summons- think you're working on this already
Raise dead- raises the corpse to fight for you, the corpse does not remain with your party after battle.
Weaker variations of the current spells- it's been said before, most of the spells are high-end equipment that you would expect to get late in the game. It would also allow for lower level spellcaster troops.

Is it possible coding-wise for the AI to cast spells on allies? This would make healing and shield very useful.

 

[Wraithcat]

I personally have never seen more than five summons in one battle. That would make 30 total hell knights. The version of the mod I have on my computer allows the Hell Knights to be influential in the major engagements without being the only thing that actually matters, trust me. As for the summoner parties, they are so named because they summon their way to victory. In this next version, however, there will be more summoning spells (summon daemon and summon phantom at least), which will summon only one uber troop. That way there won't be so many Hell Knights. As for a read-me, see the first post. It gives the name of every magical item along with its purpose and use.

With v0.1 of the mod, I'm regularly getting enemy summons of over 100 HK just from enemy noble parties. The summoner parties themselves easily get over 500 HK. (7 summoners * 20*5 = lots...)

I've now got 14 summoners in my party to counter this and I'm easily getting over 500 HK (as measured by number of kills at the end of the battle) as well. I modified the troops.txt to remove their horses so that I don't experience fatal lag, but it is still hard going. I'll probably end up modding thier armour back to leather and weapons to crappy swords so that they aren't so overpowerful.

Sadly, whereas I used to get my arse handed to me on a platter, because I couldn't summon any HK, now that I've got summoners in my party, I'm wiping the floor with any opposition. Fairly soon, I'm going to have over 30 summoners, at which point things will be looking real silly and my CPU will have a dummy spit. As is my character has no impact on the battles and my only purpose is to make sure that my summoners only get knocked out, rather than killed. This is not going to change, so long as there are a large number of summoned creatures on the battlefield.

I think that in order to keep things from spiralling out of control, you are really going to keep the number of summons low and the power of the summoned creature close to that of the creature they are being summoned by.

Balance is a funny thing...

 

[wulstrap]

Amazing and Very Very Fantastic mod Staffs is a amazing





 

 

[Mirathei]

Demonic Summons:



I'll respond to y'all in just a bit.

 

[fisheye]

Creeping rot: How?

Use Agent slots to keep track of who's infected, in the mission template perform proximity checks every few seconds to spread infection as needed. The downside is that the all-pairs proximity check has a complexity of O(n^2) which doesn't scale in large battles.

I think Warcraft had a spell similar to this.

Probably too much work for too little payoff, now that I think of it.

PS You can also steal some skeletons from I think Hero and Blade (ask Cartread on MBX) for the low level skelly summons.

PPS If you need some texture work on the demons hands and feet I'm sure lots of people would contribute.

 

[Mirathei]

Creeping rot: How?

Use Agent slots to keep track of who's infected, in the mission template perform proximity checks every few seconds to spread infection as needed. The downside is that the all-pairs proximity check has a complexity of O(n^2) which doesn't scale in large battles.

I think Warcraft had a spell similar to this.

Probably too much work for too little payoff, now that I think of it.

PS You can also steal some skeletons from I think Hero and Blade (ask Cartread on MBX) for the low level skelly summons.

PPS If you need some texture work on the demons hands and feet I'm sure lots of people would contribute.

The creeping rot is definitely too much trouble. I want to keep almost all the coding for this mod in the items file, so that it will be easy to port. Thanks for the tip on the skeletons. I'll check it out. I've got hands and feet for the demons, I just haven't put them in, yet.

I personally have never seen more than five summons in one battle. That would make 30 total hell knights. The version of the mod I have on my computer allows the Hell Knights to be influential in the major engagements without being the only thing that actually matters, trust me. As for the summoner parties, they are so named because they summon their way to victory. In this next version, however, there will be more summoning spells (summon daemon and summon phantom at least), which will summon only one uber troop. That way there won't be so many Hell Knights. As for a read-me, see the first post. It gives the name of every magical item along with its purpose and use.

With v0.1 of the mod, I'm regularly getting enemy summons of over 100 HK just from enemy noble parties. The summoner parties themselves easily get over 500 HK. (7 summoners * 20*5 = lots...)

I've now got 14 summoners in my party to counter this and I'm easily getting over 500 HK (as measured by number of kills at the end of the battle) as well. I modified the troops.txt to remove their horses so that I don't experience fatal lag, but it is still hard going. I'll probably end up modding thier armour back to leather and weapons to crappy swords so that they aren't so overpowerful.

Sadly, whereas I used to get my arse handed to me on a platter, because I couldn't summon any HK, now that I've got summoners in my party, I'm wiping the floor with any opposition. Fairly soon, I'm going to have over 30 summoners, at which point things will be looking real silly and my CPU will have a dummy spit. As is my character has no impact on the battles and my only purpose is to make sure that my summoners only get knocked out, rather than killed. This is not going to change, so long as there are a large number of summoned creatures on the battlefield.

I think that in order to keep things from spiralling out of control, you are really going to keep the number of summons low and the power of the summoned creature close to that of the creature they are being summoned by.

Balance is a funny thing...

Now that I am implementing the Daemonic summons and phantom summons, and possibly something with a weak skeleton-troop, the numbers of the summoned will be vastly reduced. I'm still working on balance, but assure you that the issues will be different by next version.

It would be great if the spellcaster tree was branched out a bit more. Based on the spells that you've got and that you're planning, it seems to me that there are 3 different branches of magic:

Light- this would include the healing and buffing spells such as heal, shield, charm, defensive blast, levitate.
Dark- this would include the damaging spells such as water staff, fire staff, wounding curse
Summoning- this would include the conjuring spells such as fruit of death, horse conjuring, the walls, magic stone, banishing sceptre.

Maybe you could create 3 different skills for these branches of magic and put requirements on the spells.

Some spell ideas, may have been mentioned before:

Heal other/mass heal?- heals your troops, never tried fruit of healing, don't know if it does this.
Lower level summons- think you're working on this already
Raise dead- raises the corpse to fight for you, the corpse does not remain with your party after battle.
Weaker variations of the current spells- it's been said before, most of the spells are high-end equipment that you would expect to get late in the game. It would also allow for lower level spellcaster troops.

Is it possible coding-wise for the AI to cast spells on allies? This would make healing and shield very useful.

I plan to do something along those lines for the spell casting troops. I do not plan to make specific magical spells anytime soon, however. Its a royal pain in the ass to create and implement custom skills. As for the suggestions of spells:
Heal other: ai wouldn't be able to use it effectively, so no.
Lower level summons: yes.
Raise dead: impossible, so no.
Weaker Variations: yes.

Another suggestion: the user in either creation or via the storyline chooses an alignment between water or fire.

Then split all the spells around such as the teleporting to water and the defensive blast to fire.

the stampede idea was almost the same idea for my apollyon idea, except that it was one horse with the grim reaper, and could only go straight

I've never much liked the concept of linking certain types of magic to certain elements. If I make a clear defined split in the magic, it will be between good and evil, not fire and water. Now that I understand your appollyon idea, I kind of like it. I'll think about if or how I could implement it well.

 

[Albino]

Cartread also released a skeletal pack, you should make a spell that summons skeletons.

 

[schmendict]

Is anyone else experiencing performance issues with the fire spell? Whenever I fire it, my game freezes for a second or two. =[

 

[Albino]

Yep.

Anyway, been playing with the source. Changed a few things around.

 

[Sheep_Archer]

One thing I find interesting to do is to use the horse conjuring charm to make a wall of meat shields to protect you from the enemy while you rain fire on their sorry asses.

 

[Mirathei]

I'm sorry that the fire staff is lagtastic. It couldn't get it to work right otherwise.

In the mean time, I have created the curtain of fire:

It kills all horses and teleports all men 50 meters backwards, thus making it incredibly good for holding an enemy at bay while holding position on a hill or for breaking up a fray.