Schattenländer - v0.1d released (Feb 10/07)
- 主题发起人 Hellequin
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Hellequin
Sergeant at Arms
(Weapon proficiencies are taken care of; don't sweat it.)
The Cutting Room Floor
Okay. We need to trim an absolute minimum of 11 saints from the list to make them fit. I've indexed them by blessing, as part of setting up my data entry for saints, but now we need to make decisions on who to trim. Most of the powers are straightforward skill or attribute bonuses; some of them are a little fiddly, like some stat losses (half your Int, small amount of Per, etc) and some conditional grants (generally to women). But those can readily enough be coded. Another few, like "may grant a miraculous longsword to the needy" and "travel instantly to nearest town or city" are clearly doable even if odd.
I'm left with this list of outstanding difficulties:
Anthony of Padua, Eustace - bonus to Impact weapons
Maurice, Peter - bonus to Edged weapons
If we keep these guys, I plan to turn "impact weapons" into 2H, and "edged weapons" into 1H; should work just as well with their descriptions.
Apollinarius, Gabriel, Genevieve - enemies may flee combat
Clare, Dymphna - satanic enemies may flee combat
Given that we don't have prayers during combat, this would simply cut off combat before it begins. Could implement it such that enemies flee after first round, maybe. I don't want to lose Gabriel in any event.
Cyprian - protects 50% from satanic magic
Since we haven't coded satanic magic, this is an unknown. If we're doing it like alchemy, as effects before you enter battle, this is easy. If satanic magic is (say) a nasty ranged weapon with cool special effects, this is harder.
Dunstan - all metal armour may be enhanced
Eligius - may improve quality of particular types of weapon
George - may enhance weapons & armour
Longinius - may improve quality of one char's weapons
Maurice - may improve quality of party's edged weapons
Michael - may improve weapons and armour in combat
This is something we talked about right off the bat. It will be difficult and limit our variety of weapons and armour, possibly more than Native. Thing is, we need to implement this in alchemy, as almost a quarter of our potions depends on enhancing weapons and armour, so I kinda think we're stuck with it.
Erasmus - improves protection from lightning and fire
Margaret - flame resistance of one person's armour
Charity, Polycarp - fire resistance
Need these for the dragon and for alchemy, so (as with Cyprian's blessing above) while it's unclear how these will implement, we'll need the effect regardless.
Eustace - speeds travel through woods
This would need to be altered to work at all. He's on my cut list, I think.
Finbar, Lucy, Odilia - provides light
This is less weird than it sounds, because darkness doesn't come up very often - just in the mines, basically. This is also actually not that hard to do, as I understand it. Having a party member glow to light your way could be kind of cool... or it could be annoying 'cause of the AI's limits. Maybe.
Engelbert, Finnian, Florian, Raymond Penafort - allows party to walk on rivers/water as if it were land
Yoicks! While I can imagine ways to teleport across rivers (spawn a host of invisible parties over a small radius, tell them to come home to you and remove them when they do; wait ten seconds for everyone who is going to make it back to do so, and then teleport to anyone who's left), it's incredibly fiddly to implement. These guys are all high on my 'cut' list. If they have any crucial functions in menus I'll move 'em elsewhere.
Godfrey, Genevieve - prevents enemy from attacking before party does
Interestingly, this one is actually probably pretty easy for us. They just grant infinite preptime when invoked.
Januarius (with relic) - prevent any combat
This is potentially a bit of a pain, and as saints go he's kinda lackluster. On my cut list, I think.
Martin of Tours, Pantaleon - heal if wearing armour
Implementable but weird.
Pantaleon - "animals have less effect"(?)
No idea what this means; he doesn't prevent wolf/boar encounters, for instance. That's two strikes against Pantaleon, IMO.
Raymond Lulli - brings very low strength up to adequate (9)
This is actually interesting to set up, but it's unusual enough to make this list.
Barbara - prevents beneficiary from dying (going below 1Str) until wears off
Not sure how we would do this in the game, but that's largely because we have only vague discussion of a wounding system later on.
----------------
So, on a first pass I think I'd cut Engelbert, Finnian, Florian, Raymond Penafort, Januarius, Pantaleon, and Eustace. That's seven. Need four more; any opinions?
Edited 'cause I can't count.
The Cutting Room Floor
Okay. We need to trim an absolute minimum of 11 saints from the list to make them fit. I've indexed them by blessing, as part of setting up my data entry for saints, but now we need to make decisions on who to trim. Most of the powers are straightforward skill or attribute bonuses; some of them are a little fiddly, like some stat losses (half your Int, small amount of Per, etc) and some conditional grants (generally to women). But those can readily enough be coded. Another few, like "may grant a miraculous longsword to the needy" and "travel instantly to nearest town or city" are clearly doable even if odd.
I'm left with this list of outstanding difficulties:
Anthony of Padua, Eustace - bonus to Impact weapons
Maurice, Peter - bonus to Edged weapons
If we keep these guys, I plan to turn "impact weapons" into 2H, and "edged weapons" into 1H; should work just as well with their descriptions.
Apollinarius, Gabriel, Genevieve - enemies may flee combat
Clare, Dymphna - satanic enemies may flee combat
Given that we don't have prayers during combat, this would simply cut off combat before it begins. Could implement it such that enemies flee after first round, maybe. I don't want to lose Gabriel in any event.
Cyprian - protects 50% from satanic magic
Since we haven't coded satanic magic, this is an unknown. If we're doing it like alchemy, as effects before you enter battle, this is easy. If satanic magic is (say) a nasty ranged weapon with cool special effects, this is harder.
Dunstan - all metal armour may be enhanced
Eligius - may improve quality of particular types of weapon
George - may enhance weapons & armour
Longinius - may improve quality of one char's weapons
Maurice - may improve quality of party's edged weapons
Michael - may improve weapons and armour in combat
This is something we talked about right off the bat. It will be difficult and limit our variety of weapons and armour, possibly more than Native. Thing is, we need to implement this in alchemy, as almost a quarter of our potions depends on enhancing weapons and armour, so I kinda think we're stuck with it.
Erasmus - improves protection from lightning and fire
Margaret - flame resistance of one person's armour
Charity, Polycarp - fire resistance
Need these for the dragon and for alchemy, so (as with Cyprian's blessing above) while it's unclear how these will implement, we'll need the effect regardless.
Eustace - speeds travel through woods
This would need to be altered to work at all. He's on my cut list, I think.
Finbar, Lucy, Odilia - provides light
This is less weird than it sounds, because darkness doesn't come up very often - just in the mines, basically. This is also actually not that hard to do, as I understand it. Having a party member glow to light your way could be kind of cool... or it could be annoying 'cause of the AI's limits. Maybe.
Engelbert, Finnian, Florian, Raymond Penafort - allows party to walk on rivers/water as if it were land
Yoicks! While I can imagine ways to teleport across rivers (spawn a host of invisible parties over a small radius, tell them to come home to you and remove them when they do; wait ten seconds for everyone who is going to make it back to do so, and then teleport to anyone who's left), it's incredibly fiddly to implement. These guys are all high on my 'cut' list. If they have any crucial functions in menus I'll move 'em elsewhere.
Godfrey, Genevieve - prevents enemy from attacking before party does
Interestingly, this one is actually probably pretty easy for us. They just grant infinite preptime when invoked.
Januarius (with relic) - prevent any combat
This is potentially a bit of a pain, and as saints go he's kinda lackluster. On my cut list, I think.
Martin of Tours, Pantaleon - heal if wearing armour
Implementable but weird.
Pantaleon - "animals have less effect"(?)
No idea what this means; he doesn't prevent wolf/boar encounters, for instance. That's two strikes against Pantaleon, IMO.
Raymond Lulli - brings very low strength up to adequate (9)
This is actually interesting to set up, but it's unusual enough to make this list.
Barbara - prevents beneficiary from dying (going below 1Str) until wears off
Not sure how we would do this in the game, but that's largely because we have only vague discussion of a wounding system later on.
----------------
So, on a first pass I think I'd cut Engelbert, Finnian, Florian, Raymond Penafort, Januarius, Pantaleon, and Eustace. That's seven. Need four more; any opinions?
Edited 'cause I can't count.
fisheye
Grandmaster Knight
Scion 说:
Any kind of demons, whatever you can come up with and animate as an opponent. I imagine something rigged on the human skeleton. For example, your standard humanoid with bat wings would work. Alternatively anything really evil-looking would be fine.
Scion 说:
The way I envision the dragon is, we have the whole dragon as a set of scene props on scene. It's gargantuan and doesn't move around a whole lot. We can rotate its wings and neck a bit to make it look alive, and of course it will have particle effects all over the place, fire and smoke coming out of its nostrils. Every now and then we throw particle effects of smoke and flame on the battlefield and everyone takes damage. The task is to damage the scene prop until the dragon is dead.
On hindsight that's a really lame idea, more fun would be an actual dragon opponent with a custom skeleton and animations. Eh. Maybe we should wait on the dragon thing.
[quote author=Hellequin]
Need fewer saints.
[/quote]
Hmm, I vote R.Lulli, M. of Tours, and the lightmakers. There's no way to add a new light source to a scene. You can throw red particles, they look glowy but they dhed no light on their surroundings.
Barbara is good to keep around. She's the closest thing to a resurrection spell which could be very useful.
Hellequin
Sergeant at Arms
I agree with leaving the dragon for now. One of the classy things about Darklands' dragon storyline was just how much content there was before you ever actually met the beast; we've got lots of work to do before we'll ever need a dragon, we can use that time to think about ways to handle it. I'm not at all certain that the scene props, at least as part of it, aren't still the way to go - but waiting for new skeletons is probably still wise.
Definitely out with the lightmakers, then. Raymond Lulli is one of fairly few good alchemy saints; Martin of Tours is one of very few who can sense evil in anybody, and is big in menus. We only need to cut one of them... hmmm. If I can find someone I want to blend Martin's menu abilities into, then I think I'll do it that way.
Fisheye, can I entrust "scripts to enhance weapons and armour" to your end of things? It'll bump heads with your loot menus etc., so if you're up for any more scripting I'd be inclined to get you to do that one. Rather than map it in just before combat and take it back after, I think we should just set their value to the same as the regular version and turn them normal again if they leave your party's hands (such as into a chest or a merchant's stock).
I'll see what I can do about the getting-away-from-XP concept. Anybody know what happens if you set a troop's level to zero?
Definitely out with the lightmakers, then. Raymond Lulli is one of fairly few good alchemy saints; Martin of Tours is one of very few who can sense evil in anybody, and is big in menus. We only need to cut one of them... hmmm. If I can find someone I want to blend Martin's menu abilities into, then I think I'll do it that way.
Fisheye, can I entrust "scripts to enhance weapons and armour" to your end of things? It'll bump heads with your loot menus etc., so if you're up for any more scripting I'd be inclined to get you to do that one. Rather than map it in just before combat and take it back after, I think we should just set their value to the same as the regular version and turn them normal again if they leave your party's hands (such as into a chest or a merchant's stock).
I'll see what I can do about the getting-away-from-XP concept. Anybody know what happens if you set a troop's level to zero?
fisheye
Grandmaster Knight
Well let's dump Godfrey and Genevieve. I think in our context infinite preptime at will is too unbalancing.
For the thingy enhancements, sure, entrust it to me. I don't guarantee that it will get done though. I'll let you know if I ever start working on it. As a prerequisite I'll need a more or less stable weapons/armor list, so I can make buffed and debuffed copies of everything.
For the thingy enhancements, sure, entrust it to me. I don't guarantee that it will get done though. I'll let you know if I ever start working on it. As a prerequisite I'll need a more or less stable weapons/armor list, so I can make buffed and debuffed copies of everything.
Hellequin
Sergeant at Arms
It'll hardly be at will; they'll have a nonzero DF cost at least. I'll make sure it's nontrivial, too, even for advanced groups. And we can tune them down if need be, they're operating on a scalar (prep time) after all. I think we leave them in and see how things shake out.
Right now we don't have anybody even working on an armour/weapons list; I'll look at the DL list and think about that sometime soon. Anyone with strong feelings about 15th c. germanic period historical authenticity who wants a voice in that list, speak now.
Right now we don't have anybody even working on an armour/weapons list; I'll look at the DL list and think about that sometime soon. Anyone with strong feelings about 15th c. germanic period historical authenticity who wants a voice in that list, speak now.
I'm working on a general hi-resolution plate armor, this is the current state
I designed it to be more shiny and metallic than what is to be find in current m&b. I also plan to make a "face mask" (from the neck and up over the nose) and then some helmets to go with it. the helmet from one of the darklands screens is exactly one of them, the sallet. it's not so easy to change the mesh after I'm done, but the texture can be modified to fit different troops/armor quality etc.
I designed it to be more shiny and metallic than what is to be find in current m&b. I also plan to make a "face mask" (from the neck and up over the nose) and then some helmets to go with it. the helmet from one of the darklands screens is exactly one of them, the sallet. it's not so easy to change the mesh after I'm done, but the texture can be modified to fit different troops/armor quality etc.
Dr.Love
Recruit
I dont know if you've already got help with that game, cause I'm a lazy sod and can't be bothered with reading through the whole post, but if you need any help regarding the way the game is built up just ask me, cause I've got the game and am actually playing it right now. God I love that game 
EDIT: Also, I can take some screenshots for ya, if you wish.
EDIT: Also, I can take some screenshots for ya, if you wish.
fisheye
Grandmaster Knight
Scion 说:I'm working on a general hi-resolution plate armor, this is the current state
I designed it to be more shiny and metallic than what is to be find in current m&b. I also plan to make a "face mask" (from the neck and up over the nose) and then some helmets to go with it. the helmet from one of the darklands screens is exactly one of them, the sallet. it's not so easy to change the mesh after I'm done, but the texture can be modified to fit different troops/armor quality etc.
Looks great Scion! The base mesh is based on the black armor I guess. Looks like you've remapped it to make it high res, and changed the skirt (I've always hated that skirt!). That's niiiice.
I didn't remap it on my own retexture so I the best I could do was this chunky one:
On another thought, since our battles are all small, we can have higher poly and higher res personal equipment than other mods. Something to think about. Like, Talak's horses have 50% more poly than Native, but I think they'll run just great for us.
The downside of it is that we'll be doing a lot of fighting in scenes (urban, dungeon, etc) so we may have to make low-poly buildings. We'll see.
Yes, it's the black armor. I discovered this new technique where I rendered the model in Blender using yafray, then copied the rendered image and pasted it over the texture file (with several adjustments, but that's the key idea). This one is only 876 polys (the texture is 1024x1024, but I think it was the place to put this extra data). If I get time I will make the shoulder protection more realistic, but it's really a pain to weigh, as well as elbow protection.
jeansberg
Sergeant Knight at Arms
I guess some equipment screenshots wouldn't hurt. And maybe some of the alchemical reagents, so people can get an idea how to model them.Dr.Love 说:I dont know if you've already got help with that game, cause I'm a lazy sod and can't be bothered with reading through the whole post, but if you need any help regarding the way the game is built up just ask me, cause I've got the game and am actually playing it right now. God I love that game
EDIT: Also, I can take some screenshots for ya, if you wish.
fisheye
Grandmaster Knight
I don't recall any of the alchemical reagents ever being shown on screen...
Dr Love if you want to do research, could you trawl the Darklands forums for info on how certain computations are performed (e.g. alchemy chance of success, prayer chance of success, etc) and make note of what bonuses happen when (guiding the pilgrims may improve virtue, what else improves virtue..?)
If you want, we could also do with some help charting the professions during character generation, what are their prerequisites and bonuses.
All this crap is in the Darklands hintbook, so, hell if you could buy the hintbook and transcribe the relevant info that would be an utter killer contribution.
Dr Love if you want to do research, could you trawl the Darklands forums for info on how certain computations are performed (e.g. alchemy chance of success, prayer chance of success, etc) and make note of what bonuses happen when (guiding the pilgrims may improve virtue, what else improves virtue..?)
If you want, we could also do with some help charting the professions during character generation, what are their prerequisites and bonuses.
All this crap is in the Darklands hintbook, so, hell if you could buy the hintbook and transcribe the relevant info that would be an utter killer contribution.
fisheye
Grandmaster Knight
NO NO TRAWL not TROLL. 
Omigod I nearly sent someone to troll on another board.
On second thought let's not, err, trawl (search) the darklands message boards.
The alchemy chance of success computations are right here in exhaustive detail.
http://www.darklands.net/tools/winning.shtml
Omigod I nearly sent someone to troll on another board. On second thought let's not, err, trawl (search) the darklands message boards.
The alchemy chance of success computations are right here in exhaustive detail.
http://www.darklands.net/tools/winning.shtml
Hellequin
Sergeant at Arms
Professions - please!
As Fisheye said, the hint book (which I'm keeping my eyes open for and will pay good money for if I can find it) contains a list of all the profession stages, their requirements, bonuses, and specials (like +1 Saint). This will be a lot of work to compile accurately because you can't just do one pass through each branch; for instance, a Monk who doesn't put a lot of points into Religion & Speak Latin might not get Abbott as an option (yet), but he might get something else instead (say Hermit). This would be a substantial job and a big help to us.
The alchemy stuff not only is listed on the site Fisheye mentioned, but isn't being preserved perfectly intact anyway, as our behind-the-scenes math isn't the same as the original. So please don't bother with that.
The other thing, though I've got Blankshield working on this already in theory, is to use the character editor to give yourself all saints, and to record from each of them for me:
- Saint's day
- Minimum virtue to invoke
- Base cost in DF
- Base chance of success
I don't recall if the latter one or two of those vary by your Virtue or Religion scores; you'd have to check. If so, two data points (one low-powered char, one high) would be sufficient to give me the pattern.
Those are two big tasks which anyone with access to Darklands could do to help us make this mod a reality.
Oh, and I believe the most useful currently-extant Darklands forum would be the yahoo group.
As Fisheye said, the hint book (which I'm keeping my eyes open for and will pay good money for if I can find it) contains a list of all the profession stages, their requirements, bonuses, and specials (like +1 Saint). This will be a lot of work to compile accurately because you can't just do one pass through each branch; for instance, a Monk who doesn't put a lot of points into Religion & Speak Latin might not get Abbott as an option (yet), but he might get something else instead (say Hermit). This would be a substantial job and a big help to us.
The alchemy stuff not only is listed on the site Fisheye mentioned, but isn't being preserved perfectly intact anyway, as our behind-the-scenes math isn't the same as the original. So please don't bother with that.
The other thing, though I've got Blankshield working on this already in theory, is to use the character editor to give yourself all saints, and to record from each of them for me:
- Saint's day
- Minimum virtue to invoke
- Base cost in DF
- Base chance of success
I don't recall if the latter one or two of those vary by your Virtue or Religion scores; you'd have to check. If so, two data points (one low-powered char, one high) would be sufficient to give me the pattern.
Those are two big tasks which anyone with access to Darklands could do to help us make this mod a reality.
Oh, and I believe the most useful currently-extant Darklands forum would be the yahoo group.
Hellequin
Sergeant at Arms
If you find it, that'll be golden. But good luck. You might actually have better luck with your local rare book stores than online...
... but failing that, if you don't want to do it, then don't. Yes, there's a lot to be done, but it's all in manageable chunks. The professions charting is a chunk which we could use pretty much right away, as I structure the bits that it will hang off of. And a first pass which just went through once down each 'fork' and wrote down the skill points given/permitted for each profession would be enough to get us started; we can chart the specific requirements separately, or just make 'em up if we decide it's not worth it.
You did ask what you could do to help...
... but failing that, if you don't want to do it, then don't. Yes, there's a lot to be done, but it's all in manageable chunks. The professions charting is a chunk which we could use pretty much right away, as I structure the bits that it will hang off of. And a first pass which just went through once down each 'fork' and wrote down the skill points given/permitted for each profession would be enough to get us started; we can chart the specific requirements separately, or just make 'em up if we decide it's not worth it.
You did ask what you could do to help...
Hellequin
Sergeant at Arms
As far as I recall those details aren't in the manual... but either way if you grab 'em for me that would be much appreciated. Ideally in a spreadsheet with each saint as one row, that'll let me mate it straight into my own data. PM me if you need more information, or if you need to know where to send a file. Note that I do also need the base odds of success and the base cost in DF to get that, as well; the base virtue is easy.
My thanks to everybody who has stepped up to the plate on this mod... we're still making bloody good progress.
My thanks to everybody who has stepped up to the plate on this mod... we're still making bloody good progress.
