[DONE] OD Windows binaries

[Danimal]

Sorry, my bad. I will attemp to contact you directly from now on when something comes up, but i was fearing that you just lost interest like it seems was REZ case. I have seem quite a few sudden disappearances over the time, and i guess Paul has seen far more than I. So please excuse his bitterness.
Regarding the dungeon heart, if you are finding it difficult to finish (for lack of time or any other reason) i can do it in your place, we would really like to have it into the next update along with the new rooms.

Regards.

Edit: Yes, i can tell how committed you are to the project, that is the reason your absency here in the forum was worrying. I wont doubt you anymore then.

[Elvano]

Regarding the dungeon heart, if you are finding it difficult to finish (for lack of time or any other reason)

The problem with my dungeon heart is that is a concept and the model is far from optimized for game still.
Haven't been able to make much changes to it with this job training and the website yet.

[Bertram]

Hi guys,

Seems the latest binary has shaken a few hearts. I'm sorry to see that. I, for one, can witness Elvano was still answering mails and told me he was busy. Sad I couldn't answer that earlier in this thread.

Anyway, now with the real thing

Dungeon Heart:
@Elvano: I know you are busy. I'm just eager to see that in action, too. Who should I enthrall with dark magic to get you more time for OD?

@Danimal: Now that's some feedback! Thank you a lot for this. This is just the perfect kind of test reporting to me.

- Since creatures appear with ramdom levels from portals, its hard to know their levels,

According to the code, newly spawned creatures should be at level 1. Maybe the crazy scaling made you think this?

adding to the general TODO of a mechanism that allows to see creatures HP, level, XP for next level and mood

We have a broken status window that should be doing this. Fixing it is in the TODO-list and hopefully will come sooner or later.
Having this windows might not be the best solution, but for now, it will do I guess.

- Goblin and tentacle from cave left from yours (on the way to the gold) kicked my ass really hard, killed everything i threw at them and destroyed half my dungeon tiles, i guess they are max level, but that made me realize a few bugs.

I guess you're right. Plus, they have true equipment, which is making them deadly.

- Rooms that have tiles destroyed keeps their actives spots even when fully destroyed.

Dang! I didn't see that one coming. My fault. Assigned to me.

- Gold tiles dont blend with surrounding dirt tiles and are shown as if they had all dirt removed from its sides.

Gold tiles treat Dirt tile as foreign tiles, and don't melt with those. It was done this way in the code, but I could change this behaviour.
A good test case for my next tileset config file.

Creatures actions & behaviour:

- Diggers should run away from enemies other than enemy diggers, at the moment they march happily to combat. They will be really weak when their stats are tweaked so a running away behaviour for diggers and near death creatures would be useful (away from enemies)
- Work assignation for diggers, no matter where you drop them, they will march back to whatever job they had on the other end of the dungeon; couldnt it be made so they re-check closest job when dropped by hand? Same for normal creature, being dropped on a room should check if they can work there (researcher or blacksmith for now) and force then to work there until hunger/sleep makes them go have a snack and return or go sleep.
- Diggers will stop working if you tell them to dig an area across water with no land path to it, they will start wandering around, ignoring work that is accesible in your dungeon (i tried to get to the gold on left by crossing water so i didnt have to claim the cave with the kickass goblin-tentacle combo), they should be able to cross the water and dig the dirt/gold there even if they cant claim that side of the river. When i unselected for digging the other side of the river, they returned to work.
- Creatures now engage on melee rather than long distance taunt figth (finally), but your own seems to be slow to start attacking, i had a legion be one hitted by the tentacle and im not sure they put in even a single blow

Well, some of this is my fault.
I have been working on workers at first, and now workers only think of working and do not actually test their environment for threats. Even fighter creatures seems to wait for the first blow to react, indeed.

There was a test about enemy threats in the code that I think I broke somehow. I'll have a look at that. I'll take the opportunity to make the workers flee instead of attacking when they see enemy fighters.

I'd propose also to empty the creature active action list when it is taken so that it's starting fresh when dropped somewhere.

I "removed" the ability of workers to go on water tiles as I thought it was what's desired. Luckily, you can simply open the creatures.def file and replace the walkableTile value by flyableTile for the workers, to let them go on water again. The problem is: they'll go on lava, just as they were doing before, when the lava was looking like water. I suppose we should split lava from water in term of passability?

Regards,

[Bertram]

Hi again,

- Workers tend to idle if the work is far from them

By design, they'll go work only on things in their sight. So, as for now, it's not a bug. Want to change that?

- Creature.def needs to have more values to be really useful: creature initial HP, range, magical/physical defense, magical/physical damage, creature initial damage and its increment per level (just like health does), and probably the rates for working on the new rooms (research, forging); creatures priorities could also be included here so some of them prefer doing one activity by default, like:
Mage Research 1, praying 2, training 3, forge 0
Orc Research 0, praying 0, training 1, forge 2
Fly Research 0, praying 0, training 0, forge 0
Warrior Research 0, praying 2, training 1, forge 3

Good idea. I'll add this to the TODO-list.

- Alignation system in Creature.def file is useless, it will never be used, can it be removed?

Planned, but not yet done, sorry.

They should be handled by just indicating their placement coordinates, level and equiped weapons, all other stats should be in creatures.def file.

No, they mustn't. This would prevent us to use level file as save game which is desired and smarter, IMHO. Setting level, and initial stats per creature is also more flexible.
That said, I agree about moving the equipment def to some def file.

Regards,

[Danimal]

Hi Bertram, thanks for clarifying.

By design, they'll go work only on things in their sight. So, as for now, it's not a bug. Want to change that?

Yes, please. They idle like crazy if you dig rooms and hallways instead of a big hole. Controlling their suicide urges should be made with doors once implemented

According to the code, newly spawned creatures should be at level 1. Maybe the crazy scaling made you think this?

Must be that, i didnt have a way to compare them since only diggers actually level up. I already tweaked scales and some other stats to something sensible, ill share the .def tomorrow; all thats is left is to check their growth doesnt broke the new scaling

I "removed" the ability of workers to go on water tiles as I thought it was what's desired. Luckily, you can simply open the creatures.def file and replace the walkableTile value by flyableTile for the workers, to let them go on water again. The problem is: they'll go on lava, just as they were doing before, when the lava was looking like water. I suppose we should split lava from water in term of passability?

Maybe Walkable (just land), swimable (Land+water) and flyable(Land+water+lava)?

[MCMic]

Should workers really be able to swim? Does not seems right.

What is the point of levels if they do not define creatures strength? If you put all creature stats in the level file it means you can have a level1 which is twice as strong as a level10? Also you can have a creature which is not consistent with its type. I do think most of the time stats shouldn’t be in there, only levels. (saved games can have these on top, but they could also be recomputed no?)

An animation for level up would be great (something like a circle of light briefly appearing around the unit).

Does the dojo actually work? Creatures does not seem to grow bigger in it. My workers still are the stongest monsters I got.

creatures priorities could also be included here so some of them prefer doing one activity by default, like:
Mage Research 1, praying 2, training 3, forge 0
Orc Research 0, praying 0, training 1, forge 2
Fly Research 0, praying 0, training 0, forge 0
Warrior Research 0, praying 2, training 1, forge 3

Is that the same as requirements for spawning?
About that, I was wondering, is the probability to spawn a creature always the same and building rooms allows to choose which ones, or does building rooms attracts creatures in top of the ones already attracted?

[Bertram]

Hi there,

I'm in the process to gather everyone's thoughts and put them in the todo-list atm.

@Paul:

Well you mean like in a box window ? I am not master of CEGUI ... so if you could make simple pop-up window with info ...

Nope, no need. Let's not clutter the gui with such temporary stuff. We don't really have time to spend on this anyway.
I've updated this topic's first post with your comment about the culling algorithm. No more is needed, IMO.

@MCMic:

Should workers really be able to swim? Does not seems right.

In fact they will be more like "walking on water". It's coming from DK1 where the workers were light enough to do that.
Danimal's proposal is thus sane, but to make it less weird as you pointed out, let's call that something like waterTile, for instance.

Does the dojo actually work? Creatures does not seem to grow bigger in it. My workers still are the stongest monsters I got.

Might come from the new fighting range of creature. Note the dojo room code itself is working and adds a creature available slot for fighting per room object you can see in game.
I'll try this using a range of 2 instead of 1, maybe and look for the interaction there.

Is that the same as requirements for spawning?
About that, I was wondering, is the probability to spawn a creature always the same and building rooms allows to choose which ones, or does building rooms attracts creatures in top of the ones already attracted?

The spawning algorithm is using a twisted set of faction ratio you can see in the creatures.def file, AFAIK, when checking to spawn a creature, the more a 'faction' has a high ratio according to the already spawned creatures faction ratio, the more likely it will spawn a creature having a ratio in this faction. Something like that at least.
The whole system is obsolete and we need to remove all that both in the loading code, in the spawning mechanism, and in the creatures.def file.
The first step is to replace this by spawn pools, set per team in the level file + adding conditions to spawn a creature: The presence of a room with enough active spots, ...

The action priority per creature is a cool thing but I'd request to have a sane default creature behaviour first, for workers and fighters.

What is the point of levels if they do not define creatures strength? If you put all creature stats in the level file it means you can have a level1 which is twice as strong as a level10? Also you can have a creature which is not consistent with its type. I do think most of the time stats shouldn’t be in there, only levels. (saved games can have these on top, but they could also be recomputed no?)

That's a possibility. Either we have a full stats system, but I'll require it to be in the level files (The stats/level can stay in the creatures.def file, of course), or we simply have the level and we recompute the creature stats at load/spawn time. Danimal? Elvano? Paul?

Best regards,

[MCMic]

In fact they will be more like "walking on water". It's coming from DK1 where the workers were light enough to do that.
Danimal's proposal is thus sane, but to make it less weird as you pointed out, let's call that something like waterTile, for instance.

I’m not sure this will add anything to the gameplay, and it will for sure look weird, so I’d vote against workers walking on water. (We don’t have to do everything like it was in DK)

[Bertram]

Well, I won't argue on this point.
Let's see what Danimal has to say.

[Danimal]

Should workers really be able to swim? Does not seems right.

Yes, they must, remember they are your only income source and shouldnt need extreme micromanaging, give them some freedom to suicide themselves as well, they are cheap and expendable and good for triggering traps. Passing water also grants the possibility to snatch a gold vein rigth under any player nose since water cant be too well defended (thats is a fun tactic to pull)

What is the point of levels if they do not define creatures strength? If you put all creature stats in the level file it means you can have a level1 which is twice as strong as a level10? Also you can have a creature which is not consistent with its type. I do think most of the time stats shouldn’t be in there, only levels. (saved games can have these on top, but they could also be recomputed no?)

That's a possibility. Either we have a full stats system, but I'll require it to be in the level files (The stats/level can stay in the creatures.def file, of course), or we simply have the level and we recompute the creature stats at load/spawn time.

I posted this just after you answered to mcmic, so i was a bit late:

Hi Mcmic, i think kind of like you on this, a level 30 creature should be the strongest of his kind. Mini-boss/boss class should be created as a variation of a base creature with another skin, and tighly setting their initial and final stats to avoid it being too overpowered(or as powerful as wanted). Or at the very least always using an alternate skin so you dont run into a harmless looking tentacle and lose your whole army to it.
So Bertram, cant we go middle ground on this? leave the level file as it is since it will be used for a save system, but creature positioning on map creation should be handled by calling creatures already on creatures.def and giving them a level (with stats calculated/corresponding to that level), even initial weapons could be added to the creature.def (i agree on separating weapons into their own .def, that would make tweaking them a lot easier).
Or in the case of miniboss at the very least giving them max level, so they dont get even stronger, because as i told you the stats of a creature altered on map file are a mistery, since they get their handgiven bonus and then keeps using its class level up bonus.
Wouldnt it be much easier to just create it into def file (arms included) and call it within a level? That wouldnt broke map file either, just make some of its stats useless (like life) but weapons, levels, and many others will remain there (especially useful if we implement weapon upgrades so the game remember we upgraded from stater ones to stronger weapons )
I know its not as easy or comfortable as putting down a few digits on map file like rigth now, but imho its the correct way to do it.
(and i ended up rambling again, lm sorry about that)

Tl;dr: Level computation +1, no hand declaring creatures on map, keep weapons used by creature on map file so it reminds if they are upgraded on game reload, their current hp as well(no cheat healing by reloading game).

Is that the same as requirements for spawning?
About that, I was wondering, is the probability to spawn a creature always the same and building rooms allows to choose which ones, or does building rooms attracts creatures in top of the ones already attracted?

Mcmic, building rooms unlocks your chance to get the creature attracted to it, but its still a chance, you can build a training room and still get a fly on your next creature, but if you have full creatures per portal (your total max creatures) you dont get anymore, but we arent evil for nothing, kill wathever spawns and you dont like as you please, there is no point in having a fly army when you can have an orc army.

[MCMic]

Should workers really be able to swim? Does not seems right.

Yes, they must, remember they are your only income source and shouldnt need extreme micromanaging, give them some freedom to suicide themselves as well, they are cheap and expendable and good for triggering traps. Passing water also grants the possibility to snatch a gold vein rigth under any player nose since water cant be too well defended (thats is a fun tactic to pull)

Then maybe this could be an other type of workers which is able to swim?
Or something than your workers can learn in the library once they’ve reached a given level?

[Bertram]

Hi

Tl;dr: Level computation +1, no hand declaring creatures on map, keep weapons used by creature on map file so it reminds if they are upgraded on game reload, their current hp as well(no cheat healing by reloading game).

@Danimal. I realize I may have misunderstood your first post about that so my apologies if so.

Ok, so if I sum it up well:

creatures.def:
Per creature class
- initial stats.
- initial level
- stats/level
- max-level
- starting-equipment

level file:
current level (makes the stats be computed at load time)
current HP (and MP for now)
current equipment (a reference that will lead to some equipment config file).
current XP.

N.B.: MP are going to disappear in favour of a creature skill system with a cool down. IIRC.

Would this be ok for you guys?

[Danimal]

Arent you overthinking it too much Mcmic? if we go by that, only flying creatures could pass water, and then lava becomes the same exact thing as water. It cant be like that, we only have a few fliers; water should be a soft barrier, impassable for heavy or special units (like Knigths or ghouls) and lava a hard barrier impassable to anyone but fliers and demons/dragons. There is not much point in capping such an useful and numerous unit capability, they need that freedom of movement to free you of having to micromanage so many of them

[MCMic]

Arent you overthinking it too much Mcmic? if we go by that, only flying creatures could pass water, and then lava becomes the same exact thing as water. It cant be like that, we only have a few fliers; water should be a soft barrier, impassable for heavy or special units (like Knigths or ghouls) and lava a hard barrier impassable to anyone but fliers and demons/dragons. There is not much point in capping such an useful and numerous unit capability, they need that freedom of movement to free you of having to micromanage so many of them

That makes sense, so in this case creatures should walk in the water instead of on it. And some creatures could not, either because they have an armor like knights or because they are afraid of water.
Demons should walk in lava instead of on top of it as it is in the current state. (and fliers, well, they just fly…)

[EDIT] @Bertram OK with what you wrote, computed stats is the way to go imo.

[Danimal]

creatures.def:
Per creature class
- initial stats.
- initial level
- stats/level
- max-level
- starting-equipment

level file:
current level (makes the stats be computed at load time)
current HP (and MP for now)
current equipment (a reference that will lead to some equipment config file).
current XP.

Yes, your map file is even more complete than what i thougth.
Creatures.def general lines are fine as well (i would include working preferences later when possible in there as well)

Edit: Well, we have no messias among our minions, can their positions be lowered when in water/lava? that would make them really deep knee in water and what i think you want Mcmic (i wasnt understanding you well)

Edit: Skill cooldown FTW!!

[MCMic]

Edit: Well, we have no messias among our minions, can their positions be lowered when in water/lava? that would make thenreally deep knee in water and what i think you want Mcmic (i wasnt understanding you well)

Yes.

Maybe making them a bit slower in water would be more realistic also.

[Bertram]

Many good things have been added here

I've updated the wiki todo-list accordingly.

[Danimal]

My creature.def file, i normalized all creatures scales to something sensible. I also updated other values like hp, damage and speed, not something really balanced, but i used a bit of logic for that:

Kobolds are fast but really weak
bugs and small creatures have low hp but are fast,
dwarfs have low-medium hp but are slow, the new dwarf has good hp but is slow as well
Knigths have good hp but are a bit slow,
Dragon is a tank, lots of hp but very slow
Demon has highest hp and decent speed

The effect of level growth is not checked, it migth break the proportions bbut i have no way to tell since only kobolds level up

[Bertram]

Hi Danimal,

It's the same file than the other topic?

[Danimal]

yes, its exactly thee same

[Bertram]

ok.

[Bertram]

- Rooms that have tiles destroyed keeps their actives spots even when fully destroyed.

Ok, I've just fixed that on github, along with the sub-goals declared in the level files.

Since all the pack about creature stats loading is somewhat linked with the current faction system.
To clean it all up, I'll be working on spawn pools and stats loading before starting again with the tileset handling.

Regards,

[MCMic]

- Rooms that have tiles destroyed keeps their actives spots even when fully destroyed.

Ok, I've just fixed that on github, along with the sub-goals declared in the level files.

Also, when our Dungeon Heart is destroyed this way, we should lose the game.
Is losing implemented? (or winning?)

[Bertram]

I don't think it's truely is.
EDIT: Longer answer:
There was a boolean about whether the player had won the game, but it broke it when set to true and was implemented in a way independent from the Game Mode, so I removed it and simplified according snippets of code.
Readd handling of winning/losing would be cool (I guess we'd need to check the goals as well.), but we should make sure it's dependent only of the game mode/game map/seat objects.
Remember also that only the server should say whether a client is losing/winning (and inform the other clients as well). The concerned client shouldn't do it on its own.

Regards,

[Bertram]

Hi,

New rolling release, for you guys to try out the latest additions.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kgsdzqptfjnb8 ... -06-23.zip

MCMic:
- Fixes click on minimap
- Show claimed tile on minimap
- Removed the useless dig selector mesh
- Fixed the drag-drop tile selection cursor behaviour in game.

Danimal:
- New Training hall ground texture.
- New Dormitory ground texture.
- New library room tile and objects.
- New treasury, temple, portal ground texture.

Hwoarangmy:
- The game is pausing when escape is pressed and a pop-up is displayed so that you can choose whether you want to leave.
- Properly empty the rendering/server processing queue when quitting or restarting a level: The game is no more crashing when you start a new game after the first one. (Hurray!)

Bertram:
- Dojo renamed to Training Hall for the user.
- Quarters renamed to Dormitory for the user.
- Fixed the Goals content displayed in the test level.
- Fixed room active spots recomputation when a room tile is destroyed.
- Added support for spawn pools. this means each team will now be able to get a predetermined sub-set of creature depending on your team.
The player team can no longer get Knights or adventurers, for instance.
- Dropped the old faction code ad removed the corresponding parameters.
- Added support to build a library
- New rooms icons + reordered the icons to be more logical.
- Fixed debug text position to fit the new gui.
- Used back the RTT Shader system for the creatures. They should look a bit better now.
- Made the claimed ground tile colored only for the cross by playing with the shader system a bit. It's still fresh. Please test and tell whether there is something not working.

Some nice things have been done here, even if it is still discrete for the user.

Enjoy!