Five Fates 1.11, Dungeon crawler

[Heindal]

@ darknear and pyrophorus

Thank you for playing and above all other things, thanks for replying and tell me what you think. Remember that cheating allows you to jump to a special level so if you encounter any problems with saved games: cheat and jump to the level again. I know that the normal turn mode is a little bit annoying, on the other hand, a normal freemovement as used in other campaigns will not work, as you always can recruit troops to help you. I could make them follow their leader, but the traps will be very annoying than and some random events (that are indeed new turn based events) won't work. The best option is to use "ctrl + space" to end a turn, this way you are even faster than with freemovement, as you can select a far away destination to move your character to and than end the turns with this hotkey. Your character is by the way not intended as a fight 'alone' fighter (but thats on the other hand the fastest way to beat the game).


@ darknear

Scenario 1

Yeah the bats. They are really annoying, especially as you played in the highest difficulty. The difficulty massively influences the number of enemy gold and with that, there cap to produce new units (in higher levels you will even meet special monster, that are just available on a special difficulty). However, this is needed to grind enough exp to get through the other levels. You can easily return to the traders by using the portal scrolls: these are intended to generate a portal back to the point where you started, but at the moment they just teleport you back.


Scenario 4 (I suppose you mean 'Fog and Steam'?): You had a problem with a saved game? Thats hard, I will check that asap - Those problems are caused by variables that contain special signs such as: ' -
So its proably something I forgot when clearing the game and variables of these little troublemakers.

Spoiler:

Actually you can do a lot in this scenario, you can find a secret way through the entire dungeon and its very end is a workshop of the dwarven engineer, that allows you to get some nice loot. There are even to special things, a mechanical steam driven armor for the dwarf and a mechanical wolf for the Bowmaid. You can either destroy these heavy gates, or open them by moving to the nearby villages.

@ pyrophorus

When I played through your campaign Return to Noelren, I noticed several things that I could add into my scenario as well. The summon ability of one of your mermaids and your helpmenu inspired me to create Five Fates as it is, so you deserve this statue for sure.

Movement: as I said above. The Movement Concept is contributed to the players that like to summon and recruit an army, but I will work out the portal scroll and give players some of them at the beginning to reduce annoying walks. I would need to develop a unique concept for the movement of entire armies and that is not likely as I use pure WML.

Pick and Lockpick can be bought or should be able to buy, the foodpad sells them. Unfortunately I changed the variables to clear names in the last version - e.g. instead of "haspick" I changed to "pick" which has to be yes to be able to break walls. Got to check if I made a mess.

The random concept of the loot was to make each game unique. You can find a trolls armor and rock the place in the first level, but you might not find a ring or an amulet till you reach the 'surprise level'. However the weapons and armors you can buy in the shops have some great abilities and some of them can't be even found, so the shops are well equipped.

About variety: I tried to keep a high variety concerning monsters and guardians. For example the wolves attack the elven and one way to get to the third guardian is to wait until both sides are busy, but I will definitely work level 2, 3, 4 and 5 out and there will be some extra story events!

For example that some walls will just open, when the player has done a random mission that changes each time you play: be it saving a wounded trader, finding fresh water to supply people ... . I also want to add a statue of each guardian, that tells their stories and in level 5 there should be some kind of bridge, that need to be reactivated by several levers hidden in the splitter labyrinth.


Ok, thats enough for today .

Kind regards

Heindal

[pyrophorus]

@ pyrophorus

When I played through your campaign Return to Noelren, I noticed several things that I could add into my scenario as well. The summon ability of one of your mermaids and your helpmenu inspired me to create Five Fates as it is, so you deserve this statue for sure.

I'm happy to know you reused some pieces of my campaign !

Movement: as I said above. The Movement Concept is contributed to the players that like to summon and recruit an army, but I will work out the portal scroll and give players some of them at the beginning to reduce annoying walks. I would need to develop a unique concept for the movement of entire armies and that is not likely as I use pure WML.

Yes. I've created some code for this (which works, you can have it if you want), but the problems you quoted are very difficult to manage. If you're moving the army as a whole, this must stop when entering a fight or a special zone and so on.

Pick and Lockpick can be bought or should be able to buy, the foodpad sells them. Unfortunately I changed the variables to clear names in the last version - e.g. instead of "haspick" I changed to "pick" which has to be yes to be able to break walls. Got to check if I made a mess.

Yes, you did But not with variables names !
EDIT: yesterday, I was too swift saying your variable were not initialized. They are but with a wrong name as you say. It's in the general initialisation code were you set 'haspick' and so on to "no". I fixed this and got a correct behaviour, both at the store, in the screen status, and, of course, using lockpicks and this kind of stuff.

About variety: I tried to keep a high variety concerning monsters and guardians. For example the wolves attack the elven and one way to get to the third guardian is to wait until both sides are busy, but I will definitely work level 2, 3, 4 and 5 out and there will be some extra story events!
For example that some walls will just open...

Yes, I think this should improve greatly your already fine campaign.

Just one more point: when using cheat mode (yours, not mine), one can jump directly to Aethenwood scenario, whichever hero is enabled. Since it is designed only for the bowmainden, playing it with a dwarf or a bandit results in really surprising dialogues. Maybe you could forbid access to male characters !

Friendly,

[Heindal]

Yeah, I saw the problems with the tool and fixed that yesterday. I also realized the portalscroll, which now will allow the player teleport back to the position he came from. This should reduce unnecessary ways and highly upgrade the the portalscroll. Unfortunately I can not upload this bugfix, as the game always reports connection errors.

Edit: I had a second end quote in the pbl , I just uploaded the version, all players should now be able to use the features above.

I will upload this as soon as I can and after that I will work on Strange Legacy.

[gooby]

I'd like to help improve the prose in this campaign. For instance, it is very strange to say "seldom" to mean "rare" in English. I understand this is the case in German (and speak German) but a lot this wording seems very strange.

[gooby]

How is the Dwarf supposed to beat level if he can't dive?

I went in and disabled that aspect of DIVE_EVENT for now.

[TheScribe]

How is the Dwarf supposed to beat level if he can't dive?

I went in and disabled that aspect of DIVE_EVENT for now.

There's a way, and it's quite easy. Do you want me to send you a PM with it, or try to figure it out yourself?

[Heindal]

Dear gooby, thanks for playing Five Fates. I already answered your pm.

But in case somebody else is stuck there: here is the solution.

Spoiler:

The dwarf has a pick, that allows him to smash rocks. Those rocks are labeled with "Strange Wall".

Walk your dwarf to the position: x=5 y=18. He will smash the wall there.
(In the code this is displayed by: {BREAK_WALL_EVENT 5 18 wallwaterfall 4 18})

If this wall is smashed, the tide will be lowered in the next move, allowing your units and you to pass the water and reach almost any location of the dungeon!

You can always be sure that there is a way to solve a mission and that I tested it before uploading, sometimes several times .
I have to admit that I don't have a Linux OS, so there might be some unwanted 'linxus related' problems. Feel free to contact me if you have problems with my campaign ad report bugs or questions. I'm always glad to help, even after 11 hours of work.

[Ulfsark]

Damn, I was thinking of making something like this lol. Check out Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup if you have not played it before, it is an awesome Roguelike RPG.

Also I plan on testing this tonight when I finish what I want to on my current campaign.

Looks awesome though!

Edit

Alright I played through the first level and here are my thoughts so far as well as a few grammatical things that I noticed.

Here are a few grammatical errors that I found.

Spoiler:

Found within the bow maiden description that appears after you choose her.

It reads... "beeing able to craft..."
It should just be being.

When you talk to the speaker in the first part of the cave he says
"we are save here"
it should read "we are safe here"

The angel of darkness called my character "he" when my character was female. You could just have them say They instead of he.

The boss of this battle (I forget the name) says "you are ambious" When I think you meant for them to say "you are ambitious"

1.Bow Maiden, I like ranger type characters in games...
2.I only played all the way through the first level and did not encounter any bugs.
3.I like the paths so far, have not played enough to see all of them, however it may seem that just stacking damage increase may be almost too strong? not sure if it caps or not so I may be wrong.
4.Not sure if you have this already but it would be cool to have side quests/bonus missions to get people to join your party. This may be in the game, but it would be cool to have altars where you can offer a little bit of gold in return for a buff/bonus of some sort.
5.Nothing stood out that I did not like so far.
6.I love dungeon crawl games I like the random potions and the tiled traps.

One thing that I recommend is coming up with abbreviations for the stats on gear as it can be annoying to scroll to the right. Just do a 3-4 letter abbreviation like prc for pierce, imp for impact etc. This would make it a lot easier to pick gear. Also you could put an item in the buyer window that lists the abbreviations and what they mean just so it is all within the same window if that makes sense.

Thank you for making awesome content!

[gooby]

How is the Dwarf supposed to beat level if he can't dive?

I went in and disabled that aspect of DIVE_EVENT for now.

There's a way, and it's quite easy. Do you want me to send you a PM with it, or try to figure it out yourself?

nvm I got it.

[gooby]

Regarding grammar and spelling: in English, "elf" is the noun, "elves" is the plural form thereof and "elven" is an adjective.

It is very strange to write "an absurd mirror image of a wood elven", for example.

[TheScribe]

Once again, my save files are corrupt. From turn 59 on.

Also, as the halfvampire there's something that is greatly annoying. If you have the nightstalk ability before you try to attack the final guardian on the first level nothing happens. He won't appear unless he can see you. You can fix that with a torch, but maybe not if you have the darkens ability. You probably should change that to when you move onto certain tiles.

[Heindal]

Thanks gooby - as I said I'm not a native speaker and unfortunately I'm typing very fast. From my experience with publishing its the best (for the author) to reread texts on a print out after a while. That's a little bit difficult as the text is in the middle of code, but an editor with grammar would be great.

I'll search and take out yours and ulfsarks mistakes.

TheScribe: The first guardian should appear when a unit side=1 is stepping on a specific field. If you just teleported there he won't recognize it. Maybe I should make the guardian appear after you defeated his two minions on the map.

Code: Select all

[event]
name=moveto
[filter]
x=14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,16,13,12
y=7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,6,7,7
side=1
[/filter]

A broken save game? My! I thought I solved that already. Have you bought or found a specific item ? If it contains a blank or a ' this might break the save game.


A little information for you about the next update:

I finished coding for:
- convincing and befriend spell, magic barrier spell, lifedrain spell, icestorm spell, different summonings to enchant your weapon (as weapon poison)

future plans:
- transform spell - into a wolf, a bat, a berserker - the code for those transformings already exists (the ship macro)
- I will embedd the new items from Strange Legacy
- weaken and changing armor and shields (shields maybe get a block ability, instead of resistance gain)
- a spell shop in the mainland
- random generated dungeons, but I admit this will give me a hard time of coding

[Heindal]

Uploaded new version 0.24

- new spellform - transformations that allow your character to turn into annother creature, adopted some spells from strange legacy
- new spells: convince, befriend, fear (teleport away a unit), flee (teleport to a random position), lifesteal, combat focus, bless weapon, lifecurse; transform into a: berserker, demon, angel, bear, wolf, dread bat and last but not least into an dangerous and godlike hare; summon spells for all characters as you improve in this path

Spoiler:

These are the spell that have been added for the single characters.

Bandit: combat focus, assassinate, flee, fear (teleport away), berserker aspect, transform into a berserkerhrero, summon bandits
Dwarf: summon thunderer, berserker aspect, transform into a berserkerhero, improved grenate (slows now)
Paladin: weaponblessing, combat focus, summon angel and transform into an angel, summon magic wall
Halfvampire: combat focus, summon skeletons, ghosts, demons and transform into a demon and a dread bat, lifestealing
Bowmaid: befriend (neutral), convince (your side), transform into a bear and a wolf phantom, magic barrier, ranger focus (markmanship)

There might be more - always check summons and spells for available options.

- spellstore in Weldyn
- graphics improvements (mainly icons), updated skilltrees (enhanced readability)
- new mosters: improved the wolfspack faction, bear monster, angel and demon
- bosses drop randomequipment (rings,helmets,amulets,armors,shoes,shields)
- more rings, amulets, shoes and helmets + macro to create them fast
- avoidgiving macro for creating those kind of items, those add defense
- changed shields - these will now give two stats resistance and defense - so they raise your chance to block
- changed armors - they now only will give an overall resistance
- scavenger skill (the bowmaid starts with this skill when played in normal mode) allows to harvest leather and other goods from animals in the dungeon and sell them at the speaker - other characters can learn this spell for a price (except halfvampire).
- changed and improved speaker (less blabla and some more options to get equipment, mercs)

Concerning the broken save games. I now played the game entirely with two different characters (without cheating). It was so existing I even wanted to make some kind of 'halfvampire diaries'. But more important I did not encountered a single broken save game - so be sure to update your version and if you have a broken saved game - please report and attach it, so I have the chance to fix that bug! Its funny how this game changed everytime you are playing. With the bosses droping loot this game should be solveable even as halfvampire.


Uploaded new version 0.241

- repaired the randomencounter
- repaired some graphics
- added the harespell

[Into-Jesus]

'halfvampire diaries'

Heh heh.

One suggestion, make the steam gates in the steamguard level mechanical. As the halfvampire, you can use your drain attack on them. And you can poison them. And you might also want to give the mechanichal trait to all of the steamguards, because some of them didn't. I think it was the fire guards, but I'm not sure.

[Heindal]

Good suggestion, I will do that.