SX RPG ADD ON 4.9.10 - now on 1.10.x Server.

[Mabuse]

Ok, thx for report JB.

I will add a warning for the thunderer in the weapon-specials menu (for the gun), since i think its because it becomes a new weapon when it levels up. so the old one is lost.


i just uploaded a new version, it does not change anything but it hides all the terrain in the map editor
So it would not annoy you if your map editor is cluttered with useless terrains.

so the new version will hide these things. simply forgot to commenting it ot before uploading.


4.7.2r: - fixed access to map editor. the last version simply cluttered the map
editor with useless garbage (new terrains). so it would annoy people.

[Warfall]

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[Mabuse]

Some bugs (i think they are old bugs) appear during this game (another reason for the saved files, you can replay them):

- time to times, when buying a +1 damage, you received a +2 damage. A very nice bug, please don't rush to modify this behavior . Please note that at 4.6.2o release, the bug was: receiving +10 damage when buying +1. This is always happening after turn 60~70, and seem to disappear somewhere between turn 110 and turn 120.

- starting from turn ~130, the cleric was showing number of damages at 220, then at 180, then back at 220.

- another old bug is coming back: no-luck deactivated, or activated, time to times the pre-calculation of a fight is false, and you die with announced 20 HP remaining (turn ~80), and even 70 HP announced (turn 150~160).

- and a new bug: the right-clickable menu of a unit doesn't always display all kind of potion available. Red (if you have one, of course) are always shown, blue time to times, and cyan nearly never. This is confusing because previous release of SXRPG displayed them without error.

thx for report. wil take a look at the shocking bugs (concerning the damage) and see what is up with that. cant explain it right now.
of course it would be annoying if there is really a bug that gives you +10 damage when you buy +1.
at the moment i hope this is just some misunderstanding or otherwise explainable. wil take a look


about no-luck: strange. it ma be that caculator forget to take slow for one strike into account .. or whatever. need to take a look here. but as an conclusion: never trust, and save some HP.
if there is no bug with the hit-percentages, i dont think i can fix it.


about the new bug:
the right click menu has just 7 custom slots. the other may be there, but are not shown.
so there is an order of slots, and the potions are ALWAYS displayed last now, since you can also access them via inventory menu

so for consistancy, i may completely disable the extra-right click slost for potions, and make them availabale via inventory only.

there are now probems since there were more other slots added. rogue mages have now heal spell, attack-spell has the "new attack" option, and clerics have "divine healing" also. these slots have always priority since the potions can be accesed vis inventory as said.

for consistency, potions will be only available via inventory in future

[roidanton]

Hi Mabuse,

one more time, the warmest congratulation for the new 'Temple of Bones'. Undoubtedly the most enjoyable map you have ever released.

I like very much how many customizations of units allow to pass the mandatory killing of the first king and pass the first 70~80 turns. Usually at this point you're in the full north/west cave (shop on hex. 3,42), but at this same point, only very few customizations allow to continue with some chance of success The fact that initial customizations and "final" customizations (allowing you to eventually win the game) are rather contradictory is a nice challenge to manage, the whole thing being a pure delight.

Hi Warfall,

Well, I think there are a ton of upgrades that help you a lot early on, but are not so good anymore later in the game. The key to winning this on expert (highest difficulty) with a few units - or even a single unit - is really planning ahead, knowing where you want your unit to be in the endgame and choosing upgrade accordingly.

For instance, skirmisher is a nice ability that will help you a lot early on - but you'll eventually get a skirmisher cloak and that ability point can often be better spent on other things.

Adding a weapon special such as rage or bersek to a speciality weapon is another example. Let me give you an example (this is actually from my ToB solo victory): suppose you have three weapons as warrior, melee-fire and melee-impact, both with raged-slows and melee-cold magical. Now you're facing an enemy with 40% fire and impact resistance, but only 20% cold and you have some 500 gold. Should you add rage to the cold weapon? While it would certainly help you a lot at this moment against this particular boss, upgrading this weapon can severely hurt you in the endgame - where all bosses have such high resistances that the difference doesn't matter so much anymore - because the gold could have been spent much better on damage.

Regarding your work on balancing the whole games, currently 'Temple of Bones' release 4.6.2.o is defeated with 4 standard sxrpg units (the "enhanced at start" version of units), rather "easily" (well, not that much easily ), but the number of turns is impressive: over 170! Please note that this is nearly impossible (the fact is i can't succeed it until now) with 2 units, or stated otherwise with 2 units: if you can't kill the king ('Adjucator of Chaos' on hex. 8,1) before turn 120~130, the spreaded moving bosses become so strong that you can't anymore being in "king attacking" strategy, and then you loose the game. And killing the king on hex. 34,1 (the 'Gorgon Sorceress') before the one on hex. 8,1 is a sure way to loose the game. I had also noted that the simple units spreaded by the final king on hex 86,2 , are becoming really powerful (especially there HP, there weapons are manageable) starting turn 150~160, rendering them impossible to kill in one pass, and obviously making the "king attacking" strategy very hard for the last king.

Do you mean the "SX RPG (max)" era with "enhanced at start"? I actually don't like that very much - especially when playing with just one or two units on Expert. The problem is that you use two level-up healings and the first AMLA will also come later. You'd have to carry two red potions - and then also need a backpack to carry those that you find on the way.

If you kill the Gorgon Sorceress first, the temple door opens and strong creeps come from the outside, is that what you mean by losing the game?

A little list of moving bosses (or simple units) that i found are terrible to deal with (whatever is your unit customization):

I had a quick look at your save files and I immediately see why you have such problems killing those two units. Did you actually win this on expert? That's pretty impressive with those units! I would have considered your initial setup as being impossible to win with. I'll comment in that other thread.

[roidanton]

About the thunderer's weapon, same thing also happened in the old version whenever a unit got another weapon during its advancement path - happens with a lot of other units as well, such as Silver Mage or Paladin.

Did I really just read "magical rage slow"? That'd be awesome!

I also have a few minor suggestions, nothing major just some stuff that I think would make this even more fun to play:

* "buy and drink" cyan potion in the shop - saves you some mouse-clicks, would also help if your backpack is already full.
* "restore full movement" in the shop - can set price to the equivalent of whatever number of cyan potions it would take - this would just be a lot more convenient than buying and drinking two cyan potions, especially when your pack is already quite full, so you'd have to enter shop, buy one, leave shop, drink, enter shop again, buy another one, leave shop, drink.
* cauldrons could probably automatically restore full movement - you'd get that anyways by jumping onto cauldron multiple times, would just make it more convenient.
* for hit&run: "full stamina run" when having less than 5 moves, running two or three hexes is really very inconvenient.

Speaking of hit&run, how about some option - for very, very high stamina costs, of course - to override movement costs and slows, for ranged units possibly also override ZoC? That could avoid a ranged unit getting trapped and killed by bersekers - not sure whether that wouldn't make them too powerful, though.

[Warfall]

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[Warfall]

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[vultraz]

Mabuse: awhile back I suggested you put SXRPG on UMC-Dev in order so we could help do some cleanup with it. However, since Wesnoth moved to GitHub, all the major projects on UMC-Dev have also moved to GitHub, so UMC-Dev is basically dead now. Just wondering if you had still intended to put SX on UMC-Dev, and if you were, perhaps you could consider putting it on GitHub instead.

[Mabuse]

Hello Vultraz,

yes you suggested that before and basically i dont mind doing that - beside i dont know anything about that.
In fact it sounds helpful.
the problem is that im too lazy figuring out all that stuff and do something else instead.



and about the other stuff:

- its obvious that the new map will take a while
i have started with it, but not much is done. even possible that i start a new one.
the concept is also not fully developed, but i started gathering stuff and i guess it will get (a bit) bigger than initially planned.

- well, the items are 45% done.

- other changes according to suggested things and also what i have in mind will be also implemented.


i guess there will be first a release with the items-drops and balance changes before the new map will be finished.

[Mabuse]

And i also play with these thoughts --

to increase replayability of the already existing maps a bit and also to prevent player from over-preparing against "supposed" to be unknown enemies (or in case the enemies are known: that they are always good for a nasty surprise), there will be some kind of randomization added to the already maps. or better said the enemy leaders. there may be more than one version of them in future with different abilities and attacks which is selected randomly. maybe i even give some "spells" or "unususal attacks" to them.



EDIT:

And ... of course a port to 1.11 / 1.12 will happen. im aware of some things that need to get changed, also some ai-changes (protect location and related stuff). but traditionally i dont bother porting unless the stable version is out

[Warfall]

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[jb]

to increase replayability of the already existing maps a bit and also to prevent player from over-preparing against "supposed" to be unknown enemies (or in case the enemies are known: that they are always good for a nasty surprise), there will be some kind of randomization added to the already maps.

I think this is an excellent idea.


Since you've changed the HP values I've noticed much faster calculation time. It's not perfect, but it makes the game much more playable now. However, the downside is that the game balance has swung too much. Games seem too easy now. I know balancing is a process, and I'd need to play more games before I could identify any specific changes.

cheers,
jb

[Dugi]

I don't know much about SurvivalExtreme, so pardon me if I am talking about something too unrelated.

When speaking about randomness to increase replayability, maybe blocking some paths randomly (maybe every more important path with 25% probability) at the beginning of every game should allow to relatively easily create a dungeon with millions of possible small variations. I can't say how much negatively it will affect the scenario design.

And I think that you might run to a problem with multiplayer random seeds, if something is randomly chosen at the beginning of a multiplayer scenario, it won't be very random (I think I read somewhere that there are only four possible initial random seeds). It can be worked around by using time stamp modulo something instead of usual WML random (but it'll need lua's wesnoth.synchronize_choice to avoid OoS).

[Mabuse]

thx for the feedback.

things may become also a bit easier, along with the new inventions that has been made.
(rage addable, clerics have new spells, better spell effects, new specials for ranged units, hit and run for warriors ...)

also you guys are freakin' experts ... what do you think - if you will not be able to beat expert difficulty who will be able then?

what is included:
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anyways, the new version already features slightly toned down gold for less-then-5-player-starts.
(and cauldrons replenish moves to maximum instantly - a real relief compared to the sh*t that you have to do in the actual version - thanks for the suggestion)

what may happen:
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difficulty can be adjusted, simply by cutting the money that creeps give down by just 1 gold.
this can delay player develoment a bit. i think this is needed since the inventions (which are fun to play, but help saving money) made the players stronger.

i already think about it also to compensate the effects of the LOOT.
and since loot is fun, i also think about giving normal creeps some loot (just 1-4 gold coins), for 10% drop chance per player in game. (this will be never enough to compensate the change that a creep gives 1 gold LESS to every player. if 5 creeps are killed that means every player gets 5 gold less. if 3 creeps (60% of 5) drop 4 gold each, then 3 players get 4 coins, but in fact only 50% of the creeps drop coins in a 5 player game, and only 10% drop chance in a single player game. bla.)


nightmare difficulty:
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(that having in mind, there always a chance that i may add a "nightmare" difficulty that isnt supposed to be playable at all , or lets say "barely playable", cutting down creep money by 2 can very well do the trick. and voila': here is nightmare.) so its not really dificult to make the game overall a tad harder.
also creeps may be a tad harder.

TO DO:
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so randomization of bosses and leaders. and cave-critters, and other critters.
NOTED.

also the old maps, cantar, evil dad, wizard of war II - will be overworked.

- cantar annoyed me since it is so easy, but was kept to be an easy starter map.
but its so easy, its almost lame and boring.

- evil dead can be more elaborated.

-wizard of war II should be harder and better thought over. temple of bones set new standards here.
also the enemies annoy me. some units (enemies) will change.


randomized maps:
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@dugi:
the idea of creating different paths by blocking/opening things randomly is interesting and of course also a possibility. (for cave exploring for example). i like the idea.


next week i have 5 free days. yay.
and i know im kinda sluggish - but rl is really annoying me.

[Mabuse]

Well, just wanted to drop in and say that quite some work has been made.

progress is good so far.
Items almost completed, of course there are still some balance things to consider.
Cantar map overworked. added some enemies and a twist in the tale.
i could imagine it as a good starter map -

more work to go. evil dead needs an overhaul as well as wizard of war.
then release.

boss randomization still not implemented.