Dungeon Adventure MOD MOD

[seZereth]

cool stuff going on here!

FOR TRANSPARENCY:

in the alphachannel settings (click on flags) of your texture, in nif scope choose:
enable testing
testfunction: greater_or_equal
no sorter: no
test threshold: 64

 

[mtagge]

Seriously, though, I'd appreciate some feedback from the forum dwellers on this: when is the appropriate time to release a work in progress?

I would say it depends on how much "help" you want and your programming style. Release it early and people like Xienwolf, Vehem, PL, and myself will mess around with python, XML, and suggest lots of add-ons while you are working on other things yourself (which might add a little stress to something that should be an enjoyable process).

 

[Arctem]

I would say release, at least, a limited beta to a few people once they'll actually have something to do (a few techs, basic system working, etc.) helping you find bugs as you go along, so you won't have to waste time playing over and over to find every bug, and can focus on programming (and squishing the bugs the beta testers find).

Also, could you give us even a vague estimate as to when it might be playable?

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Graphics: sometimes messing around with the alwaysvisible tag can help. Also, make sure that what you think is transparent really is -- I know that sometimes I think that I am rendering a transparent texture and it doesn't quite work out that way. It has to do with alpha channels and other things that I do not understand. (Seriously, I am like monkey with a hammer when it comes to modding...) Also, I have noticed that, for really complex layered textures, like fog and water, there is a "xxx_planes" file in the misc folder for the XML. I'm not totally sure, but I suspect that this file controls the vertical offset for painting the various texture files. That is what give it a deep, complex layered texture effect. I suspect that this is also why the shadows on some terrain features, like the ancient towers, have a jitter effect when you move around -- the shadow is painted too close to the terrain plane, and you end up with a sort of moire effect.

Boulders and trees: These items look great! For the time being, I am focussing solely on "indoor" dungeony stuff -- I may eventually expand to outdoors but that is several versions off. But those boulders are super. I am already getting ideas for cave-ins and whatnot!

The rat: I am still having it crash on me when I try to access it in SceneViewer. For the time being, I am still using my roaring reskinned panthers.

Other improvements: You know, I could really use some ornamental stuff like braziers, torches on floor stands (not wall brackets), potted plants, small statues and the like. Maybe a weapons rack. Tables and chairs. You know, stuff you'd find in a dungeon! One of my grand plans has to do with converting one of the tree flavors into carpeting (we'll see if that ever happens!).

Ok thats cool, ill have a shot at some ornamental features. ill use other games for inspiration . ill also look at making bigger boulders and maybe rubble

FOR TRANSPARENCY:

in the alphachannel settings (click on flags) of your texture, in nif scope choose:
enable testing
testfunction: greater_or_equal
no sorter: no
test threshold: 64

hmmm i had a peak in nifSkope, and cant find any button that mentions alphachannel settings or flags i may be suffering domsetic blindness again, but could you give us a hint on where those are?

EDIT: never mind, i found it thanks seZ

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

i just had an idea for a Dungeon adventure scenario: the escape of Garrim Gir from Perpentachs palace.

you would have one unit, Garrim Gir, and no base. you would start off in your cell with the muddy hole, viper, key and that other nasty beasty, and would have to retreave the key to get out. once out you must negotiate the labarynt h that is the belseraph palace nad escape before perpentach changes his mind

you could have all sorts of campaigns based off the leaders backstories...

 

[Vehem]

i just had an idea for a Dungeon adventure scenario: the escape of Garrim Gir from Perpentachs palace.

you would have one unit, Garrim Gir, and no base. you would start off in your cell with the muddy hole, viper, key and that other nasty beasty, and would have to retreave the key to get out. once out you must negotiate the labarynt h that is the belseraph palace nad escape before perpentach changes his mind

you could have all sorts of campaigns based off the leaders backstories...

That does sound excellent. Just the thought of "Perpentach's Dungeon" - perfect location for the truly evil GM to devise all manner of insane trappery.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

the trouble is we would have to remake all the terrain to follow the deranged clown look

 

[xienwolf]

Actually it could be worth looking into using the ERA settings for just that. Set up textures for all of the terrain so that you can have various dungeons with different layouts/appeals to them somewhat readily.

 

[Lutefisk Mafia]

Actually it could be worth looking into using the ERA settings for just that. Set up textures for all of the terrain so that you can have various dungeons with different layouts/appeals to them somewhat readily.

That is an excellent idea, especially since it looks like I will not be using ERAs for religion-specific music like FfH2 does. But probably too ambitious to tackle in the first release.

What I would REALLY like to dig into are the arrays or whatever the mini database things are called in python. For example, Final Frontier uses a "list" of starbases to facilitate the "starbases make culture zones" function. Naturally, this list has entries added to it and subtracted from it as the game proceeds. The python code also processes this list in a variety of ways to get the functionality out of it that the culture mechanism needs.

I have a gut feeling that this system could hacked to make map switches possible. Essentially, you would put an entire map, along with unit infos, etc., into this array. (Is this what savegames are anyway? Mostly a tile by tile record of terrains and "stuff" on a given tile?)

So, you could have an alternate map in a preset array, waiting to be called up. Upon a certain event or trigger, the python could read all of the information on the current play map, write it to a new array, save it, then call up the alt array, read the info in it, and overwrite the current map with the new info. Yes, it would take a long time to process this, especially on big maps. But in a sense, it isn't a huge step away from what armageddon blight already does -- a reprocessing of the entire map.

I don't have the skills to tackle this one yet. Someone who is comfortable in python and know how these arrays work could probably make this happen.

And how cool would that be? For starters, it could mean a real D&D type campaign with indoor and outdoor maps -- each map stored in a separate array!

 

[Lutefisk Mafia]

Ouch. My hands hurt. I aerated my lawn today and forgot to wear gloves. (Blisters!) I am also tired -- pushing that huge, heavy machine around and raising and lowering the set-off wheels is harder than it looks. Basically, I have now reminded myself why most people pay someone else to do this.

But enough whining. I did actually accomplish something on the mod mod.

First, I confirmed that noise units were the way to go for doors. I switched over to a converted "birdscatter" system tied to the feature -- and it did not work well. Without changing the DLL (something I am unwilling to do at this point), the "birdscatter" effect will not work on doors that are within cultural boundaries. It also causes frequent mystery door slams. I wasn't able to track down that particular error but, suffice it to say, I am sticking with the noise unit system!

But it was nice to try... and reminded me of an idea to convert the birds into bats.

I fiddled with the DDS file associated with the "flock" NIF until I got the birds to look bat-like. Then I substituted a batty sound for the birdscatter sound.
Here is a video clip of the the in-game result:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmx_ygFFpl4

Gotta love bats!

Although you can't see it well in this low-res clip, you can sort of see the new fog effect in action, too.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

NICE! you continue to amaze me lutefisk

 

[woodelf]

Great little teaser vids. I love them.

 

[Lutefisk Mafia]

Tonight I tried to delete out the alignment functions. Since these are tied into the DLL (argg!) I just figured out a work-around instead. I removed the mention of alignment from the main screen display (it doesn't show up next to the player name now). I all changed the global defines so that the diplomatic modifiers between different alignments are all zeroed out.

I am doing this because I handle alignment choices through civics. Later on, I'll chase down other mentions of the old alignment system but, for now, at least it is partly cleaned up.

I also tried out a few new terrain textures to replace the old stone block floor. Most of them were really bad! The only one that turned out sort of okay was a texture that made the floor look like open metal grating over a black pit. Like I said, sort of okay. It looked fine, I'm just not sure how much it would actually get used.

I also tried to transplant Rhye's marsh terrain, thinking I could make it look like muck. Didn't work! His system uses a terrain, a terrain feature, and an improvement to acheive the effect. Too intensive for my mod. It also doesn't look like you can easily add marshes in the WB with Rhye's system so... back to the drawing board.

I'll probably work to make a bare stone cave floor texture, but making it match the color of the dungeon walls is proving to be difficult!

Oh well, not every day can be a productive one, I guess.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

you should use vehems marsh and wetlands, theyre a HUGE improvement over rhyes marsh. i personally think rhyes marsh is complete *expletive*

 

[Vehem]

you should use vehems marsh and wetlands, theyre a HUGE improvement over rhyes marsh. i personally think rhyes marsh is complete *expletive*

Heh - mine are Rhyes, with a bit of reworking...

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

hahaha a bit of reworking. understatement much?

nah, its not so much the graphics (though those are much improved), but the fact its so much easyer to use, ie, it dosnt use a resource, terrain AND feature.

 

[Demus]

his isn't impassable up to a certain tech though, rhye's is.

 

[loocas]

you could have all sorts of campaigns based off the leaders backstories...

such as Donal escaping Hell, maybe?

or an Overlords-induced nightmare scenario, Unknown-Kadath style?

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

such as Donal escaping Hell, maybe?

or an Overlords-induced nightmare scenario, Unknown-Kadath style?

yeah! and the ultimate one: the quest to rebuild the godslayer... dun dun DUNNNNN

 

[Lutefisk Mafia]

The way this mod is evolving, it will be pretty open ended: lots of cool toys to play with and units with which to populate a Dungeon. I am hoping to allow for flexibility in designing dungeons, rather than locking people into a single scheme. This is really modelled after games like NWN, which made fan designed dungeons easy to do. In my opinion, the things that fans design with readily available tools often surpass the original game. Well, duh... case in point: FfH2!

And this is very much an evolutionary process. I started originally by playing around with terrain textures -- the first significant acheivement was the dungeon walls. After that, I dabbled with some new units and tried to make some new spell effects. after a bit of this I realized, "Hey! This could be a mod!"

I have also made a decision about the civs. I will pare things down to just a few playable choices for the first release -- perhaps even just one playable civ. A fairly generic "we can become anything" type of civ that will allow for the player to pursue his or her choice of tech path and playing style without the burden of a previously established backstory or lore.

The barbs will be in, of course, as generic nasties. But I will try to include a few thematic civs (that will not be playable) to help populate The Dungeon with some more challenging opposition. For starters, I am thinking a demi-humans tribe (orcs and goblins, etc., much like the Horde), Drow (svartalfar, more or less), some flavor of Dwarves, an Undead civ, and perhaps a few other surprises.

But this weekend, assuming I can get some free time to code, I hope to tackle my first draft on the new tech tree. This is a much bigger job than just whipping up new techs, of course. I also have to go through all of the other XML and python files and remove instances and dependencies that contain the old, discarded techs. Blechh.

But a bit about the tech tree:

There will be five main roots, that branch into higher and more specialized tech, with the usual cross-overs and alternative research paths. The main roots are: Combat, Stealth, Magic, Dungeon Lore, and Leadership (although the name of this last one may change).

Combat deals with developing more powerful and effective units adapted to the type of close-quarters fighting experienced in the environment of The Dungeon.

Stealth deals with improving sneaky type skills like lock picking, hiding, and finding hidden objects.

Magic will be a departure from the system used in FfH2. "Surface dweller" magic doesn't work very well in the environs of The Dungeon. Accordingly, its denizens have developed a system of magic more attuned to the unique conditions of The Dungeon. Low level magics are available to all magic-users, but higher levels are organized according to Schools. The player must choose a School carefully. Once a particular School path is chosen, other paths get closed off! Also, the highest level magics require more than just knowledge of the spell: these spells need material components that are consumed in casting the spell. Accordingly, the player must learn to carefully manage rare resources and use them to the best effect.

Dungeon Lore covers exploration (better spelunking), ecology (learning to identify and use the flora, fauna, and mineral resources of The Dungeon), and construction (how to demolish and build things like doors and passageways).

Finally, Leadership covers a range of things like diplomacy, trade with the surface world, and attracting new party members and henchmen.

If I can come out of this weekend with a tech tree that has one single tech -- and it doesn't crash the game when I start the mod -- I will count it as good progress!