Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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LordMortiferus
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

Post by LordMortiferus »

Went over the map and could not find anything weird - so I guess cropping was the problem. On second thoughts it is better to work with a clean working file instead of fixing something within a corrupted file, anyway.

Edit: Probably found the reason for the crashes. I saw that several undertiles I set before resizing the map are now beyond the map boundary. See bugs thread for screenshot.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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Sometimes something good comes from bad things or was it worse comes from bad things. Anyway, I copy&pasted lvl262 (maptiles and items) to a clean file lvl263. Updated the undertiles within lvl263, deleted lvl262 and renamed lvl263 to lvl263 - et voilà all the items where gone! :fp:
Furniture items are stored within the *.lvl file, BUT my stupid copy&paste script unsets the furniture attribute of said items, which causes the items to be saved within the *.itm file henceforth. Whole problem is that most items in the *.itm file are not locked down in-game and player can pick them up. I guess my apoc scirpt has the same problem.
Bottom line, just had to manually set all the items as furnitures on lvl262.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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Only two things left on my list:
1) finish and clean up scripts
2) add ched's boss
3) script unique tp scrolls that let you to a portal room on the map

..Well 3 things obviously, but have no clue how to do the last and might likely forward that to egg - we'll see.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

Post by 1[WoWz] »

This map is so hyped up in my own mind it's going to be a blast to finally play it soon!
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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1[WoWz] wrote:This map is so hyped up in my own mind it's going to be a blast to finally play it soon!
Thanks 1, I am hyped as well and am sorry I couldn't keep my release date of June. But I am getting somewhere even if it slowed down a bit again. I try to get cheds boss in next.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

Post by LordMortiferus »

Woot animated screenshots:
Image
The shadowmage, as other mobs in ToLS, is able to upgrade certain other mobs upon death. This hopefully results in a more tactical gameplay on the side of the players as they have to decide what they want to attack first.
Killing the mage first results into fighting stronger mobs that will grant more XP and probably better loot.

Have been updating my map today for compatibility with the new btiles20 and added Cheds Titan Boss at the end of the Dungeon. Next are the scripts....
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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LordMortiferus wrote:...added Cheds Titan Boss...
Does it still work as intended? And did you buff it to make it more appropriately strong? :?
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

Post by LordMortiferus »

CHED!!!
Haven't tested it yet to be honest - but it worked back then and should still do so now. From what I remember your script should be able to send a player within an instance to another (where the Will is) and back to the correct map (using m:wis or something) - at least I hope it works that way - otherwise I have to change the designe a tid bit. - actually I wonder if I can scale the mobs within the will-instance according to the difficulty level of the parent map. Beefing the stats is something I will do in the next step though, like adding some lines to scale the boss within an epic or heroic instance.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

Post by Chedich »

It's quite possible it still works, however I seem to remember reading of some updates that made me wonder if they would interfere with the script. Scaling the shadow instance shouldn't be a problem as long as you can read the difficulty of the parent map.

I'll try to catch you on skype.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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Chedich wrote:I'll try to catch you on skype.
I'll try to log in to skype more often when I have the time and do not have to look after the baby. I am Looking forward to it!
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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Kay Ched and I tweaked his Titan script yesterday - and I tried to implement a feature that nearly drove me nuts resulting in an infinite loop crashing the server. Well after a lot of trail and error We figured out what the problem is. Furthermore, I started to clean up my scripts and to tweak stats as well as damage dealt. I am not really good at balancing and wonder if my numbers are any good.
For example is it okay if a special attack of a certain boss monster deals nearly 1k of damage and shall this scale with heroic/epic instance? which would be overkill as the dmg multiplies by 3 and 5, respectively. Keep in mind this attack cannot be blocked, though you will no before hand if the boss uses his special and you could go invis to evade the attack!. What is your opinion on difficulty ? I don't want any cheap deaths but coming up with good balanced numbers ain't easy.

Edit: I made it so that the dmg is 1.1k at normal and 1.9k at epic difficulty - so my Char on Reg would be able to survive the attack using GHS.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

Post by 1[WoWz] »

LordMortiferus wrote:Kay Ched and I tweaked his Titan script yesterday - and I tried to implement a feature that nearly drove me nuts resulting in an infinite loop crashing the server. Well after a lot of trail and error We figured out what the problem is. Furthermore, I started to clean up my scripts and to tweak stats as well as damage dealt. I am not really good at balancing and wonder if my numbers are any good.
For example is it okay if a special attack of a certain boss monster deals nearly 1k of damage and shall this scale with heroic/epic instance? which would be overkill as the dmg multiplies by 3 and 5, respectively. Keep in mind this attack cannot be blocked, though you will no before hand if the boss uses his special and you could go invis to evade the attack!. What is your opinion on difficulty ? I don't want any cheap deaths but coming up with good balanced numbers ain't easy.

Edit: I made it so that the dmg is 1.1k at normal and 1.9k at epic difficulty - so my Char on Reg would be able to survive the attack using GHS.
This kind of damage would be pretty nuts. My level 401 Rogue Priest has around 950 HP so a GHS would be required and even then I would have to be full health to stand a chance of surviving. If there is counterplay like going stealth or using an SL scroll, that makes it cool and interesting. I don't think even a level 450 pure mage could survive a 1.1k hit even with a GHS.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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1[WoWz] wrote: This kind of damage would be pretty nuts. My level 401 Rogue Priest has around 950 HP so a GHS would be required and even then I would have to be full health to stand a chance of surviving. If there is counterplay like going stealth or using an SL scroll, that makes it cool and interesting. I don't think even a level 450 pure mage could survive a 1.1k hit even with a GHS.
I will rethink my approach. At the moment this would force ppl to team up to fight the mob - at least they would need one tank (tank stance is likely in effect in this case as the dmg is dealt directly) - This is either a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it, I guess.
Anyone who would like to audit my code ? XD
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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LordMortiferus wrote:I will rethink my approach. At the moment this would force ppl to team up to fight the mob - at least they would need one tank (tank stance is likely in effect in this case as the dmg is dealt directly) - This is either a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it, I guess.
Anyone who would like to audit my code ? XD
Tank stance would make this idea feasible but the problem is there aren't a whole lot of tanks in EUO. Most of the time that I did Blood Queen was in a group without a tank to be honest. I'd say get the HP from a level 450 mage and make the boss do a little less than that, it's probably around 700 or so if I were to guess. Good luck ironing out the details.

Wish I could help audit the code but I haven't given scripting a go yet.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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Kay I think I have the 4 main bosses finished. Magical dmg is scaled by attacker Int and defender MR:

Code: Select all

local dmg = (math.random(800,1000) + m:get_intel()/10) / (ptr:get_magic_resistance() / 1000)
hurt(m.target_id,dmg,"Atomic Breath")
Where as physical damge scales with attackers xdy (damge dices) and defenders HP (thanks 1):

Code: Select all

local dmg = int_rand(m:get_dmg_dice()*m:get_dmg_sides())+ptr:get_hp_max()*0.25
hurt(ptr.id, dmg, "the shockwave")
Both with some randomness thrown in. Also, in both cases attacks become stronger in an heroic/epic instance and at least in case of the former player MR blocks damage. Attacks still pass tank stance (not sure if I want to change that).
It kinda looks okayish on my spreadsheet using Babycakes and mine stats as references.
Next up are the basic map scripts like normal mob scaler etc und soweiter. And at last a quick quality beta testing on my side so I can forward everything to egg and still have a good concious even if my scripts crash the server.
Last edited by LordMortiferus on Thu Aug 07, 2014 6:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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I put the work for ToLS on hold for the last week to work on a very cool idea by 1. Without telling too much it involves procedural randomly generated maps that has a very unique look to it. I want to thank egg for the load_temp_map() function which I used to create a basic random dungeon, and Rusty for his Farimond dungeon scripts, which I changed for my own needs to add random house structures. I wrote some scripts of my own to make the map visual unique and appealing. Gonna clean up the script and then go back to ToLS.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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I am slowly going over the code I wrote for ToLS.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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Kay I am coming to an end (I think I said that before giving an estimated time for mid of June - well that's not gonna happen) and might be done by mid of August. Just a bit more of bugfixing and balancing - not gonna add anything new from now on.
Anyway, I want to use this moment give my personal view on this map project, especially on a critical note. But first the good, before we come to the bad and the ugly. I am proud of utilising a 2D engine with limited maptile palette to create new environments like an underwater town as well as unique mobs and a hand-full of pop-cultural references. However, I am kinda sad I did not got around to establish some kind of lore for the map though I had it planned. My biggest problem is the map layout - when I started the map I was going for a kinda open world environment. Looking back with more experience, I think this was not a wise choice as a more linear level design is more fitting for a dungeon crawler like EUO. The main problem here is that navigating especially through the forest might be frustrating, if you do not know where to go. I tried to redeem this with a more linear dungeon design that has loops and short cuts in parts of the map I have added more recently.
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

Post by 1[WoWz] »

LordMortiferus wrote:Kay I am coming to an end (I think I said that before giving an estimated time for mid of June - well that's not gonna happen) and might be done by mid of August. Just a bit more of bugfixing and balancing - not gonna add anything new from now on.
Anyway, I want to use this moment give my personal view on this map project, especially on a critical note. But first the good, before we come to the bad and the ugly. I am proud of utilising a 2D engine with limited maptile palette to create new environments like an underwater town as well as unique mobs and a hand-full of pop-cultural references. However, I am kinda sad I did not got around to establish some kind of lore for the map though I had it planned. My biggest problem is the map layout - when I started the map I was going for a kinda open world environment. Looking back with more experience, I think this was not a wise choice as a more linear level design is more fitting for a dungeon crawler like EUO. The main problem here is that navigating especially through the forest might be frustrating, if you do not know where to go. I tried to redeem this with a more linear dungeon design that has loops and short cuts in parts of the map I have added more recently.
I think you might be a little hard on yourself as far as your expectations were compared to where the map ended up. Sure an open world design would be nice, but like you said, it would hard to implement it correctly into EUO. Interesting concept though.

The lore part can be added later imo. Look at how well the stone quests were added into EUO.

I think the map is going to be awesome. Myself and others eagerly await exploring it. :cool:
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Re: Town of Lost Souls - Map DevLog

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thanks 1,
Aside from the lore stuff which is kinda writing down in the cryptic scan I posted a while ago I am really pleased with how the map looks and feels. The non linear open world design is something I would probably not do any more based on my experience from the last years. Well that may not be true as Carnival Carnage will be probably non linear in design, but will give the player better orientation (I hope) as this will not take place in a natural environment. I wanted to reflect on the map based on the experience I gained since I started the map in 2010(?) with this huge development cap in between. And I think it is interesting to see how my personal preference on map design has changed since then.
Anyway, I forgot that I need to script the rewards for killing the end boss (special TP scrolls that lead to a portal room on the map so you can jump to certain points and skip stuff if you want), but here is something cool a 2x2 maptile:
RabbitHole.png
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