Lindor's Mod for Sacred 2 EE development Thread

[Lindor 534]

In this Topic I'll post screenshots and previews for my Alternate Spells module for S2EE. This project started as my personal Inquisitor Rebalance mod, but eventually grew bigger when I became more interested in modding. Goals of this mod are:

• Making every playstyle the game offers you viable for every aspect of the game, wether it's bossfighting, mob fighting, questing etc.
• Making the Character aspects more independent of each other
  • Keeping Summon CAs to summon aspects, spells to magic aspects and weapon CAs to Weapon Aspects
  • Some aspects are getting specifically designed to become either a main combat aspect OR a supporting aspect, but not both. This shoul make secondary aspect Hybrid builds more viable while destroying the possibility but also the need of multi-main-aspect hybrid builds
• Every character gets a teleport spell and at least one protective buff (that is not all-or-nothing)

This is not meant to completely replace Flix's Alternate Spells module, instead I want to offer an alternative playstyle and game feeling.

Before we start one important note: This mod is of course built around Flix's famous S2EE mod. This means that at any moment if he decides that my mod has too much content created by him and not enough content created by me, I'll not upload the mod or take it down.

And now let's start with the first nugget; The inquisitor's Underworld Aspect! This aspect was one of the most confusing and inconsistent aspects of all to me. It has had kinda mediocre damage dealing CAs, summoning CAs, very strong if not broken supporting Cas and it couldn't even decide wether it's blue or green themed. I decided to make this into one of the hybrid-themed aspects: You can decide wether you want it to be your main damaging Aspect or a supporting aspect, but it will never be both. Let's get starting with the first spell:

Dislodged Spirit:

This is the strongest attribute debuffing spell in the game. There is not many changes going on here, the two main changes are that it's now green and it can no longer be modded for area damage.

Spoiler

Inexorable Subjugation:

Again, the beam is now green. It will no longer completely disable an enemy since that was way too strong. Since the aspect is no longer a summoning aspect, it will also no longer create ghost enemies. This change makes me a little bit sad since enslaving your enemies to fight for you fits so well thematically, but there are two very good reasons for this change:

• Since the stats of the ghosts are drawn from enemy ghosts and enemies are naturally way weaker than a player character, balancing this especially for the lategame is an absolute nightmare
• Making this aspect into a summoning aspect would limit the potential of the awesome spells of this aspect

Instead, you can now decide wether you want to mod it for debuffs like decreasing movementspead and more or let it become the hard hit CA of this Aspect.

Spoiler

Now the first exciting news:

New Combat Art: Tormented Souls (Replacing Paralyzing Dread)
The Inquisitor opens a gateway from the depth of death, setting tormented souls free to punish all the living heretics and give them a glimpse for the dark fate awaiting them!

This one is the Dryads entangled vine of the Inquisitor, but without the root effect and with a larger radius. It can either be modified for, again, debuffing the enemies and filling the gap that occurs with the drop of paralyzing dread, or becoming the inquisitors go-to Area of Effect attack, filling the gap that occurs with the drop of Eruptive Desecration. Which was never a very good Area of Effect, but pretty broken when it came to farming items.

The visuals come from an unused Vanilla CA, skeleton root. Flix used this CA in his D2Fallen mod a lot, e.g. as Rathmas divine gift. I retextured it into two different versions (well three, but I already dropped one). Which one do you like more?

Spoiler

Standard:

With blue aura:

New Combat Art: Salvation (replacing Eruptive Desecration)

The Inquisitor fears nothing to reach his goals! He would even breaks his soul from the body, travelling through the underworld to get where he wants to!

This one is the inquisitors teleport CA. Not much inspiration for the mods yet, although I gues it wouldn't be an Inquisitor CA without a damage mod. The visuals come from the retextured zealous doppelganger FX and the Reverse Polarity FX.

Spoiler

Soul Reaver:

Not many changes, but it's green now. The trail of the souls when they're getting catched already were grean with a magenta tail, I tried altering it but I liked the original one more. First I had some blue in the catched souls as well and I liked it more, but unfortunately when lots and lots of souls get catched at once, the overlapping becomes so tight that the game only renders the blue parts which didn't really fit, therefore I decided to make it strictly green.

Spoiler

Lastly a little nugget: since Souls are now thematically green, the souls thingy in general Terus area will now also be green. Additionally, the faces drawn on them looked REALLY bad and unrealistic, like something a two year old would draw. I don't know if you noticed, but if you ever zoomed in, then you'll probably know what I mean. I gave them new faces that are barely noticeable but actually look like a tortured soul. It's like a little easter egg when you zoom in now and not a bad surprise like it was before.

Spoiler

 

Edited July 8, 2022 by Lindor

[gogoblender 3,185]

Quote

This is not meant to completely replace Flix's Alternate Spells module, instead I want to offer an alternative playstyle and game feeling.

Its awesome that you pay homage to the inspiration AND that you've carefully and step-step shown the comparisons.. what's been done and why.. how you shade is different and how it could appeal to a different style.

Oh boy.. modding and style interpretations are limitless

thanks LIndor, this is a lot of work for the fans!

 

gogo

[Lindor 534]

49 minutes ago, gogoblender said:

 

Oh boy.. modding and style interpretations are limitless

 

Oh yes, I think especially after Flix figured out how to mod FX we just like that got huge new field of freedom to play around with It's just a matter of how much time you want to spend exploring the gamefiles.

[Lindor 534]

Hello again Next up I want to finish my thoughts about the Inquisitor. I didn't have much time lately, but I want to go back to modding more again now :D

First of all I believe the most important part about modding is trying to get in the original developers' mind and understanding what they did, what might have been their inspiration and what might have been cut or might not have worked out like originally planned. It's only after one completed the picture that one can try to make an own opinion about parts of the image and either try ro fix it or give it an own personal touch. Changing everything completely like Flix did with his D2Fallen mod is a little bit out of reach for me right now (which is probably a big understatement), although I'm currently working on another mod that if I'm successfull would be quite game changing, but that's a very big if. This is why I first want to explain my thoughts a little bit in this post, if you're more interested into screenshots and actual results, don't worry, they will come later

The way I see the inquisitor is that he's inspired in three different ways, and one of them makes him probably the Lore-Wise most important character. What follows now might spoil some things:

Sacred 2 sets place in the ancaria storyline before Sacred 1. In Sacred 1 if you talk to random NPCs, they sometimes give a hint that way back in time something awful and cataclysm-like happened and as a result the Seraphim lost lots of their power. One can see this e.g. in the Seraphim BFG which is only a temporary buff and doesn't give any Weapon boni in Sacred 1. I mean one could argue that this is because Sacred 1 does not support buffs and weapon summons the way Sacred 2 does, but making this into a lore-based tradeoff is a pretty cool move in my opinion. Now the cataclysm that happened was the Inquisitors shadow path campaign, where after he gained control over the T-Energy he used his new powers to form Ancaria after his mind, throwing the Wastelands, the Dryad Island and even parts of the Garema Jungle into the Underworld to the place where the Souls are bound, probably to create an empire that is nearer to his beloved Ker. Then he vanished, letting the seeds he planted grow, only to come back later and reconquer his underworld empire as described in the books and scrolls of Sacred 1 - that's right, he calls himself Anducar! I got goosebumps the first time I found this out. Now despite that whole story being so epic, there is only (lots of) foreshadowing but I never found any explicit clues. This is was Sacred always has been to me - we have to find things out ourselves starting from the game mechanics all the way up to the lore. I see this as an important part of the game, I think many people are here because after all these years there is still so much stuff to uncover about the two games but I also understand everyone who doesn't like that, who wishes the developers would have given more explicit tutorials for how everything works, sometimes I wish that too and I want to take the opportuniy and thank everybody who contributed to the wiki or helps out in the modding forum. Insert thank you smiley here (couldn't find one)

And this is why I have mixed feelings about S2EE Inquisitors summoning spell, yes it's awesome, a lot of fun playwise and fits perfectly into the lore, but it's also the first explicit piece of information about above story and while probably everybody knows by now, I probably would have been a bit disappointed if I had found it out via this spell. And with mixed I mean mixed, not bad, on the one hand I want to keep it and on the other hand I don't. But after I learned a little bit about modding, it's now possible to have both the spell and not the spell just by creating another mod. This is what I meant with not replacing Flix's alternate spells module, but instead offering an alternative.

Now that's for the first part of inspiration. The other two that make this character for me are quickly explained although not at all less spectacular: there is the name giving and most obvious aspect as the counterpart to the seraphim, a medieval inquisitor, a once spiritual man who fell for - you guessed it - the dark side of the force. Yep, hes's a freakin' Sith Lord! And that concludes it.

 

 

Now that we've gathered my thoughts about him, it would be tempting to sort these three aspects of the character to his three Combat Art Aspects, the Seraphim Countarpart to Inquisition, the Sith Lord to Astute Supremacy and the Anducar to Underworld, but I don't think it's completely like that in Vanilla (but it's close). While Inexorable Subjugation e.g. can be thought of a lore-wise adaptation on how Anducar enslaved his four Subkari, it also reminds me of the force choke. The Doppelganger also doesn't really fit the star wars theme (well at least until episode 8 came out, but I don't want to talk about that) and Mortifying Pillory kinda reminds me of an evil version of the Jedi Mind Trick. The question is: do I want to mix it more or do I want to sort it more?

And then there's also the game mechanic part. I want the Underworld Aspect to get a better Area of Effect that Eruptive Desecration, Astute Supremacy to get a better (additional) Hard-hit than Raving Thrust and then there's also the in my mind failed attempt with the Purifying Chastisment buff. Originally Sacred 1 had a very unique way to build a character, namely WIDD (wounds increase damage dealt). One of the main parts of this playstyle is a modifier that lets you sacrifice your own life with each hit. This won't kill you but it is necessary to get to extremely low life. The second part of that playstyle was not, never, under any circumstances get hit by anything. The BM (battlemage) has e.g. his water form for that, the D11 (dark elf) has the same thing as a set bonus and he has some very strong reflective combat arts, just to give two examples, the probably best known for WIDD character is the dwarf, at least I think so. Since the Inquisitor is a Sith Lord who naturally likes to deflect projectiles, they probably gave him the Reverse Polarity buff and reflection chance on his runes because they saw an opportunity to merge these two things, carrying a very popular and risky playstyle from the first game over to Fallen Angel and fit it perfectly into this sith-lore thingy they had going on, it could have been so beautiful like the teeth of two bearings fitting into each other. Unfortunately there are two very strong reasons that make this impossible which let the inquisitor in my mind become a very quirky and failed character. Firstly you cannot sacrifice your own life in this game. Trying to create such a modifier just led to game crashes (I tried this a lot and in some creative ways, there's no way to do it with my knowledge, this probably can't be done without writing some code or changing some things around in the dll's and I'm not ready for that yet. If anybody is able to do that and wants to help, please let me know) The second reason is that this game is not made for a risky playstyle. If you want to backup your characters, you'd have to do it maunually every time before you start a game session. The survival bonus makes every death feel like a hardcore death. Dying is really bad in this game, so I recommend not to do it

So how do I resolve this mess of thoughts and implement it into my mod? Well let yourself be surprised, I'll post my ideas next. Since I see him as the Seraphim's counterpart, this won't be happening without talking a little bit about my ideas about her as well, so stay curious One last thing, I write about all of this stuff so you can understand the direction on where I want to be going with this mod, but it's the details that I'm always unsure about so I would greatly appreciate any ideas and advices you might have, if I like them and I'm able to dewit then I promise to implement them.

[dimitrius154 614]

1 hour ago, Lindor said:

Trying to create such a modifier just led to game crashes (I tried this a lot and in some creative ways, there's no way to do it with my knowledge, this probably can't be done without writing some code or changing some things around in the dll's and I'm not ready for that yet. If anybody is able to do that and wants to help, please let me know)

Ahem:

 "et_dotdamage_physical", 420, 210, 4, 37 - will damage the caster once per casting 

"et_dotdamage_physical", 420, 210, 4, 41- will damage the caster and friends once per casting.

works for DOT, not working for life-leeching effects, though.

[Lindor 534]

Ok so lets start off with the Astute Supremacy Aspect.
I want this aspect to have two main groups of spells, force spells and lightning spells.

 

New Combat Art: Lightning Shield (replacing Reverse Polarity)

As promised, he gets a protective buff that is not all-or-nothing. I don't want the reflecting projectiles thing to be gone completely, Frenetic Fervor is now getting this as a bonus and modifying option, but it's only projectiles.

Spoiler

Initially I thought of it as a shield that never regenerates and needs to be charged manually with Levin Array. Unfortunately the shield regeneration is globally hardcoded for all shields, just the base regeneration time can be adjusted in balance.txt but that's for all shields. So instead I let the shield regenerate out of combat. It's just a very weak shield and I don't give the inquisitor access to shield lore, the main purpose is that it gives magic armor. It also damages close enemies a little bit. Can be modded to give physical armor, more damage, increase all magic damage or magic damage mitigation, more magic armor, increase range. Maybe I'll replace one of these modifiers with spell intensity. Since the Astute Supremacy Aspect is not thought of as a Hybrid Aspect, I want it so it wouldn't make lots of sense to use this buff in a Weapon damage build, so if I replace something, then it's probably going to be the increase all magic damage modifier. If you want to take the shield to full usage, then you have to mod Levin Array Correctly. Speaking of Which:

Levin Array:
Gold mod Dynamic now gives in-Combat shield Regeneration.

Yep. That's all. I find Levin Array to be one of the best balanced Vanilla spell-CAs. If I doch decide do something here, then I'll decrease the direct damage and increase the built-in dot damage and give it a duration mod to make it more of a stacking CA. The duration would then replace one of the Silver mods.

New Combat Art: (doesn't have a name yet) (replacing Zealous Doppelganger)
This is the promised Hard Hit CA for the Inquisitor. Let's first talk about the Seraphim here: Lore-Wise the Seraphim, which is a cloned Warrior designed by a race of Aliens which the Seraphim refer to as the one true god, which were fighting the dimension travelling Worgarians (the demons of Sacred), fires it's lightning bolts from geo-stationary satellites. Therefore it doesn't make sense if the Seraphims Celestial magic bolt comes from her hands, instead I gave this CA a true lightning bolt look:

Spoiler

Now since the inquisitor is the demon-worshipping counterpart of the Seraphim he can fire his own demonic version of this spell:

Spoiler

Now unfortunately and as you might have noticed, this brakes with Flix's Idea of a consistent color scheme for each Aspect. But I find this better than giving the Seraphim the red one and the Inquisitor the blue. I also don't want to move it to Gruesome Inquisition because Lightning should be AS exclusive. The best I could come up with is recoloring all the other AS spells red. As you might have noticed, the new buff got his visuals from the Temple Guardians Jolting Touch, so that would mean that I would make the Lost Fusion Aspect red as well. I might do that just to see how it looks, but not today. When I've decided on everything I want to do with the Temple Guardian, then I'll come back to this idea. Oh and the spell will probably do half magic, half fire damage, but I've not finally decided yet because I don't want it to synergize with the new Gruesome Inquisition buff which will probably increase fire damage.

That's it with the three Lightning CAs. Now to the Force CAs, Clustering Maelstrom and Raving Thrust:

Well I significantly decreased initial damage and significantly increased level scaling, especially for Raving Thrust. The unfortunate thing is that level scaling is always linear while exponential scaling would be way more fitting here. Raving Thrust became super weak on high levels.

Additionally, Raving Thrust now no longer knocks back, instead it has an on-kill knockout like many of the CAs got in S2EE, e.g. TG's Archimedes Beam. This way Raving thrust can now become way better at synergizing with clustering Maelstrom. Other than that, there is no more changes to these spells.

Now that's it with the Astute Supremacy Aspect, next will come Gruesome Inquisition

[Lindor 534]

49 minutes ago, dimitrius154 said:

Ahem:

 "et_dotdamage_physical", 420, 210, 4, 37 - will damage the caster once per casting 

"et_dotdamage_physical", 420, 210, 4, 41- will damage the caster and friends once per casting.

works for DOT, not working for life-leeching effects, though.

Oh that changes everything, thank you so much <3 I'll test if that can kill the caster, if not then this would be perfect! It's the flags, right? Or was et_dotdamage_physical always self damaging? Oh man, I'm soo excited, I have millions of questions, why didn't I know that before? This is great news!

[Flix 5,162]

5 minutes ago, Lindor said:

It's the flags, right? Or was et_dotdamage_physical always self damaging?

Yeah that final flag determines how the effect is applied.  @dimitrius154 Do you have a master list of the different values for the final spell token parameter, and what they correspond to?

While we're hovering around the topic, there is also "et_sacrifice_health_rel" which is functioning.  This is how the Mist of Miasma suffers damage when you kill his undead minions.

It was also meant for a Kobold "mistake" CA where the Kobold apparently fumbles a bomb or something and blows himself up.  The VFX and SFX are still intact.

[Lindor 534]

28 minutes ago, Lindor said:

Oh that changes everything, thank you so much <3 I'll test if that can kill the caster, if not then this would be perfect! It's the flags, right? Or was et_dotdamage_physical always self damaging? Oh man, I'm soo excited, I have millions of questions, why didn't I know that before? This is great news!

Unfortunately, it can kill the caster. Will test et_sacrifice_health_rel next.

EDIT: Hmm it doesn't do anything. Using Flag 17 = 16 + 1, like in the Boss's CA. Will try using different flags then.

Edited December 19, 2020 by Lindor

[Lindor 534]

17 minutes ago, Lindor said:

Will try using different flags then.

Nope, doesn't do anything. And the flags don't really fit the purpose if it can kill the caster. Maybe I'll find an effect that doesn't do that though, you already said life leeching effects wouldn't work, I'll do some tests on other effects.

Edited December 19, 2020 by Lindor

[Lindor 534]

Well it's pretty late here, I'll continue tomorrow but before I go I wanna leave one of my initial failed and more, lets say creative ideas on how to implement such a thing here. The idea is that if it was possible to apply a deep wound effect or something else that decreases the maximum healthpoints to the caster and with the same spell apply an effect that increases the players max health by the same amount, the effect would be a percentage based life sacrifice that can never kill the caster (since a max health increase wouldn't increase the current health, but a max health decrease also decreases the current health.) Now that I know the correct flag, I can maybe get this work.

[dimitrius154 614]

3 hours ago, Lindor said:

Unfortunately, it can kill the caster

Of course, just like Diablo 2 Paladin Sacrifice can kill the Paladin. There're no such things as being "reckless, but safe", or "a little bit pregnant".

[dimitrius154 614]

4 hours ago, Flix said:

Do you have a master list of the different values for the final spell token parameter, and what they correspond to?

No such thing, since how flags are interpreted depends on specific spellClass function sets(which sometimes overlap).

37 - affects caster only.

41- affects caster and friendly units, generally.

42 - affects hostile units, sometimes buggy.

133 - affects hostile units, sometimes should be used instead of 42 to prevent spectacular glitches.

8 - affects caster once, spellclass-dependent.

9 - affects hostile once, spellclass-dependent.

4 hours ago, Flix said:

"et_sacrifice_health_rel" which is functioning

Some tokens are spellclass specific, some are not tied to bonus types.

4 hours ago, Flix said:

Kobold apparently fumbles a bomb or something and blows himself up. 

It was to be a suicide, accompanied by a little trolling speech, but they've refrained from implementing it.

[Lindor 534]

20 hours ago, Lindor said:

Well it's pretty late here, I'll continue tomorrow but before I go I wanna leave one of my initial failed and more, lets say creative ideas on how to implement such a thing here. The idea is that if it was possible to apply a deep wound effect or something else that decreases the maximum healthpoints to the caster and with the same spell apply an effect that increases the players max health by the same amount, the effect would be a percentage based life sacrifice that can never kill the caster (since a max health increase wouldn't increase the current health, but a max health decrease also decreases the current health.) Now that I know the correct flag, I can maybe get this work.

Btw that doesn't work because unlike in Sacred 1, max. health boni in Sacred 2 do increase the current health. Until me or someone else finds a way to reliably get to and stay on the smallest non zero hit points possible, I'll stick to my plan b then which is removing the damage of enraged players dependency from the inquisitor. It's sad but I think Sacred 2 is not really a game that supports the constantly-being-at-risk-for-being-oneshot-but-doing-insane-damage-as-a-tradeoff-playstyle, especially considering that all the other characters can already do insane amounts of damage without needing to take that risk.

[Lindor 534]

I didn't want to start a new topic for that, but I have a couple of questions considering standard attacks, because I have a couple of ideas about them.

Why doesn't the manaleech animation (the blue stream of the regeneration per hit modifier) get triggered on blowpipe hits? Does it have to do with the no projectile property? And why does the lifeleech animation get triggered then? Also I couldn't find an attack spell in spells.txt for blowpipes, every other ranged weapon does have that, does that also have to do with the no projectile property or am I just blind again? Afaik sounds of attacks come with the FX, so if melee and blowpipe attacks don't have an attack spell, then how is the sound effect triggered?

And one final (and long) question, can I make an attack spell to a characters combat art and by this way make it moddable ingame? Like let me explain: Spells are hardcoded somewhere. But I don't know exactly how it works, I always believed the name of a spell is an important factor. e.g. I think that "he_in_meteor" will always going to be the third spell of the high elfs arrant pyromancer aspect. But I don't know it for sure, it's just a strong assumption, but I have small hopes that I'm wrong here, like probably that eiStateName also has a role to play in that process or something like that. Now the blowpipe e.g. is exclusive to dryads. If the blowpipe had an attack spell, could I make this spell appear somewhere in the dryads capricious hunter aspect and make it moddable? And if that is possible, would a leftclick still trigger it then?

[Flix 5,162]

21 hours ago, Lindor said:

Also I couldn't find an attack spell in spells.txt for blowpipes, every other ranged weapon does have that, does that also have to do with the no projectile property or am I just blind again?

This is correct.  No spell = seems to mean all various properties are hard coded.  D changed this in his latest patch I believe, giving them a spell entry and making them shoot arrows like bows with all the attendant properties.

21 hours ago, Lindor said:

Spells are hardcoded somewhere. But I don't know exactly how it works, I always believed the name of a spell is an important factor. e.g. I think that "he_in_meteor" will always going to be the third spell of the high elfs arrant pyromancer aspect.

The names are hard coded.  But the aspect they belong to, and the order in which they appear, can be changed within the spell entry.  This is how I moved things around in Alternate Spells and Diabo 2 Fallen.

eiStatenames are important for mechanics, and sometimes, spell FX are hardcoded to them.

[Lindor 534]

25 minutes ago, Flix said:

The names are hard coded.  But the aspect they belong to, and the order in which they appear, can be changed within the spell entry.  This is how I moved things around in Alternate Spells and Diabo 2 Fallen.

Oooh you mean in creature.txt right? I totally forgot about that, this is great news, thank you very much! I can't wait to show you what I have in mind

 

@dimitrius154 for the change Flix mentioned in the Addendum, did that involve already heavily altered dll's? I'd probably want to use it if you allow me to, but I'd like to know what else would change then

 

[Flix 5,162]

5 minutes ago, Lindor said:

Oooh you mean in creature.txt right? I totally forgot about that, this is great news, thank you very much! I can't wait to show you what I have in mind

No, not that.  In the spell entry, like so:

aspect = "EA_HE_INFERNO",

sorting_rank = 3,

That's what makes it the third entry in the Pyromancer aspect.  It could just as well be the 1st entry in the Arcania aspect, or even another character's aspect I suppose.

If you move aspects don't forget to also change focus_skill_name and lore_skill_name.

[dimitrius154 614]

6 minutes ago, Lindor said:

 for the change Flix mentioned in the Addendum, did that involve already heavily altered dll's?

That's correct.

6 minutes ago, Lindor said:

I'd probably want to use it if you allow me to

Oh, no problem. Part of what I do is providing a wider space for modifications by alleviating certain hard-coded limitations.

9 minutes ago, Lindor said:

I'd like to know what else would change then

Well, quite a few things. You'll have to wait for the next iteration of the Addendum to get an updated list. 

[Lindor 534]

12 minutes ago, Flix said:

No, not that.  In the spell entry, like so:

aspect = "EA_HE_INFERNO",

sorting_rank = 3,

That's what makes it the third entry in the Pyromancer aspect.  It could just as well be the 1st entry in the Arcania aspect, or even another character's aspect I suppose.

If you move aspects don't forget to also change focus_skill_name and lore_skill_name.

Uhmm, in Germany we have a saying: "Man sieht den Wald vor lauter Bäumen nicht." Don't really know how to translate without it losing the meaning, but that is what happened to me Good I can get help here.

But then I don't really understand why it doesn't interfere with the creature.txt spell entry, like:

Spoiler

mgr.createCreature {
    id = 210,
    itemtype_id = 6,
    name = "SC_Templeguardian",
    behaviour = "Invalid",
    dangerclass = 7,
    groupmaxcount = 1,
    elite_creature_id = 210,
    probabilityforelite = 0.000000,
    rank = 999,
    tenergy_creature_id = 210,
    livesremaining = 0,
    unconscioustime = 5,
    palettebits = "1111111111111111",
    monstertype = 0,
    faction_id = 1,
    modelscale = 1.000000,
    rise_from_ground = 0,
    has_corpse = 1,
    has_soul = 1,
    can_strafe = 0,
    spells = {
        entry0 = { "tw_cc_kampfarm" },
        entry1 = { "tw_cc_todesspiesse" },
        entry2 = { "tw_cc_schoepfungsschlag" },
        entry3 = { "tw_cc_kampfaura" },
        entry4 = { "tw_cc_tkampfschild" },
        entry5 = { "tw_te_projektil" },
        entry6 = { "tw_te_flammenwerfer" },
        entry7 = { "tw_te_archimedisstrahl" },
        entry8 = { "tw_te_tschock" },
        entry9 = { "tw_te_levitieren" },
        entry10 = { "tw_en_mutieren" },
        entry11 = { "tw_en_energienetz" },
        entry12 = { "tw_en_gluthitze" },
        entry13 = { "tw_en_eiseskaelte" },
        entry14 = { "tw_en_schockpulse" },
        entry15 = { "tw_cc_kampfaura_buff" },
    },
}
 

Is that just a leftover again? Or is that a duplicate and not the actual hero?

[dimitrius154 614]

12 minutes ago, Lindor said:

Don't really know how to translate without it losing the meaning, but that is what happened to me

A common saying in several languages, it seems, 'not being able to see the wood behind the trees'.

14 minutes ago, Lindor said:

Or is that a duplicate and not the actual hero?

It's the actual one.

[Lindor 534]

Hey again

I have a couple of things to share again. First of all there's that open question from last time:

On 12/28/2020 at 11:54 PM, Lindor said:

But then I don't really understand why it doesn't interfere with the creature.txt spell entry, like:

  Reveal hidden contents

mgr.createCreature {
    id = 210,
    itemtype_id = 6,
    name = "SC_Templeguardian",
    behaviour = "Invalid",
    dangerclass = 7,
    groupmaxcount = 1,
    elite_creature_id = 210,
    probabilityforelite = 0.000000,
    rank = 999,
    tenergy_creature_id = 210,
    livesremaining = 0,
    unconscioustime = 5,
    palettebits = "1111111111111111",
    monstertype = 0,
    faction_id = 1,
    modelscale = 1.000000,
    rise_from_ground = 0,
    has_corpse = 1,
    has_soul = 1,
    can_strafe = 0,
    spells = {
        entry0 = { "tw_cc_kampfarm" },
        entry1 = { "tw_cc_todesspiesse" },
        entry2 = { "tw_cc_schoepfungsschlag" },
        entry3 = { "tw_cc_kampfaura" },
        entry4 = { "tw_cc_tkampfschild" },
        entry5 = { "tw_te_projektil" },
        entry6 = { "tw_te_flammenwerfer" },
        entry7 = { "tw_te_archimedisstrahl" },
        entry8 = { "tw_te_tschock" },
        entry9 = { "tw_te_levitieren" },
        entry10 = { "tw_en_mutieren" },
        entry11 = { "tw_en_energienetz" },
        entry12 = { "tw_en_gluthitze" },
        entry13 = { "tw_en_eiseskaelte" },
        entry14 = { "tw_en_schockpulse" },
        entry15 = { "tw_cc_kampfaura_buff" },
    },
}
 

Turns out I misinterpreted these entries, they're not there to set the sorting rank or appearance inside the aspects, they're there to set what spells are generally allowed for the hero character. So if you want e.g. seraphims "se_te_schockwelle" spell to become the third spell of the temple guardians t-energy-aspect, you'd have not only to swap the "aspect" and "sorting rank" lines in spells.tx but also give it an entry in said creatures.txt part.

 

Then, I've got some inspiration from all the revived spell FX. The next aspect I want to change is actually the T-Energy aspect of the Temple Guardian. It always bugged me out that it doesn't seem to have to do a lot with T-Energy at all, the closest (and coolest) thing related to T-Energy is the mutation chance of primal mutation, if it weren't for the chickens. There are some pretty cool looking unused T-Energy themed FX, so this is an aspect that I want to completely re-define. The general idea is that all the main damage spells I want to give him are more powerful than most other spells, but only work against T-Energy creatures. So one important goal of a proper T-Energy build would be to get the enemy mutation rate as high as possible. Therefore I played around with the "et-chance-mutate token" a little bit. These are my findings:

1. The token works only with the original primal mutation spellclass, cSpellTwMutieren
2. There's also a chance that it only works on the original spells name, tw_en_mutieren, although I'm not completely sure about that yet
3. It is impossible to mutate multiple enemies with one cast
4. One can still give the spell an Area of Effect effect though:
   • If only one enemy is inside of the Area of Effect range, the spell mutates it normally, also all other effects of the spell apply normally
   • If multiple enemies are inside of the Area of Effect range, the spell won't mutate any of them but all other effects will apply normally
5. The chicken transformation can also transform enemies that are already T-mutated (thanks to dimitrius154 for pointing that out)
6. The chicken transformation chance is unaffected by the T-Energy-creature mutation chance, it's probably hardcoded which is really good since it makes that effect less annoying

So this is really bad, one of my main ideas was to give the Temple Guardian an Area of Effect mutation effect. I have one idea left though, that is giving him a chain mutation spell instead. I don't know exactly how possible that is for spell damage CAs, so I'll maybe have to make them Hybrid CAs which is fine because I have another exciting idea in mind regarding those which I don't want to spoil too much right now.

For the chicken transformation, what I have in mind is to replace all the chickens properties with those a T-Energy-Creature of some kind in creatures.txt, and then create a or maybe even a few new chickens there that would then get the properties of the old chickens and lastly replace all naturally spawning chickens with the new ones I created. I have to do the process for all the chickens because I have no idea which one exactly is the spell tokens chicken (if you know pls let me know)

Lastly, you might be thinking that after these changes the T-Energy Temple Guardian wouldn't have a proper bosskiller then since bosses can't be T-mutated which would not fit to my initial goals:

On 12/7/2020 at 5:20 PM, Lindor said:

Goals of this mod are:

• Making every playstyle the game offers you viable for every aspect of the game, wether it's bossfighting, mob fighting, questing etc.
• Making the Character aspects more independent of each other
  • Keeping Summon CAs to summon aspects, spells to magic aspects and weapon CAs to Weapon Aspects
  • Some aspects are getting specifically designed to become either a main combat aspect OR a supporting aspect, but not both. This should make secondary aspect Hybrid builds more viable while destroying the possibility but also the need of multi-main-aspect hybrid builds
• Every character gets a teleport spell and at least one protective buff (that is not all-or-nothing)

Well, I have some ideas in mind for that, but I haven't decided yet on what I want to do. But I can spoil the idea I like most so far that is making all bosses that aren't T-Energy creatures already T-mutable. Since I can't export .gr2 models, I would simply draw the mutated boss version models and animations from the original ones and then give them a buff that makes their skin look mutated (and therefore also give them 100% debuff resistance to not break the illusion).

That's it for now. It might take me a lot of time since this is much work to do for only one aspect, but in my vision there's just a lot of potential to be uncovered here. And as always, no guarantees, it might very well be possible that I change my mind or find a better way of doing things

[Lindor 534]

Update:

On 1/11/2021 at 10:25 AM, Lindor said:

So this is really bad, one of my main ideas was to give the Temple Guardian an Area of Effect mutation effect. I have one idea left though, that is giving him a chain mutation spell instead.

That didn't work. I tried every multi-hit spellclass eiStateName I know, the primal mutation spellclass just won't accept any attempts on multiple missiles. et_missile_adapt. et_missile_count, et_maxangle_cone, cGarble, cSMDrAngriffsserie, cSMSchlaghagel, all these tokens and eiStateName's are not accepted, at least the multi-missile-part. Only thing that it draws is the sound and et_missile_adapt can sometimes lead to multiple hits but on the same target. If I want that playstyle to work, then it seems that I'd have to make the player mutate every single enemy one-by-one which would become very annoying very soon.

EDIT: oh in case you're wondering, the original idea for a chain attack, et_chance_chain_nr, also doesn't work (I thought it was clear but I didn't explicitly state it).

Edited January 12, 2021 by Lindor

[desm 330]

Hi guys, I wonder, is there a chance that we see different fx for potions?

[Lindor 534]

1 hour ago, desm said:

Hi guys, I wonder, is there a chance that we see different fx for potions?

Hmm the triggering on FX for the potions are hardcoded, at least I can't find a .txt file related to that. If I'd had to guess where I'd say probably somewhere in s2logic.dll. This would mean that I generally can't give potions different effects, I could only alternate the existing one. If the FX had a particle script I could maybe play around with the emitter shape and the colorinterpolator, but after having revived all possible FX I can savely say that if the FX are force-triggerable (which they probably are), then they don't have a particle script. There are only a couple red ones left and none look like the potion effect. There's one (very small) possibilty left though, namely that I find an image somewhere in pak that looks like the potion effect. It's pretty unlikely though.

@dimitrius154Can you maybe figure out the FX name for the potions?