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Post by Boaster on Oct 3, 2019 7:36:33 GMT -6
I no longer have a time-consuming second job, and have therefore been casually playing a few games to get back into the mind of modding the game for the GS5R3.
Also, I no longer have that second income and I also have a COSTLY car repair that has surfaced (to the tune of $3300), which effectively wipes out all of the earnings from that second job that I had set aside. Convenient, isn't it?
So, I will be getting back into modding the game and more active in doing so.
There will be an update coming soon, so it's in the works for minor changes to the mod.
Additionally, I will call upon lovers and appreciators of the LOMSE GS5 series mod to consider making a donation through the website via Paypal. At this time, it kind of is needed, admittedly for my own benefit.
Donations through the website have always come with the benefit of the [GSM] Game Script Manual I wrote a few years back, that teaches people how to mod the game for their own, with an introduction on how to make changes to the game.
Also, there's another way you can show your support is by purchasing the game through the website, via Paypal.
You can purchase both the Special Edition of Lords of Magic (LOMSE), and the original not-so-special edition (LOM) in ISO format. These are complete retail versions of the game, and can be burned directly to a CD.
Community support is appreciated, and is always 100% voluntary and zero percent compulsory.
Thanks for showing your appreciation for the work I have done, for the game I have loved.
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Post by lemminkainen on Oct 5, 2019 14:17:43 GMT -6
Such a great new to see you're working on the game again Boaster! I hope also your real life stuffs will go better. Can't wait to play a newer version of the mod! Here are two lists, a bug report list and a gameplay changes wish list. For both, I offer my help if you need to investigate deeper on bugs, or test changes. It's a small help, but it's the best I can do.
Bug reports:
1) Encounter description texts are sometimes truncated. I saw one in a level 3 fire cave and another in a level 7 chaos multi level encounter.
2) Multi level encounters in hard mode are sometimes ridiculously easy when you go to the second stage (clearly not an intended feature, the second stage is a lot weaker than the first one).
3) Ranged units like archers will sometimes walk towards their target instead of shooting arrows when you order them to attack.
4) In some games, Balkoth and his army will stay at the same place on the map for months.
5) Sometimes mages cannot cast overland spells when they still have plenty of mana. It tends to happen when they have 0 movement point left. Maybe it's a feature?
6) Sometimes the great temple has the wrong encounter level displayed (I don't remember what I meant when I took this note).
7) (already reported) Gloves of quickness are not granting the dexterity they should.
8) The dungeon encounter sprites seem a bit odd in the current version of the mod. The death dungeon uses an earth dungeon sprite. Air and water have the same type of sprite. Also, breweries and crystal mines don't use many different sprites on the map, which is unfortunate since you made many cool sprites available in the editor, why not have them appear on Urak? 9) Some map sprites get modified or disappear totally when using the broader magnifying glasses. I can list them for you if you need.
Gameplay changes wish list:
1) Have everything be able to level up. It doesn't make more sense for a water elemental to level up than for a dragon. Therefore it would be way cooler if everything could level up. Of course it should be balanced. For example, dragons could start level 8 and end up at level 12. I think it would also make water battles with ships more unpredictable and less boring.
2) Have scouting units sight radius increase with levels.
3) Make elephants much stronger. These units are maybe the rarest in the game and whenever I fight them in battles they're as weak as goblins!
4) There's something wrong with balancing the windjammer. I know air shouldn't be the strongest water race but in most water battles this ship is unable to shoot due to very long recuperation time.
5) Make city/temple guards randomized so that I cannot guess 100% right the forces of my enemy in every game.
6) Make villages destructible again BUT allow to rebuild them, so it would make the game more dynamic.
7) Allow to hire units from village without owning the nearby cities? I think this game feels sometimes too empty, and the fact that you can't do anything with a building when you're far from home makes the game emptier.
8) Buff the capital sight radius spell (sorry I can't remember the name). When you reach this spell you already have usually high level troops patrolling everywhere so I think the minor increase in capital sight radius really make this spell useless.
9) Nerf the Grendel encounter a bit. I remember placing a level 3 Grendel encounter and facing an abnormally strong army there. It's okay for a special encounter to be tougher, but I think it is a bit unrealistic for the level. Maybe some other special encounters are worth checking, too.
10) Make cave encounters even more random? They're really great but it would be cool if you had a small risk of facing sometimes only cavalry, only ranged or only infantry, which would create a different battle from facing a mix. Also in lvl 3 cave it's ALWAYS a thief. Why not a warrior or a mage or a creature?
11) Make marauders tougher and more random in hard mode?
12) Prevent marauders from spawning on small islands and get stuck.
13) Allow some form of parley/trade with villages before conquering them.
14) Give krakens and sea serpents a weak ranged attack, so they can be more useful by attacking the land units on the shore? 15) Have lord portraits randomized, so that some games still use the old portraits. I like the new artworks, but I've played this mod so much that I can't remember the old portraits, and I think they looked beautiful, too. 16) Include Keith Zizza's new musics? Please please it would be so great.  Maybe also other musics (Kevin Macleod provides free fantasy musics without copyright if you like them). |
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Post by Boaster on Oct 6, 2019 8:23:42 GMT -6
1) Encounter description texts are sometimes truncated. I saw one in a level 3 fire cave and another in a level 7 chaos multi level encounter. A picture would be good for this. 2) Multi level encounters in hard mode are sometimes ridiculously easy when you go to the second stage (clearly not an intended feature, the second stage is a lot weaker than the first one). Yes, this is something that's been this way for a long time. You will also find that in a Level 1 multi-level encounter, the second half is still a Level 3 encounter. I just never had intentions of really changing it. I suppose this could be addressed. 3) Ranged units like archers will sometimes walk towards their target instead of shooting arrows when you order them to attack. This is something I cannot fix. It's in the game's engine. It happens to me even, and it's annoying. 4) In some games, Balkoth and his army will stay at the same place on the map for months. Not sure what I can do about that specifically. 5) Sometimes mages cannot cast overland spells when they still have plenty of mana. It tends to happen when they have 0 movement point left. Maybe it's a feature? Intended. Mages have to be able to move at least one tile, and not be inside a building/sprite. 6) Sometimes the great temple has the wrong encounter level displayed (I don't remember what I meant when I took this note). Great Temples vary by level. I forget the exact numbers off hand, but on Hard mode, the Temples will be at least Level 6 and otherwise the level they were placed if higher. On easy mode, they will be the level they are placed, but no higher than level 5. I forget how medium was done. 7) (already reported) Gloves of quickness are not granting the dexterity they should. I thought this was addressed. On my end, it was. 8) The dungeon encounter sprites seem a bit odd in the current version of the mod. The death dungeon uses an earth dungeon sprite. Air and water have the same type of sprite. Also, breweries and crystal mines don't use many different sprites on the map, which is unfortunate since you made many cool sprites available in the editor, why not have them appear on Urak? You're talking about automatically generated dungeons? I haven't changed anything to what sprites get used on the overland map. Also, same with the randomly generated army setups for randomly generated dungeons. 9) Some map sprites get modified or disappear totally when using the broader magnifying glasses. I can list them for you if you need. Not really something that I can fix, I don't think. But, feel free to explain further with the sprites affected. 1) Have everything be able to level up. It doesn't make more sense for a water elemental to level up than for a dragon. Therefore it would be way cooler if everything could level up. Of course it should be balanced. For example, dragons could start level 8 and end up at level 12. I think it would also make water battles with ships more unpredictable and less boring. Tier 3 creatures won't be levelers; I have decided that long ago. Also, many creatures that were set to 1 level now do level up. Ogres, Unicorns, Stags, Golems, Wisp. 2) Have scouting units sight radius increase with levels. I considered this at one point. It would be possible to implement, but... I will see. 3) Make elephants much stronger. These units are maybe the rarest in the game and whenever I fight them in battles they're as weak as goblins! Elephants are, among Scout Level tier, one of the most powerful. Their inherent tier is CR4, which is Scout, which I believe it is the strongest. 4) There's something wrong with balancing the windjammer. I know air shouldn't be the strongest water race but in most water battles this ship is unable to shoot due to very long recuperation time. Shoot and Block. They're on-part with Earth's ship as far as attack/hit recovery times. 5) Make city/temple guards randomized so that I cannot guess 100% right the forces of my enemy in every game. I have considered finding a way to make more Guards on the difficulty. 6) Make villages destructible again BUT allow to rebuild them, so it would make the game more dynamic. I'll take a look into this. 7) Allow to hire units from village without owning the nearby cities? I think this game feels sometimes too empty, and the fact that you can't do anything with a building when you're far from home makes the game emptier. You have to own an adjacent city to make the building, and therefore the units from that building. 8) Buff the capital sight radius spell (sorry I can't remember the name). When you reach this spell you already have usually high level troops patrolling everywhere so I think the minor increase in capital sight radius really make this spell useless. I disagree. The sight spell for Capitals turns the capitals into watch towers, basically, which covers the core of a region. 9) Nerf the Grendel encounter a bit. I remember placing a level 3 Grendel encounter and facing an abnormally strong army there. It's okay for a special encounter to be tougher, but I think it is a bit unrealistic for the level. Maybe some other special encounters are worth checking, too. Grendels are tough. And it's in the name, Grendel encounter. It's 1 Grendel and an assortment of scouts, and maybe a Champion. This is a battle of quality instead of a spread. 10) Make cave encounters even more random? They're really great but it would be cool if you had a small risk of facing sometimes only cavalry, only ranged or only infantry, which would create a different battle from facing a mix. Also in lvl 3 cave it's ALWAYS a thief. Why not a warrior or a mage or a creature? Cave encounters are different from other encounters. Just use a variety? Earth caves and earth encounters and earth multi? 11) Make marauders tougher and more random in hard mode? One thing marauders do now, that they didn't use to, is be able to combine forces. 12) Prevent marauders from spawning on small islands and get stuck. Don't know that I can do that. The spawns are random based upon undefeated encounters. 13) Allow some form of parley/trade with villages before conquering them. Marauders don't barter. 14) Give krakens and sea serpents a weak ranged attack, so they can be more useful by attacking the land units on the shore? Sea Serpents do attack land. Krakens used to have a ranged attack, but I felt them more fitting as a bulky solo Water melee unit, specifically for enemy ships. 15) Have lord portraits randomized, so that some games still use the old portraits. I like the new artworks, but I've played this mod so much that I can't remember the old portraits, and I think they looked beautiful, too. You can adjust the Champion Portraits, including Lord Portraits, by right clicking them. 16) Include Keith Zizza's new musics? Please please it would be so great. Maybe also other musics (Kevin Macleod provides free fantasy musics without copyright if you like them). This can be done by the end user, replacing the music in the WAV folder, so long as it's 22050 Hz in PCM Wav format. |
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Post by lemminkainen on Oct 7, 2019 7:17:37 GMT -6
Thank you for this quick answer! Before I run some tests, can you confirm that the latest available version of your mod is "version 3.02.3197"? I want to make sure I'm not using an older version. Glad to work with you on the game. |
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Post by Boaster on Oct 7, 2019 10:53:56 GMT -6
3/15/2018 - Build 3204
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Post by bearbear on Oct 8, 2019 6:47:38 GMT -6
Hi I’m new here, been playing lom on and off for couple of years now. Just started playing with your mod and it’s been bring great fun again. Thank you very much. Just some issues, even after using the steam version, images still occasionally get muddled up. It is abit annoying at times but you get used to it.
but there is another issues that I’m also having, some reason half the spells I researched can’t be used... I don’t understand why. I traded some spells but does that effect it?
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Post by Boaster on Oct 8, 2019 7:02:08 GMT -6
Hi I’m new here, been playing lom on and off for couple of years now. Just started playing with your mod and it’s been bring great fun again. Thank you very much. Just some issues, even after using the steam version, images still occasionally get muddled up. It is abit annoying at times but you get used to it. but there is another issues that I’m also having, some reason half the spells I researched can’t be used... I don’t understand why. I traded some spells but does that effect it? The graphics glitches that happen are mostly unavoidable. There's nothing I can do, that I know of, to correct for these issues. You just have to restart the game to clear things up. What spells have you researched and who is attempting to use them? |
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Post by bearbear on Oct 8, 2019 7:23:59 GMT -6
Hi thanks for the quick reply, ive research the first 3 attack spells for chaos, none of my chaos mage are able to use the chaos random bolt in combat or any attacks spells. i could be missing some spells from earth aswell.
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Post by bearbear on Oct 8, 2019 7:32:09 GMT -6
Nvm I understand the issues now, it’s my fault. Too long havnt play the game, I just check the game again and notice I need to right click to access more spells. Thank you for the mod and helps.
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Post by lemminkainen on Oct 19, 2019 13:50:16 GMT -6
I'm back with some news! I've correctly patched my game. Therefore, I can confirm the gloves of quickness are now working properly. I've run tons of test on the encounter texts being truncated: I could not replicate the bug. I think it was related to an older version, or my game being in French, or whatever, case closed. Most of your explanations regarding balance and game design are very clear and if I don't comment again it means I 100% agree.
Now some sprites observations...
As you can see in this image from Urak turn 1, the sprite for the death dungeon near the fire village looks like small sturdy castles with mushroom heads. This was clearly intended to be the sprite for the earth dungeon. I'm not sure if this mismatch occurred in the original LOMSE or in your mod, but clearly there is (as we can see in the editor) a typical death dungeon sprite looking like a scary skull which never get used by the game in the randomly placed dungeons. Overall, my suggestion is to review one by one every sprite used by the game in these instances to make sure everything looks as smooth as possible, and it might be also an occasion to use newer sprites in these randomly placed dungeons.
Now another sprite problem. In this image, we can see some trees plus some villages sprites. Now let's use the average magnifying glass...
The sprites become totally invisible or (in the case of the water village) change. Note that this happens not only in the editor but also in game, and is not related to the disappearing sprite bug. Now I know you're probably aware of this problem already, but I thought it was more worth trying to fix it, since this level of zoom is pretty accurate otherwise.
Now for points 15) and 16) I think most end users play this game once every other year and won't think about digging for new music or learning you can right click the portrait and realize there were other artworks they never see. So I'm convinced we should incorporate as much variety as we can into this game as long it fits the original theme and as long as it feasible. Portraits, sprites, musics, in my opinion are an easy way to do this.
For the elephants, how possible would it be to make them a non CR4 unit to match them with stronger creatures?
Again for the rest 100% agree. For the anecdote, I tried the windjammer micro and it worked. Also, for the capital sight radius spell I underestimated it because I had a very long sight radius thief nearby.
And finally, still a wish... If you could figure out a way to make the different cavalries more unique. You did such a great job with the ranged attack on the chaos cavalry. If you could find something for water/order, earth/death, life/air it would be great. I lack ideas, though.
How is the modding going? Have a great day.
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Post by Boaster on Oct 20, 2019 6:15:12 GMT -6
Modding is progressing slowly. I've had OT at my FT job.
Car repair came back at $3500, which ate up all my earnings from the second job I had set aside. No one had responded to my "call to the magistrate" which actually was expected, but I hoped at least a couple people would heed the call.
The sprites disappearing likely because they have no variants at that scale level. In the IMP.mpq, you may be able to see certain files that that end their names with *a.imp, *b.imp, *c.imp. Each A B and C sprite set corresponds with the different magnifications. There's combat level, default overland map, and then scaled overland map. I suspect the unused sprites in the IMP.MPQ that I introduced into the game may not have a scaled map variant.
In the case of the Water Village, it appears to not have a proper scaled variant. Similar situation to the Death Watch Tower Level 3 being the sprite of the Chaos Watch Tower level 3.
It would be possible to change the tier of the Elephants. I just don't see a particular call for it. I may seek to include these wild animals to replace scouts in Cave Level encounters.
Also, as far as the text truncation on certain sprite encounter dialogs, I have found that some of the text gets hidden when a Thief is in the party, providing a scout report on the estimated power of the encounters.
As far as champion portrait changes, you're correct in that there's nothing in the game mentioning this can be done. I suppose there could be some in-game dialogs that would provide detailed hints and notes.
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Post by lemminkainen on Oct 21, 2019 12:42:45 GMT -6
Thanks for this quick answer! You could try to explain your need for funding on your Facebook page, there's still a small chance of someone ending up reading you there and helping. Or asking in some of the small LOMSE communities we talked about in the websites topic like Reddit. I hope you'll find time and money... This game is so awesome and so worth updating... These level 12 champions and level 6 units you want to implement will be great fun to play. |
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Post by lemminkainen on Nov 10, 2019 14:33:04 GMT -6
I figured out why cave encounters felt monotonous! There's in fact a huge bug, which I can try to explain. Long ago, you implemented all sorts of randomizations of units in cave encounters. However, the variable you used for champions never works. I'll use the water caves as an example. You wrote the variable:
/THF_GEN[/wathf /fithf /dethf /eathf]0 3 gamerand get def
and some lines later
{THF_GEN dup 3 give_level_exp{}unittypedict THF_GEN get getnewchampionname}
However, for some reason unexplainable by me, the water, death and earth thieves never show. I've tested it extensively. In fact, on every single map, every single game, every single level 3 to 5 cave encounter will yield only one predictable type of thief. Water region always faces fire thieves, life region always faces life thieves, death region always faces life thieves, etc.
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Post by Boaster on Nov 10, 2019 14:50:39 GMT -6
Strange indeed.
I will look into that claim.
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Post by Boaster on Nov 10, 2019 15:04:30 GMT -6
So what I have found thus far is that it only ever seems to pick one because of how the random champion data is setup. The random value is picked in the variable, rather than selected randomly at generating.
I did that to try to avoid having the champion generating a name that didn't belong to it, such as a Life Thief with a Death Thief name.
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Post by lemminkainen on Nov 10, 2019 15:11:59 GMT -6
Yeah I see the problem now. So... One solution would be to come up with a brand new gender neutral name for every encounter every level.  But I'm trying to come up with something more simple and more clever. |
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Post by lemminkainen on Nov 10, 2019 15:30:01 GMT -6
So after thinking a bit, I think the best and quickest solution is to go with the awkward names and always pick the opposing faith name. So yeah, we will sometimes end up with a life thief with a death name, so what? The greatest RPG ever Diablo 2 always spawned awkward names. Besides, the champions we face in encounters will have an opposing faith name which kinda makes sense, as being renegades of their own faith. Most people don't look at names but do notice that the champion is not always the same. |
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Post by Boaster on Nov 10, 2019 16:14:40 GMT -6
I have come up with a practical fix.
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Post by Boaster on Nov 14, 2019 13:47:44 GMT -6
Also, I recall now why the second level of a multi level encounter has set levels of Level 3, 6 or 9.
This appears to be set in the Dungeon Map, located in the maps folder.
If the first floor is set to being level less than or equal to 3, it generates an an "easy" encounter (about level 3).
If the first floor is less than or equal to 5, the encounter is generated to about level 6 or 7.
Otherwise the second floor is generated to about level 10.
This is because of the combat map, the door way is set to a particular "level" and therefore the army spawned on the otherwise is supposed to pull one of three army sets.
I will see if I can try to find a way to circumvent that. Otherwise, the mod would have to include changing and/or adding "combat maps" in addition to everything else (pic.mpq, gs.mpq, etc).
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Post by lemminkainen on Nov 14, 2019 15:48:23 GMT -6
Thank you for all this information. I'm starting to understand the game programming language better and better, I've even introduced my own quick fix to the always-the-same-thief cave encounters! They still have wrong names, though. If I understand correctly, each gs/dungeons/generate file is linked to a .smp file. The .smp file gives various pieces of information like army specifications, tile set and map. However, sometimes the army specifications are in the gs files, sometimes in the smp files, which is weird. And is there even a way to edit .smp files? WinMPQ won't open them. What you're looking for is a way to include all the information in the .gs file without needing to modify the .smp. However, I don't think it's that big of a deal for an end user to just cut and paste files into a folder as long as you explain correctly in the mod download page. |
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