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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 26-Jul-11, 13:46:58 | ||||
| It is official -- project is dead. I have been informed of several engine limits that can not be overcome nor worked around. Two such limits include the inability to have Area tiles any smaller than 10x10 meters; and the inability to draw a map that is bigger than 32x32 tiles, regardless of tile size. In any case a map greater than 16x16 and mildly populated [with objects] is going to take a fair amount of time to load for play. A map of 32x32 (or bigger) and populated with the amount of objects I was planning to adopt would have dead-locked the game or outright crashed it upon loading. Some things just can not be done -- Bunnies can not fly. But some others can -- I will have an apple pie. -fox |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 24-Jul-11, 17:56:11 | ||||
| Hm. Looks like I talked too soon. Already I am paused by a problem. I thought it was easy to solve, but looks like I have hit the usual wall: hard-coding. I asked for help on the NWN forums -- awaiting a response. Since custom content is not really my field, there is chance I just ignore how to do this particular thing. But if it is hardcoded as I fear, it marks the premature end of the project. -fox |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 23-Jul-11, 17:34:53 | ||||
| Alright :-) If I will have questions for you I will not hesitate to ask (probably by e-mail). And do not think that the fact you are not a modder is going to "save" you. All the contary -- Your mind is free from the NWN constraints I am aware of. Which makes you able to spark some bright solution to nasty problems. If only you believed in it, that is... Meanwhile I will concentrate on getting some of the base mechanics up and running. The ideas are simple, but they require lots of data edits. It will take a while before I start seeing on my screen something "coherent". After that, I will contact Exlend and squeeze off him all the knowledge on internal ROM2 mechanics he may possess. -fox |
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Author: NOVA (KINGKOTA666 [at] HOTMAIL [dot] COM) | |||
| Date: 22-Jul-11, 20:10:57 | ||||
| I doubt anyone who knows you would ever claim (with any seriousness) that you lack the skills to make good on NWN projects. And I don't know about OTHER people not using Fox Spells. I HAVE used it for quite some time. Fox Spells is integral to the version of Rhun which I hosted for quite a while (and still occasionally host). You were the one who personally inserted the system into that module for me. As to your 2nd point, I would be more than happy to assist in any way I can with your ROM2 project. My only point was that I considered that your valuable time and skills could be better spent on more worthy projects. ROM2 had it's time, but I think it's dead now (and probably deserves to stay that way). But that last statement is just one man's opinion (mine). I can't claim to know any of the inner workings of the ROM2 game code or algorithms (Exlend would be the ideal person to assist with that), but I do know quite a bit about the game play. That and an abundance of opinions (some good most probably bad) is what I can bring to the table. -NOVA |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 22-Jul-11, 17:33:17 | ||||
| -------------------------------------------------- NOVA said: << I think all your efforts would be much better spent trying to improve upon the multitude of flaws which exist in NWN. >> -------------------------------------------------- Aah, I have a long rant in answer to that. But rants take people nowhere. Thus, I will give you the rant-less (and shorter) answer: I tried that already. With fox_spells. As it turns out, all my hard work is not appreciated. And I spent 4 years on it. Nobody can claim I lack the will to get the stuff done. But I am done with fox spells. Until I decide otherwise, at least. Since people are not using it there is no point I slave on it. Makes sense. Instead... -------------------------------------------------- I want to try something new and different. ROM2 is a fun game. I think. But it is unbalanced in some aspects. I can not correct it. But I can remake it, and correct said remake. And the NWN engine is actually quite compatible with ROM2 mechanics. In fact it has in it all the base ROM2 mechanics. I just need to cull the excess D&D stuff. I have setup a schedule for the project already. Hm. In truth I was hoping you would help me, NOVA. I understand you have played ROM2 for many years. And you have worked with many maps and servers and players. You must have acquired vast knowledge of the game. I could use it. But I gather from your words that you do not wish to help me. -fox |
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Author: NOVA (KINGKOTA666 [at] HOTMAIL [dot] COM) | |||
| Date: 22-Jul-11, 02:48:33 | ||||
| I have only ONE question.... Why would you bother bastardizing the NWN game engine in order to replicate a dog shit game system like ROM2? Personally, I think all your efforts would be much better spent trying to improve upon the multitude of flaws which exist in NWN. |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 21-Jul-11, 19:44:46 | ||||
| Gosh -- Today I got nothing better to do. I guess it shows, eh? Good for thinking. And thinking is good for the brain. Keeps it young and brilliant. See? When you have "nothing better to do" it is not necessarily a bad thing. My logic is flawless. Back to my NWN2ROM2 ideas. Back to the "Combat" aspect of it: The limit of max +60 attack bonus is not a problem anymore. I thought about it. Bear with me. In ROM2 your character attacks the enemy. The enemy is always "hit". At that point the game will decide if the hit has produced damage or not. This mechanism is so simple that we can do exactly the same in NWN. For all characters we will keep the AC value sufficiently low. At the same time we will keep the Attack Bonus value sufficiently high, so to guarantee that the target AC is always exceeded (that is: a "hit" is scored at every attempt). There is only one problem with this. The unlucky roll of 1, also known as the Critical Failure. According to D&D, when your attack roll is 1 you shall miss the target, regardless of your attack bonus and the target AC value. It is no real problem. 1 out of 20 is 5% chances. I say it is sufficiently small to be ignorable. And it will apply to monsters too anyway -- things are even. Alright this covers the aspect of "always hitting the target". What about the actual damage? Weapons will cause no physical damage. In point of fact no weapon shall directly cause any damage to anything. Damage shall be indirect, instead. That is, all weapons shall run a script to determine if damage (and how much) is to be dealt to the struck target. As for the Attack and Defense values of a creature, these will be two numbers I will keep in memory. Being them disjoint from the NWN combat system they will obety any-my-rule I implement. And that is how we ditch the NWN hardcoded combat system, and introduce the ROM2 combat system. Questions? -fox |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 21-Jul-11, 18:03:43 | ||||
| Hm. On second thought, character levels are totally unrequired. Attacks per round can be modified via script in NWN, so long you keep them within bounds. And 4 attacks per rund are definitely within bounds. So... that makes truly possible to have a level 1 character and keep it level 1 for his entire life. Which incidentally makes it possible to create a new character and start playing with it in less than 3 minutes (instead of having to go through 20 level ups before enjoying the game). Okay, so taht is one less worry on the mind. -fox |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 21-Jul-11, 17:44:42 | ||||
| Blessed Lady Genna. She has always everything! I have had my coffee. Meanwhile I thought about ROM2 some more. (continuing from the previous post) I can use the NWN Journal interface creatively, and implement with it the stats panel of ROM2. You just keep your Journal open, with 1 quest in it, the text of which is a list of your stats (Health, Mana, Skills, et cetera). As you equip or unequip anything, your "stats" quest text changes accordingly. I can make it self-update in real-time with no need for the player to click anything. I suppose that is one less worry. I also thought about the problem of drinking potions as you get harmed. In ROM2 you press a key, and you gulp dozens of potions per second. The longer you keep it pressed, the more the potions you drink. NWN does not offer this kind of functionality. Potions in NWN work differently. Also, you can not swing your sword and drink 20 potions at the same time. Very well. Who said that they have to be potions drinked in the NWN way? Potions can be dummy items. You have them in your inventory so to symbolize that you have potions you can drink. But when you want to drink them, you do not right click the potion... Instead you use a handy button on your quickbar, and your potions shall be drank accordingly. And your health shall refill accordingly, no less. I never used mages in ROM2. I thought them weak. And mages have Mana. And I always run out of Mana. NWN has no such thing as Mana. But I can teach to it what Mana is. Much like Health and health potions, I can implement Mana and Mana Potions -- and make them extremely close (if not outright identical) to behave like they do in ROM2. I will need a way to extract the graphics of ROM2 so I can replicate its items "look" in NWN. I think I can also make spells bound to available-mana, instead of being bound to spells-per-day. Potions of Body, Reaction, Mind and Agility... these will require some experimentation. But I imagine I can brutalize the NWN Feats such as "Great Charisma I" in some creative way in order to achieve the same effect of permanent stat increase. Hm. Do we need Character Levels? Because I am thinking that this trait of D&D is totally unnecessary. It would take away the burden of the LevelUp procedure entirely (which is a good thing). Characters in this ROM2 mod could stay Level 1 forever, and be empowered by the gear they wear. Just like in ROM2. But what about the _number_ of attacks per round? That is where character levels will be required. If I recall correctly, in ROM2 you can swing your sword about 2 times in a second. But NWN combat is split in Rounds, which are 6 seconds long. That would be about 12 attacks per round! Way too much for the engine of NWN. Instead ROM2 characters are single-weapon only. Excluding the Monk class, in NWN with a single weapon you can swing 4 attacks per round at best. That makes 1 attack every 1.5 seconds. Knowing the problems of this game when things go too fast, I say that 4 attacks per round are okay. Hm. Needs 20 base attack bonus to reach 4 attacks per round. That means that the ROM2 Fighter would be a NWN Level20 Fighter Class. What about his starting stats (the NWN ABilities)? Can they be modified to match those of ROM2? They can be renamed. Strength would become Body. Dexterity would become Agility. Constitution would be unused and unnamed. Intelligence would become Mind. Wisdom would become Spirit. Charisma would be unused and unnamed. As for the Saving Throws of NWN, there is no equivalent in ROM2, so we can ignore them completely. Comes to think of it, the whole Character Sheet of NWN would become useless in this mod. The real informations would be held within the "stats" quest text in the Journal. Much more ROM2-like if you ask me. Not even the Armor Class (AC) would make sense. ROM2 uses "Defense" and it is a whole different matter. By the way, anybody knows what are the rules governing Attack and Defense in ROM2? What I know is that the higher the better, and that if your Attack exceeds the Defense of your foe, you will hit him. But there is also a random component thrown in the mechanism. With an Attack of 250 I can still occasionally land a hit on a foe with Defense 300. Conversely, when my Defense is 500 a foe with Attack of 300 will still ocassionaly land a hit on me. So what are the precise rules? I can replicate them flawlessly, provided that I know how they work in ROM2. The same goes for the ROM2 Skills. Anybody has insight on the mechanism governing their growth? And what about the XP gained for hitting what? The stronger the foe the more the XP per hit. At the same time, the more the damage, the more the XP received. That is easy to mechanize. A foe can give you a set amount of XP. Given a set amount of HP, then, you gain N xp per every single HP of damage you cause to the monster. Natural health regeneration seems to be ignored in this. If you harm a monster that regenerates faster than you can hurt him, you will keep gaining XP forever. So long you take away his HP you receive Xp. That is the simple rule (like I always say: Simplicity is Bliss). But then there is another rule: the more times you kill a given monter, the less XP you receive from him. The same goes for the quality of the loot. The more times you kill the same monster, the less the "total gold value" of the random loot he drops. Now for the good news: I can replicate all of this in NWN. But... I need to learn the details of it. Because if I have to "guess" this stuff, the end result will not be very close to the behavior of ROM2. Makes sense? I conclude with a major problem to be solved. The flying creatures. Dragon, Succubus, Bat, Bee (are there more types in ROM2?) They truly fly in ROM2. And they are able to traverse any terrain type by flying along a "straight line". But in NWN there is no flying creature. Everything will have to path-find on walkable terrain. If a Bee spots you from the other side of a river, in NWN she will pathfind to a bridge in order to traverse the river and reach you. If there is no bridge, she will be stuck! Oh wait. There is no Bee-like creature in NWN to begin. So another problem to solve. Which NWN creatures do we match to which ROM2 creature? I think it is enough brainstorming for today. -fox |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 21-Jul-11, 16:05:30 | ||||
| Too late :-) I made a mistake and lost everything. Did not renew my earth protection in time, and I ended up stone cursed -- with a blessed spider only tiles away. I saw it in his eyes, he could not believe his luck: a free go at the tasty adventurer! Yuk! Eight-legged critt-... Oh wait, they are six-legged actually. No doubt a mistake. Spiders have exactly 8 legs. Else they are no spiders. Some Nival guy did skip his homework, I say. Well I did not feel like getting back my stuff. What for, anyway? To see it lost again at the next such rookie mistake? This game is unforgiving, and I am getting too old for it. Back when I was introduced to it I was so much better at it. A Troll and 9 blessed spiders would have not scared me away. Oh they could not do so this time either. Only... this time I forgot the earth protection. A "minor" detail, I suppose. Hm. I should start a new thread for this: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I will lack originality, but I am thinking to make a ROM2 mod for NWN. But with 2 gameplay so different from each other I guess it would take some massive modding and adaptation. The massive modding part is no problem. It is quick done when you know where to put the hands. But the adaptation? That requires ideas. And there are limits to respect in NWN, with "Combat" being the hardest to reshape in any acceptable way. I would have taken a look at Jultknight work. He has "been there" already, it could save me some time. And _if_ his work is a good basis, why not? But he has not answered me. I guess that is a "No". So be it. I can not understand his french translated to english anyway. Communication with him would be very problematic. Back to Combat. To implement the attack bonus progression typical of ROM2 is a big problem. Perhaps the biggest of all. For every Skill point, you gain 3 attack points in ROM2. With any skill ranging from 0 to 255 there is a 765 potential bonus coming from skills alone. To which is to add the base attack bonus from the character main stats, such as Body and Agility -- which I have no clear idea how they are computed anyway. Then add the bonus coming from weapons... Finally consider that 1023 is the maximum total attack bonus you can collect in any case. More than that and it will roll to the other end of the scale, starting from 1 again. Now, in NWN, there is the base attack bonus of the character, to which I can add +20 from any amount of different sources but always to +20 it shall "cap". And that is it. With 40 levels and max 1 attack point per level, the total maximum attack bonus of NWN is just 60... definitely not 1023... Damn, 60 does not even cover the 8 bits range [0...255]. This is example of adaptation needed. Workarounds can be found, I am sure. (I have 1 in mind already, but I wish to hear more ideas) It is a challenge. Do you like challenges? I do. So... any idea? Hm. It occurs to me I have not had coffee yet today. How could it happ-... Oh right. I am out of it. Time to fix that. I will be back later. -fox |
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Author: NOVA (KINGKOTA666 [at] HOTMAIL [dot] COM) | |||
| Date: 18-Jul-11, 19:19:41 | ||||
| Well, first let me say how sad I am to hear you playing ROM2 instead of NWN. I'm still hosting and pecking away at minor improvements to the World of Torr module. It's slow going, however, due to two main factors: 1) my ineptitude at the toolset and scripting and 2) a bit of a personal real life crisis which is still ongoing. At any rate, I would personally urge you to consider eliminating ALL shops from the map selections you use for your ROM2 HAT (or multiplayer if that's how you're playing it). I have personally found that finally brings a bit of a challenge into the game again and at least moderately slows down the pace of your character advancement. If you put the maps together properly, it's still possible to build up even to full HORROR quest gear yet playing utterly solo. It's a tad more challenging when you no longer have the ability to just stock up on stuff by utilizing shops. Anyway, just a humble suggestion from me to you. That's the way all (except the first few generations) of my CHAOS HATs were organized (CHAOS 3 thru 14). I was still able to figure out how to wind up with full quest gear in less than 4 days. When you remove the shops, you will find just how important mage skills become when fighters can no longer just purchase potions or elven scrolls that allows them to duplicate the powers of a level 100 mage. Mages actually become useful again. I'll leave it to your creative thinking just how you get things like armor, weapons, potions, scrolls, or even mage spell books when there are NO SHOPS. Later, NOVA |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 18-Jul-11, 00:31:58 | ||||
| Hm. At about 10.8 millions XP I was doing quests in TurtleBeach. That is when Dragon.4 intecept quests became available. At that point it was only a matter of minutes to climb to 19.4 millions XP. And that is when the Stat Potions became available for reward. Interesting enough, I maximized Spirit first, then Agility, then Mind. Body was last... With a total Body of 73, plus resistance to Earth Magic (52 without Shield, 82 with Shield) and 3500 Health, pretty much every Monster.4 became boring. I had to carelessly step in CrossroadsOfMistery to find some challenge. Near the North-West corner there were these Undead + Necro + Dragons + Succubus... they managed to force me to drink potions. Mostly because they were cooking me alive with all those flames. But it was when I met the Lizard.5 that I was forced to drink about 2500 health potions in about 2 minutes. That thing was willing to eat me uncooked -- go figure. Lesson learned. I sold the remaining 88 health potions (out of the 3000 I had when I entered the map), and have bought 5000 Greater health potions. Lots of money burned, to be sure, but worth the expense. Now I will spend some time to hunt Monster.4 -- at least those of the most interesting types, so I can distinguish them from their .5 variants. Then I will pause to decide what quest gear I want in my maps. -fox |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 13-Jul-11, 20:13:43 | ||||
| I thank you for the tip. I will take a look. ------------------------------------------------------------ Update: ... and meanwhile I have gathered a set of maps, and have shuffled them in map servers along with the few I had already. Rough and patchwork-looking right now. I suppose that editing the maps to make them coherent with one another will be the fun part. At the moment things are too easy. I already am rich and geared and skilled to survive in hard. Next on the ToDoList is to skill-up Shooting so I can intercept black dragons. I did redistribute my initial stats to 34|34|34|34 -- instead of keeping 40|36|25|17. It seemed like a risky bet, but now I will peak my stats 18-potions ahead of schedule. That brings my first step on quest-maps so much closer. But I remember there was a minimum XP limit to possess in order to activate the Potions and Gear Upgrade options? Perhaps 20 millions? I remember this number. Hope not -- my current XP is barely above 5 millions. I died 3 times already. The 2nd time it happened at 15 seconds from map change. That was scary -- and I am too old to go emotional over a bag. So I decided that I will switch to Kray mode at 10 minutes from map change -- just so I can not accidentally stomp over the wrong drunken sheep bent on scattering myself all over the place. Hm. Given my rusty status I think I am doing good. -fox |
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Author: exc!ton (vladimir [dot] chebotarev [at] gmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 12-Jul-11, 02:21:57 | ||||
| There are some patches for rom2.exe on allods.homeunix.org . Also, if you play on http://a2.incraft.ru you can use latest russian patch (translated to english, a2patch14_en). It has a single player too. |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 11-Jul-11, 14:36:31 | ||||
| Patches from the russian website do work great. Must give the guys lot of credit -- no doubt. I see the fix for too fast scrolling incidentally solves the problem of lightning fast animations of special effects, such as the purple magical sparks displayed in the portrait of magical items. But I see that this fix does not extend to the shop interface, wherein said magical sparks still perform their animation lightning fast. Very ugly to see. It would be nice if that was addressed as well. I also see that there is no fix for the problem of the lightning traps crashing a map. My memory is foggy about this one, but I remember that placing a Lightning trap on nude ground would crash the map as the trap was triggered. Or was it a Prismatic Spray trap? Or was it not nude ground but the trap had to belong to a "Player" (not as in a human-player, but a Player entity as meant by the Map Editor)? Well, that makes only 4 combos to check -- it will be quick to find the culprit one. And hopefully they get it fixed. -fox |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 08-Jul-11, 20:21:54 | ||||
| Oh, wait. Disregard the previous post (anti-Kray tech stays ON, though) My inability to search the www for stuff is growing cumbersome. But I will advocate that "keyboards are not meant for paws"! It is not my fault. Anyway, looks like the stuff for rom2.exe is there, after all. But there is even more stuff for allods2.exe? This I do not get... But no matter -- I am off to play. -fox |
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Author: the.gray.fox (the [dot] gray [dot] fox [at] hotmail [dot] com) | |||
| Date: 08-Jul-11, 20:04:07 | ||||
| Hello. I have been wanting to play Rage of Mages 2 again. Weird -- maybe all this 3D has started to annoy me. Anyway. Years ago my last attempt to play rom2 on windows xp ended prematurely. I recall troubles of assorted types. Jumpy performance. Superfast scroll speed. And more. I also recall discovering many a patch for rom2.exe, made by some talented russian people. But this only happened _after_ I last uninstalled rom2. Now I am looking for those same patches again -- but all I find are specific ones for allods2.exe... which I do not have. I understand "allods" is the original rom2 game name, and that -similarly- allods is the original exe name. But I also understand that allods2.exe and rom2.exe are different (internally). I do not wish to install the game only to discover that I do not have the right patches. Wasting my time does put me in a horrible mood for hours -- I may bite. So where are those little russian patches specific for rom2.exe? Warning: This post is protected with anti-Kray(c) technology. Legendary Losers and their kin shall be ignored on-sight. -fox |
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