Quote:Cool, let's see then. Will something like this do?
Names, books and retorts are in Magic.exe.
2AFE0 : Name of the wizard
Following that, there are 5 bytes for the 5 types of books, word values so there will be a 0 between the actual numbers of each type of book.
Following that an ID code for the retort, unfortunately I don't have my list anymore but it goes from 0 to 11h as there are 17 retorts total. Also don't remember if 00 or FF is the "no retort" option because I never used it. There are exactly 14 wizard slots.
To insert the images, you need to use the tweaker.
Use open LBX, select the LBX you want to change.
It'll show the list of entries in the file, you can go through them and see if any are wizard images.
If yes, you check the size, make an equal size png, and import it.
To import, you need to place the file into the folder before opening the LBX, as the tweaker does not update the list of files real time.
I wasn't able to change animation due to a tweaker bug yet, but I did manage to hack the LBX so that the animations are replaced by single images, and from that point the rest is the same. Use the already altered LBX files that have the Touhou wizards and you are good to go.
The game uses 256 colors. The tweaker will apply the palette for you, but it isn't perfect, it generally yields a better result to take palette from one of the original images in that LBX file, and apply it to your new image. Some of the color codes actually are used for system functions like flags, pixels that end up with that color code can appear the wrong color in the game. If you identify such a color, your best bet is to remove it from the palette and make the image not use it at all.
There are a large number of files that contain wizard portraits or animations of some sort, including : HALOFAM.LBX, MAGIC.LBX, WIN.LBX, LOSE.LBX, SPLMASTER.LBX, SPELLOSE.LBX, WIZLAB.LBX, CONQUEST.LBX, DIPLOMAC.LBX, MOODWIZ.LBX, LILWIZ.LBX and WIZARDS.LBX.
To change hero portraits, you modify PORTRAITS.LBX. The default names used for them are in NAMES.LBX.
Finally, the HELP.LBX contains all help texts for the game. You need to modify this if you want right clicking on the wizard to pop up information about your new wizard(s).
That'll probably work. I can include a link to the tweaker, and repost all that. Anything else I should include a link to?
Quote:Cool, let's see then. Will something like this do?
Names, books and retorts are in Magic.exe.
2AFE0 : Name of the wizard
Following that, there are 5 bytes for the 5 types of books, word values so there will be a 0 between the actual numbers of each type of book.
Following that an ID code for the retort, unfortunately I don't have my list anymore but it goes from 0 to 11h as there are 17 retorts total. Also don't remember if 00 or FF is the "no retort" option because I never used it. There are exactly 14 wizard slots.
To insert the images, you need to use the tweaker.
Use open LBX, select the LBX you want to change.
It'll show the list of entries in the file, you can go through them and see if any are wizard images.
If yes, you check the size, make an equal size png, and import it.
To import, you need to place the file into the folder before opening the LBX, as the tweaker does not update the list of files real time.
I wasn't able to change animation due to a tweaker bug yet, but I did manage to hack the LBX so that the animations are replaced by single images, and from that point the rest is the same. Use the already altered LBX files that have the Touhou wizards and you are good to go.
The game uses 256 colors. The tweaker will apply the palette for you, but it isn't perfect, it generally yields a better result to take palette from one of the original images in that LBX file, and apply it to your new image. Some of the color codes actually are used for system functions like flags, pixels that end up with that color code can appear the wrong color in the game. If you identify such a color, your best bet is to remove it from the palette and make the image not use it at all.
There are a large number of files that contain wizard portraits or animations of some sort, including : HALOFAM.LBX, MAGIC.LBX, WIN.LBX, LOSE.LBX, SPLMASTER.LBX, SPELLOSE.LBX, WIZLAB.LBX, CONQUEST.LBX, DIPLOMAC.LBX, MOODWIZ.LBX, LILWIZ.LBX and WIZARDS.LBX.
To change hero portraits, you modify PORTRAITS.LBX. The default names used for them are in NAMES.LBX.
Finally, the HELP.LBX contains all help texts for the game. You need to modify this if you want right clicking on the wizard to pop up information about your new wizard(s).
That'll probably work. I can include a link to the tweaker, and repost all that. Anything else I should include a link to?
This thread, so people are aware of the regular updates.
I've finally started a new game, the first since the major diplomacy changes. Had so many bugs to fix that I couldn't even play.
I have to say it really feels different now, even only 50 turns into the game.
The Life and the Nature wizards are already allies, and fight a war with the Chaos mage, exactly how you would expect considering their book types. They actually formed a pact before the alliance, too.
The Life wizard who also has Sorcery books (I'm playing Sorcery to test Aura of Majesty) already offered a Pact to me. The Nature who shares nothing with me did not.
Also, that odd moment when the maniacal red mage is offering me a pact because their total army strength dropped 1 point below mine for just a turn was so funny. Guess waging war with 2 others is taking a toll on her forces. I'm planning to attack her to score some points with the other two, though, but I need more units first to do it.
(October 31st, 2015, 12:44)zitro1987 Wrote: Hey, I received a 1260 mana award from 4 fire elementals and 2-3 hell hounds. I'm sure that's an issue.
let's see
Fire Elementals are 90 each, Hell Hounds are 50. So the total monster value was ~500.
hmm that doesn't sound right. Wonder how much the "monster to treasure" multiplier actually is, I thought it's like a few tens of percentages or something to randomize things, maybe not.
Let's see there.
1. Total cost of primary monsters+total cost of secondary monster/2 is calculated.
(wait, what? secondary monsters have halved value why???)
2. If the difficulty is 2 or lower then value := value*(4/(2+difficulty))
So Easy = 2x, Normal = 1.33x, Hard or above = 1x
(Think this is to offset lower difficulties having low amount of monsters.)
3. For Arcanus, 50-125% of this value, for Myrror 75-175% of this value is used as the actual treasure value.
4. Finally a flat +118 is added to make sure you won't be finding "Absolutely Nothing". (my change)
So, if i get it right, the treasure amount can be up to 3.5 times the monster value on easy mirror, and 1.75 times on impossible myrror.
In short if it was on Myrror and you were playing Normal or below, this amount is possible.
Were you?
Maybe the Myrror modifier is a bit too high there, 175% is a lot. On the other hand the chance of only finding 50% of the value isn't very nice either.
I'm going to change these to 75-125% and 100-150%.
Another rather major bug - Nomad Armorer's Guild does nothing.
Another major bug: chaos spawns abilities are at resist +4, not resist at -4
PS: I'm keeping a more detailed game log I will pass to you while I play-test the mod. This is not just me reading your game files, now I'm actually playing.
(October 31st, 2015, 13:56)zitro1987 Wrote: I'm playing 'extreme' difficulty on arcanus.
Another rather major bug - Nomad Armorer's Guild does nothing.
PS: I'm keeping a more detailed game log I will pass to you while I play-test the mod. This is not just me reading your game files, now I'm actually playing.
Awesome, thank you!
Nomads, let's see Griffons use...Fantastic Stables. Rangers use...hmm only an Armory and Forester's Guild.
Yes, you are right. I need to disable Armorer's Guild there, I think I assumed Griffons were using it by mistake. Have to fix this ASAP.
Okay, so 1260 mana from ~500 points of monsters with no more than a 1.25x modifier, that definitely isn't right.
I see nothing wrong in the code itself. Can you please look for the dungeon/lair which gave you this in the tweaker and tell me the exact data? (mana found, number of monsters)
also, just to make sure, you are playing the latest version and generated the game using it? I don't think it matters much though, original value for these monsters is almost the same.
Edit : Something weird definitely is going on. 3x Giant Spiders (3*150) 2x Sprites (2*100) for a total of 650 points, and there is an item with a value of 2200, a hero and 480 mana inside. At the same time, the other 10 lairs I checked had the correct amount.
I did notice the prisoner subtracts more points than needed to get one, but that should not generate extra points, it would just make it even fewer.
...and another one, 3000 value for 4 gargoyles.
Very interesting, absolutely nothing seems to be wrong enough to cause such a huge difference in value.
Uh 2 Air Elementals and 2 Phantom Warriors for about 8k value in yet another. Why???
Another, 6 Djinns and 1 Sky Drake for only 3000 total treasure, despite these being worth (6*800+1*2500)=7300
The strange is, it's like one out of every 20 or so nodes and I don't see anything in common between them at all.
Could the routine used for the difficulty modifier for that mutiplication by 4 have a bug? it seems like a "shift left for doublewords" fuction, a rather odd way to multiply by 4 considering treasure is a word value, like, always.
eh, whatever. I'll try to run the map generation with all the difficulty and plane modifiers turned off and see if that fixes things. I couldn't find any bug anywhere else.
Since the removal of the the difficulty and plane random modifiers, I couldn't find a single place that had a wrong amount of treasure and I generated 3 games and looked at at least 100 nodes. I also calculated the points for about 20 of them and all of them were an exact match to the monster value.
All I can think is that the percentage calculation has some bug that only triggers on very specific numbers.
This release has treasure with value = 100% of monster value for Arcanus and 125% for Myrror, no randomness involved, regardless of difficulty. (Higher difficulty still has more monsters ofc, meaning more treasure)
Without wasting any time, I present Caster 0.84 :
-Fixed bug : Casting Raise Dead when 7 or more units are dead crashes the game. The menu window with the pages seems to be broken somehow, I redirected it to use the normal one. 8 dead unis fit in there without problems.
-Fixed bug : Casting Animate Dead when 7 or more units are dead crashes the game. The menu window with the pages seems to be broken somehow, I redirected it to use the normal one. The menu might overextend the screen if there are a too many units (including enemy ones), though, not sure what happens then.
-Fixed “banish my enemy” diplomatic event displaying the player's name instead of the banished wizard's.
-AI unit combat rating is now 1+(formula) to avoid the AI perceiving really weak units like spearmen as having 0 value, thus thinking there is nothing to attack (I observed a whole army not attacking a lone spearmen and retreating after 25 turns on auto, I suspect the cause was the enemy total army power being zero)
-Experimental : Spell of Return now costs 500. As the AI is now better at protecting their capital, ultra-cheap Spell of Return is probably both unnecessary and undercosted.
-Fire Giants now have 6 more melee, and magical ranged attacks instead of rocks. They should now be a viable midgame unit.
-Doom Bat now costs only 200 to summon.
-Chimeras now cost 250 to summon.
-Basilisks now has +3 melee and +1 armor
-Stone Giant now has +3 melee and ranged.
-The Magic Immunity item power cannot be enchanted on items due to being overpowered and unfun. Unless you find one of the very few (I think 4 total) predefined Magic Immunity items, it's unavailable. There is no way to grant unremovable immunity to magic for potentially unstoppable heroes anymore.
-Units revived by Animate Dead gain “Animated” buff - +1 attack, ranged, defense, To Hit, and weapon immunity, on top of the original effect of granting “Undead” with all the related immunities and effects.
-Fixed problem : When AI asks you to break an alliance before proposing a treaty, they offer the spell or gold they were planning to offer for the treaty here too. However, this offer has no effect other than giving you a second chance of breaking the alliance, you cannot get the spell this way, only by then refusing the treaty afterwards and then accepting the bribe again when offered. Instead of this weird behavior, the AI will now not offer a bribe at all if you refuse to break your alliance, as it wasn't supposed to get offered there in the first place, it was for accepting the proposed treaty.
-In the above scenario, accepting the “break alliance” proposal right away will no longer clear the bribe to be offered, as it is not the same as accepting the treaty itself without the bribe.
-Secondary monsters in lairs contribute their full value towards the treasure calculation instead of only half.
-Fixed spell in treasure requiring 150*(rarity^2) points correctly, but only subtracting the default value of 50*(rarity^2)
-Prisoners now only use up 400 treasure points instead of 1000
-There is no random modifier when converting monster value into treasure. Always 100% of the value is the treasure for Arcanus and 125% for Myrror.
-Nomads cannot build Armorer's Guilds as none of their units require it currently.
Note that the diplomatic event fixes are not yet tested, I need to actually encounter them in game, but according to code, they should work now.
PS : Did you test the Chaos Spawn in combat? I believe that's only a visual bug, I tried the original game and it's showing positive numbers there too. I haven't changed the modifier. "Multigaze", the ability it has is not the same ability as "Death Gaze" or "Stoning Gaze", so probably the code to display the icons is wrong. It has Posion, Doom, Death and Stoning share the same modifier (two of which use "4" as the amount of attacks, the other two -4 as the resistance modifier, but there is only one byte storing all of these as a single "4".)
In fact there is no separate Doom Gaze ability, enabling it will always make the unit have all of them.
...and more :
Quote:0.84a
-Fixed bug : Only the very last unit in battle counted into the diplomatic penalty instead of all of them when killing enemy armies as the attacker. If that unit was the player's, no penalty was applied at all.
When was the last day I found fewer than 3 new bugs in the original code of the game, omg.
We really need that Raid, the bug counter is probably way above 100 now! Only the diplomacy parts contained at least 30-40 new bugs, half of which very severe.
Quote:-Magicians having magic immunity is way overkill
I actually am facing the red wizard's capital now and it has 7 elven magicians inside. I started to think about how to kill them and realized I can't. Missiles and magical ranged attacks don't work. Melee would work but City Walls prevent me from doing that. Catapults and other boulder attacks would work but magicians fire first and catapults can't survive that.
The only way to deal with the situation seems having units that can tank the magician's attacks for 4 turns, either a huge defense, or Elemental Armor...or Invisibility. A bit too specific to deal with a normal unit.
I think I'm going to remove the Magic Immunity, we already have Golems with it instead.
I am really impressed by most of the changes, particularly in regards to how AI operates (minus seemingly lack of early aggression). I remained open-minded at the much different pace of the game (including the sawmills) and the high emphasis on large army sizes.
It's obvious game balance is still the biggest hurdle, though given your focus on mechanic changes and this being a beta ... I think game balance is at least better than original. It will take a long while to get spell/hero/unit/race/building balances right
