Arulir Mountain

[Moerit]

Inspired by this Thread http://andorstrail.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4132, i decided to help out and give us some more Arulir monsters to hunt and loot

Im presenting: Arulir Mountain

This maps are including :
- more and stronger Arulirs
- an Arulir-bossmob
- an old modified acquaintance named Gaunard
- a new extraordinary item: Hunters Sword
- some mean traps

- and a secret room

Furthermore the Gaunards drop colored crystals, which could be easily related to some kind of quest.

Here's the worldmap (older version, just fixed some graphic issues in the newer maps):

worldmap_arulirmountain.png

The .tmx and .json files can be downloaded here (hope it works):
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

The whole map is for players who can kill an arulir with ease, feedback is very welcome.

These maps could only be entered while carriing an arulir skin

especially about the extraordinary item i would like to have a feedback.

[Zukero]

Looks great. Can't wait to return to a computer to try them out.
I just hope the entering requirement is well introduced and doesn't look to blunt.
Is something planned for the other side of the eastern outdoor bridge (the one with blue stains) ?

On another note: how was your first experience in creating content for AT ? What resources where useful ? What lacked or could be enhanced ?

Thanks for your hard work !

[Moerit]

I really would like to say thanks for the great tutorials on the wikipage! They helped a lot. Furthermore a lot of thanks to you Zukero and Ian, you to answered all my questions i had

Tiled is a very easy to learn program, the content editor is great too.
There were just a few things i stumpled above;
While creating the traps there was one time a strange situation, I wanted to change the order of quests ive written but in the content editor it all mixed up. I managed it by editing the .json file in a texteditor, afterwards there were no more problems of that kind.
Furthermore an additional button "Clear-all" would be very helpful. Cause i edited Dialogues, quests, items, monsters... in one session and had to clear every single topic. with a "clear-all" button that would be some less count of klicks (Yes im lazy on klicking )

I encountered a logical problem too; while creating the secret room i put a containerbox in there. When i tested this on my device, AT messed up with it and changed the position of the containerbox. The problem was, that the position of the containerbox was not-walkable. I made it walkable and it worked without problems.

Another question i had about the possibility to replace Object-layers ( I dont mean the Objects-layer, i talk about the different tasks of Tile- and Object-layers(Sorry, i have the german version of tiled, so i dont know the correct words used in the english version of this program))

Third i noticed some not correct tiles of the "transition"-set; some transitions look very edged. You can see an example for that on the map arulirmountain1 on top of the cave-entrance.

last but not least i asked myself if it is possible to reset quests, means that a questprogress could be set on a lower value (e.g. hero steps on a tile and questprogress is set to 10 - even if the hero already reached queststage 20 or more).

To answer your questions:
When a hero tries to go over the bridge to the east without an arulirskin, this text will be displayed:
"A feeling in your stomache is saying:\n\"It would be better to not go further unprepared.
You need some item which would help you go through there undiscovered."

The other side of the bridge is not reachable yet, its destroyed("The Bridge is broken. It would not hold your weight."). But maybe someday it will be fixed

[rijackson741]

Looks interesting. Can't wait to play it

A few things:

1) I can't import the droplists into the content editor. It gives me an error.

2)

I happened to notice that the Arulir pack leader is not unique (i.e. will respawn). Is that intentional?

3) The English in the dialogues could use a little clean up. That's not a criticism, after all you are not a native English speaker, just an observation. I'll do it for you if you wish.

4)

The sword is interesting! For an extraordinary item perhaps somewhat overpowered though. It is a 4AP weapon, which for most players will of course really have a 3AP attack cost. So it is possible to get either one or two extra turns per round, depending on the number of successful hits. How likely that is depends on the players actual chance to hit. Here are the probabilities. First column is actual chance to hit, second column is chance of one extra turn, third column is chance of two extra turns:

20% 14% 0.4%
35% 33% 2.4%
50% 52% 7.4%
65% 62% 17%
80% 60% 33%

So for a character with a high AC that is Cleave on steroids! If it keeps the current stats, I hate grinding, but I would grind for this one!

[Moerit]

Hey rijackson741,
#1: fixed droplist(were just two little " that was missing
#2: yes the bossmob shall respawn. He got a better chance to drop the sword too.
#3: please forgive my bad english. I really appreciate a clean-up of dialogues! If you would do that, that would be awesome!
#4: we could make it legendary of course too, or maybe reduce the dmg

[rijackson741]

#3: please forgive my bad english. I really appreciate a clean-up of dialogues! If you would do that, that would be awesome!

Your English isn't bad, but your dialogue was just not quite the way a native speaker would say it. I've attached the new json file. It was only a few minutes work

#4: we could make it legendary of course too, or maybe reduce the dmg

Now that I've seen the droplist I actually think it's OK as is. It's not really an extraordinary item or a legendary item. It's something in between, leaning heavily towards legendary.

The boss drop chance is extraordinary, but there is only one boss. So trying to get the sword by killing the boss, waiting for the boss to respawn, killing the boss, etc, is going to be a very slow and painful process!

I want one

Edit: I've changed my mind. It's overpowered. Here's why:

There's something I forgot to take into account when I calculated the probabilities of one or two extra turns that I showed in my earlier post. Those only take into account the four "standard" chances you get to hit. But of course, if you hit, you may get one or two more turns, and in each of those you get a chance to add yet more AP. I haven't done the calculations (which are getting increasingly complicated!), but what I think that means is that the chance of getting one extra turn is somewhat lower than I showed (because the chance of getting more than one extra turn is now higher), the chance of getting two extra turns is probably somewhat higher than I showed, there is a moderate, but not insignificant, chance of getting three extra turns, and there is a very small chance of getting four extra turns. Given that each extra turn is effectively a 25% increase in the average damage per round, that is way too powerful. Even I think, for a legendary item. I would suggest lowering the AP boost to 1AP only. That gives a decent chance of one extra turn per round (in fact, with high AC, a very good chance), but no chance of two extra turns per round. If you think that's not enough, you could add a chance of minor speed for one round. The advantage of using minor speed is that the chance of getting it (and perhaps the duration) can be adjusted to balance the weapon. It also doesn't stack, so it could get you to two extra turns, but not more than that.

[Zukero]

Hello Moerit.

I'll look into that clear all button. I'd like to have it too.

For quest progress, it is stored as a list, so once a step is reached, it is so forever so far. Someone that reached step 10 and step 20 has reached both, but not step 15. Hope it's clear. If not I can elaborate a more in depth answer.

Since v0.7.1, game objects layers are replaceable like tiles layers, but you have to set a property somewhere to indicate which layers are initially active and which aren't. I'll have to check the code to give you the technical details as you could be the first to use this feature. Just to help communication on this matter, I call this type of layer a group, so you have the Objects layer (tiles) and the object group named X (objects).

I have a few ideas to enhance the immersion related to your key-area requiring an arulir skin to be carried. I'll send you a PM later with the details.

Good job !

[Moerit]

Thanks all for looking through what i made.
Updated the dialogues from jackson on gdrive.

@Zukero:
When theres no possibility to reset the questprogress, i have got another question:
How else could i trigger something like a boolean-variable?
The only thing came into my mind was something with an invisible item for the hero...
I guess because its still not possible to create invisible items, there would be some coding to do. Maybe there are other ways to create something boolean-like...

[Zukero]

There are two features I was thinking of adding in the code that may suit your needs:
- Removable quest progress. That would be easy to code. I may also add it in the content editor so that only quest stages that are marked as removable could be removed.
- Global variables. Arbitrary numbers saved in the player's hidden stats as a pair id-> integer, to keep track of stuff. For example: how much you donated over time to each temple...

My code for object group replacement seems not to be part of the current code base. I guess I wrote it but was removed during rework after Oskar's comments. I'll rewrite/remerge it and will send you the details.
In one of the last meetings we agreed on feature freeze code wise so unless I get agreement from the team, this'll be for v0.7.3 and not the upcoming v0.7.2.
That will also give us more time to include and debug your content.

[Moerit]

Thought about some grafics for the new arulir. Not very creative, just recolored some and thought about giving the arulir pack leader the 3. image, cause the actual boss doesnt fit in the game(IMHO). Furthermore im thinking about changing the "demonic arulir" too:

monsters_arulirs.png