Author Topic: Siege of the Heavens Feedback, Difficulty, Mid-Fight Saving, and More  (Read 1748 times)

Legacy_Empyre65

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« Reply #15 on: August 02, 2013, 08:56:14 pm »


               You could give the player a really nice bonus item right before the final boss fight. Since the item and the final boss fight are both only in normal mode, that is the only fight you have to balance for the item.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_MagicalMaster

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« Reply #16 on: August 02, 2013, 10:42:39 pm »


               That was the plan anyway, to give the player a weapon for the final boss.  So that works.  Only get weapon and final boss on normal.  Still get a decent conclusion on easy.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_MagicalMaster

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« Reply #17 on: August 02, 2013, 10:52:05 pm »


               

rogueknight333 wrote...

The point is that in Siege this is probably going to be a more common scenario than in many modules (even knowing the right strategy to pursue getting careless can still lead to a quick death sometimes), so it would not surprise me if there were a certain percentage of players who got really upset at having to start certain fights over all the way from the beginning for the Xth time after almost winning.


Probably, yeah.  Question is, if they can continuously save every few percent then are they really playing the fight on the intended difficulty?  And would an easy mode simply be better?

rogueknight333 wrote...

On the other hand if it is too impractical to implement I do not see that it is that big a deal (the module is not supposed to be a piece of cake). Since you specifically asked the question of whether there was a reason to make mid-fight saving possible, I assumed you regarded it as feasible. But, yes,there are reasons saving in combat is not even possible in a lot of games.


Feasible as in "if everyone seems to think it's much better than easy mode and would be a massive improvement, I could probably figure something out" not as in "Yeah, it's easy to do."

rogueknight333 wrote...

I did not really give much thought to specifics since I was basically just tossing a random idea out there. As Cave Gnome says, however, you would not have to hand out anything that is even useful. It could just be a pure trophy. Alternatively you could hand out more powerful gear even if you tune the mobs to compensate so that it makes no real difference to anything, since I expect a lot of people will still feel happy about their nominally superior bonuses.


Handing out more powerful gear becomes difficult due to how the fights are tuned and some of the limitations of the toolset.  I could consider simply handing out weaker gear that also has less AB/AC (though enemies would have a larger AB/AC penalty than the gear) and less percentage immunity.  Not sure if it's worth the bother creating another two sets of gear specifically for easy mode though - weapon and final boss might be sufficient.  Considering.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_rogueknight333

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« Reply #18 on: August 03, 2013, 01:48:51 pm »


               Assuming one is not using mid-fight saving in a ridiculously exploitative way to erase any and every piece of bad luck one might suffer (something that I certainly do not think should be encouraged and could quite reasonably not even be allowed), I do not see that allowing it and implementing an easy mode are addressing exactly the same issue. The point of an easy mode is to make the game generally less intense and difficult. The point of a mid-fight save (for those using it in a reasonable way) would be to address the specific problem of needing to tediously repeat what is basically the exact same fight over and over again. A player who has mastered the first, but only the first, stage of a particular fight, and is never really going to do anything different during that stage, could, by saving it, repeat only the later portions that are still giving him trouble and in which he needs to try different tactics. I expect there are some players who would appreciate the ability to do so.

Personally, I see little purpose in an easy mode but that just may be because it is not the kind of thing someone like me would be likely to take advantage of, particularly in a non-story oriented module where the combat is the main point. It may be I am not representative I am on that score.

Short answer: if you can implement either without too much trouble, it would likely help a few players and probably does no harm, but if it would be a great deal of trouble, I also see no compelling need for either.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_MagicalMaster

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« Reply #19 on: August 03, 2013, 11:34:52 pm »


               

rogueknight333 wrote...

The point of an easy mode is to make the game generally less intense and difficult. The point of a mid-fight save (for those using it in a reasonable way) would be to address the specific problem of needing to tediously repeat what is basically the exact same fight over and over again.


Strictly speaking, an easy mode also avoids needing to tediously repeat parts of the fight for those struggling at the end since it's far more forgiving of mistakes.  It also brings up a problem - what happens when something in one phase of a fight affects a later phase?

Using Selenoth -  if you let her drain too much, it's possible you wouldn't be able to win from a given percentage.  I'd hate for a fighter to keep reloading to her being at 95% when she starts Frenzy, for example.  So I'm even concerned about an auto-save to that extent.

rogueknight333 wrote...Short answer: if you can implement either without too much trouble, it would likely help a few players and probably does no harm, but if it would be a great deal of trouble, I also see no compelling need for either.


I could implement easy mode in about 5 minutes, plus another few minutes to set up the trigger for it.  Saving mid-fight would require trying to change the combat script of every boss to account for it - and each boss would be different.  Since it seems that there does not seem to be an overwhelming call for it, I don't think I'm going to bother trying to allow that.  But I will implement an easy mode, which is currently planned to be the following:

- 50% vulnerabilty to all damage on NPCs
-3 AB to all NPCs
-35% ability damage for all NPCs
- No weapon reward and no final boss (won't even exist until part 2)
               
               

               
            

Legacy_MagicalMaster

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« Reply #20 on: September 05, 2013, 03:09:17 am »


               After some more thought and feedback from others in PMs and beyond, I've decided against introducing easy mode for the moment.  So far no one has specifically asked for it, several people are adamantly against it, and others don't care about it either way.

If people actually approach me and ask for an easier mode that's more forgiving, I will be happy to reconsider and likely implement such a mode - but so far there seems to be no desire for it.  I suspect simply changing Selenoth will be a huge improvement for most.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_Lazarus Magni

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« Reply #21 on: October 06, 2013, 02:36:25 am »


               This looks interesting... I got about 3 min into it then it crashed...
               
               

               
            

Legacy_MagicalMaster

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« Reply #22 on: October 06, 2013, 03:08:00 am »


               Do you remember where you crashed?  I'm not saying you're lying or anything, I've just never had anyone ever tell me they crashed and it uses no custom content.  If you can replicate the crash that would be extremely helpful in figuring out what might have happened.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_Lazarus Magni

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« Reply #23 on: October 06, 2013, 04:21:06 am »


               1st map 3rd dialog. Nice vfx though.
               
               

               


                     Modifié par Lazarus Magni, 06 octobre 2013 - 03:32 .
                     
                  


            

Legacy_MagicalMaster

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« Reply #24 on: October 06, 2013, 04:48:05 am »


               So in the mists still before you left the starting zone?  I'm assuming you brought a pre-40 character, otherwise there should have only been two dialogues.

If you said the VFX was nice (thanks, by the way) I'm assuming you managed to get past it on a second try?  The dialogue you mentioned should literally only adjust a local int and do a conversation.  Trying to figure out why you might have crashed -- I'm guessing you don't still have the crash log?
               
               

               


                     Modifié par MagicalMaster, 06 octobre 2013 - 03:48 .
                     
                  


            

Legacy_Lazarus Magni

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« Reply #25 on: October 06, 2013, 05:36:27 am »


               I am merely pointing out what I experienced. I tried the mod, single player, with a toon in my vualt. crashed at the 3rd dialog..

Yes the mists, yes the starting zone. And no, the "toon" was lvl 40.









Crash log? No... How do I find this?
               
               

               
            

Legacy_MagicalMaster

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« Reply #26 on: October 06, 2013, 06:07:58 am »


               I understand, I just loathe having bugs in my module (and so massive they apparently crash the game) so I'm trying to figure out what went wrong and fix it.  Like I said, I don't think you're lying -- I'm just very confused.

Logs are under NWN folder -> logs (or logs.0).  Bunch of stuff there that you can look at -- looking for something like clientlog or serverlog.
               
               

               
            

Legacy_Lazarus Magni

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« Reply #27 on: October 06, 2013, 02:41:01 pm »


               I am sorry, it wasn't on the first map, it was on the second, and it happened when the merchant's store tried to come up.

Also, not sure if this was intended or not, but not all items were removed either, my vualt character still had it's helm and robe. I was playing with a druid/shifter/monk btw (but not polymorphed.)

And I just tried it again just now, and same thing happened. Crash when opening the store on the second map.

This is the only thing that shows in the log:

[Sun Oct 06 08:33:53]Server Starting Up: 10 Second Heartbeat logging has been disabled
[Sun Oct 06 08:33:53]---- Server Options ----
Max Players: 16
Char Levels: (1-40)
Player Password: NO
DM Login Enabled: NO
Server Admin Login Enabled: NO
Post Game To Internet: YES
Game Type: Action
Difficulty: 3
PVP Setting: FULL
Vault: LOCAL
Only One Party: YES
Enforce Legal Characters: NO
Item Level Restrictions: NO
Player pausing: ENABLED
Auto Save: Enabled
Saving Characters in Saved Game
---- End Server Options ----
[Sun Oct 06 08:33:57] Lazarus Magni [] () Joined as Server Admin 1
[Sun Oct 06 08:33:57] Lazarus Magni () Joined as Player 1
[Sun Oct 06 08:33:57] Loading Module: Siege of the Heavens v1_06
Unknown Update sub-message

P.S. I was running as singly player mod. Is it only supposed to be run using nwserver?
               
               

               
            

Legacy_MagicalMaster

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« Reply #28 on: October 06, 2013, 08:41:33 pm »


               Quick public service announcement:

No one but Lazarus has ever encountered this bug and I cannot reproduce it.  Either this is something strange that <1% of people encounter or there's an issue with one of Lazarus's settings specifically.  In short, it's safe to play this mod, it won't crash on you.

Now, back to trying to figure out what's going on...

Lazarus Magni wrote...

I am sorry, it wasn't on the first map, it was on the second, and it happened when the merchant's store tried to come up.

Also, not sure if this was intended or not, but not all items were removed either, my vualt character still had it's helm and robe. I was playing with a druid/shifter/monk btw (but not polymorphed.)


All right.  Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to help me figure out what happened either -- I just downloaded the exact module stored on the vault and started six different characters with it.  All of them were able to open both of the merchant's stores.  All of them had their items stripped correctly.  Even removed the stores in the toolset before running it as an experiment and it simply failed to open the store -- didn't crash.

That said, I also tried using a druid that was shifted -- this failed to strip any of his items.  This is something I'll fix but in general I will warn you playing a shifter in this module is probably a recipe for trouble.  I was trying to avoid making major class changes and I have not touched Shifters at all.  If you're feeling masochistic go for it, but otherwise I'd strongly recommend you play something that doesn't involve shifting (I personally tested pure fighter, pure rogue, pure sorcerer, pure bard, fighter/rogue crossbow wielder, pure cleric, pure barbarian, and fighter/weapon master).

The code to open the store is:


    object oStore = GetNearestObjectByTag("sh_me_light1");
    if (GetObjectType(oStore) == OBJECT_TYPE_STORE)
    {
        OpenStore(oStore, GetPCSpeaker(),-1);
    }

The code to strip items is:


    object oItem = GetFirstItemInInventory(oPC);
    while (GetIsObjectValid(oItem))
    {
        DestroyObject(oItem);
        oItem = GetNextItemInInventory(oPC);
    }

    int x = 0;
    while (x < NUM_INVENTORY_SLOTS)
    {
        if (x != 17)
        {
            DestroyObject(GetItemInSlot(x, oPC));
        }
        ++x;
    }

Nothing really fancy there so I'm very unsure how anything would cause a crash.

Lazarus Magni wrote...

P.S. I was running as singly player mod. Is it only supposed to be run using nwserver?


No, single player mod would probably be better, frankly, but it shouldn't matter either way.  Can you email your character bic to balkothwarcraft at gmail dot com (using symbols as appropriate)?  I want to see if it's something with your particular character that is causing a crash.
               
               

               


                     Modifié par MagicalMaster, 06 octobre 2013 - 07:45 .
                     
                  


            

Legacy_MrZork

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« Reply #29 on: October 06, 2013, 11:50:17 pm »


               I can't comment on the particulars, but a couple ideas on diagnosing the crash:

0) The partial item strip makes me wonder if the toon wasn't shifted when saved.

1) LM, try emptying your override folder (back it up first). The crash on opening a merchant has happened to me in the past (once in HotU not less) and it ended up being a problem with a texture or something in my override.

2) Since MM is having trouble reproducing the crash, maybe sending a copy of the toon's BIC would be helpful. It would certainly eliminate a variable.