My variant development journal

[CJNyfalt]

For the TMJ problem, I'm considering the solution of removing junk. That is, item types that are worthless. (Cursed/Bad armors & weapons would still be generated.) To compensate for the better drops, I could instead reduce the number of items generated on a level with one.

Thinking about it some more, I decided that the situation isn't all that easy. Once you add the possibility to have monster allies, stuff like Heal Monster, Haste Monster, and so on, becomes more valuable.

Well, I could at least remove stuff like Shard of Pottery and Broken Stick.

[CJNyfalt]

I have spent time on add colors to the monster memory (same scheme as in Oangband), and doing some internal C++ conversions.

[CJNyfalt]

I finally got my inspiration back, and started working on the resists (and spell realms).

What I want to do is to define a number of spell realms that each have their own resist, opposite realm and associated GFs.

I decided to use WoW spell realms as a model.

The opposing pair would be:
Fire - Cold.
Holy - Shadow.
Arcane (unnatural) - Nature.

Now, I decided to start with merging resists, since it seems like an easy point to start at.
We have 16 resists in Sang:
- Fear, Blind, Confusion: These are resists for specific effects, not damage, so they don't count.
- Fire, Cold: No change.
- Light: Holy.
- Dark, Nether: Merge to Shadow.
- Shard: Physical, should be reduced based on AC.
- Nexus, Disenchant: Merge to Arcane.
- Chaos: Remove and/or convert to Fire. (With order=cold.)
- Acid: Nature.

and the problem childs:
- Electricity: Nature? Arcane? (Going with WoW this would be Nature.)
- Poison: Nature or remove direct damage.
- Sound: Can't get to fit. Convert to Holy?

A big problem is that Nature=Elec+Acid+Pois would be way too powerful.

[CJNyfalt]

I merged Disenchant and Nexus resists into the new Arcane resist.
I also merged Chaos resist into Fire resist.

Next up will be merging Dark and Nether resists.

I will also start to merge selected essences together.

[CJNyfalt]

I decided to change the way the resists are represented ingame.

I made a class of an array of bytes representing the main resists.
I decided to use a separate class because I want resists to work the same way monsters and the player.

I will represent the resists as a numerical percent value in the code, even if I will not change the way they work for the player at this point.

It would work like this:
resist = 100 for immune
resist = 67 for normal resist
damage *= (100 - resist) / 100.0

What's unclear right now is what to do with temp resists. Change the resist values accordingly or threat them as a separate special case?

[PaulBlay]

What's unclear right now is what to do with temp resists. Change the resist values accordingly or threat them as a separate special case?

The question is, how much damage do you want PCs to take when they have a normal resist and a temporary resist?

Also, as you've gone to the trouble of turning the resists into percentage values, I suggest that the protection from temporary resists tales off gradually, rather than being all or nothing.

You also open the way for cursed / blessed items that provide normal resist to provide somewhat less / more resistance than before.

[CJNyfalt]

Had to redesign the resist class a bit. Putting all the resists together in one class makes the design inflexible, so it's better to have a class for just one resist, and then putting the classes together in an array.

The question is, how much damage do you want PCs to take when they have a normal resist and a temporary resist?

At least some, which means that 66% resisted from normal + 66% resisted from temporary in an additive way wouldn't work (sum > 100%).

Also, as you've gone to the trouble of turning the resists into percentage values, I suggest that the protection from temporary resists tales off gradually, rather than being all or nothing.

Well, it have to be done in a way that wouldn't just be another way of annoying the player. Warning messages when the resist grows smaller and having the full resist still have a decent duration would be the right way of doing it.

You also open the way for cursed / blessed items that provide normal resist to provide somewhat less / more resistance than before.

Yes, that's a possibility.

[PaulBlay]

Well, it have to be done in a way that wouldn't just be another way of annoying the player. Warning messages when the resist grows smaller and having the full resist still have a decent duration would be the right way of doing it.

One way to avoid annoying the player is to have it so they get greater resistance right at the start than they normally would have had.

[CJNyfalt]

Well, I haven't got much done lately, I just managed to finish what I already had decided to do with resistances.

So, I have new style resistances: Fire, Cold, Lite, Dark, Arcane

And left-over old style: Acid, Electricity, Poison, Fear, Blind, Confusion, Sound and Shard.

Fear, Blind and Confusion will stay as they are, boolean immunities. (At least for a while.)

Shard, I have shelved, but it will become based on AC later.

So, the leftovers are Acid, Elec, Poison and Sound.

Sound I will most likely convert to holy/lite, since monsters that have sound attacks fit that theme, and the lack of holy/lite attacks.

Acid will become Nature.

Poison and Electricity are the ones I can't make up my mind about.

[CJNyfalt]

Started to look at how I should make shard resist depend on AC.
Looking a the ladder it seemed to me that winner AC, in Sang which this variant is based on, varies from just over 100 to just over 200.

So I'm considering a scaling that 2 AC would give 1% shard resist. This would mean that 200 AC would give shard immunity and 134 AC would correspond to shard resist. Does this sound reasonable?

[CJNyfalt]

I'm working on changing places in the code that checks for resist true/false to using numerical resist values.

In most cases it's clear what to do, but I'm not sure about AI part.
At what value should a monster start to consider it non-productive to use that kind of attacks against a player. 50% resist? 67% resist? 75% resist?

[PaulBlay]

At what value should a monster start to consider it non-productive to use that kind of attacks against a player. 50% resist? 67% resist? 75% resist?

Do monsters 'learn' resistances, or do they automatically know all of them?

[Pete Mack]

They learn, unless you enable smart_cheat.

[andrewdoull]

Do monsters 'learn' resistances, or do they automatically know all of them?

They learn them.

Chris - I'd always let a monster 'bother' attacking a player using a resisted attack some of the time. It's not important that every monster act perfectly intelligently - you want resists to be useful after all.

There's also the exploit where a player could allow a resist to be learned, then switch to their 'hit monster really hard' kit, and take advantage of the fact the monster won't use learned resistances.

Andrew

[Nick]

At what value should a monster start to consider it non-productive to use that kind of attacks against a player. 50% resist? 67% resist? 75% resist?

In FA, monster behaviour changes at 0%, 20%, 80% and 100% resistance.