Extra Summon NPC's

[franky200]

I was thinking about more monster summoning scrolls and here is what I have come up with:

Summon Undead Archer: 150 MP, A skeleton used for ranged support. 8 DMG

Summon Troll: 220 MP, A regular troll that can be used for tanking/distraction. 20 DMG

Summon Ogre: 300 MP, A basic ogre that could be used to help stun enemies and keep them occupied. 30 DMG

Summon Giant Spider: 50 MP, A nice little spider made for lower level support. 5 DMG

Summon Orc Warrior: 150 MP, I don't know if this would work well but its worth a shot to try i guess.. 10 DMG

Summon Mage: 300 MP, A Mage that keeps an Ice shield on you and provides fire dart/ball support. 8 DMG

Summon Maldora: Jk

EDIT: Maybe a Charm for the higher ones like Orc/orge/troll.. That could be nice to have a pet troll that could level up.

EDIT AGAIN: Idea... Maybe if we could find a way to get an Orc buddy (cant think of another way to say it) It could level up like a wolf... but evolve into a blackhand/marogar/shaddahar type orc?

 

[Jordy]

Do these come with summoning spells subskill? :roll:

 

[Caluminium]

Most of these ideas sound good, the mage would be useful as ice shields break during combat alot.

Do these come with summoning spells subskill? :roll:

How would this be trained, through damage points the summon does?

 

[franky200]

Don't think that would be possible

 

[Caluminium]

Another suggestion, lives for the F menu summons.

By this I mean you could buy a maximum of 3 lives at once for the summon, for an expensive price, from the Galat Storage People. Then once it lost one of its lives (being killed once) it would unsummon itself, and would have to be summoned again.

When it runs out of all its lives it would either A) die and you would have to charm another one, or B) it won't be able to be summoned again until you renew the lives.

 

[Thothie]

Should point out that one of the things that limits our summons is the fact that all the data for such a summon has to be precache'd before every map load, just like weapons and items. It's harder to consolidate summon models, as unlike items, they each have independent complex sets of animations.

The rat/wolf/bear/snake model that is our current summon model (models/monsters/giant_rat.mdl) is already well beyond the bounds of sanity in that regards.

 

[ceriux]

half-life precaches before each map loads? why not before the game can load, like before you get to the main menu? that's what darkplaces does, or maybe shift some of the precaches elsewhere?

 

[Thothie]

SFAIK, it's engine side, and thus there's no way around it. However, Dogg did add a system to dynamic precache TGA's. Sadly, I don't think we have a coder who could work a way to use that same methodology to load models outside the engine's system (suspect it'd be much more difficult). Sprites might be somewhat more feasible, and that would save a lot of resources, but the same issue of finding a coder who could pull it off.

Dogg had a similar thought of getting around the edict system by creating our own DLL side, but, in addition to being *much* slower, I don't think there'd be any way to get the engine to 'hook' them and thus treat and manipulate them as normal edicts.