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[Shurik3n]

All the lower level spiders have been renamed for simplicity. Have fun.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

 

[Thothie]

Evaan's doing (I finally have someone else who can script a little!)... Personally, I miss the latin names already. They were spicier.

*sigh* Writing ya'll from one of the laptops as the main puter is down. Apparently my drive imager realized it was not compatible with my SATA2 RAID BIOS and decided to uinstall itself. Sadly, it's absolutely idiotic, as the way it decided to uninstall itself was, of course, restore the image it made when it first installed itself, dispite the fact it was not compatible with the drive BIOS. Thus *poof* instant corrupt primary hard drive.

Fiddling with it now... I think maybe it just restored critical areas, like the registry, in which case the file system and most of the files maybe intact. System restore wont work, but I maybe able to tweak it into working through the recovery console. Wish me luck.

If I have to reinstall XP, there maybe no patch worth posting next month as that'll cost me at least a week of bullsh*t. If the whole drive is corrupted - meh - I'd say then there'd be no patch at all - but the scripts at least are backed up in like five different places, and the hard code is on an unaffected drive, but I'd lose a lot of map work, models, and archives that haven't been burned off yet.

 

[FER]

I'll be cheering so you won't lose anything important

 

[Gurluas]

Aww i liked the latin spider names...
and i hope you are not loosing all files O_O

 

[CrazyMonkeyDude]

But... Tothie!... Where are we without our monthly updates?! I'll have to go emo and cut myself!

Hahaha, just kidding! I don't think we'll die if we don't get an update next month, so long as there's a good reason for it.

 

[FER]

I dont care about the update but I hope you havent lost any files

 

[Thothie]

Meh, seems I just lost Windows, so not so bad as it may have been. Bleh, need a new disk imager now.

 

[Gaz]

Thoth, what imaging prog do you use? I really need one and I figure you'd know which ones best

 

[Shurik3n]

I really must protest the amount of HP Maldora has on your beta server. It was over 8470 one run (I got the 10x message). It takes a good 20 minutes to kill him like that, what with his jumping around and everything. Maldora has to be the most unstable boss in the game when it comes to edict errors, and every second were fighting him adds to the chance of a crash.

 

[Humming Bird]

Shuri, wasn't there also only 4 of us? Think about having a full 8 people. He would have, I would say, around 12k hp?

 

[Shurik3n]

I'm sure it maxes out somewhere... I'd also like to note I got a slammin 500 something xp from a 25 minute fight.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Wait a second; I thought only the new Kharaztorant Cult foes had the more-players-in-game-more-HP-and-XP-for-monsters thing. Does this crap apply to all monsters now, or only bosses and the Kharaztorant Cult foes (still lame)?

 

[The Man In Black]

Go check it out on Thothie's server. It at least works with Maldora, too.

 

[Thothie]

Wait a second; I thought only the new Kharaztorant Cult foes had the more-players-in-game-more-HP-and-XP-for-monsters thing. Does this crap apply to all monsters now, or only bosses and the Kharaztorant Cult foes (still lame)?

On JUL2007b it applies only to the K Cult. The ultra-beta server is experimenting with spreading it to all monsters, but obviously, it needs some balancing work. (Which is why we have the ultra-beta server)

One issue I've yet to get around to fixing, is the base multiplier stacks ont he K_Cult's internal system - we had 3 players in there, and the buggers had 1050hp a piece. :|

I also can't yet apply the system to the old AI, as I can't multiply their damage. Even with the new AI, it doesn't apply to projectiles. I'm thinking of moving the damage multipliers to the hard code side, thus any and all damage done by monsters can be run through it.

Another problem is that boss monsters are already balanced towards multiple players, so I might have to work up boss flags for them or something, to tone down the multipliers.

 setvard NPC_DMG_MULTI 1
  local N_PLAYERS game.players
 if ( N_PLAYERS > 1 )
 {
  //increase XP by 10% / player
  if ( NPC_GIVE_EXP > 0 )
  {
   local BASE_EXP NPC_GIVE_EXP
   multiply BASE_EXP 0.1
   multiply BASE_EXP N_PLAYERS
   add BASE_EXP NPC_GIVE_EXP
   setvard NPC_GIVE_EXP BASE_EXP
  } 


  //increase HP 25%
  if ( game.monster.maxhp > 0 )
  {
   local BASE_HP game.monster.maxhp
   multiply BASE_HP 0.25
   multiply BASE_HP N_PLAYERS
   add BASE_HP game.monster.maxhp
   hp BASE_HP 
  }

  //increase damage 20% / player 
  setvard NPC_DMG_MULTI N_PLAYERS
  multiply NPC_DMG_MULTI 0.20
 }

Basically, it's currently +25%hp/player, +20% damage/player, +10% xp/player, and it, at the moment, only affects monsters on the new AI, and that only applies to the ultra-beta server.

 

[Thothie]

Thoth, what imaging prog do you use? I really need one and I figure you'd know which ones best

I can tell you which ones not to use. Norton Ghost doesn't work well with the latest Intel Raid BIOS, and doesn't tell you until it tries to uninstall itself, which it does by restoring the image it made on install - on a drive where the BIOS isn't compatible, which, needless to say, leads to bad things.

Drive Clone Pro reportedly has similar issues, and does the same stupid restore bit.

So at the moment, I've no drive imager. I basically want one that can make compressed drive images and save them on separate drives, and it needs to work outside windows (as one that can only work from inside windows is more or less useless). The closest thing I have to that is a program called SavePartition. It does have the somewhat surprising ability read both SATA2 raid drives, and NTFS, from DOS. However, the major bugger with it, is that it can't create files on NTFS drives. I've not yet attempted to overwrite an existing file, but I'm hesitant to try, as I've no empty drive where I wouldn't lose a bunch of stuff if it fubared it.

I do know SavePart works very well with FAT32 drives, as I've often used it to clone laptops (occasionally I'll get a set of laptops in and need to install the same OS's on em all – usually quicker to clone the drives).

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Suggestion: Keep the more-players-in-game-more-HP-and-XP-for-monsters thing Kharaztorant Cult foes-only.

 

[Shurik3n]

The XP should increase by more. Making something twice as hard to kill for only 40% more XP doesn't add up. Its already hard enough to level as it is.

 

[Humming Bird]

Thoth, what imaging prog do you use? I really need one and I figure you'd know which ones best

I can tell you which ones not to use. Norton Ghost doesn't work well with the latest Intel Raid BIOS, and doesn't tell you until it tries to uninstall itself, which it does by restoring the image it made on install - on a drive where the BIOS isn't compatible, which, needless to say, leads to bad things.

Drive Clone Pro reportedly has similar issues, and does the same stupid restore bit.

So at the moment, I've no drive imager. I basically want one that can make compressed drive images and save them on separate drives, and it needs to work outside windows (as one that can only work from inside windows is more or less useless). The closest thing I have to that is a program called SavePartition. It does have the somewhat surprising ability read both SATA2 raid drives, and NTFS, from DOS. However, the major bugger with it, is that it can't create files on NTFS drives. I've not yet attempted to overwrite an existing file, but I'm hesitant to try, as I've no empty drive where I wouldn't lose a bunch of stuff if it fubared it.

I do know SavePart works very well with FAT32 drives, as I've often used it to clone laptops (occasionally I'll get a set of laptops in and need to install the same OS's on em all – usually quicker to clone the drives).

Give Acronis True Image a try. My family uses it (I don't, myself, cause I don't have enough space on my second drive to backup stuff). I backup just by rar-ing, and burning onto a DVD.

Link:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/pr ... trueimage/

 

[Thothie]

Suggestion: Keep the more-players-in-game-more-HP-and-XP-for-monsters thing Kharaztorant Cult foes-only.

People have been complaining that multiple players oft make the game too easy. The k-cult was introduced as an experiment to see how easy it would be to rig up a system where creatures could ramp up difficulty/reward by the number of active players on the server.

The XP should increase by more. Making something twice as hard to kill for only 40% more XP doesn't add up. Its already hard enough to level as it is.

One, experience never goes up exponentially with difficulty, and the ratio above is much more generous than normal. Two, it does not make them twice as hard, as it does not affect all aspects of the monster. And three, you, of all people, with two level 40ish characters in less than six months know that leveling is indeed, far too easy. (At least until you actually get to level 40, by which time the game is pointless.)

I backup just by rar-ing, and burning onto a DVD.

That don't work so good with system areas. I'd like to have a nice clean image of windows to fall back to when the computer is configured correctly. Sadly, I think I just moved beyond that point when I installed VS2003.

 

[Shurik3n]

When I said "its already hard enough to level as it is" I guess I was trying to say that with the experience ramp its too hard to keep leveling. You already know that though, and have stated somewhere that because of it the effective level cap is 45 or something. I guess I was hoping an increase in XP might change that.

I suppose I was thinking of the fights against Maldora yesterday and comparing that to the difficulty he went up in versus XP. However, I don't see how giving a monster 2 times the HP doesn't make it take 2 times longer to kill, granted, for it to get 2 times HP there has to be more people which would make it take less time to kill, but then again would also produce even less XP.

And I don't have two level 40s, I have one, a 17 Wizard and a 17 Defender (if you add them together its almost 40 ?).

 

[Thothie]

Meh, getting you mixed up with someone else - yer the one who got to level 40 in 3 months then.

HP isn't everything. An Orc Warrior with 60,000hp is still a breeze to kill, just takes forever. In Malodra's case, almost none of his weaponry increases damage, nor do most of his minions, so his difficulty doesn't increase with HP at 1:1 - except in that he gets more HP back per kill still, as I've not nerfed the HP return yet (scaled it by player killed HP). He's a bad example though, as I don't intend to have him increase his HP at the ratio he currently does, due to the fact that's he's a boss, and already prepared to deal with multiple players.

Think to keep the concept, we'll need one ramp for regulars and one for bosses. Figuring maybe about double the XP/HP/Dmg at 8 players for bosses, and maybe tripple to quad with minions, there may not be enough time to balance test all that before AUG2007, so implementation may slide over to SEP2007.

You already know that though, and have stated somewhere that because of it the effective level cap is 45 or something. I guess I was hoping an increase in XP might change that.

That isn't by accident - it's by design. There's nothing to challenge characters above level 35 or so, hardly. In the future, when say Lodagond and Nasthralwhatiztz and the like are out, we'll be tossing in monsters with more insane XP and the level cap may raise a bit then, but for now, we want it to become neigh impossible to level to 40, never mind beyond.

Granted additional XP per player mitigates that a bit, or at least it does when coupled with my other plan: setting up monster spawns that only trigger with X# of players present, and ripenting some of the vanilla maps accordingly. Hopefully not too much so though. If/when we fix the DOT XP passing though, it may turn into going back and adjusting values.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Suggestion: Keep the more-players-in-game-more-HP-and-XP-for-monsters thing Kharaztorant Cult foes-only.

People have been complaining that multiple players oft make the game too easy. The k-cult was introduced as an experiment to see how easy it would be to rig up a system where creatures could ramp up difficulty/reward by the number of active players on the server.

Suggestion: Keep the more-players-in-game-more-HP-and-XP-for-monsters thing Kharaztorant Cult foes-only.

Or:

Suggestion: Keep the more-players-in-game-more-HP-and-XP-for-monsters thing specific to certain maps.

I refuse to finish and release Riverwind and/or Goldmoon if you implement this system.

 

[Thothie]

I can add something to allow you to toggle the feature off on specific maps (although I've no idea why you'd want to, as yer just robbing people of XP), but I've got more people for this than against it (it wasn't my idea), and I've my doubts that you have any intention of working on those maps in anycase.

 

[HumanSteak]

[/quote]Basically, it's currently +25%hp/player, +20% damage/player, +10% xp/player, and it, at the moment, only affects monsters on the new AI, and that only applies to the ultra-beta server.[/quote]

I disagree with the "robbing people their XP" since monsters takes 25% more time to kill and are 20% more dangerous for only 10% more :? . So it still pays more to kill unnafected monsters. I would 100% agree and be for this if XP was proportional to difficulty instead of hitting the same monster twice as long for a bit more XP.

That feature is very very interesting, but if it makes XP farming even harder and endless... It's way too long and pointless as it is at high levels please don't make it worse