'Rare Monsters' suggestion

[TheOysterHippopotami]

What do you guys think about adding 'rare' monsters to the game that only spawn at a fraction of the rate other monsters spawn and/or only spawn under certain conditions. I'm thinking more monsters like the ferocious boar, or even the wolves in the thornlands, except more interesting. I would like to see monsters that have a chance of spawning only when the weather conditions are right, or only at a certain time of day. For example, if it were raining in the thornlands there would be a chance of, say, a giant bullfrog monster spawning. Or, if it were nighttime at Edana perhaps there could be a chance of encountering a thief or bandit. It might also be fun to combine the two for some monsters. Make it a condition for it to be both nighttime and raining, for example, for some monsters to spawn.

Not only is this a cool idea, I think if it were implemented it would be an easy way to add more quests and items/quest items to the game. It might even be possible to set up an FFXII style 'hunt' system.

I can foresee one exploitable problem with this, however. A person could very easily go to the thornlands and just make it rain via console command. I have two solutions for this, one being that a monster isn't guaranteed to spawn just because the conditions are right. The other solution brings me to a whole new idea.

What about restricting weather manipulation to spells? It would be cool to have a spell that could make it rain or snow, regardless of where you were. If this were possible, it would be really cool to see extra weather conditions added to the game, like sand storms and thunderstorms or possibly hurricanes and even floods, if possible. It would also be cool to see an 'apocalyptic' weather condition where the sky turns red and occasionally rains down one of those magma balls that shoots from the volcano spell.

I hope this idea gets some kind of support in the community, as I think it would add a very fun dimension to MS:C.

 

[Thothie]

One of the things I tried, and failed, to do was rig it so the weather console commands only affected the client that ran them. That way, those FPS slain or blinded by various weather effects could axe them without interfering with the experience for others. Sadly I think, although I've not confirmed, that the setenv script commands are global.

I've also been meaning to re-write the rain/storm scripts to use a cluster model and only rain down near players, rather than tempent flooding the entire map as it does now. ><

In terms of quests, one of the concepts we came up with, but is proving rather daunting to script, is special quest-creature mini-bosses. You'd go up to various static NPC's in the towns, and they'd give you a randomized quest and reward based on your level - sending you off to a random maps with various special level-generated creatures looking for items they carry or the like that would appear for those with the quests flags. The players would then return the item, or proof of the creature's death, to gather the generated reward.

Tis the closest thing I've think we've mulled over along those lines.

 

[haseo]

doesn't sound that complicated, if a condition is met, eg based on time, weather, && additional condition, eg playeramount, amount of killed monsters, whateveryouwant { monster raremonster_3.. (additional code here duuuuh)

also why stop at rare monster events, wouldn't it be cool with random encounters, eg you travel at night and close to a city thus increasing the chance of getting attacked by thieves or bandits (like in: fallout or baldurs gate..), if (time=12 && map.travel=helena) and rand condition is met { forced map.travel=rarelevel; } or somethings?

One of the things I tried, and failed, to do was rig it so the weather console commands only affected the client that ran them. That way, those FPS slain or blinded by various weather effects could axe them without interfering with the experience for others. Sadly I think, although I've not confirmed, that the setenv script commands are global.

I've also been meaning to re-write the rain/storm scripts to use a cluster model and only rain down near players, rather than tempent flooding the entire map as it does now. ><

In terms of quests, one of the concepts we came up with, but is proving rather daunting to script, is special quest-creature mini-bosses. You'd go up to various static NPC's in the towns, and they'd give you a randomized quest and reward based on your level - sending you off to a random maps with various special level-generated creatures looking for items they carry or the like that would appear for those with the quests flags. The players would then return the item, or proof of the creature's death, to gather the generated reward.

Tis the closest thing I've think we've mulled over along those lines.

and *better late than never annoying poke of offtopicness*

 

[Jelly]

I have written *some* code/script on the random quest system, nowhere near finishing it though.
Haven't decided on the best way to spawn these quest entities though.
(note: typing this on my wii )

 

[FER]

Quests aside, the idea of super rare monster that spawn at random or under certain conditions might be cool

 

[littleaznboi]

Quests aside, the idea of super rare monster that spawn at random or under certain conditions might be cool

New, bigger, badder, meaner monsters please ^_^
Maybe some juggernauts or dragons

 

[Thothie]

/attempts to link wiki article regarding dragons.
/fails.

 

[Dejiko]

/attempts to link wiki article regarding dragons.
/fails.

I'm not really sure, but I think there are only supposed to be 3 living dragons remaining in MS lore, and one of them is supposed to be friendly to the three races.

 

[Thothie]

Rare spawn: A wild Kharaztorant appears in Thornlands!



Okay, maybe a bit much...

(No that's not shopped)

There's actually four dragons, IIRC... I can only remember the names of three of them though...
• Kharaztorant is the eldest of all the remaining dragons - K Cult guy, eats a lot of dwarves, etc.
• Jaminporlants (also known as 'Janz') is an evil green dragon who hasn't been seen since the Age of Blood.
• Rhudeanlorat - I *think* this is the black dragon who fled into the Bleak at the end of the Age of Blood.
• A white dragon, who lives in the Elven capital city, and whose name I've completely forgotten.
...*sigh* Gotta get that wiki back.

 

[littleaznboi]

i just jizzed my pants!

I want to see that in the best map!

 

[Echo717]

Some more monsters like mscave Stone ogre and Fire reaver would be cool

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

• A white dragon, who lives in the Elven capital city, and whose name I've completely forgotten.
...*sigh* Gotta get that wiki back.

Aeldorandorat.
FYI

Some more monsters like mscave Stone ogre and Fire reaver would be cool

Yeah that stone ogre dude in mscave is awesome. Maps really need more extra "mass HP present" monsters like that one. Too bad you rarely see the stone ogre, though, since there's never that much people in mscave >_>

 

[Thothie]

There's a few like that... Rarest is probably the Bandit Leader in Helena, or, alternatively, the Orc Brawler and Catapult crew - or even more rarely - both (and god help the server should the two meet). There's always the aformentioned fire reaver in mscave, amongst a few other things in there. There's also a few misc creatures in Daragoth and Sfor that are HP dependant - some of which swap places with lesser creatures. I wish we'd see this more on the newer maps, but I understand why not, for it is rather complicated to setup this sort of trigger.

Problem with the Bandit Leader in Helena is that he's more likely to crash the server than you are to get his treasure out of him. ><

 

[Echo717]

I believe the bandit leader, crashed the server upon death, 100%

 

[Dridmar]

There's a few like that... Rarest is probably the Bandit Leader in Helena, or, alternatively, the Orc Brawler and Catapult crew - or even more rarely - both (and god help the server should the two meet). There's always the aformentioned fire reaver in mscave, amongst a few other things in there. There's also a few misc creatures in Daragoth and Sfor that are HP dependant - some of which swap places with lesser creatures. I wish we'd see this more on the newer maps, but I understand why not, for it is rather complicated to setup this sort of trigger.

Problem with the Bandit Leader in Helena is that he's more likely to crash the server than you are to get his treasure out of him. ><

I'll probably be needing to do a lot of these for my special little project so do you think you could write up a little tutorial sometime?

 

[Thothie]

I believe the bandit leader, crashed the server upon death, 100%

It's about 50% with four players in my experience... 0% with one - but there's no way to summon him with just one, without using dev commands.

It has something to do with the way the global helena NPC manages all the civlians the moment he dies, coupled with the ent spam his own death entails. Too many external events callled on too many scripts all at the same time... I took another few stabs and mitigating it recently, but the current alpha-pack has changed so much that it is now entirely incompatible with the current release, so I've no good way to test it.

I'll probably be needing to do a lot of these for my special little project so do you think you could write up a little tutorial sometime?

I'm hoping to add some way to make this easier in the future, but at the moment, there's two ways to deal with it.

The simplest, is to use the hpreq property on any msmonster_xxx/ms_npc. The monster will then only spawn if the total HP of players on the server is greater than said number. You can do simple multiplication to figure a good number. The monster will not count against any fireallperish events if he does not spawn, so you can combine such monsters with others that always spawn.

More complicated is to make a creature spawn within a certain range of hitpoints. This is done by using a trigger script, which is accomplished by adding a "scriptfile" property to any trigger_multiple or trigger_once (this property is there by default in the next FGD release). In the resulting property, you can use one of the following scripts:

triggers/totalhp_trigger
or
triggers/trigger_avghp

(In non-alpha packs, use the folder prefix "other/" rather than "trigger/")

In the target property, enter the event you want to fire under an HP condition.

In the targetname property, enter the range of hitpoints you want to trigger the map event seperated by a semi-colon. For example: 500;1000 - will fire the event if the total player hitpoints range between 500 and 1000 (or, in the case of trigger_avghp, will only fire if the average hp of players on the server is between 500 and 1000).

To make an event randomly rare, without worrying about hitpoints, just use mstrig_relay's (or trigger_relay's) "Fire Chance (%)"(random) property.

You can also use the multi_manager's random property (ie. set it to 1) to trigger a single event in the multi_manager's list at random - which you can then use to trigger one of various monster spawns, thus spawning a different creature on each visit. (This is why, in Daragoth's cave entrance to CotBG, sometimes you get a giant bat, and sometimes you get a fire shaman.)

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I also think this would be a great way to add new pets to the game. I'd like to see a rare snow wolf spawn in ms_snow or something.

And that dragon is freaking awesome.

 

[Hakariaki]

I believe the bandit leader, crashed the server upon death, 100%

hmm, what if you slay all the npcs then the server will less likely crash i guess?