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[Toady One]

In my 10x/10y, the title letters "SLAVES TO ARMOK" start bumping into each other a little (no longer can see between them).  Hmmmmm....  quite odd.  I wonder what accounts for the difference.  Did smaller numbers work for you, or is 10 the minimum? (if you don't mind checking)

All of the suggestions sound good (the wound screen is due for a massive overhaul).  I've written them down.  Speaking of which, did anyone have anything pressing enough that they wanted a version "e" for it?  Once I start the item editors, etc., I won't be able to make such regular updates.  We can start a list here or in a new topic.  I won't do anything major like, "could you please add an effect that destroys the world but puts you in a big bubble and sends you to another planet to be the first person so you can start humans and stuff please cuz it would be kewl", but I could do other things.  Are people more-or-less happy with how it's working?  Spells working?  Maybe not as many as you'd like, but it's a start, and easily bloatable.

I won't spend much more time on magic.  I'd like to be heavily into the item release in August, even if it doesn't get out then (my university oral exams, etc., will mostly determine my August schedule).  However, if certain interface issues are pissing you off, or you can think of what you think would be an easy magic effect, I'm all for a final pre-me-being-in-Canada release.

[Captain_Action]

Hmmm... Perhaps some feedback on some of the spells. I had a mangle foot at one point (damned ant) and it would have nice to have a message like "you healed your foot, but it still looks like hamburger"

Also is it possible to target a body part and partially heal the connected body parts? Like that foot in the previous example, instead of healing each mangled toe, perhaps I could heal my foot instead. There should be some reduced results for doing this.

[Toady One]

You can do it in the magic art editor under Acquire Creature (effect 6) for the healing art (3rd one).  There's an option called "Can Target all BPs below a point" or something (that would include toes below a foot).  I should add a third option (can target all adjuncts but not major connected parts), because as it stands, you could target the upper body and healing everything (if you made that change in the editors first).  Anyway, maybe there could also be a power attenuation associated to this type of target...

Feedback is good.  Now that the text window looks nicer and holds more, I should put more text in it.

[Toady One]

I'm also voting in showing how many targets you have left to designate.  If you get enough spell skill to have your green zapper make more than one line, it gets annoying not to know when you are through.  Incidentally, if you want to try this, you can hotkey the ball of splat and pop a ton of them off.  Once your skill gets around 200, cast green zapper.  You should be able to make multiple rays.  It's not that impressive, but the underlying code will eventually support any sort of spell-improvement-with-skill as more effects are added.

If you want to blast your computer, cast chunky cone over the entire map, passing over your character so you can see it.  If you are in turn-based mode, you can pause and admire the tracer-like lines before the computer slowly works on creating thousands of projectiles from the creatures.  I'll fix this later (simply by cutting down on the number of projectiles and adding particulate clouds that will setting on the ground.  For now, don't blow up everybody all at once.  If you must do such things, use the rectangle field spell from the dark arts to burn out everybody's nerves.  You can also pause to admire the lightning strikes (make your rectangle huge and stick you in it).  Well, nothing to admire yet...  pretend they look nicer.  It's still funny.

[ July 17, 2003: Message edited by: Toady One ]

[Harlander]

It seems to work at 2x 2y... though I'm running at 1024x768..

Could you do a teleport spell effect?
It'd make flesh balls a usable player class.. heh heh

[Toady One]

2x2 doesn't mess up my machine.  I'll make that the default in the init file.

Lessee...  here's what I've done, and the night is still young:

• Stuck "cast spell" on the top in the magic menu
  
• Made it possible to target all adjuncts within a part (and the part itself).  As suggested, it makes healing much better.
  
• If you can target multiple things, it tells you how many targets you have left to designate.
  
• The spell target is now flashing red as you are drawing it so it is slightly easier to tell what you'll be hitting.
  
• The target cursor has an option to follow terrain.
  
• There was a bug that if when making a line target, you pick the same point twice, the spell ends up hitting EVERYTHING.  This locked up my computer with detonation, but it works with the blood draining ray.  You can drain everything.  But now it is fixed.
  
• There was a problem with nerve damage healing.  Now spells that cause some nerve damage won't have their effects overridden.
  

I'm still planning to tweak how healing spells work, add more spell feedback, and at least think about teleport spells and a better wound screen.  The wound screen would be the hardest thing, if I wanted to do it right.  I think I'll have time for it.

[Toady One]

And of course, if I add teleport spells, you'll have to be able to teleport body parts as well...  I mean, naturally...  and since you can only target living creatures, the implications of this addition are quite dark indeed.

[Toady One]

Teleporting creatures and their parts is done...  as a side benefit, summoned creatures can be given entry locations, so you won't have to search for them.

Spell feedback and wound interface are the only things left I think (assuming I finish the wound interface at all -- it will take time to do it how I want to do it).

[Captain_Action]

Some more stuff to think about.

Perhaps there could be spells that could auto-re-cast(?) themselves until the player moves or becomes involed in combat? I've noticed it takes several castings of the heal spell to fix ant bites and many more for the nastier slashes. Maybe it would make things easier to cast the spell once and just wait in realtime mode for the wounds to be healed. Or perhaps we could make a LONG duration but weak heal spell, AKA regeneration a la troll?

Also I notice that some of my hairier humans suffer slashed hair wounds. They even show up in the highlighted wounded part list! Too bad there isn't a magic hair regrowth spell.  

One more thing, starting the game with a weapon made from mercury or ice is funny. What is more so is tracking a kobold by the puddles of water on the ground. But tracking a titan by the trail of smashed bunnies is not!   :eek:

[Toady One]

I'm not sure about putting in auto-recasting now, but I could make a regeneration spell.  Right now, healing spells have a random effectiveness when cast, so the nastier slashes just take a number of castings until you have success.  I'll put in a notification at least, as I'm doing the spell feedback mentioned earlier.

I'll also make a regrowth effect for lost limbs (as well as a weaker one for hair).  Hair will eventually be able to grow back naturally, but for now it's treated like a missing arm.

He he he.  I'm afraid we'll have to wait for the item release for items to be made out of reasonable materials, since all of the item code is going to be revised anyway...

[Toady One]

The old heal spell will also regrow hair.  There are new regeneration and regrowth spells.  With body part regrowth, the game enters a new macabre realm...  you can set how you want regrowth to occur.  The spell effect regrows a certain number of tissues, and you can set them to come back from inside to outside, outside to inside, or randomly.  Regrowth does not bring growths like hair and finger nails back.

So for instance, I blasted off my right leg.  Then I cast regrow on each leg section (upper, lower, foot) to get all of the pieces together (you can include toes, so when I cast it on the foot, the toes came back too).  However, it only brought back one random tissue for each part.  My leg was:

Upper leg (skin only)
Lower leg (muscle only)
Foot (skin only)
Toes (various bone/skin/muscle only)

All hair and nails were missing.  Then I cast heal on my upper leg.  The nasty hanging skin thing grew its hair back, although it still didn't have muscle or bone.  You can cast the spell a number of times to bring your leg back fully, but you'd need to follow it up with a number of heal spells to grow back you hair and toe nails.

Anyway, the game is sick now, even without supporting graphics for these additions.

[Toady One]

I finished spell feedback, more or less.  All the spell effects are represented, but I think I could make some of it a little more accurate...  this is what you get now:

I'll save more interesting text for you to discover.

Hmmm...  only wound interface left to go.

[Harlander]

Does the game let you walk on a boneless, unmuscled skin outline of a leg?

[Toady One]

Of course!  I haven't figured out why yet.  I thought the stance code was pretty clean...  how wrong I was.

[Toady One]

The whole effectiveness routine didn't respect missing tissues.  Up until recently, tissues themselves couldn't go missing -- only body parts could, so I didn't notice.  With the advent of melting, and now regrowth as well, certain tissues can be missing while the part is still there.  This should be an easy fix now.  By Heaven's grace, the boneless leg-sack will collapse!