Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Putnam]

Considering how the interaction system works, with ATTACK being one of the usage hints, they'll probably turn your ponies against you first thing, attack later.

[Telgin]

Oh, didn't realize that much had already been released about the way interactions were structured.  I am happy. 

I am also plotting ways for unicorns to mess with their enemies now.  It's going to be tough to balance out things if all unicorns have any sort of baneful magic.  Certainly nothing like turning enemies against their friends, but anything worth using in combat is going to make unicorns vastly more useful.  How do you compensate for that?

The eternal question in MLP, of course.  Unicorns are just better.

[Putnam]

Here is a text file containing all the interaction-related stuff that we've seen so far.

And here is a far more well-organized zip file containing all of that.

[Pokon]

Oh, didn't realize that much had already been released about the way interactions were structured.  I am happy. 

I am also plotting ways for unicorns to mess with their enemies now.  It's going to be tough to balance out things if all unicorns have any sort of baneful magic.  Certainly nothing like turning enemies against their friends, but anything worth using in combat is going to make unicorns vastly more useful.  How do you compensate for that?

The eternal question in MLP, of course.  Unicorns are just better.

Giving two-horned zebras the ability to cast two things at one time?

[Telgin]

I was mostly referring to the non magical castes vs. magical ones.  Earth ponies already suck compared to unicorns, since they get no combat advantage compared to an extra grasper.  Throw in magic too, and what do you get?

Admittedly, it's a problem with MLP in general.  I ended up tweaking the mod a bit to give earth ponies small bonuses to strength, toughness and endurance to compensate.  I don't know if it'll be enough with interactions, depending on how powerful we make them.

[Maklak]

I looked at what castes of ponies have, and normal ones look pretty balanced. EPs are very useful for industry. Tough maybe give them increased healing rate in addition to strength and stamina, and some natural skills, like swimming. PPs are fast, and therefore great for hauling and scouting and hunting. They are also pretty good for 'going outside' jobs, because their dodge can keep them alive while they run from danger. Their flying, even broken, is still somewhat useful as long as there is a path, that a non flier could follow. UPs are great for industry too, and have an extra grip. I'd rather train them in crafts, than throw them into combat tough.

If something is imbalanced, it is 'abnormal' ponies. An army of spider ponies is pretty unstoppable, and some castes have 2 gripping horns or tusks.

BTW is there a built-in way to make only Princesses nobles, or are they treated like anypony else?

If there is a way to manipulate gender rates, I've read somewhere that they are around 2/3 females.

[drilltooth]

jsut change the POP_RATIO tag.. Nazomrimtar only has one stallion, discounting the last wave which I'm not sure i really examined that well.

[Valikdu]

If your reaction produces an item with [MAT_FIXED_TEMP:...] set to higher than the boiling point, will the product be gaseous on arrival?

[yes, I'm preparing a reaction to make the IMP for the next version]

[Zarhon]

I was bored, so I decided to see how much of the Sapphire Stone/Statue Temple and it's traps can be reproduced for DF in some way. 
This is all theoretical however. Can a trap-master confirm it?

Video reference

Traps as they appear in order + way to reproduce it for DF:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

#1 Flying axes
This seems to be either a weapon trap with regular axes, or a special ranged weapon trap that shoots "axe blades" ammunition, linked to a pressure plate.

#2 Pit with fire erupting from it
A Retracting bridge that opens into a pit, containing either magma, or a creature with a fire breath attack inside it. Or both! (make sure the creature is fire/drowning proof though)

#3 Ceiling crocodiles / alligators
Only way this seems viable is just dropping cave/river crocodiles from a Z level above, or having a few of them chained nearby. Do chained creatures break their restraints when they drop a Z level?

#4 Roof scythe
A simple weapon trap, this time armed with a giant axe blade.

#5 Arrows trap
Another weapon trap, armed with bow & arrows.

#6 Hall o' spikes
A 3 blocks wide hall full of Upright spears / spikes, set to trigger either off pressure plates or fully automatic.

#7 Slowly closing/crushing stone door
This can either be done simply with two floodgates (They open with delay, but wont harm anything when they close), or with raising bridges (open normally, but when triggered form a wall that flings/crushes anything on the tiles of the "door", with a 100 step delay)

#8 Unseen traps
A combo trap, conisting of
-Arrow traps (due to arrows in her fedora)
-Collapsing ceiling floor tiles (crumbling ceiling)
-Mass release of Rhesus Macaque / Gibbons / Mandrills (monkey noises)
-Delayed stone door (same as trap #7)

#9 Sapphire Statue arrows / tiles hall
A hall filled with pressure plates linked to 10 fully armed bow & arrow weapon traps. The "safe" (unlinked) pressure plates being identifiable by engravings on those tiles / color of the tiles / material / whichever.

#10 Self destruct sequence
I have no idea how the trigger for this would work, other than having a pressure plate with the "Sapphire Statue" laying on it, set to trigger off humanoid weight. To make the trap fair, the stone needs to be a Z level above the level where all the pressure plates were for the arrow traps (upwards ramps leading to the Sapphire Statue "pedestal")
As for the trap itself:
- The "pressure plates floor" all collapse at once, isolating the Sapphire Statue pedestal area
- The pre-filled layer of MAGMAAAAAAAA (1 Z level beneath the pressure plates), gets pressurized to start rising and filling up the rest of the room
- Pillars collapse or cause cave-ins. Possibly forming an upwards path to the exit on the roof?

Sadly, it seems the final deathtrap Daring Do is tied up in can't be recreated properly (apart from the spiders/snakes). 

Or can it? 

[Putnam]

If your reaction produces an item with [MAT_FIXED_TEMP:...] set to higher than the boiling point, will the product be gaseous on arrival?

[yes, I'm preparing a reaction to make the IMP for the next version]

Yes, it's a commonly used trick.

[Sorcerer]

gentlemen!

[Neowulf]

The awesome has been doubled!

[Sorcerer]

stonesense poni sprites now grab their coat and hair color
im not sure what happens if someone with a custom stripe job shows up, probably just defaults to white, but i'll burn that bridge when i get there
next up is adding wings and horns

[Solifuge]

^_Yay!

It makes me happy to still see Stonesense around... I really ought to get on updating those art assets some time, but I can't XML for the life of me.

Anyway, as someone familiar with the show, here's a few thoughts for balancing the pony castes:
Earth Ponies should tend to be stronger and faster than the others. Pegasi have their wings and all that, which is cool enough. For Unicorns, is there a way to randomly apply one unique magical "trick" to each individual, without creating 20 different Unicorn Castes? Things like "Teleportation", a ranged "Energy Attack", or a "Sleeping Spell", etc. You could probably adapt some of the reactions Putnam made for Fortbent, the MSPA Troll-themed mod.

[Telgin]

Using castes is probably the only way.  I may experiment with that some to see what sorts of things are possible.

Of course, with the new DF coming out in what should be a very short time, it's hard to justify spending much time modding stuff like that with the current version.