Sleep/fire field problems

[Lord Rat]

I don't know if you are aware of this, but it causes a real problem with gameplay. . .

When you are moving through a dungeon (at least in BG -- I'm going to beat it before I try SI), and there is a sleep field or fire field square that pops up, there are two things in the Exult engine that are very different from CU7. (Classic U7)

1) Party members are not affected by them at all.

2) Once you are hit with one, it stays. In classic, it would not.

You see, in classic, any time I had a field pop up, I had an option:
Dispell it
Walk through it, take the hit and let it be gone forever.

Also, I've noticed that fields will trip over and over, even if one is already on the same square when you go offscreen and back onscreen.

In Classic, there were fields that would re-trip in this fashion, but only if the previous one had already burnt its course.

[wjp]

IIRC, fire fields didn't disappear when you walked through them. Sleep and poison fields did.

[Lord Rat]

OK. I think you are right.

But right now, nothing does -- at all.

[Max aka Moscow Dragon]

Maybe some usecode stuff for them?

[drcode]

True, party members aren't affected. It's easy to add, but I haven't decided whether to do so yet (never know what sort of bugs will come up).

I didn't realize that poison/sleep fields were supposed to disappear after they hit you. This isn't controlled by Usecode, so we'd have to put it in our engine. It wouldn't be difficult, but I'll want to check the original U7 first.

[Lord Rat]

OK, thanks

[artaxerxes]

sure Jeff...

but I'm pretty sure that was the case. Poison/sleep will disapear, fire stays and energy is not crossable

Artaxerxes

[Neutronium Dragon]

Yes. Poison and sleep fields were both one-shot effects, disappearing as soon as they affected someone. This was true for both U7s.

I would think it especially important for sleep fields, otherwise you could get stuck in one, unable to wake up long enough to move out of it.

Neutronium Dragon

[drcode]

Okay, thanks. I'll fix this before the Beta.

[Automaton Dragon]

Please, don't make party members affected unless you change their following algorithm. I already can't keep the bastards from walking in & out of houses, jumping into poison, and generally being irritating devils. I dread the thought of having some weakling party member (spark) decide to run willy-nilly through damaging force fields without my consent.

As a matter of fact, I really dislike the new following algorithm, and would greatly appreciate if it a "classic style" lock-step algorithm could be implemented as an option. This has been brought up so many times, by so many people, on the message boards that I'm surprised nobody has implemented it yet.

Since this is open source, maybe it's time to "put up or shut up".. I'm willing to have a go at implementing the classic walking style myself. But I am completely lost in the source code; where is the following algorithm implemented? What functions are used to calculate the "next step" of each character?

[drcode]

Yes, I wasn't planning on making party members affected before Beta. And I will work on better following after our 1.00 release.

The reason nobody has implemented 'classic' following is probably because it isn't easy. Personally, I'd like to have the members follow more intelligently. So, out in the open, they'd walk in a rough formation. But going through poisonous areas, they might arrange themselves single-file.

[Lord Rat]

2001-11-16 Jeff Freedman * objs/egg.cc (Animated_egg_object): Remove poison/sleep field
after one use.

Whooo HOOO

[Max aka Moscow Dragon]

IIRC in the native U7, ALL NPCs are affected by these fields and not only the party members.

BTW - what is "Curse" in U7? Decreasing of the armor protection?

[Lord Rat]

Yes, plus a random chance for spells to fail when cast.

[Lord Rat]

hmm. better check on that last one (I'm not so sure of myself, as I am going from memory.)

[drcode]

Curse: When you're 'cursed', your strength and dexterity are decreased, I think by about half. It last several seconds.