Dungeon Keeper 2 Patch - DK2 with Better Balance (And Pie)

[Metal Gear Rex]

How would people feel if I sacrificed the Elite Dark Angel in order to make the Horned Reaper a standard Creature again like in the original DK? I'm pretty sure this is a bit of a dumb question though as I think I already know the answer. F*** YEAH!!

Edit:
Oh and I should probably mention how he'd function. Well he'd be similar to the Dark Angel in that he'd focus entirely on offense. The differences would be that he's a Melee only Unit, and he's better at taking hits as well as landing them. Being able to walk on lava would also make him a serious threat. His drawback, other than lacking ranged capabilities, would be that he's vulnerable to Turncoat unlike the Dark Angel. He also is very difficult to manage. Think of DK2's normally sensitive Creatures, except on crack. He also cannot really help out in other dungeon activities and may refuse to train even.

[Skarok]

I'd love to see that, but the problem about him is, that he doesn't do anything. The only thing he does is walking through random areas (bad if you're in front of an open lake and don't want to get trouble with some heroes) and fighting. He doesn't sleep, eat, requests gold or does anything else. If you could manage to make him do these things, it would be great (though it will still look kinda weird, since he's lacking all of the animations), if not I'd leave it how it is now. Plus, there would be another downside; the Ai couldn't handle elites, and if a whole race only works with such rooms, they're really fucked. Plus you'd have to make another creature as horny, therfore the campaign would be stupid to play and not make any sense. And one sort of creature will have to be out forever to make buggy horned reapers available. If you can manage it to avoid these problems, then do it. But I don't think you'll be able to change these things, at least the editor can't.

[Metal Gear Rex]

I'd love to see that, but the problem about him is, that he doesn't do anything. The only thing he does is walking through random areas (bad if you're in front of an open lake and don't want to get trouble with some heroes) and fighting. He doesn't sleep, eat, requests gold or does anything else. If you could manage to make him do these things, it would be great (though it will still look kinda weird, since he's lacking all of the animations), if not I'd leave it how it is now. Plus, there would be another downside; the Ai couldn't handle elites, and if a whole race only works with such rooms, they're really fucked. Plus you'd have to make another creature as horny, therfore the campaign would be stupid to play and not make any sense. And one sort of creature will have to be out forever to make buggy horned reapers available. If you can manage it to avoid these problems, then do it. But I don't think you'll be able to change these things, at least the editor can't.

I'm not fully sure what you're talking about with the latter part of your post, but I know what I'm doing. (Most of the time) I've done this type of thing before. He works perfectly fine as a regular Creature. Perhaps you forgot to change some of his other stats such as Hunger Rate/Hunger Fill/etc as they're set up for him to never eat, sleep, or collect pay by default. I know he doesn't have all the proper animations but he doesn't crash the game at all so there's really no problem. At least he does have the proper sounds. (For some reason)

What I mean by "sacrifice" the Elite Dark Angel is that I need to tell the Editor that the Horned Reaper is not Horny, but rather that the Elite Dark Angel is. There has to be someone checked with "Is Horny" or the game will crash. (For fairly obvious reasons) They aren't technically swapping positions. (Meaning the Horned Reaper won't become the new elite Dark Angel or anything like that) And even if they were swapping positions, I know how to change an elite unit into a regular unit so that won't really be a problem either.

The only real thing that would be different would be when you summon Horny, the Dark Angel will come instead. If I give the Dark Angel the exact same stats as Horny before the change, then there won't be a difference at all, statistically. It may look a bit strange, story wise, to see the Dark Angel pick up the Portal Gem (Better than Prince Balder as I previously used, at least) but that's really a minor problem. If someone is seriously going to complain to me about something as small as that, I'm just going to ignore them.

* * *

If anything, the Elite Dark Angel coming by could be used as a start to write a new plot. Zachariah, the most powerful of all Dark Angels that is feared even by the Gods, has been sealed away and imprisoned. Although his spirit remains free, his body has been hidden away in an ancient realm. So now he manipulates the Dungeon Keepers into capturing the Portal Gems, the keys to opening up the ancient realm and freeing his body. Said Portal Gems have been hidden away in many of the lands but were soon found by the Heroes and then utilized as a powerful source of magic. This only makes Zachariah's job easier as Dungeon Keepers and Heroes already lack the need for reason to be at each others' throats.

...well it's better than DK2's Plot anyways.

[Skarok]

I'm not fully sure what you're talking about with the latter part of your post, but I know what I'm doing. (Most of the time) I've done this type of thing before. He works perfectly fine as a regular Creature. Perhaps you forgot to change some of his other stats such as Hunger Rate/Hunger Fill/etc as they're set up for him to never eat, sleep, or collect pay by default. I know he doesn't have all the proper animations but he doesn't crash the game at all so there's really no problem. At least he does have the proper sounds. (For some reason)

Well, I changed these stats, but the reapers were still just running off, doing nothing. Don't know what went wrong though.

What I mean by "sacrifice" the Elite Dark Angel is that I need to tell the Editor that the Horned Reaper is not Horny, but rather that the Elite Dark Angel is. There has to be someone checked with "Is Horny" or the game will crash. (For fairly obvious reasons) They aren't technically swapping positions. (Meaning the Horned Reaper won't become the new elite Dark Angel or anything like that) And even if they were swapping positions, I know how to change an elite unit into a regular unit so that won't really be a problem either.

I know, already made horny a creature once. But if you make the horned reapers available for the Ai it won't be a problem I guess.

The only real thing that would be different would be when you summon Horny, the Dark Angel will come instead. If I give the Dark Angel the exact same stats as Horny before the change, then there won't be a difference at all, statistically. It may look a bit strange, story wise, to see the Dark Angel pick up the Portal Gem (Better than Prince Balder as I previously used, at least) but that's really a minor problem. If someone is seriously going to complain to me about something as small as that, I'm just going to ignore them.

Just wanted to warn you. And yeah, imo Zachariah also fits good as your right hand, though I'd prefer to have the spell completely removed from the campaign. It wasn't much of an use against keepers, but levels like stonekeep were beaten within minutes with him. Is there a way to make him disappear after he took some damage? (though that would also need some tests)

If anything, the Elite Dark Angel coming by could be used as a start to write a new plot. Zachariah, the most powerful of all Dark Angels that is feared even by the Gods, has been sealed away and imprisoned. Although his spirit remains free, his body has been hidden away in an ancient realm. So now he manipulates the Dungeon Keepers into capturing the Portal Gems, the keys to opening up the ancient realm and freeing his body. Said Portal Gems have been hidden away in many of the lands but were soon found by the Heroes and then utilized as a powerful source of magic. This only makes Zachariah's job easier as Dungeon Keepers and Heroes already lack the need for reason to be at each others' throats.

...well it's better than DK2's Plot anyways.

Change Zacharia's name to the horny Zachariah and the mentor's quotes would fit too.

[Metal Gear Rex]

Just wanted to warn you. And yeah, imo Zachariah also fits good as your right hand, though I'd prefer to have the spell completely removed from the campaign. It wasn't much of an use against keepers, but levels like stonekeep were beaten within minutes with him. Is there a way to make him disappear after he took some damage? (though that would also need some tests)

That's something I'm trying to test. But rather than him disappearing after taking damage, he disappears after a time limit.

[Metal Gear Rex]

Does anyone hold an emotional attachment of any kind to the Trigger Trap? As far as I'm concerned, it was generally pretty useless. I've been considering trying to change it to make it into a Hail Trap.

It would have an AoE like the Fireburst Trap, except it would actually attack the enemy once they entered its line of sight instead of waiting for them to step on its tile. It also would damage all enemies, unlike the Fireburst Trap which cannot damage enemies that can walk on lava. Other than that, it would generally be a cheaper yet downgraded version of the Fireburst Trap. Might be pretty interesting to experiment with. (One other idea I had was a cannon that fired Boulders, but that was more of a joke idea)

[Metal Gear Rex]

Quite a major setback has occurred, I must admit. While attempting to create a test area in order to test the newly revised King Reginald, his sons and Guardians, the editor decided to crash on me when I tried to save. What's worse, it continues to crash every time I load up the level. Even worse, it isn't the level itself but the Global Data. I've played around with it and it seems that the Global Data itself is the problem, I don't know how or why. It really doesn't make much sense considering I didn't really change any global settings, just the map. I cannot get the Global Data to work. The last backup save is before Level 17's Playtesting.

So now, I have to either redo everything after that... or I figure out a way to get the editor to stop being stupid. It is being rather difficult though. I fear that the Global file itself somehow got corrupted. What a bother.

[MeinCookie]

That sinking DK 2 just screwed up feeling. I've had that a few times.

[Metal Gear Rex]

That sinking DK 2 just screwed up feeling. I've had that a few times.

It's quite annoying considering how much work and effort I put into those last 5 Heroes. I made each of the Princes uniquely different.
Prince Tristan, the oldest and most spoiled of the sons who's definitely quite arrogant. He doesn't like getting his hands dirty and prefers to indirectly fight by offering support. He's well balanced in terms of combat abilities but also had his father's ability to regenerate Health on his own land.
Prince Felix, the middle son who's the most psychotic/bloodthirsty. He's reckless in battle as he slashes through his enemy, not caring about taking damage himself. He doesn't know when to retreat and will fight ruthlessly until the bitter end. He's ironically a bit easier to manage as he doesn't care about food or sleep as much. He also is not very religious and refuses to pray.
Prince Balder, the youngest yet the wisest of the three sons. He protects his comrades well in battle, focusing more on fighting defensively. He's an adept manufacturer, and uses his knowledge of that field to aid him on the battlefield in order to spot hidden traps. He's the most patient out of all his brothers, and doesn't drink as he knows its bad for him.

As for the King and Stone Knights, I really put the effort to make them into challenging opponents, worthy of being the final bosses. The Stone Knights are now damageable by normal Units, and all three bosses are now very difficult to kill without the proper strategy. You can't just send Horny in to kill everything as its not going to work out too well. (You can still use Horny to help you out a bit, but you just can't rely on him solely anymore)

Maybe when my headache goes away, I can redo them all. I still have a lot of the changes in my head as I just did this last night.

[Metal Gear Rex]

I will not touch Level Variables (So I cannot adjust the growths of stats, for example) because that will not be saved to the global data.

Scratch that, I will modify the Level Variables, but only a select part of it. At the top of the Level Variables, the part that says "Misc. Variables" is what I'll be modifying. I found out that the "Variables" Map File only effects the Misc. Variables, the part I need to modify, and doesn't effect anything else in the Level Variables. This is good as it means the patch can easily be applied to any map without worry of it resetting other things like the speech/text ID.

However, I also learned (although I learned this quite a while ago but never bothered to mention it as I hadn't released the patch) that if a level was not saved with Global Data, then copying and pasting a Global Data file to the level won't work as the game will simply ignore it. This more so applies to official levels as I believe most custom maps were saved with Global Data. I'll have a copy of the original and modified versions of the official maps ready with the gobal data saved to it anyways so that won't be a problem.

I'll update the main post with details of Traps/Doors/Keeper Spells eventually, followed by information regarding the Level Changes.