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Thread: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

  
  1. #21
    Spider
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    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    I tried this:

    IF(PLAYER0,TOTAL_CREATURES> 10)
    NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    KILL_CREATURE(PLAYER0, RANDOM, MOST_EXPERIENCED,1)
    NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    QUICK_INFORMATION(1,"A CREATURE HAS DIED!",PLAYER0)
    ENDIF

    It didn't work - I got a logfile error that said "not enough parameters for KILL_CREATURE", and "Invalid second argument for RANDOM command"

    The value for RANDOM is chosen at start of level, and never changes according to wiki, so I guess this would only ever remove one creature type?

    I'm sure you can see what I'm doing is looking for a way to put an absolute ceiling on player number. my thought being to randomly kill a player's creatures if the total exceeds a set limit.

    dayokay

  2. #22

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    Yes, the KILL_CREATURE command doesn't work with a random creature type. The parameters the log file is looking for are the min-max of random, so it returns a number instead of a creature.
    What also doesn't work is:

    KILL_CREATURE(PLAYER0, FLY,RANDOM,1)

    To kill a random 'fly', this is too bad because it is actually implemented, but Mefisto decided not to enable it in the level script for being useless.

    What does work is:

    KILL_CREATURE(PLAYER0,Fly, MOST_EXPERIENCED,Random(1,3))

    To kill roughly 1-3 flies.

  3. #23
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    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    That's a shame.

    Interestingly, this didn't give any error messages.

    IF(PLAYER0,TOTAL_CREATURES> 10)
    NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    KILL_CREATURE(PLAYER0, RANDOM(1,30), MOST_EXPERIENCED,1)
    NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    QUICK_INFORMATION(1,"A CREATURE HAS DIED!",PLAYER0)
    ENDIF

    However, no creature was removed. If player 'number' even means anything here, it'd have to be a creature type I owned I guess. As it is, my creatures continued to grow in number, and I got spammed with the 'quick_information'.

  4. #24

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    Related to this, from KeeperFX version 0.4.5.1610 it is now possible to use new variables: 'EVIL_CREATURES' and 'GOOD_CREATURES'.
    See the wiki on how to use them.

    They can be used to determine how many creatures and how many heroes there are in an army. Some examples:

    Code:
    REM: Get exactly 15 creatures not counting heroes.
    IF(PLAYER0,EVIL_CREATURES <= 14)
    	NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    	MAX_CREATURES(PLAYER0,100)
    ENDIF
    IF(PLAYER0,EVIL_CREATURES >= 15)
    	NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    	MAX_CREATURES(PLAYER0,15)
    ENDIF
    Code:
    REM: Punish player for having too many heroes
    
    IF(PLAYER0,GOOD_CREATURES >= 5)
    	QUICK_INFORMATION(3,"You have to many heroes in your army, they will try to sabotage you.",1)
    	NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    	SET_FLAG(PLAYER0,FLAG1,1)
    	SET_TIMER(PLAYER0,TIMER1)
    ENDIF
    REM: Stop sabotage when hero count drops to 4.
    IF(PLAYER0,GOOD_CREATURES <= 4)
    	NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    	SET_FLAG(PLAYER0,FLAG1,0)
    ENDIF
    REM: Kill imp every 3 minutes until player has just 4 left.
    IF(PLAYER0,FLAG1 == 1)
    	IF(PLAYER0,TIMER1 >= 3600)
    		IF(PLAYER0,IMP >= 4)
    			NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    			KILL_CREATURE(PLAYER0,IMP,LEAST_EXPERIENCED,1)
    			SET_TIMER(PLAYER0,TIMER1)
    		ENDIF
    	ENDIF
    ENDIF
    When making a map you can now consider how many heroes the player has, and increase the difficulty accordingly.

  5. #25
    Spider
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    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    Modifying the difficulty is good. I also think we need to be able to make creatures disappear if there's too many of them. Heroes are not the only 'abuse'. Skeletons, vampires etc. In a practical sense, many maps that already exist start to malfunction because of too many creatures. A simple script that allows removal of creatures would help.

    dayokay

  6. #26

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    Quote Originally Posted by dayokay View Post
    Modifying the difficulty is good. I also think we need to be able to make creatures disappear if there's too many of them. Heroes are not the only 'abuse'. Skeletons, vampires etc. In a practical sense, many maps that already exist start to malfunction because of too many creatures. A simple script that allows removal of creatures would help.

    dayokay
    Well, making creatures 'disappear' really isn't as good as making creatures 'not appear'. As a player if you have 6 skeleton and 1 just randomly dies that's just plain silly, a lot worse then in you have 5 skeletons and having a hero just die in prison without a skeleton coming back from the dead.

    This is something that can now be done as well:
    Code:
    REM: Turn inprisonment off when you have too many heroes converted
    IF(PLAYER0,GOOD_CREATURES >= Random(5,15))
    	QUICK_INFORMATION(5,"The heroes have learned you torture those you capture. They will now fight to the death.",PLAYER_GOOD)
    	NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    	SET_CREATURE_TENDENCIES(PLAYER0,IMPRISON,0)
    ENDIF
    REM: Turn imprisonment off when you too many skeletons
    IF(PLAYER0,SKELETON >= RANDOM(15,22))
    	QUICK_INFORMATION(5,"The heroes rather fight to the death then rot in your prison.",PLAYER_GOOD)
    	NEXT_COMMAND_REUSABLE
    	SET_CREATURE_TENDENCIES(PLAYER0,IMPRISON,0)
    ENDIF
    This way too many heroes/skeletons won't become a problem.

  7. #27
    Spider
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    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    I agree that it's better to stop a player / map having too many creatures, rather than randomly remove them. But random creature removal would be an easy fix for existing maps that can end up over-populated.

    I think there are creature config settings for torture conversion probability?

    Your script samples are interesting; if imprison is set to 'off' can't the player0 just turn it back on by toggling the imprison button? Have you tested that?

    dayokay

  8. #28

    Default Re: Minor room balance changes would have made DK1 a far better game

    I have not tested this script here, but I have tested this before and it works. As soon as the player turns imprisonment back on, the game turns it back off again because the player still meets the conditions.
    When the hero numbers drop, he can turn imprisonment on again, with this script at least, but that can be changed.

    There is a 'torture convert change' config option, but this can only be configured on campaign basis, not on separate maps. And it only affects the Reveal Info <-> Convert chance. In other words if you reduce it, heroes will simply end up revealing more of the map and needed to be healed more before they convert.

    I think what I described in the first post of this topic, to be able to reduce the capture chance, (real!)convert chance and vampire-count on a per level basis, would be an even easier fix to existing levels. And my guess is that having a config option to reduce imprisonment rates would also be easier to implement in the software then code a system to detect 'too many' creatures and 'kill of the appropriate creatures'.

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