Creature editor?

[AdamP]

it all works as far as I have been able to tell thus far.

That was perhaps a tad premature: I was testing it by using it to make the Avatar and Horned Reaper stronger, and it wasn't long until I noticed something was very wrong with their health (they were dying very easily). It turned out I had accidentally set the maximum health (the max you can set in the program) to 255. No wonder they were dropping like flies!. Good job it has a feature to reset to defaults (I actually embedded the original cfg files into the executable, which loads them and then and saves them). On that note, are there cfg files that have the default values of the original game?

[YourMaster]

Yes and no.

The mechanics of KeeperFX are different, so using the original values will not give you the original results. In the original game there were overflows (for example dexterity started back at 0 when it grew past 255) and growth caps (strength for example was capped at 255 and reapers and giants hit that at a low level already). Creature spells from lvl 10 units also bugged out completely. Those bugs fixed changed a lot, and KeeperFX tries to balance around those fixed.

But you can look at the Ancient Keeper configs, those try to mimic the original game - bugs and all - as closely as possible.

[AdamP]

Yes and no.

The mechanics of KeeperFX are different, so using the original values will not give you the original results. In the original game there were overflows (for example dexterity started back at 0 when it grew past 255) and growth caps (strength for example was capped at 255 and reapers and giants hit that at a low level already). Creature spells from lvl 10 units also bugged out completely. Those bugs fixed changed a lot, and KeeperFX tries to balance around those fixed.

But you can look at the Ancient Keeper configs, those try to mimic the original game - bugs and all - as closely as possible.

Thanks. Where canI find the Ancient Keeper configs? The only files I see are creature.cfg anf rules.cfg. Also, I tried the unofficial KeeperFX version, and (on a quick glance), the stats for each creature appear to be the original game's. Are they? I noticed a change description to something of that effect too. Speaking of the unofficial KeeperFX, the Time Bomb, Disease, Chicken, and Fear spells are mentioned, and there are also, Light and Group spells in magic.cfg. The Time Bomb, Disease, Chicken, and Group spells don't seem to work at all (they don't even appear in the creature's info panel), and the Fear and Light spells do appear in-game, but don't seem to have any effect. Is it supposed to be like this?

[YourMaster]

In the \campgns\ancntkpr_crtr folder.

And yes, in Unofficial I reverted many creature properties to the original values. Not everything though, sleep experience for instance is still set to a higher value since the original value was basically 0.

And those 6 spells you mentioned are indeed unfinished spells from the original game. A few of them do work though, Disease and Chicken do in fact cast the respective effect on the targeted unit, Time Bomb is nothing but basic damage. The only change I made in Unofficial is that when assigned to units, they will actually be used. This basically gives you an extra spell to play around with as a modder as you can tweak the configs in such a way that any other shot is assigned to those spells.
Make sure to use the correct name to assign them to creatures though, the correct name is 'CAST_SPELL_CHICKEN' for the chicken spell, as seen in the creature.cfg.

[AdamP]

In the \campgns\ancntkpr_crtr folder.

Not sure how I missed that .

And yes, in Unofficial I reverted many creature properties to the original values. Not everything though, sleep experience for instance is still set to a higher value since the original value was basically 0.

And those 6 spells you mentioned are indeed unfinished spells from the original game. A few of them do work though, Disease and Chicken do in fact cast the respective effect on the targeted unit, Time Bomb is nothing but basic damage. The only change I made in Unofficial is that when assigned to units, they will actually be used. This basically gives you an extra spell to play around with as a modder as you can tweak the configs in such a way that any other shot is assigned to those spells.
Make sure to use the correct name to assign them to creatures though, the correct name is 'CAST_SPELL_CHICKEN' for the chicken spell, as seen in the creature.cfg.

I got them working, and see the balance issues with the disease and chicken spells. The Time bomb spell is a bit queer though; I'm not quite sure how it's supposed to work. Is it splash damage? Another thing I don't get is why Disease, Chicken, Time bomb, and Group require a 'CAST-SPELL' prefix, where as the other spells (including Light and Fear) don't . Another thing I noticed with the Chicken spell is that Avatars can be affected by it, even with his NEVER_CHICKENS property enabled (unless I messed up the game somehow?).

[YourMaster]

I don't think there's much to understand. You need to use whatever name is also used in the creature.cfg, change the name in the creature.cfg and you can use the changed name to assign it to units.

Time bomb is supposed to work a lot differently. This is what one of the developers said when asked about it in an interview not too long ago:

"Until about 30 seconds ago I thought Timebomb was in the shipping game. Since it isn't, I'll tell you - you could turn imps into suicide bombers. Great fun!"

There was also supposed to be a 'vortex'.

[AdamP]

I don't think there's much to understand. You need to use whatever name is also used in the creature.cfg, change the name in the creature.cfg and you can use the changed name to assign it to units.

Time bomb is supposed to work a lot differently. This is what one of the developers said when asked about it in an interview not too long ago:

I was looking at magic.cfg, hence my confusion. My the names are hard-coded in my editor (that is, they aren't loaded from creature.cfg). Am i right in assuming that if I change the names in creature.cfg, they won't work? As for Time bomb, I see this projectile (rebound blasts it right back) thingy (not sure how best to describe it) but I'm not sure if they directly hit creatures (the creatures do seem to be harmed by them).

There was also supposed to be a 'vortex'.

Was there? My first thought was something like 'oh yes! I forgot about that!', but I later realised I was thinking of another game . A completely different game to boot (Land of Lore: The Throne of Chaos).

[YourMaster]

There's no point in changing the names in the creature.cfg, but if you change them there AND in all the creature configs everything will still work.

And yes, I've seen the timebomb spell as it currently is included, it does damage I believe, but this is not the spell it was supposed to be, it's incomplete. It needs to create suicide-bomber-imps.
And yes, you can still find 'Vortex' in one of the configs.

[AdamP]

There's no point in changing the names in the creature.cfg, but if you change them there AND in all the creature configs everything will still work.

And yes, I've seen the timebomb spell as it currently is included, it does damage I believe, but this is not the spell it was supposed to be, it's incomplete. It needs to create suicide-bomber-imps.

In that case, is it worth me putting my editor available for download somewhere? I think it's almost finished (save perhaps for loading other sets of defaults).

[YourMaster]

Sure, why not.