Elemental Modding: Goodie Huts

By on August 7, 2010 10:46:28 PM from JoeUser Forums JoeUser Forums

Frogboy

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So you’ve decided to get sucked into the world of Elemental…

So let’s make some “notable locations”.

Step #1: The Tile Editor

First, you make your “goodie hut” in the tile editor.

I’m making an “ancient battlefield”.

image

Step #2: Define the GoodieHut and its “treasure”

  <GoodieHutType InternalName="Notable_AncientBattlefield">
    <Name>Ancient Battlefield</Name>
    <Name>Lost Battleground</Name>
    <Name>Forgotten battlefield</Name>
    <Description>This was the site of some long lost battle.</Description>
    <Rarity>100</Rarity>
    <Destructable>1</Destructable>
    <PreferredTerrain>Land</PreferredTerrain>
    <SpawnRating>0</SpawnRating>
    <Medallions InternalName="">
      <All>EnchantedSword1.png</All>
    </Medallions>
    <TileDesign>N_AncientBattlefield_01</TileDesign>
    <DrawnIcon>Gfx/TacticalIcons/Artifact_Bones1_ClothIcon.dds</DrawnIcon>
    <IconSize>50</IconSize>
    <Treasure>
      <Title>Found a midnight stone</Title>
      <Desc>While walking through the debris of the ancient scene of carnage you find a midnight stone.</Desc>
      <Liklihood>100</Liklihood>
      <GameModifier InternalName="Dagger">
        <ModType>GiveItem</ModType>
        <Attribute>MidnightStone</Attribute>
      </GameModifier>
    </Treasure>   
    <OnSelectSFX>Click_Bones_01</OnSelectSFX>
  </GoodieHutType>

 

Explanation:

image

Step 3: There is no step 3.

That’s really it. You just toss this into say the quests directory and voila. It’ll show up.

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August 7, 2010 11:01:19 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Will it be possible to have 2x1, 3x2, etc sized tiles in the future?

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August 7, 2010 11:02:44 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

No.

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August 7, 2010 11:42:08 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

So how's the AI work coming along?

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August 7, 2010 11:47:29 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Cool, Frogboy! Thanks for givin us these tips, I have a feeling I'll be using them a lot in the future. Is there any way that you could set up a "% chart" that gives you different items based on chance? I saw in the code there was a "likeliness". Could we set it up so that its more likely that we will receive 50 gildar instead of the midnight stone? So in example:

there is a 70% chance you'll get this:

"you search the ruins only to find 50 gildar in gems" 

there is a 20% chance you'll get:

"while walking through the debris and carnage you find- near a seemingly well dressed skeleton- a midnight stone"

there is a 5% chance you'll get:

"your presence on these hallowed grounds has disturbed an army of Warrior Spirits"


Oh and, providing the above is even possible, could there be other factors that determine your percentages?

 

  • Evil alignment: you have a much greater chance of spawning the Warriors.
  • {{insert value here}} or higher Adventuring level: a greater chance of finding the stone.

This would have amazing potential for story telling, I hope it might be possible. 

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August 7, 2010 11:48:03 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

How would you create such a location which only activates 10% of the time?

I would like to create mysterious locations which don't always automatically activate.

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August 7, 2010 11:51:45 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

What we really need is goodie huts and quests in the adventure tree that do anonymous negative things to your opponents instead of rewards for you .

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August 8, 2010 12:38:42 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Yea, having percentage drops would be nice.

Also having a triggerable battle either "before" you get the item(s) or simply as a replacement/ bad trigger

 

Heh, It'd be pretty cool if you could make a notable location act like an "epic lair" in FFH ... high chance of random battles and a low chance of a goody drop, and it only disapears once the goody/Item is dropped.

 

Edit: For that matter, a notable location where you can simply visit for random battles might be cool. Maybe a world limit (or national limit) of 1 visit per turn.

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August 8, 2010 1:41:30 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting RisingLegend,
Cool, Frogboy! Thanks for givin us these tips, I have a feeling I'll be using them a lot in the future. Is there any way that you could set up a "% chart" that gives you different items based on chance? I saw in the code there was a "likeliness". Could we set it up so that its more likely that we will receive 50 gildar instead of the midnight stone? So in example:

there is a 70% chance you'll get this:

"you search the ruins only to find 50 gildar in gems" 

there is a 20% chance you'll get:

"while walking through the debris and carnage you find- near a seemingly well dressed skeleton- a midnight stone"

there is a 5% chance you'll get:

"your presence on these hallowed grounds has disturbed an army of Warrior Spirits"





Oh and, providing the above is even possible, could there be other factors that determine your percentages?

Frogboy, is it possible after the release you'll add in the abillity to do link Python scripts here? It seems like it would be pretty straightforward to have a python script attached like this:

<OnTriggered>RandomGoodie.py</OnTriggered>

 

Otherwise doing random stuff is going to end up looking like this:

<cfif rand eq "70">
  you search the ruins only to find 50 gildar in gems
</cfif>

<cfif rand eq "20">
 "while walking through the debris and carnage you find- near a seemingly well dressed skeleton- a midnight stone
</cfif>

<cfif rand eq "10">
 "your presence on these hallowed grounds has disturbed an army of Warrior Spirits"
</cfif>



Because then it's just writing coldfusion, and no one liked that. Even CF eventually gave up trying to script with SGML/XML-like tags.

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August 8, 2010 3:12:07 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

I think I'll make a Mortal Kombat style quest that at the end unlocks different exotic battlefields across the map that can be accessed every ten turns to fight increasingly more powerful opponents.

Mortal Kombat!!!!            

                                                                  

 

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August 8, 2010 8:43:47 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

will there have loose solid parts of object so we can change size and rotate to together create a new objects (like playing Lego)? 

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August 8, 2010 9:13:25 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting PanicWave,
will there have loose solid parts of object so we can change size and rotate to together create a new objects (like playing Lego)? 

Yes, that's how it works.

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August 8, 2010 10:27:46 AM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Heh, It'd be pretty cool if you could make a notable location act like an "epic lair" in FFH ... high chance of random battles and a low chance of a goody drop, and it only disapears once the goody/Item is dropped.

 

Edit: For that matter, a notable location where you can simply visit for random battles might be cool. Maybe a world limit (or national limit) of 1 visit per turn.

If this is possible, I'm going to create an arena. I think it'd be great to have world wide hero tourneys.

So say, every nation gets a chance to put one of their heros in the tourney. Winner gets a lump sum of Gildar and a small prestige bonus in each of their cities.

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August 8, 2010 12:10:30 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting TheProgress,
Will it be possible to have 2x1, 3x2, etc sized tiles in the future?

Just make your 2 tiles, or your six tiles as separate entities.

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August 8, 2010 12:22:12 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

is it possible to make creature units using these editors?

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August 8, 2010 1:47:38 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Yes!

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August 8, 2010 2:30:30 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting seanw3,
Yes!

Is this yes meaning that you want it or that it is available? You can customize units (weapon, riding, clothes, etc) but a creature editor would be new to me.

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August 8, 2010 2:35:14 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting RisingLegend,
Cool, Frogboy! Thanks for givin us these tips, I have a feeling I'll be using them a lot in the future. Is there any way that you could set up a "% chart" that gives you different items based on chance? I saw in the code there was a "likeliness". Could we set it up so that its more likely that we will receive 50 gildar instead of the midnight stone? So in example:

there is a 70% chance you'll get this:

"you search the ruins only to find 50 gildar in gems" 

there is a 20% chance you'll get:

"while walking through the debris and carnage you find- near a seemingly well dressed skeleton- a midnight stone"

there is a 5% chance you'll get:

"your presence on these hallowed grounds has disturbed an army of Warrior Spirits"






Oh and, providing the above is even possible, could there be other factors that determine your percentages?

 


Evil alignment: you have a much greater chance of spawning the Warriors.
{{insert value here}} or higher Adventuring level: a greater chance of finding the stone.

This would have amazing potential for story telling, I hope it might be possible. 

 

If I remember correctly, you can have several <treasure> options (not only one) with differently likelyhoods. If I understood it right, the smallest percentage comes as the first <treasure> declaration, afterwards the next one until nothing is left

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August 8, 2010 2:36:23 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

You can't create creatures with the editors but you can create them with XMl.

Here's my goodie hut in the game:

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August 8, 2010 3:00:16 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting Wylaryzel,

If I remember correctly, you can have several <treasure> options (not only one) with differently likelyhoods. If I understood it right, the smallest percentage comes as the first <treasure> declaration, afterwards the next one until nothing is left

Yeah, there is such thing, and it works. But it's like we have "1 and 2 and 3".

Also want to know will it be possible to make "1 or 2 or 3" so we get only one item?

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August 8, 2010 3:05:52 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

heh, speaking of getting only 1 item (instead of possibly getting all or none) ... that reminds me about NPC likelyhoods.

 

Is it possible to say "NPC(A) has X likelyhood, but will not spawn unless B spawns (so will have X likelihood to spawn if B spawns)"

and also "NPC(A) has X likelyhood, but will only spawn if C doesn't spawn (so will have X likelihood to spawn if C doesn't spawn)"

 

basically tying NPC spawns with each other (specific others). Whaddya think? Is it possible?

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August 8, 2010 3:22:14 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

I'm not so good at that thing, I'm rather noobish I understand what you mean, and like this idea (although such way will take much space and time), but also can't find any examples of what you are saying about in game .xml's.  Most monsters are just spawning like "2nd after the death of 1st".

And strangely, I can't find any "Goodies" from adventure techs. Where are they?

 

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August 8, 2010 4:19:54 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting Fardeil,

Quoting Wylaryzel, reply 17
If I remember correctly, you can have several <treasure> options (not only one) with differently likelyhoods. If I understood it right, the smallest percentage comes as the first <treasure> declaration, afterwards the next one until nothing is left

Yeah, there is such thing, and it works. But it's like we have "1 and 2 and 3".

Also want to know will it be possible to make "1 or 2 or 3" so we get only one item?

I think its rather 'or' not 'and'. Last time I tried I received the first one after it was successfully rolled. Seems like the logic goes in that way that it jumps out of the loop for the treasure as soon as you are successfully rolled the item (which by the way makes more sense than having an 'and' logic).

 

BTW, even not a 100% fan of the UI, I like the smaller icons and the layout..looks more clean

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August 8, 2010 4:29:04 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting NTJedi,
How would you create such a location which only activates 10% of the time?

I would like to create mysterious locations which don't always automatically activate.

I think it would be best to change the likelihood of the tile appearing in a given game rather than to change of the likelihood of the tile to work. Iirc Frogboy said there's a way to make things only show up once every 100 games if that's what you want. I would guess though that it's possible to apply the same modifier to whether or not the tile would work once placed. You could also think about basing whether or not the tile would activate based on the level of the unit stepping on the tile. Maybe it would only work for a Sovereign that's level 10 or higher. Just some thoughts.

Quoting KellenDunk,

Just make your 2 tiles, or your six tiles as separate entities.

That's what I was about to say . That's how I'm making the "High Clerist's Tower" for the Dragonlance Mod. It's 4x4 Tiles big. I will however have to make a 4 piece custom picture for cloth map view of the tower.

Quoting Frogboy,
You can't create creatures with the editors but you can create them with XMl.

Frogboy, how can we create custom creatures and can we change the way those creatures look through XML? Is it possible to have the models for those creatures display at half or double size on both the strategic and tactical maps? (Remember the "Gulliver" Bug?) I.E. for making Halflings or Giants out of models that already exist in game. This way we could take the standard human model and make it appear twice it's normal size both on the campaign map and Also on the tactical map for making "Giant" units or apply the same process with negative values for making Halflings or short Dwarves. We've been wondering on the modding forums about this for a while now. A few people have tried it but I'm not sure if they've succeeded or not.

 

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August 8, 2010 7:19:47 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

You could also think about basing whether or not the tile would activate based on the level of the unit stepping on the tile. Maybe it would only work for a Sovereign that's level 10 or higher. Just some thoughts.

Yes. It's like I was saying about alignment and skill above. There are thousands of options for amazing creativity if these kind of things are available to us

 Just make your 2 tiles, or your six tiles as separate entities.

That's what I was about to say. That's how I'm making the "High Clerist's Tower" for the Dragonlance Mod. It's 4x4 Tiles big. I will however have to make a 4 piece custom picture for cloth map view of the tower.

But wait, how could you be sure that your tiles would always appear alongside each other if they are included in random maps? Do you just mean these would be used in pre made maps?

Bc lets be honest, pre made maps are for wussies 

 

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August 8, 2010 7:28:17 PM from Elemental Forums Elemental Forums

Quoting RisingLegend,

Bc lets be honest, pre made maps are for wussies 

Not if you're recreating a world from a book or something

Yes, I meant for hand-made maps. I have no clue how they would work for random made maps but maybe you could link them somehow so that if it places 1 it automatically places the others associated with it? Not sure honestly.

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