LightofAbraxas

[quote]And I won't be able to stop mentally comparing to what I do for my mod in which (as much as I hate to mention my mod out of its own thread, so I apologize)[/quote] Lol, I've pimped my mod in a couple of threads (including this one), so maybe I should be the one apologizing. Second, I need to go ahead and post the lore background for the mod if I want to sell anyone on a different spell system. I think that I'm going to release a canon lore version of the mod as well,

[quote]Ice Prison: Holds the target in a block of ice for X duration preventing the unit from taking action but granting it increased defense.[/quote] Done. I agree, I think this contributes significantly to the spell book. As for your concern about the encased unit being the target of other magic... the Water school is very light on direct damage. Maybe this would be an incentive to develop affinity to another school as well? Just to update again, without unnecessarily bumpin

[quote]My first idea was to give the Shards more personality. Put them in locations that are appropriate for them. And have the environment itself defend them against those not attuned to their element. They could also be guarded by appropriate creatures, that the Sovereign could take under control instead of having to kill them.[/quote] In the CoreShards.xml, there is a Preferred Terrain tag. I'm not sure it's currently used in game, I've never seen evidence that it is. But, this mig

*updated with new spell school, revised damage equations for first 2ish schools* Also, after thinking long and hard (relatively speaking), I've decided to release a canon lore version of this mod, as well. Will include everything, minus non cannon names, creatures, etc.

[quote]An addition to this might be creating 'affinities' for certain magics. NPCs, SOV with an affinity for a certain type of magic will have beneficial enhancements when using that magic. [/quote] Agreed. A system like this is already in my expanded magic mod. The affinities are faction-wide, for the most part, though. It doesn't really work on a character-level basis without a system for skill progression. [quote]and introduce a concept of magically enhanced territory relat

Just as an aside, I kind of wish this improvement was still in v1.1.

I can't give you an answer, but I can give you something... In the code for the Eyes of the Eagle spell is the following code. Map Reveal 1 I wonder if this GameModifier tag could be ad

Aeon: working on one spell damage. One done, I'm going to try to get all the elemental schools done before I call it a night. A couple of considerations: 1) Intuition and low level spells should ideally have as much or more power for casters with low intelligence and Spell Affinity. But, they should not scale well as the casters power grows (in Int/Cha and Affinity). That is

[quote]Just some ideas. It's best when you actually start writing spells (just the ideas, no fulldetails) just to see how solid the element is in its supposed role (and can give new and cool ideas).[/quote] I actually have! Check out my mod to take a look at specifics and make suggestions, if you would be so kind. There are a couple spell schools that feel really thin, still. Thanks for the comments, guys. To pose another question... to what degree do you think that

[quote]Idea is having a good book and a bad book will worsen relations between Empires/Kingdoms and lead to more wars.[/quote] I agree with the intent and disagree with the implementation. Right now, I have it set up that other factions are neutral on some spellbooks, slightly concerned with some, and will get belligerent when a couple are researched. I think that (assuming a significant power rating) there is plenty of peace to go around- in all my games, the AI is a little more pass

Or resources that provide less of multiple resources. For example- Marble Quarry: provides 1 materials and 1 gold.

This is JUST what I've been looking for. Awesome. Karma for you, sir (or ma'am)!

So, over the course of creating a mod which expands the game's magic system, I've found myself thinking alot about how each magic school should "feel" during play. In my opinion, the absence of different "feels" is one of the main shortcomings of the vanilla version of the game's magic system. Ideally, each school should be good for a specific style of play, but be able to be used in new and interesting ways for the creative player. I'd like to spark a little discussion about what eve

[quote]Ritual of the Firmament -> Ritual of the Breath of Ellas Ritual of Ellas Reborn -> Ritual of the Flesh of Ellas[/quote] Done. I like these names better, too. [quote]Post some numbers on the spells (cost, result, maint, etc) and I'll whip together a spreadsheet to check balance. Also think you should expand the oppositional feel for various books, especially the elemental ones. Might also be a good idea to have a Good school and a Bad school -- one gets

[quote who="agio" reply="3" id="2850712"]That title's definitely due for a remake. [/quote] It is being remade. Unfortunately, it's being remade as a FPS. No, I'm not kidding. [e digicons]8C[/e]

[quote]I never played XCom Apocalypse so dont know how its graphics were[/quote] Dude. If you liked X-Com, you should really consider giving this one a try. Some people hate, but I liked it the best of the series. The graphics have aged better than some others'. The only problem I have with them were intentional designs by the developers. Alien guns look like hairy purple pig snouts, for example. If you do get it, buy from Impulse or another place that comes with DOS-Box alrea

Alright, everything seems to be in order. Apparently the line was just a warning to the coders to keep their spells organized.

[quote who="Capn Darwin" reply="1" id="2850678"]The AI may need to know which spellbook to draw relevant spells from based on the shards it controls. Just a wag from my perspective on things. [/quote] If I'm seeing the code correctly, you do this from another file. In theory, the name of the xml file should matter. But, the warning was dire sounding enough to make me cautious. I'm doing a test here in a minute, I'll post how it goes.

^ What he said. ^

I'm going to go ahead and show my computing ignorance here, but I have no problems with FPS running Civ4, which seems like it has similar graphical requirements. I've never intuitively understood why Elemental is so resource intensive, given what it actually looks like on-screen. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than myself has some insight... I understand that there are a lot of things on-screen with a lot of cities, but it seems like I get stutter from the very beginning of

Hey all. I have (yet another) question about xml editing. A few lines in to each of the files there is what I took to be a dire warning. For example in one of the air spell xmls, there is: STRATEGIC Air Spells ONLY in this file! Now, I've always combined mods into one xml, and all of the iso numbers are the same for all the spell xmls, so I would think that there would be no problem, but... there must be some reason that "only" is in all caps! Or am I wrong?

*Updated with a few more spells, some mechanics changes, and minor talent changes and the beginnings of spell level assignment*

Thanks for the help guys. I'll give the poisonshot ability a look today. If I can get it to work, I'll post the xml as a reference for others.

Good ideas. Do the spells that summon weapons have a mana maintenance cost? Do they disappear when dispelled or are they one-shots? Keep it up, more spells are always good.

*Updated with new talents*