I'm having a bit of trouble looting corpses when they are located underwater or behind a wall or tree or something. They are just very difficult to find. Is there a trick for this? Other games often have a key defined to make foreground obstacles invisible. I did some searching but there were too many hits. Apparently, there was once a problem where you could not loot corpses at all.
Not really. There will be some bodies you can't loot, especially when they stack. This was a problem in the old Fallout series too.
The trick to looting corpses underwater is to patiently observe the circular water ripples that randomly trigger just above where corpses are underwater. Then move your mouse pointer slightly down from where the circular water ripple originated from and hopefully the corpse will be highlighted so that you can click on it to loot it. If you are really patient, sometimes you can loot a corpse that is buried under a pile of other corpses by carefully fiddling around with your mouse pointer until you eventually outline the corpse that you are trying to loot. Of course, you can just pass time long enough for the corpses to disappear (leaving behind their items in a pile on the ground which you can easily loot by clicking on the pile of items). 2D 45 degree angle isometric-view computer games (such as the view that this computer game uses) are not the ideal way to deal with combat and looting corpses. Sometimes while playing this game I have accidentally clicked on a nearby corpse instead of the living opponent that I wanted my currently selected character to attack, so my character ends up attacking a corpse instead of the living opponent next to him (which is SO stupid!). Also, sometimes an opponent is completely obscured by another character that I can't even click on them to target them so I can't even attack them when I want to (which is SO stupid!). The ideal way to play a tactical combat computer game that has a battlefield in 3 dimensions is to have a 2D overhead (birds-eye) view (or an isometric view that can be rotated at 90 degree angles, or a 3D view that can be manipulated to show any camera angle (like in the computer game Neverwinter Nights)). That way, you can't accidentally click on a corpse when you are selecting your target to attack, and it makes it easy to see the battlefield (no characters or corpses or treasure chests obscured by walls or buildings). The only problems with this interface would be when multiple corpses occupy the same square or when multiple characters occupy the same square but at different altitudes (but these could be rectified simply by assigining a different number to each character and corpse occupying the same square, and then another number which informed the player exactly what altitude each character is at (e.g. "G" for ground level, "1" for one square above ground level, "-1" for 1 square below ground level, etc.). Then the player could select the number of the character or corpse in that square that they want to attack or loot. Sure, this kind of interface wouldn't look anywhere near as good or as realistic as isometric-view battlefields but it would make tactical combat functional on any battlefield (as long as the interface allowed the player to see different altitude levels by allowing the player to select an altitude level to view down from when there are multiple floors (such as multi-story buildings or underground dungeons, etc.). Man, I wish that some programmers out there would make a new computer game that used the brilliant turn-based combat system of the computer game The Temple of Elemental Evil but used the 2D overhead view interface that I described - that to me would be the perfect tactical combat computer game. I'm still undecided whether turn-based or real-time combat is better. The best turn-based squad-based tactical combat computer games that I have EVER played are The Temple of Elemental Evil, UFO: Enemy Unknown (known as X-COM: UFO Defense in North America), Fallout Tactics, and Helherron. The best real-time squad-based tactical combat computer games that I have EVER played are X-COM: Apocalypse and Soldiers of Anarchy. All of those computer games have superb combat game mechanics!
Personally I think that ToEE's 2D isometric system is the sweet spot for CRPGs. A straight overhead shot would be immersion-breaking IMO since it would be very reminiscent of graph paper instead of a battlefield. And the fact that ToEE never changes views is a good thing imo - that's the player's view of the world, period. Also I don't really see what the issue is with mis-clicking. Sure we all do it from time to time, but there are selection circles to help you avoid that. Looting can be a pita at times but for the most part it works fine, I think. I mean, it maybe should be a bit difficult to strip somebody when they're underwater, shouldn't it? Also, ToEE is genuine parallel projection isometric (right, below) as opposed to dimetric or trimetric, which is pretty clearly superior for our purposes.
Hmmm. I did not think my request for info would be controversial. Frankly, I don't know the difference between "parallel projection isometric" and the other options you listed. I really don't need to know. The thing is, if you fix the point of view and if you have things that can get in front of other things, then there needs to be a way to a) find and b) get at the things that are behind. And if you are good you will make it very easy to accomplish both a and b. The whole point of designing a user interface (post-DOS) is to make things easy for the user. Anyhow thanks for your helpful responses.
I love a good grid, but I also enjoy the view on ToEE. I loved playing the old gold box games, and the new Heroes of Neverwinter on Facebook provides grid-based play once again.
Thanks for that tip, gazra_1971! When I met the diplomat by the river after freeing Prince Thrommel I couldn't get the items because all my slots were full. Then I saw these water ripples and thought I must be able to get the items from there, but didn't know how. After reading many posts here I realize that what I missed must have been this famous sword Scather. Oops. I'll go back now and try what you suggested. By the way, apropos to this thread, when I beat Belsornig and finally had the Juggernaut defeated, too, it collapsed right on top of him so that I could not loot his corpse. (I wish you could move corpses around if you had enough strength). Anyway, I went back later thinking it might have dissovled into the ground as corpses sometimes do. But it was still there, so I started to leave. Then, as my characters got to the edge of the screen and it began scrolling, I noticed that only part (maybe a third) of the Juggernaut corpse was being drawn, and I could finally see Belsornig under it. So I left the party on the edge to tie the scrolling down and walked one guy back to Belsornig by clicking on his now visible body. Even though it redrew the Juggernaut on top of him as I approached, I was still able to loot Belsornig. So you might want to try this method, too. It exploits a bug I guess, but I'm with the author in thinking that all defeated enemies should be lootable.
That's strange, I recall that the Juggernaut actually explodes upon being killed. Leaving no corpse behind.
I agree, maybe it was just knocked out, or had not reached the -10 HP needed to die. Was a troll still alive from the combat, you can check easily by clicking on the combat actions tab and looking for "troll regenerates" repeating over and over when you think the battle is over.
It can be a PITA..I have found that if you scroll over the stack EXTREMELY slow eventually your able to loot the bodies underneath..
I fall back as new enemies run up. Otherwise the next enemy that fights and dies in the same place will fall exactly on top of the previous.
The easaiest way to des with such stuff would be to implement looting from inventory. Enter inventory and a separate tab shows all reachable loot in vicinity.
