Monks (zen and ToEE?)

Okay, I've compiled some notes on the changes I've been trying to do to monks... as such, here's what I have so far:

Greater Flurry (as per notes, make sure you make the open hand mods as well if you do this.) Not really a new feat - just tacked on some stuff to the existing Flurry of Blows code.

Open Hand Damage for all levels. Also added open hand damage for large monks, and may have corrected open hand damage for enlarged non-monks. (It appears that open hand damage for enlarged non-monks was set to 1d3 and not 1d4. Not positive about this though.)

Fast Movement rates implemented for levels 1 - 20. May be kind of screwy if you go for epic levels, since I'm not sure if it keeps going up. (Monk movement set to (level / 3) * 10.) Also modified it to stack with Barbarian's Fast Movement. (These do stack, right? I mean, the bug is a valid bug?)

Ki Strike: Added adamantium damage penetration at level 16.

Lots of rambling on how to add class feats. Details on how to add the rest of the monk class feats (or at least get them to show up in the feat list). Possible implementation for Diamond Body. (Just had to copy Venom Immunity.) (Did not actually test, as did not have a convenient save with a monk about to get poisoned.)

Note: I realize this is a lot of junk, so what exactly are the forum rules on say... uploading my modified version of temple.dll? It's the 2.0.0. patch, and probably should be replaceable. I think. And I don't feel like writing a jscript the way xp uncapper was setup. Too many bytes to change.

Edited to fix a rather obvious data over lap bug. This probably isn't helping any string buffer overruns that exist.

Edited: Argh. Can't believe I forgot relocs.

 

Well, I'm a bit undecided on it. No doubt the work you have done here is nothing short of fantastic and I believe ToEE fans certainly deserve to have their fixes delivered to them ASAP. After all we've already waited more than 1 year for things to happen.
However, I'm a bit apprehensive of uploading things like a dll as people who did not buy the game could download it as well. That coupled with the fact that there are already cracked exes available on the net makes it possible to piece these two together. Of course you'd need the data files as well, though, to actually have a complete game...

Another problem is I don't think you can attach the dll as a forum attachment (its size is too big, even if zipped I think). Of course the proper way to do it would be to upload it to the main Co8 site. Unfortunately I have no permission to upload anything to the main site.

So I will just forward your request to Exitium and Ausir who do have the permission to do so. If they agree and our hosts (Sorcerer's Place) do not mind, I have basically no problems uploading it.


Looking at it from another point of view, actually since it is a big enhancement of duggelz's work, I was wondering if you could contact him and work something out. Probably you could pass the changes to him, get a 2nd opinion in the process, get him to include the changes in his jscript patch, and get yourself credited on his web page as well.

 

It is fine. As long as the code doesn't bypass the copy-protection (which it doesn't - as that's contained within the main TOEE.exe file) there is nothing wrong with uploading this .dll provided that there is some text disclaimer there about the contents of the file and the changes listed.

Any violations would have to be the result of disabling the copy protection and nothing more - that too is questionable, because Troika/Atari staff themselves suggested to several forum users on the Official Forum back in the day to use the no-cd cracks to alleviate their problems with the game's copy protection mechanism.

 

temple.dll

Okay, temple.dll, isn't going to make it below the size limit, even if it is zipped, so I'm making it available at: http://www.jadri.com/temple.zip .

This is more or less the version I'm playing with right now. I've added in fixes for the broken Skill Focuses.

 

Great Job! Keep up the good work!

 

woohoo. Excellent work.

Could you bullet list the changes in your temple.dll?

I'll add them to the release notes for the upcoming 3.0.4.

Should we release 3.0.4 Sometime in October? Though Moebius's changes are significant for a release themselves.. I could put together a 3.0.4 contiaining what we have tonight, get out to this forum community for testing, and out to other forums this weekend..

What do you think?


nw

 

I think getting out a beta release soon is a really good idea.
Remember this is the first time we are introducing dll modifications in our mods and IMHO the risk to incur bugs is higher. There may be unforeseen glitches as with Magic Missile for duggelz's cap remover which was fortunately caught and rectified.

I also hope we can isolate fixes separately from the mods in a release. It is not my intention to give people more work but I think a good number of board members just want to see fixes only without any added stuff.

Therefore I was thinking whether we could get duggelz's cap remover and its associated corrections and enhancements put in another dll (or simply getting him to update his work and credit moebius as a major contributor).
Burne's puzzles (my small dialogue mod) should definitely be optional. I am hoping that the Sir_Toejam's npc levelup fix will be part of the core download. I believe the majority of Atari board members prefer to have it in and those who don't can just delete levelup.tab which will restore the default bugged levelling process.

I leave the rest to your discretion. No need to rush things though.

P/S - I might be away for a couple of days having some important things to attend to. Will get back to the boards probably Thursday night or so.

 

I don't have a conditional installer... If you know of one, I can start learning it, but I think the installer I'm currently using is pretty basic, and only backs up the current files, and installs the new ones..

I.e. TWO packages. 1 for bugfixes and 1 for optional content is what I think you mean.

The issue I have with that is with regard to conflicts.. We'll need to be maintaining two seperate files in some cases.. 1 with the extra content and 1 without.

I'm not sure we want to do that.

 

Agree that TWO packages: 1 for bugfixes and 1 for optional content is the better way of doing it.
There'll probably still be overlap for protos.tab which means 1 protos.tab for the bugfixes and another with the bugfixes + optional content. The rest should be fairly straightforward I think.
If no 2 changes affect the same file, it shouldn't be too hard hopefully.

RufusAtticus made a toeepatch.pl that would allow different versions according to him but the broken attachments make it impossible to access these anymore. Not sure but I think Exitium made the installer for v2.0 which allows options to be ticked. But with more options this can get really unwieldy.
I think going with just 2 packages would be simpler as you mentioned with hopefully only protos.tab and maybe description.mes getting coded twice. Probably we'll include all the core stuff and save it for package 1 and then add some more stuff to make package 2.

Anyway, those are just my 2 cents. We are under no obligation to deliver exactly what people want (even that isn't constant and opinions do vary) and I certainly do feel the modders have more than lived up to their part of the bargain in making the game less bug ridden.
Still, if the requests are reasonable, I think we can spend a bit of time considering them. Certain things like the brothel, extra masterwork items, extra crafted items can be easily ignored even if we do decide to lump everything together, so I'm not too worried about those. Even my little extra quest can be similarly ignored if players don't want to use it.

On the other hand, if we include the level cap remover as core, everyone's game will be affected once they hit level 10... so I'm a tad more particular about it...
So if we could breakup those 2 - dll fixes only, dll fixes and level cap remover, that would be nice.

 

Just received an answer from duggelz that it's perfectly Ok to modify and redistribute his original level cap remover as seen fit. Also mentioned that he will be outstation for about a week and a half and unable to inspect/comment on any changes till then.

Suggest we proceed as planned to upload fixes to the main site once we are ready, since we appear to have the green light from all involved parties.

 

Edit:

After writing this, I'm more and more against it.

I've had tons of bad experience with trying to keep two codebases synchronized.

Doing things twice leads to much opportunity for error.

We will also need support from the DLL people, as they will need to be doing work twice too, I'm sure my guess that they will want to move on to bigger and better ToEE changes, rather than re-do what they just did is right on.

(Mobeius work with the touch spells/skill feats, will need to be redone in Duggels level cap remover Temple.dll version)

Most important of all, this will slow us down.

I think we just need to decide whats in and whats out. If the majority of people are against something than we don't add it. If the majority of people are for it, we do.


We will need more powerful development tools to be able to deliver something for everyone. Until then IMO, we need to develop for the lowest common demoninator..

 

re:

I've been kind of keeping track of my changes, so I should be able to mod an original temple.dll into having whichever set of fixes and modifications you guys want to release. For the xp cap remover, I'd be tempted to actually re-disable the thing rather than just not install it - larger chance of something going wrong, but it'd be easier to maintain a level-uncapped and level-capped version simultaneously.

Also, I was wondeirng if someone could help with a rules clarification? As far as I can tell, the Barbarian's Fast Movement feat is an unnamed bonus, and thus stacks. The Monk's Fast Movement feat is an enhancement bonus, and thus does not stack with Expeditious Retreat and Haste. And Haste should just give you an enhancement bonus of the minimum of 30 and your base movement speed, instead of giving you an enhancement bonus of 30, and then capping your maximum speed at double your base movement speed. (As an odd effect of it's current implementation, Haste will actually *lower* the speed of a 12+ level monk.)

 

Well, if you are okay with possibly maintaining two copies of the temple.dll, than I don't have much to complain about.. (The NPC levleup also falls into this catagory as well, are you familiar with it?)
In my opinion, We should include the NPC level as PC does as part of the base fixes.. That would eliminate some confusion as people wonder why NPC X does this or that, not realizing that the NPC just switched from Bard to Fighter..

The only other thing I think people complain about is the masterwork weapons and armor being available in Hommlet, and My response is that they could just choose to not buy that equipment from him...

As for monk and Barbarian movement bonuses stacking I just checked the SRD, it's not mentioned.. I'll post a note in a few forums and see what responses I get.

 

NPC level up mod

I never tried the NPC level up mod (having never taken on any NPCs - being the money and XP-grubbing bum that I am), but from the zip I downloaded, it looks like the changes are limited to levelup.tab?

 

Yeah that was the Double IPA's talking..

I got a little mixed up as to what files got edited to mod which functions, thought the NPC level up thing was the LevelCap remover.