For those interested in my AI changes I thought I would sort of explain what I did. Basically, I think Troika never finished. They had everything set up, very well, in fact, but they never finished. Really their engine is awesome, and I have to give them credit for that. They just needed time, probably 3 or 4 months and TOEE would have been one of the best D&D games ever. I seriously believe that. It is an awesome, awesome engine. Anyway, about the AI scripts... I went through and figured out how the AI worked. I then figured why Troika's AI scripts didn't work. And I then wrote new scripts. It was trial and error and took about 100+ hours to actually figure out how to get it all working correctly (I am sure I could do better given more time and hopefully will). It appears to me Troika just never got around to making the scripts that they would have made given time. I wrote 80+ new scripts. For the most part this was the only way I changed the monsters/NPCs. I simply made them use what they already had in a smarter way. This will make the game harder, no doubt about it. Previously you were doing battle with monsters and NPCs that were pretty stupid. The AI script selection was very small. And every NPC/monster pretty much had the same exact AI script. It was a mess. There were only 3 or 4 different melee scripts. Almost every single creature had the exact same script... it didn't matter if they were a Chicken or an Ogre or a Giant... the same AI script. Many of the spell caster AI scripts were completely broken with routines that didn't do anything at all... except make the spell caster stand there doing nothing at all or perhaps running around from place to place not doing anything. Now there are more scripts, and hopefully the game will be more interesting. But yes it will be harder. - Livonya
Liv, You've been through the trial-by-fire, so you know a lot more about how all this works, so I may be a little off in my impression here (formed by lots of research into how everything works as I shoot ideas to others, work on a prototype editor, and just basically suss out how everything (and in this game, "everything" is EVERYTHING -- a WHOLE LOT of warm-baked goodness) works... ------ But my impression, and correct me if I'm wrong here, is that it went basically like this: There's a text file with a series of general activities that an NPC might perform, stuff like "ATTACK NEAREST" or "HEAL FRIEND", in the order of priority. Every NPC was "hooked up" with a given "class" of AI operations to perform, always the same. So the number of AI activities was limited to about 20-30 different classes, and EVERY monster in a given class would follow the same dull, simple rules for behavior. In order to really personalize each monster, this work could then be customized with python scripting. Troika ran out of time to do this customization step, and so everything got left with just its bare, slightly-out-of-kindergarten behavior, with a few exceptions where they had the time to start on this task. Then what Liv did was come along, pick each monster or group of monsters, and send it to the proper "trade school" for that type of monster. Spell casters were sent to the academy, and now actually cast the spells they have. Monsters with claws were sent to be taught how to attack and kill with them, etc. She's basically just finished the work that Troika began, and didn't have the time to finish. What would have happened, had Troika done this, would have been to finish all the AI scripts, and then playtested the game, working on some of them to "balance" the AI for the different areas. Liv's done some of this already, but the big test is for everyone here to put it through its paces, form some good solid opinions on what works and what doesn't, and then provide that feedback to Livonya for (possible) fixing of the patch (since it's Liv's cookie jar, Liv decides the changes that get made, so make your arguments well-constructed, is my advice ;-)). Personally, I'd like to see something like this... A character pops up early in the game, asks you whether you want the "full-bore, 2nd-run-through experience", and you say yes or no. For any really serious balance areas that now get discussed, that tough stuff only happens at the tough level if you say "yes", and the rest gets dialed back a little to make the game a little more accessible for those wanting a slightly less daunting challenge. But first people have to find some really seriously hard stuff, and I'm not sure anyone's there yet, IMHO. In the case that noone ever does, I would like to see some even tougher goodies added under just such a mode; anyway. Perhaps requiring you to talk to just the right person in Homlett to "turn on" this super-tough version for the veterans to test their mettle against. -- dulcaoin
Dulcaoin - Your idea is great, though I don't think it can be done from in game. It would not be hard to make two different protos.tabs and two different strategy.tabs One being easy and one being normal. The funny thing is I only posted my easy version. The version I play with is much harder, but I didn't post that version as I thought it would be too much too handle. I decided in the end I would just post the easy one. But if people want I can post the more difficult one as well. - Livonya
Personally I'd love to have both. I like the challenge, so the difficulty really matters for me. I prefer to play one battle over and over again if it provides enough strategic challenge than hop from one to another if none of them is really worth it. Don't take me wrong, I admire your mod and I'd like to say that all the modifications you've made in your mod are incredibly impressive! The depth of the game, the amount of pen-and-paper D&D stuff that I love so much, and the game challenge increased greatly! Thanks a lot! That is THE ToEE as it should have been made initially. I just wanted to say that if there's an even tougher version of the AI available, it's well worth publishing it for the likes of me. )) If you could post the more difficult stuff, thanks in advance. And thanks for the wonderful mod!! - Agetian
Hey, I sure do! Btw, it's impossible to do any serious modding job on the game in case you don't play it ;-)
So true! So True! I must have something like 100+ save files (I actually have 3 different save folders now) with different scenarios so that I can test this or that... It is a constant... change something, play test it... oops didin't work... change something, play test it... okay that worked... change something, play test it... over and over and over again... - Livonya
*minor spoiler* Just a note, the battle in the Temple tower was more challenging, but the Witches turning the fallen soldier into zombies was cool - but it sure makes it hard to find loot in all that mess of bodies. Since the corpse is gone and all items dropped. I had quite some difficulty locating the key in that mess of dropped items.
Sorry. I didn't think it was that big a deal. Just animate dead spell.. I will be more careful in the future.
