Mod Update

I had just been "going with" the example given, but you guys worried me I'd said something silly (like hearing an ooze say something). But bugbears are Int 10 and speak Goblin and Common -- [just went and looked it up to make myself feel better.]

I'd think, wizgeorge, that while you wouldn't want to hear their threats, you MIGHT want to hear their screams of torment as they ***fried***, would you not?

"Aiiiigh! It burns!"
"Please, let me die!"
"Oh! The Humanity!"
"Kaaaaahn!"

Ahem.

Sorry if I went too far there.

-- d

 

It would be extremely easy to make sure that only the intelligent creatures say something. Very easy. I can just put an inteligence test in the script so anything below intelligence 5 says nothing, etc, etc...

The real thing I need to test first is if I can float a text line over a mute character. Most monsters/creatures are flagged mute.

So I have to see if:

a) I can float a text over a mute character

b) I can turn off mute, float text, and then turn mute back on

I absolutely know how to turn mute on, but I am not sure if the opposite will work properly. I know the proper code to use, I just need to test if it works.

Then all I need to do is make a dialog file and code a random script that sometimes picks a dialog line (this will go in the same file as my anti-web script so that is really easy to do).

The random number would work something like 50% of the time they say nothing, and then the rest of the time they get a random line.

We would just need to come up with random lines... say 20+ different lines of dialog that would work for primitive but intelligent monsters.

It wouldn't take me more than 20 minutes to write this code... the only thing that would take time is to write the dialog.

- Livonya

 

I'll betcha money (not really) that MUTE won't matter. the floattext call is like the particles call, it's a utility function just used for appearance.

After all, if TOEE cared about MUTE, then mute characters couldn't be marked to have made their saving throws (as an example).

Also, this idea should have some legs. Your first stab at it would be great, but one could easily do this work for just particular types of monsters, or even individual monsters, over time. So the bugbears might say something topical, rather than random.

Otherwise, you're going for the RTS "yes sir" "right away sir" "affirmative" feel, which breaks realism a bit much.

-- dulcaoin

 

Fireballed monster: "It's better to burn out than to fade away!"

 

I think it might work well to have mostly random dialogues, sprinkled with a few specific ones. The leaders of the various groups might have something that mentions the area your in, who you are fighting, or what god they are trying to destroy you in the name of.

 

I am pretty sure you are wrong about this. As proof of this you can look at the Murderous Thief that you encounter with the Neutral Good opening. He has a dialog line, and the he is marked as mute so he won't say anything else.

The mute flag only refers to dialog. If you have mute on then you can't talk to NPCs, and they won't make random encounters. If you click on a mute NPC then nothing happens. If you click on a non-mute NPC then you either start a dialog or get a random text float.

I have added dialog to other monsters, and it would not work until I turned off the mute flag in the protos.tab so what I had to do with those monsters was turn the mute flag back on in most situations.

- Livonya

 

D -

One other thing...

The particles float you are talking about is different than having a dialog line float.

With the particles float which you can do as mute you see a text line, but don't get the line added to the dialog history, and also you won't see the creatures picture.

With a dialog float the picture of the NPC appears next to the dialog and the dialog lasts longer and also the dialog line is added to the dialog history.

So you are correct, you can float a particles line above a mute character but I don't think you can float a dialog line about a mute character.... actually I pretty positive you can't... if you could then a lot of invisible NPCs would be making remarks during combat.

For instance there are lots of invisible NPCs all around the game world that are either waiting to be turned on, or that do special actions... most of these are marked as mute so they never talk... if you un-mute them in the protos file then the they will say all sorts of things when combat is going on.

- Livonya

 

Yeah, we were talking two different things, and you then cleared it all up without my input

I was talking about the difference between going full-blown into a dialog situation (which would break the "flow" because the player would have to click on a response to exit dialog; and which would mean a lot of work creating new .dlg files), and simply using float_mesfile_line() to have them "speak" as they attack. It's quick, it's easy, and the text can be safely "ignored" as non-plot-important.

My reference to particles calls was something like

game.particles( "sp-evocation-conjure", spell.caster )

which is completely removed from actually doing anything spell-like; it's just a visual effect, and I think you can have the game fire-off particle effects pretty much any time you'd like (though you wouldn't WANT to for consistency reasons). It's unrelated (I believe -- since I can have it happen for a non-spell-user from the console) to actually being ABLE to fire off spells.

In the same way, my bet was that float_mesfile_line() is callable any time you'd like, whether the target obj is muted or not; that's all.

I was unaware that there was a float-line-like routine that added to the dialog history. Is that float_line()?

I would think you wouldn't WANT to add the grunts and threats of combats to that history, in any case; as a thought.

-- d

 

Gaear, no worries.

Using scripting, it would be possible to MAKE SURE that bugbears at the temple would say something different from bugbears at the moathouse from bugbears at the grove to bugbears at the inn [I'm imagining up a nightmare/dream situation for wizgeorge now, must stop that ] It would take time and attention, is all.

So I was saying, make them generic in the "RTS" sense NOW, and then come back and customize this stuff over time to make certain encounters more enjoyable and "new". I mean, you could even add some really 'rare' occurences, like 1 time out of 100 (or 1000), an NPC in a certain area of the temple, might say, instead of "death to the interlopers!" perhaps "I swallowed a bug!"*.

BTW, that last sentence you gave in the "misguided" list is probably getting a little long for a float text, at least the kind I keep thinking of.

-- d

* Perhaps, even better, something from quotes.mes. That thing is HILARIOUS. Too bad Troika's gone. I'd REALLY like to work there now!

 

Nightmare!

A nightmare would be for the bugbears to capture my female half-elf wizards. That would be hard because they are guarded by 4 AC30+, 100HP+ level 8 fighters with Scather, Holylongsword+3,etc. Meleny and Fruella are level 8 now, and the Druid has Calllightning and Flamestrike. Come and get me!

 

D -

If you float the text using the particles system then no one would ever really see the text as it would go by too fast... as fast as the spell messages go by... these things are easy to miss.

When you float a dialog line the line appears for a longer time and you can see the NPCs picture... and I think it is good that it goes in the dialog history in case someone wants to see what was said.

When the Neutral Good party attacks the Murderous Thief he shouts something as he attacks. This is exactly how I think it should be done.

It works really well in that instance and this is an easy example for anyone to check out.

- Livonya

 

not working

Well, I don't think this will work.

There is no way that I know of to turn mute off.

I can turn it on with...

attachee.critter_flags_set( OCF_MUTE )

but the reverse does not work (as far as I can tell)...

attachee.critter_flags_unset( OCF_MUTE )


If you take out the OCF_MUTE on creatures in the protos.tab then you will have monsters constantly talking during combat and saying random things when you click on them.

I will have to think some more on this topic, maybe I can come up with a work around...

- Livonya

 

well we could use generic phrases for the random encounters we find every so often. give the set encounters, especially the big ones, something more unique depending on the creatures and the location..

hey Liv maybe for them to speak needs a different phrase, unset doesnt sound right for programing. seems like it would use a different term in place of mute

attachee.critter_flags_set( OCF_TALK ) or attachee.critter_flags_set( OCF_SPEAK).

im not sure of course just a thought.

 

Suggest we bump this over to modding, it's getting kinda technical?

-- d