Volunteers needed - Reactive Temple Mod

No, a straight copy is exactly what I wanted when it comes to determining WHAT critters and how many of them are there. Their exact relative positioniong may (and should) be altered, including the air elementals.

Yes, that's what I meant by 5 water bugbears - the defecting bugbears, which may or may not have been turned over to Air. (the scripting will check if you've converted them or not and move them accordingly to either the Air Temple or Water Temple once they are put on alert)

The Air Temple robes will only work for monsters that are scripted to Kill On Sight (KOS) everything that isn't wearing those particular robes. This includes the Air Temple bugbears, and that's about it really.

Other spawned creatures may or may not include the KOS flag by default (as defined in the protos.tab file). If spawning them gives you trouble, then spawn something else instead to represent them, just for purposes of placement (e.g. spawn a jaroo for every bugbear, a calmert for every goblin, etc.)

I've now updated the t.py file with a test script similar to the Air test script but for the Water Temple instead. This teleports you near the Water Temple and dresses you in Water Temple robes, in addition to all the usual hacks and items. The function is called tw().

I'm also wondering whether the Water Temple should be moved to where the pit with the water snakes is. It should help to prevent the exploit where people position their party where the defecting water bugbears are and snipe away at the juggernaut and others while creating a bottleneck at the narrow door. What do you guys think?

 

Can I just ask, at what point does the temple 'react' to your actions? Will you be repositioning the high priests?

 

@badger:

The plan is to make the Temple factions react when it makes sense. This includes:
-Having killed other faction leaders (excepting the faction it was done for, if it was done for one of them)
-Having eliminated a certain number of the mobs in the Temple, where relevant (e.g. if you've killed all the harpies, ghouls, stirges, and non-aligned gnolls and ogres in the first Temple level, I'd expect Romag to be wary)
-Paladin is in your party and has been sighted (for simplicity's sake I'll abstract this as having visited any occupied Temple floor with a Paladin)
-For Earth Temple: Earth altar desecrated
-Having liberated prisoners more than once or twice
-Having killed faction's Troop Commander (Earth, Fire)
-Temple is on general alert (Smigmal Redhand or Falrinth escaped the fight, conversed with Hedrack and agreed to part ways)

Each faction will react individually, although some conditions may be shared between some or all of them. If I'm forgetting anything, let me know.

Of course, if the faction's leader is already dead, this will be nullified. Furthermore, everything will depend on timers, so the Temple factions won't instantly regroup the very minute one of these conditions is met (the passage of time required may also vary depending on what you did)

And yes, the faction leaders will be relocated so they are better protected by their troops.

@ Gaear:

I agree that the Temple is too small. The nodes are probably too small as well, compared to the module (IIRC they were far mor expansive there). I wouldn't want to make it much larger, however, since there's no convenient navigational interface as in Crichton's mod, or Fallout's city schemes, etc, so it'd probably entail a lot of walking. I wouldn't object to some minor modifications in principle, perhaps for things like shopkeepers and low level minions, but we'd have to be careful not to add too much XP and loot.
Also, what does the module say about the Temple's layout? Is there a detailed map with every room and hallway defined in detail, or is it just a list of encounters and central characters?

@ Guardian:

If no one else objects, then go ahead with moving everything to the Water Temple pit room.

 

Roger! Everything into Snake Room. Including the Juggernaut? Can it manuever?

 

Here's the Water Temple setup:

Belsornig
14193(547,580)0

Juggernaut
14244(539,573)5.5

Gargoyles
14239(532,566)4
14239(536,561)2.5
14239(545,562)2.5
14239(547,565)1

Water Temple Bugbears
14178(534,573)5
14179(545,572)6

Priests
14198(540,580)5.5
14198(533,581)5

Bugbears (if not traitors)
14231(547,577)0
14178(544,577)5
14179(531,578)5
14180(534,577)5.5
14181(537,580)6

Owlbear and Keeper
14046(533,568)5
14225(531,570)5

Oohlgrist and Trolls
14195(544,574)0
14262(544,567)1
14262(544,571).5

I used the tw function, but, when created, the Juggernaut appears out of location and attacks immediately, making it difficult to set everything up and check to see that there won't be a traffic jam after combat starts. Is there a way to turn off combat until everything is set up? I want to play with this, too.

I do have to admit this probably does simulate untrained troops in real combat, though.

 

The Juggernaut is set to KOS in the protos.tab, since in the game it currently only appears when you attack the Water Temple. I've now added a new script to address that however - a function called bsp(proto_number). It stands for 'benign spawn', and it will spawn a creature on top of your character and immediately set its KOS flag to zero, so it won't attack you.

I've also noticed that there's a script attached to the Juggernaut so it self-destructs if one has been spawned already in the past. This was probably used to prevent the multiple Juggernauts bug. If you want to spawn more than one, you need to reset the variable game.global_vars[777] to zero via the console.

By the way, a question to the module / d&d experts: Is it okay that the Juggernaut remain animated when transferred to the Water room? It can remain as a statue, but I think if the Water Temple were on alert, they would awaken it as soon as they moved it, unless there were some other kind of constraint such as a short lifespan, inability to return it to statue mode later on, wanting to retain the element of surprise, etc. Though come to think of it, it would actually help toughen up the fight if the Juggernaut remained where it is, and once your party attacked Belsornig in the altar room, it would flank the party from behind. Could be quite brutal!

edit: Forgot to attach the file...

 

So, is there anything else to do atm?

 

Well, all that's left is the Fire Temple. But there are several issues that I think need to be discussed first.

First off, is it really needed to make the Fire altar fight harder than it already is?
Second, if we add more critters to the Fire altar room, won't they be toasted by the Salamanders' fireballs? And if we give them protection vs. fire, what kind of protection would be justified (bearing in mind that we don't want to increase the amount of loot too much, and don't want to arbitrarily hack in fire resistance)? Or should we just disable the Salamanders' fireballing?
Third, I think the game is already pretty laggy in the Fire altar room due to all the particle effects. Perhaps moving more critters there could exacerbate the situation further.

Perhaps it is better to relocate the Fire Temple minions to where the two underpriests are, except for the ones in the altar room.
The encounter, as I picture it, would include the Fire Temple's Troll keeper and his Hydra, the ogres you might have recruited for them, the bugbears just outside the room, Oohlgrist and his two troll neighbours (if they are recruited), and that's it I think. Could be a little crowded though.

 

move + set appropriate standpoint, because unfortunately there isn't a simple method (that I am aware of) to make them walk without messing with their mobs, and there are complications relating to 'activating' them a la the frozen badgers on patrol. It will only be done on a 'first heartbeat', though.

If you have a better method, let me know.


On a side note, even Fallout had flexible enough scripting commands that allowed you to walk characters around the map. I wish we had low level commands like that. Maybe someday ToEE will be so irrelevant to Atari that they'd agree to sell off the source code for pennies...

 

Interesting idea. I think it could work, and it makes sense too. Anyone else in favour?

As for Allrem's troops, well, his faction was supposedly decimated in the war. He does have a few bugbears, Antonio and Bassanio, and the Troll keeper and his Hydra. And he's not that understaffed compared to the Water Temple actually.

It is pretty goofy that the number of existing troops is nowhere near what was in the battle of emridy meadows, or that there are infinite rest encounters in the Temple - where are they coming from? But I suppose it's just one of those gamist abstractions you have to live with.

Also, here's the Air layout according to Guardian's coordinates (attached). I think I'm going to modify this, though, since the different groups are too separated for my tastes. You have to account for the player eliminating some of the mobs, so it'd be goofy if all the guards are in one place and Kelno is in another. And lastly, you should try to anticipate where the player will cast area of effect spells (web, fireball, etc) and try to minimize their effectiveness by spreading the critters out.