Search Results
Searched for posts by 4zb4 in all forums

Showing results 461 - 470 out of 981 total
Modify your search
Posted by 4zb4, Nov 21, 2013 at 4:02 am
UT4 was made by an outsider known only as Corey
Lines 2239 and 2240:
Strange side dungeon added to UT by foreigner named Corey.
Many new bugs included.

Origins of Lobh-se come from when they added necromancers and thought the current spiders were too small
Lines 2344-2353:
Necromancer laugh diabolically as he finally free.
He begin collecting allies to spread havoc and terror amidst innocents.
First he descend into hideous cave of malevolent spider army.
But necromancer disappointed to see all spiders Ivan drawn small and puny.
They scare no one.
Ivan crossbreed tiny spider and Siberian tiger to create giant spider.
Then it mate with mammoth and baby become mighty 32x32 spider queen.
Both should be grown up and ready for rampage in char.pcx ere Monday dawn.
Ivan also have them spin sample webs in effect.pcx.
Necromancer then decide whether they worthy for his needs.

There's also explanations for other unused things in the graphics files
The factory has no good reason, other than making cars which are also in the graphics file. There's just a car, what I thought was a factory is actually a tank. Line 2374 onward:
Leader gave Ivan some nights to sleep.
If Ivan still near Novosibirsk he check its newest factory.
It make shiny Ladas for loyal soviet citizens.
Ivan park one in char.pcx so leader can check quality.
32x32, deadline 2.9.
And the dragon was made to apologise to the Leader, or was a request by him, line 77 onward:
Ivan make good graphics.
Big leader guy not mad anymore.
Big leader guy just and merciful.
But big leader guy still somewhat angry.
Ivan draw dragon for big leader guy. Scary. Char.pcx, 48x48 pixels.
Ivan be ready within 48 hours.
Then big leader guy content.

And this thing is meant to be a tank
Line 1797 onward:
CCCP road no CCCP road without tank.
Ivan draw one.
Char.pcx, size 32x32.
As always, there be slight shortage of materials and tools though.
Ivan only have steam engine and museum cannon to equip tank with.
Still leader trust Ivan conjure up great icon of Party glory.

And here's some stuff on the flail:
Line 1028 onward:
Next Ivan draw flail.
This be experimental weapon proposed by Party scientists.
Flail must have three separate heads.
Ivan use m-color 1 for handle and m-colors 2-4 for heads.
In game, some flails can be missing a head or two.
If so, colorize system replace heads m-color with transparent color.
More heads mean more damage.
There may also be magical heads that have special effects,
for instance fire damage or poisoning.
Party try this and see if its fun.
Line 1167 onward:
Leader had some fun whipping kulaks with flail Ivan made.
Flail had flaw and broke.
Ivan tidy up floor and put broken flail to item.pcx.
Leader also expressed wish that fail could have additional heads.
Therefore Ivan make also picture of single separate head.
Ivan finish work within 48 hours.

And some backstory on the tourists
Line 2390:
Leader must confess minor thing.
Ivan recall leader trip to Korea last summer.
One night leader drank vodka, played card game with Kim and lost.
Vladivostok and next years State budget, for instance.
Former not too bad as CCCP so mighty no one notice one city missing.
Latter however a problem.
Leader forced to allow some foreign visitors the privilege of walking on
holy CCCP soil.
First tourists be fat American couple, both equipped with expensive cameras
like in Nethack, and their 10 year old child.
They arrive on feFriday.
Ivan escort them to humanoid.pcx without delay and protect their wallets
with his life.
Party release them from the burden of evil capitalist money ASAP.
Posted by 4zb4, Nov 21, 2013 at 2:55 am
There's also Attributes.txt that sums up exactly what each stat does:

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.
Iter Vehemens ad Necem attributes:

Arm strength - arms
-melee and weapon damage
-melee and weapon to hit value, slightly
Leg strength - legs
-kicking damage
-kick to hit value, sligthly
-carrying capacity
Endurance
-hp
-healing rate
Dexterity - arms
-melee and weapon to hit value
Agility - legs
-kick to hit value
-dodge value
Perception
-to hit value
-dodge value
Charisma
-shop prices
-pet handling (chance to charm a monster etc.)
Intelligence
-ability to cast wizard spells                   //clearly the player was meant to be able to cast spells
Wisdom
-ability to cast priest spells                   //but they didn't get around to implementing it? Maybe there's some remnants in the source?
-praying
Mana
-spell efficiency
-mana points


Mention of mounted combat can be found in my signature, and also here on lines 152-157:
Ivan make Cossack in human.pcx.
Then Ivan make mounted symbol in symbol.pcx. Like many items symbol.
Big leader guy then put symbol above Cossack.
Cossack laugh and ride to battle.
But if Cossack too drunk, Cossack fall off saddle.
Ivan make horse without Cossack in char.pcx, too.

Mention of floating eyeball behaviour is on lines 1933-1939:
Floating eyes annoy leader, too, so their hp now halved.
Nevertheless they still not very easy to kill.
Leader usually carry daggers and short swords and throw them at eyes.
Leader may also drop lantern and lead them to dark where he cant see them
and therefore not faint.
Gods may also help, and Dulcis be best.
It fun to see stupid monsters faint when gazing at pet eye.

Mammoths definitely once spawned, and were apparently the highest danger level spawn before a "dark wizard" was added in (Ischaldirh by the description)
Lines 1692-1698:
Now Party noticed IVAN players powerful enough encounter only mammoths.
This rather odd since they extinct.
Party need more deadly enemies.
Therefore Ivan add dark wizard to humanoid.pcx.
Ivan think of swedish teacher when drawning and result will certainly look
evil enough.
And of course, pointy hat be a must.

Mention of changing graphics for a swimming character or one in a pitfall as well as some apparently unused world map textures is here on lines 278-288:
Next Ivan make all remaining wilderness lterrain graphics:

base tile for snowy terrain
big rock
base tile for desert
base tile for swamp
boghole
dead tree

Btw. if humanoid sink in boghole, then perhaps we draw only his head.
The same could even apply to swimming people.

"Ivan" also has a large list of things he wanted in the Attnam map, some of which were implemented
Line 2717 onward:

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.
Ivan finish suggestion of Attnam. Suggestion crude to say a least. Ivan 
should have millimetre paper or small square paper use. Too late. But 
lot of detail and new thing:

New:
Carpenter - construct items of wood
Apprentices - make -1 items for 1/3 or 1/2 of cost
Bakery - produce and sell bread. maintain stock of 50 bread
Healer - heals stuff
Bar - interesting people and beer in bar. lot of poor and tough and 
adventurous people.
Brewery - right next to the bar. contain hidden altar of Nefas where 
bartender sacrifice gold and beer! Five paid mercenary soldier guard 
brewery and shut up about altar.
Tomb of the unknown soldier - Guarded by two guard with fake mithril 
armour and wood sword. Guard line: "This is the Tomb of the Unknown 
Soldier! His name was Lamusius! Oops."
Apprentice priest - no fuction yet
Royal prison for trophy prisoners - Exotic prisoner collection of 
different race and species!
Obedience station - To keep all prisoner happy
Punisher - Ivan plan smiley face mask graphic for punisher
Garden - Nothing special but lot of plants
Training dummy - Can be mauled to keep up weapon skill
Entrance points - When entering, prompt: "From which direction do you 
want to enter (N,E,S,W)? South recommended."

Beds not included for every resident because in IVAN people no sleep 
unless they get bump in head.
In later version Attnam be several square big in world map, and there be 
suburb and homes and farm in these other square?
Oh, Ivan has forget windows on everywhere but garden. Leader add them as 
he wish.
If leader wish for a city wall, then one should include. However outside 
city wall must be enough space to use wand of fireballs and have 100 
gazillion super pets as allies.
It may be that city square size have to be increase a bit.
Lot of new graphic require. Ivan do some time.


"Leader" also has a lot of ideas and lore for Attnam
Line 2762 onward:

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.
Ivan represent fine ideas.
Leader share some of his plans, too, and comment Ivans.
Attnam grow so large that it be bother for Petrus to decide everything.
After all, he must have enough time to use wives and dolphins, too.
He read 1984 and name four cardinals to aid in rule:
Cardinal of Truth, who responsible for propaganda.
Cardinal of Plenty, who responsible for tax collecting and treasury.
Cardinal of Peace, new title of Sir Galladon, who responsible for guards and
leading army to preemptive peacekeeping operations.
Cardinal of Love, who head of Inquisition.
Entrance to Cathedral can indeed be more more impressive, with tiled way
leading inside.
Red mat can as well be wider.
However Leader suggest Cathedral remain in frog shape.
This tradition after all.
Obedience station be constructed underground.
Cardinal of Love, two Inquisitors and a few law students
(this be their summer job) interrogate prisoners there.
Happy face mask brilliant idea for them all.
Trophy prisoners also kept safe on this floor.
This because in Ivan plan it too easy for clever enemy to drop kamikaze
dwarves from hot-air balloon so they explode wall and release prisoners.
Jail residents moved to ground level only on special occasions, for instance
to entertain foreign VIP visitors.
Guards quarters also underground.
Above ground level there another, smaller floor where Cardinal of Love place
four telepaths so intelligent they detect mind of every thought criminal in
town with their amulets of ESP.
They avoid brewery, of course, since Petrus like to occasionally enter it
incognito and examine Nefass mistress or two throughoutly.
"One must know ones enemy as well as himself" he explain if player
recognize him.
Since in future characters can avoid being telepathically detected by
wearing tin foil as helmet, giant floating eye placed on top floor as added
security measure.
It rotate all the time, its gaze penetrating all hidden corners of Attnam,
making enemies of Church despair.
Training dummies can be on back yard whose access be easier.
There also very hard wall against which prisoners condemned to capital
punishment be led.
There they shot by execution squad armed with wands of fireballs.
North of it be graveyard.
This be church after all.
There well kept graves of numerous world famous, powerful, just and
righteous Attnamese heroes who Cardinal of Truth invent.
There be also gravedigger named Ummah.
He genius mathematician who dig graves and play saxophone as hobby.
Tomb of unknown soldier there as well.


There's also a lot of fun stuff in there I didn't realise, such as Vlad the bunny's name is actually VLADIMIR, an acronym:
2005 It may be that Vladimir (Vile Lurking Agressive Devourer with Infernal 
2006 Muscles Intended to Rampage) look bit unclear.
Posted by 4zb4, Nov 21, 2013 at 2:52 am
Putting this in Programming instead of Dev so everyone can see.
If you have not done so already, go read Dialog.txt now.
It is a "development log" of sorts heavily stylized as diary entries from the everyday life of "Ivan" (Head Graphics Designer Tuukka Virtaperko) and "The Leader" (Master Programmer Timo Kiviluoto) metaphorically detailing IVAN's development process whilst roleplaying as extremely stereotypical communists.

While it's a very entertaining read, it also brings to light a LOT of things about IVAN I did not know, along with ideas and things that have apparently vanished somewhere along the way to the current release such as flails, spawning mammoths, and having the player be able to swim or fall into pitfalls represented by a downward arrow similar to the levitation arrow.

What I'm getting at here is that Dialog.txt is a very good way to get a feel for IVAN's sense of humour as well as garner ideas the devs themselves wanted to implement - a good indicator of what we should be aiming for if we wish to stay faithful during our attempt at continuing development IMO.
It's also been very good for revealing tricks and details about certain in game entities, such as floating eyeballs not being able to put you to sleep if they cannot see you (i.e. invisibility or being in the dark).

There's a lot to read and a lot of ideas in there so I will be updating this thread later with what I consider to be relevant info.
It'd also be nice if someone who is still around on the forums from the old times could explain to me where all these nice features went to - especially the mounts mentioned near the start!

I've only read up to around line 1990 so far so perhaps that's explained later.
Posted by 4zb4, Nov 20, 2013 at 9:38 pm
With the "list" tasks for bugs, ideas etc where are we meant to be making said lists? Here? A text file on github?
There's some fun stuff in here too, I should've snooped around sooner:
Ur-Khan the orc marshal has appeared way too early in GC level 6.
The situation map:

#### ####
#### ####
#### ####        # = moraine earth
    G  U        @ = you
####@####        G = your pet adamant golem
#### ####        U = orc marshal
#### ####

You have a scroll of taming and all wands.
Reading the scroll takes two turns.
You cannot survive for more than one turn if Ur-Khan concentrates his attacks on you.
How can you capture him?
Posted by 4zb4, Nov 20, 2013 at 6:22 pm
I'm at Vic and doing Software Engineering at present.
Thanks for the list of things, I can go grab Microsoft Visual Studio 2013/2012/2010 right now if I wanted to but arrrgh there's so many different versions of it I'm not sure which one would be best (Express/Professional/Premium/Ultimate)
Posted by 4zb4, Nov 20, 2013 at 5:23 pm
Right, now that I have a lot of free time on my hands I guess I can lend a hand (or, try to) in IVAN dev.
I'm on Windows7, so what program(s) do you suggest I use? I've only got stuff for Java development on me from uni work.
I've also got access to just about every microsoft product under the sun for free because of being an engineering student if that helps.

My Trello and Github accounts are both "Azba"
Posted by 4zb4, Nov 20, 2013 at 5:17 pm
Warheck's said it's in C++ and the files are .cpp, a C++ extension though...
Posted by 4zb4, Nov 20, 2013 at 5:27 am
RustKnight wrote
Also, what language do you need to know to program ivan?

Unless I'm mistaken, IVAN is coded in C++ which is good considering you know a little.

Posted by 4zb4, Nov 19, 2013 at 7:30 pm
Although the whole "you're not the first" makes sense for everyone up until Elpuri gets beaten (also accounting for bones) I'm going to have to agree that it seems awful strange that the big baddies you got through before have resurrected. Still, having Petrus say "you're not the first" or some variation thereof would be nice, and I'd be willing to overlook the other small details. Maybe you could work in Oree here - I'll get to that later.
However, having him rattle off a list is going to be a problem - both in-universe and code-wise. I think Somagu's right in that Petrus would likely not give a damn about all the slaves that get sent to him for a suicide mission on Elpuri, and then having to display what is effectively the hi-score board is going to be both a problem to code and perhaps an unneeded distraction.

I do like the idea of a successful high-priest victory replacing Petrus with the previous protagonist, and yeah you could easily resurrect Elpuri under the guise of "Oh he comes back every couple of years". Or perhaps say that it's to do with Oree who gets resurrected every few years (would make more sense) and in turn resurrects Elpuri and all the other baddies. Kinda like Castlevania's Dracula except the protagonist turns into a iron-fist dictator when he wins.
You're right about the hierarchy of Attnam - the High Priest rules over all and is replaced by whoever can beat him. Kinda like that Riddick movie.

As for a Champion Victory you could have the previous champion replace whoever the head-guard was with the illithium armor.
The only problem I see with this is having to code it as you'll have to save the last successful players somewhere. Setting a flag to trip for successful characters will be easy enough, I'm just not entirely sure how to go about loading past character data from a file and then having them replace Petrus/Head Guard.

A female character would be troublesome storywise too because, well, you're a banana grower at the start and all the banana growers are male. Then again, you are said to be an outsider raised by hippos so I can see that working in just fine. If we were lazy we could just make a separate chest sprite with a bra on it and call it a day.

Somagu wrote
I can think of one other less tasteful place to put the beard instead...
I for one would be in support of gigantic armpit-beards.
Posted by 4zb4, Nov 19, 2013 at 5:29 am
Ahoy ! in forum Other Coding
Also on mines, failing a cloak of fire resistance a single ring of fire resistance should at least let you barely survive a single standard landmine. If you're unlucky and no fire resistance items have spawned for you at all your next best bet would be a ring of searching, which will usually point them out for you before you step on them - so long as you have a version which pauses upon warnings!
As for big landmines you're going to need a full kit of 2 fire resistance rings and a cloak to survive with low tier armor - or you could massively enchant a cloak of fire resistance.
Your final alternative is the belt of levitation which can be gained via wish or beating the sumo in New Attnam.

As for the Enner beast (noise monster), pretty much what Somagu said. You can use scrolls of detect to find where he is by searching for Enner Beast Flesh or Octiron (he carries an octiron item) but these won't last long. ESP might work if your INT (is it INT? Or WIS?) is high enough, but it's unlikely you'll have it high enough to spot him without taking enormous shout damage.
You can also try landmines if you've brought them, although I do not recall if he can set them off with shrieking. A fun thing to do with landmines is to stack dangerous wands or bottles on top of them so that they break upon being set off, making them a lot more effective than usual.