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Posted by JoKe, Sep 27, 2016 at 3:17 am
I agree with crystal cave being the exception here, light crystal emitation values are so high compared to other sources up to that point.

Is there a hierarchy with light sources though? I was under the impression that sources simply add to a light map. A hierarchy change also wouldn't do too much for the issue of darkness being non-existent.
Posted by JoKe, Sep 27, 2016 at 2:30 am
It would fix one of the light sources, but basically all other sources besides the oil lamp are really bright too.
Posted by JoKe, Sep 27, 2016 at 1:59 am
Should light be more of a factor?

IVAN has a lovely light system in place, but since all practical light sources are so bright, all the player usually sees is the light from their own lantern. The only time light actually comes into play is when the lantern breaks, and there's just two levels it reliably happens. Unbreakable light sources nullify even that. There's just no room to use light creatively when everything the player sees is bathed in a flat shade of pale yellow.

I was envisioning using skylights, magma flows and glowing vats of experimental Valdemar, but realised there's no proper way to actually show the effect when it's overridden by a carried light source.
Posted by JoKe, Sep 24, 2016 at 3:19 pm
Having a dragon in TX sounds odd to me. How would it have ended up in a tomb and why?

I'd save it for chao's tower, if he decides to take the idea somewhere that is.
Posted by JoKe, Sep 20, 2016 at 4:18 pm
First win done. No artificial limbs / pets as usual.









The only cloning wand (2-charge) during the entire run came from a lamp wish after UT3, not a single other mirroring or cloning source. 3 scrolls of charging total, two of which were in the library. Mellis was quite generous with ommel substances, with some cloning I rounded up around 15 cerumen, 8 snot, 8 urine, 5 tears and 1 sweat. Equipment didn't really change after the change to octiron in TX10, found a max of around 4 of EA/EW each deeper in.

Some probably incoherent sleepy rambling on the level of difficulty follows:

The difficulty curve felt off. Levels TX1 thru 6(?) were rather easy even in really poor equipment (stolen from a mistress torturing chief from Nefas). Compared to GC, I'd been torn to shreds on the wolf level. Aside from a few danger spikes (accidentally releasing a veteran dwarf from the oasis), there were no real actual hazards up until mages started appearing. Even then an amulet of elemental prot mostly countered them. Combined with the relative lack of instantly recognizable elements, being rather easy meant most of the levels felt like filler instead of interesting places to explore.

Let's look at the pacing in GC for comparison:
GC2: Wolf level! (maybe)
GC3: Huge level with a minefield! (could have wolves here here instead)
GC4: Breather filler (might have the earlier things here too)
GC5: Enner beast level!
GC6: Zombie level!
GC7: Dark frog level!
GC8: Breather filler with Ivan
GC9: Elpuri level!
GC10-GC11: You're now in hell level!
GC12: Massive room with nasty things level!
GC13: J/K, now you're actually in hell level!

Whereas for TX, based on a single visit so far, uhh... There was the oasis, the shop, the experimental lab, the dwarven room that blew up right after entering the level, the enner kids, the level where you suddenly run into the ghost of Xinroch and the harder levels after that. I'm sure the levels would be easier to tell apart with more attempts. However, with just a single visit I honestly cannot tell them apart because most of the early levels (pre-TX10) were easy to just blitz through without too much thought.

What TX really needs are hazardous elements of interest. Excluding GC8, the GC levels aren't defined by their non-threatening elements (chest room, dungeon shop, hidden chest), but by the threats you need to overcome or avoid on those levels. Those are what make the levels challenging, not the level generation or regular monster spawns. Including dungeon elements that aren't out to kill the player is fine, I just don't believe they should take the spotlight from what I see as the meat of the game. As it stands, there were hardly any difficulty spikes to spice up what felt like simply filler quite similar to GC1 or GC4.

As for the post-TX10 levels, they were pretty alright for x2-x3 ending difficulty. Definitely harder than a freedom ending but not quite reaching the GC11-GC13 levels. The small mage room felt like something you can actually take on dependably, as opposed to the magical murderfest that is the GC mage room. Invisible elder dark mages were a lovely hassle to deal with. Xinroch himself could be buffed a bit, he felt less of a threat than even Elpuri.

I'm assuming there was some possible victory involving raiding Attnam, but I couldn't find any in-game breadcrumbs hinting at that. What're the other victory triggers?

Other random thoughts:

* Overall look in pre-TX10 levels is indeed pretty close to GC. Some more differentiation would be nice, though I don't know what that could be at this point.
* The level with a friendly necromancer gets really annoying when zombies start to pile up. 1-tile wide tunnels really don't fit having a mass of neutral NPCs milling about. Waiting behind a rolling zombie torso to get anywhere is not fun. How about just replace the master necromancer with a new caster type NPC that doesn't reanimate things?
* The kitchen feels rather useless as it stands. With regular Mellis prayers, I was not in any danger of starving at any point.
* Already mentioned elsewhere, but I do agree that the gas chamber explodes too easily from passing monsters.
* Maze rooms should not IMO be generated with an altar. Being cut off from all other gods in a particularly twisty tunnel seems very arbitrary when combined with how long you tend to spend exploring them.
* Maze terrain under walls should match rest of the level, having patches of different material on the ground after an earthquake looks odd.
* In the latter levels, ebony floors with octiron walls makes some mazes too hard to read. I'd suggest choosing a bit lighter floor material for more contrast.
* The tactical level (I think? the long red tunnel place) could possibly have some light sources littered about to let the player use the added sight range.
* why does this fountain have running water in an ice cave
* Is dark knight win a score x2 or x3 ending? I honestly can't tell.
* Sitting when standing on the iron maiden in the Attnam cellar should have some special message. ("You sit in the iron maiden. This doesn't seem safe at all.")

I'll be giving a go at the other wins at some point, but that just about covers my initial thoughts on the dungeon. I'm quite sure there were other things as well at some point, actually keeping notes might've been a nifty idea.
Posted by JoKe, Sep 15, 2016 at 3:53 am
How about just replace the "limb is severed off" message with "limb disperses" if the target is a ghost? Functionally it's the same thing, but having parts of a ghost vanish instead of get severed doesn't seem too bad.
Posted by JoKe, Sep 14, 2016 at 6:35 am
Not to kill the puns, but I should probably clarify that this is after whacking the ghost with a WM-pumped character. The thing just refused to die, because all hits were aimed at limbs only.
Posted by JoKe, Sep 13, 2016 at 5:16 pm
Found an issue with ghosts of foo:


Ghost limbs cannot be severed, so silly situations like this happen.
Posted by JoKe, Sep 13, 2016 at 7:39 am
That might be for the best. Ultimately, so long as blink dogs keep multiplying, getting the required amount for perma-TC only takes time. The only thing the nerf would actually accomplish for a more advanced player is a stat loss of a few points max from vomiting or being bloated. That's not really significant, neither is the amount of work needed to get the corpses. The only thing it would actually do is make the whole process more tedious. Cap's point about discoverability is very true as well.

I don't honestly like the idea of reducing the blink dog spawn rate. Telecontrol is a very important part of a successful run. Making the telecontrol sources too rare would mean some runs might not ever find a source, which can essentially doom the run purely based on a terminal case of RNG-itis. This is also why I really liked how the CLIVAN mushroom boss drops a wand of cloning, another important piece of the 'ascension kit'.
Posted by JoKe, Sep 3, 2016 at 1:11 pm
I still very much like the idea of permanent states.

That being said, simply eating three blink dogs to gain permanent telecontrol is indeed stupidly easy and frankly makes rings of telecontrol useless the moment you find a single blink dog. Instead of removing the permastate, I'd suggest nerfing the blink dog flesh effect strength to 10-20%. This way in order to gain the effect, you'd need to find and eat 15-30 corpses scattered all over the area from teleports on death. Not only that, but you'd also need to contend with overeating and actually getting to the corpses fast enough before the effect runs out or the corpses spoil.

ESP currently takes a bit more work, as you need to keep the eye corpses fresh long enough to gather a few up. Increasing the corpses needed to around 5 would be enough in my opinion.

Haste is completely fine as it is, it takes a lot of wands and a Cleptia prayer to get to permanent status.