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Posted by Z, Feb 21, 2009 at 9:11 am
At least that's what I read somewhere. I cannot find it in changelog nor in the source. Maybe it was just an idea? If it is true, then SoCMing into GEF should be impossible until you get its only sample in the Universe.
Posted by Z, Feb 21, 2009 at 5:15 am
It's true that IVAN does not allow wishing for materials which the character has not seen yet. However, if your character sees the material, it does not mean that you notice it. Rings and wands are made of lots of special materials, and some good ones can be seen in Attnam. For example, the smith and the tailor wear ommel hair.
Posted by Z, Jan 22, 2009 at 5:58 pm
styles in forum Website News
Is it possible for me to create a style? I prefer an Ivan-themed website to be in black, but both IvanBlack are not good (they are gray actually, not black). IvanBlue is okay, but I prefer black.

There is a problem with IvanBlue: it's hard to tell white and yellow flaming sword from each other (when both are on white blackground).
Posted by Z, Dec 22, 2008 at 7:32 am
No need to recompile, as it is defined in the char.dat file. The simplest way to fix it would be to remove the following two lines from "humanoid":

KnownCWeaponSkills == UNARMED;
CWeaponSkillHits == 19000;

Since this is defined in "humanoid", it says that every humanoid which has no skills specified especially for it has level 19 in unarmed (e.g. player, banana grower). This would make more sense with a low value like 100, since e.g. Alfred has only 1000 points in unarmed (level 12).

I think you can fix it yourself, no need to recompile the package.
Posted by Z, Dec 16, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Both languages have their good things and bad things. I prefer C++ myself for some reasons, but Java is not that bad (yes, it is slower, but it's only like 2 times slower, that's not that bad, most algorithms in IVAN work instantly anyway; and I don't suppose it is harder to learn than C++).

But I agree it's best to keep it in C++, for some reasons:

- If you write a remake, each change somebody makes to IVANOV or IVAN won't be compatible with another, unless somebody is willing to translate.

- you will have to understand IVAN very well anyway if you want your remake to be faithful. You can create your own random level generator, but it will be different than IVAN's. And so on.

- it is a lot of work to translate such a big program as IVAN to another language. If you had no C++ lessons yet, it will be less work to learn C++ yourself than to translate IVAN to Java.

- as capristo says, there is a chance that you will lose your interest in the project. If you lose it halfway while you are remaking IVAN in Java, your work will be kind of lost (unless somebody else comes who wants to continue porting IVAN to Java). If you add features, they will stay.

I was thinking about multi-player IVAN... I think IVAN is written in a way that allows relatively easy upgrade to multi-player, since (AFAIK) both player characters and NPCs are "characters" and the only thing which changes is that players are controlled by UI and NPCs by AI. It shouldn't be that hard to allow more than one player character. Some things are designed for one player only (I suppose the gods only have relation to 1 PC), but these should be easy to change. (You can even clone yourself in IVAN, or resurrect your old self from a ghost level! These are controlled by AI, but it's a good thing anyway.) (In some games player character seems to be a completely different object for the game than NPCs. I think games like these would be much harder to make multiplayer.)

The simplest version of multi-player is ... well, to have shared ghost levels and hi-score files. But I think it's not what we are after. My plan to make IVAN multiplayer (which I currently don't intend to actually perform, but I think it is an interesting project) is to introduce a special mode in IVAN, where you can import your character from your single player game, and fight against guys controlled by other players playing on the same server. You could do it like chess (i.e. turn based). I think this could be a interesting thing for our forum (play multiplayer IVAN instead of random multiplayer games). We could do something like a battle of two teams of 8 guys each. But I don't know if we would play it that much.

Changing IVAN into a MMO would be more work. You need to do lots of design for that (are strong players able to fight weak players? if somebody slays Attnam and New Attnam, does it mean that they won't be available to the new players? how to find good stuff when all the dungeons have already been cleared by players before you? in IVAN there is a limited supply of items and this fact limits your power, if there would be an infinite supply of dungeons, how to make sure that it is also so in multiplayer IVAN? and so on) You can keep the mechanics, gods, and materials, but I think you will need to redesign all the world for MMO. Well, not all of the mechanics, because turn based play will probably no longer be a reasonable option.

I have not looked at it, but there is a roguelike turned multiplayer called MAngband (Multiplayer Angband). Maybe you could look there for some solutions to your problems.
Posted by Z, Dec 7, 2008 at 10:20 am
Enner beast is able to kill Petrus, but he does not want to. When testing in WM I attacked the Cathedral, making Petrus and Enner and everyone else around follow me, and finally Enner killed Petrus.

Also, it seems people who are far away from Enner are not hurt, it would take a lot time for Enner to reach them when moving randomly.
Posted by Z, Dec 7, 2008 at 7:45 am
I tested this in wizard mode and I think it could work also in the normal mode, although seems to be very hard to pull off:

- kill the enner beast
- place a wand of resurrection close to the dwarfchambers in the Cathedral
- place the enner beast corpse next to the wand of resurrection
- summon a hostile genie in the dwarfchambers

A kamikaze dwarf attacks the genie, his explosion breaks the wand of resurrection, which resurrects the enner beast. At least in the CVS version, the resurrected monster is in the same team as the one who resurrected it, or, in this case, the dwarf.

The enner beast shouts in the cathedral, and nobody has anything against you (it was all genie's fault) nor the enner beast (who is in the Attnam team). He wanders randomly and I don't know any good way to make it do what you want (e.g. kill Petrus).

It's very hard to perform it correctly, so that the explosion breaks the wand of resurrection, but does not kill the Enner Beast.
Posted by Z, Oct 7, 2008 at 5:57 am
I think one of these guys says "we have an agreement with the monsters so they don't attack us", something like that.
Posted by Z, Sep 27, 2008 at 5:12 am
I usually use original (i.e. not taken from somewhere, like Frodo) names with a fantasy feeling. For inspiration I use objects that are lying near my computer, recent events, etc. For example, if there are sunglasses near, I could call a human character Sunglar. I sometimes use a series of names which are similar, except the first letter which advances alphabetically. E.g. Anglar, Bunglar, Cunglar, ...
Posted by Z, Sep 24, 2008 at 4:13 am
Ivan should not be polymorphed by a gas, as he is wearing a gas mask.