i keep thinking about shops. let's be honest: they are barely useful now. most of the items in shops are not interesting, and there is no way to ever get something interesting once the shop is generated. shoplifting is hard, and even if you'll manage to lure shopkeeper away somehow, there is usually nothing worth the risk.

maybe shops should restock after several days, and with higher priced items each time?

also, shop restocking don't have to be completely random. Merka, for example, might bring some definitely useful items each time. he's doing business after all, and he wants to sell his goods. so, if he sees the adventurer without fire protective items, he'll bring some rings and cloaks of fire protection, for example. full helmets and strongboxes if the player haven't visited Enner yet. if you go even deeper, he might bring electroprotective items, hinting the player that they will be useful. then there will be at least some solid reason to trade with him.

also, novice player might remember some items for sale, and after reaching deeper GC levels will think: "yay! the game is even better than i thought! the shop is useful, and the game dropped some subtle hints with shop items! i need to tell my friends about that!"

what do you all think about it?


p.s.: also, warehouses. don't you think that there should be some warehouses, locked and heavily guarded? with windows, so you could see all the great loot inside. the slave in Attnam could take the items player sold, and transport them to the warehouse. and bring back some new items to replace those which player bought. useless from the gameplay perspective, but fun to watch, i think.

also, shop restocking can be "visual" — the player could see the caravan of slaves bringing new items. and this is a great random encounter too.

just don't do 0.666, i reserved that number!

landmines are easy to survive with fire protection. nobody should go to GC without at least a ring of fire resistance anyway. yet mustard gas is killing me even with 45-50 HP.

but your reasoning seems… reasonable. i reverted the change for now. also, i was sure that i have to drink antidote potion to get rid of mustard gas, and never even thought about drinking a healing potion instead. oops. and i know that antidote potion does nothing in this case… yet wasn't able to connect the dots.

basically, yes, adding special handling for this is a… medium size change. currently, characters has no `TryToCharm()` method, all charming code simply sets the new team directly. so we need to refactor this to a new method first, and then use it everywhere. which is a good thing to do (it might help with other similar effects later), but is slightly more than simply adding a check.

or, we can copy-paste the check in each charm code, which is way worser, and error-prone.

so i think that it is "nice to have", but if it doesn't break the quest… let's call it a "feature". at least for now.

besides, this actually might be a feature, if you'll change your mind, and decide to give the kid to the other side. it shouldn't be that easy… but let's say that it explains how goblins took the kid in the first place: nobody really cares about the poor little king. politics, you know…

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

hm. i starting to feel that i need a village with a market near Aslona. or make Black Market open without it's location map. i need a place where i can sell some trash. as smith and tailor can harden items now, there is more ways to spend the money. there should be a "freelance priest" to heal you too. a shop with bottles. a shop with gears. and shops should get new goods over time.


btw. am i crazy, or we (both k8I, and vanilla) have effects of mustard gas and mustard liquid swapped? `character::ReceiveMustardGas()` spills liquid, and `character::ReceiveMustardGasLiquid()` does instant gas effect. wtf?!

hm… the logic behind this seems to be reverted. that is, mustard gas spills mustard liquid on a character, and then mustard liquid slowly dissolves the body. this makes mustard gas The Ultimate Weapon. but i don't feel that it should work this way. mustard gas should work like a gas. that is:
1) methods should be swapped, and
2) MUSTARD_GAS_LIQUID should have `Effect = 0;`, and `Acidicity = 80;` (or something).
this way, everything works as expected: mustard gas is one-time hit. drinking mustard luquid is like drinking other acidious liquid. spilling mustard luquid is like spilling other acidious liquids.

rationale: 'cmon, immediate unavoidable death traps is too much. mustard gas is not THAT deadly. maybe the idea was to imitate "delayed effect", but i don't think that it works good the way it is now. with the changes, stepping into mustard gas several times is mostly deadly (it quickly dissolves the skin), but drinking or spilling it in a liquid form is not (because it is just a mustard sauce, lol .

anyway, i believe that this is how it should work, and made the changes.

with mighty wizard and two other people around who basically did exactly that? lifetime expectancy: -1.

it should work, i believe. i'll prolly check.

that's where i took the changes, yeah. but they keep breaking things, introducing more and more javascript for nothing. that page is barely usable as for now, and i'm pretty sure that they will completely break it quite soon.

and that's where i want some uncertainity; you never know which siren took better singing lessons.


i'll take a look. porting the core command code should not be hard; but proper console with autocompletion… dunno. i haven't looked at the console implementation in vanilla. in k8I, the console is rendered directly to the texture, after converting the game 16-bit frame buffer, and OS event handler knows about console too, so it redirects all keyboard input when the console is active. i.e. it doesn't use felib rendering code at all.


thank you!

@rk: ah, and i have a request. if you find some free time and inspiration, could you please create some simple levels for random encounters? nothing complex, just some ground levels i could test random encounters with. i barely know what to write in level scripts, so if you could give me some fun test maps, it would be great. not a demand, of course, just maybe you happen to have some ideas and some free time…

do you prefer Aslona to became hostile if you try to mess with king's mind instead?