Necros Skellies and Anonymous

First off, apologies for the long delay between posts, the next semester has started and I'm retooling my weekly activities around it as well as preparing for an upcoming move as one of my roommates recently bought a house and I can't afford this place by myself.

Bael-elves

Necro healers were always kind of boned in general, though they could hold their own in PK with Pain.V and sneakyness combined with a fair bit of talent.  As I see it theres two options going forward.  One, keeping them at cloth like their brother guild, but granting them level 5 sheilds instead of level 4.  The other, lowering them down to level 4 shields and granting them the leather armor that orcs and priests have.  It will also be much easier for them to hunt with a weapon, ie training weapons, than before, allowing them to hunt much like priests used to.  That will be similar across all three healer classes.

Pure Necromancers, similar to wizards, will take over part of the "warding" burden/privilege, retain their role as primary tappers, shields, teleportation, cold/pain lists and of course the good old namesake ability of their undead pets which were never really all that exclusive to them in the first place.  I always thought that was a bit silly.  Necromancers who can only summon one at a time and whose summoning ability isn't unique to them at all.  Maybe I'll do something about it if there is an imbalance.

 Skeletons

I've made a previous post where I described the joke ability "bone" and how Skeletons will have a second guild option akin to rangers/gnolls to take over evil's archer race.  Of course the typical melee double fighter class will remain and will have Parry as well, though I cannot remember if they had it originally or not.


Anonymous

The big news of this post is a big thank you to the anonymous poster who has given me a link to documentation on the tempest engine, that is, really really really freaking detailed information on how the game works.  It's uncovered a lot of tiny things missing from my database design.  It would have all been picked up as the game was developed, but having it pointed out now saves significant time later on.  So, Cheers to whoever sent that.  It is immensely helpful.

I also have another message of appreciation to another person and those who came before him, who have offered material support of some kind.  Thank you.

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Demons

For pretty much everything CoX demon you can refer to the craftie characteristics of goblins and craftsmen.  They have the physical creation/reparation skills of craftsmen types,.  When it comes to fighting, however, they have slightly less defense (studded leather vs chain) in favor of more offense (melee) while also retaining the parry skill that the other two have.

Burning Hnad Demons will have level 4 shields, leather armor, the ability to tap, though not to the extent of primary tapping classes.  There won't be any mechanics tricks to it, BH demons simply have less points in the mental area than the others akin to the way CoX demons are better at fighting than a goblin would be, but not as good as a skeleton would be.  They will have their pets, though the CoX might have them as well.  I am uncertain on that specific point. They will cover the craftsman duties not covered by CoX demons, that is weapons/armor infusions/enchantments.   They will also be the alarm wards casters as well as absorbing some of the other wards for evil realm (healing/refreshing) and if I ever manage to implement a fair approach to light/dark issues, they would also have a darkness glyph.

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Werewolves

Wolves were always one of my favorite classes.  I'm a fan of the idea behind the berserker type of fighter and the shapeshifting ability is just the cherry on top for me.   My largest non-good realm character was a level 35 wolf named "Ultimatemooo" and I can't really remember why I stopped playing him.  Anyway, as I have elaborated in the troll post, I have made a strong attempt to re-implement berserk and make it useful at higher levels and not really a death sentence.   The theoretical method for calculating berserk is to take half of the berserk skill and add it to the weapons skill, while taking the same % off of defense.   Having run a few simulations, PVPwise, using berserk does provide a significant damage increase and the defense decrease isn't so damaging that the wolf is killed by a random level 1 town npc, which I remember happening more than once in DFC.

As for shapeshifting, I initially wanted to keep it as a skill, and have the damage related to the shapeshifting skill % but that doesn't seem feasible for various reasons.   Instead it seemed easier to implement it as a spell casting ability.  If I recall correctly, blood coven vampires had spells to shapeshift themselves into bats and I remember more than once staff using spells to shapeshift themselves and targets.  I mentioned in previous posts that monks and gnolls forms were less diverse and fewer in number.  Monks and Gnolls operate in their forms with only one real choice, their highest level form.  To use any other form would be stupid.  Wolves, being the natural shapeshifters they are are given a much more diverse setup.

First tier of forms:
2) Physical damage, single attack
7) Earth damage, single attack
11) Cold damage, single attack

Second tier of forms:

16) Physical Damage, chance of attack being a double attack
20) Cold Damage, 10% stun chance
25) Earth Damage, 10% fatigue damage chance
30) Fire Damage, 10%  chance for a second attack


Third tier forms:

35) Physical damage, 100% double chance
40)  Cold damage, 25% stun chance
45) Earth damage, 25% fatigue damage chance for a second attack
50) Fire damage, 25% fire damage chance for a second attack

Each tier's forms have the same basis for damage and defense values meaning a level 50 wolf in any of the third tier forms will get the same usefulness from them.

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Gnolls

Gnolls run a lot of the typical archer stuff they used to have, mildly akin to Rangers in good.  The main difference comes in the spell setup.  Gnolls still retain a few of the wilderness skill spells that rangers have, like improve.track and such, but they also pick up the slack when it comes to Chaos's shapeshifting class.  Their intervals are every 10 levels, like monks and are all animal forms (Large Cats/Hawk/Bear etc).    Nothing else really all that special.

Tomorrow I'll start in on posts about evil and possibly dive back into programming again, it depends as I am having a few friends over.

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Ogres

I hinted at some changes to the overall game that affected Ogres, but didn't get into a lot of detail.  As of right now Ogres have the fire and earth lists that wizards have and when you consider that wizards have more elements available, well that is not terribly fair to Ogres.  I've discussed a few changes with the others to be made to all the tappers that will even things out, so I won't get into that and I'll ask people reading this to put that point aside at the moment  They will still have wards, that is, all of the types of wards available, unlike other realms who's wards are split between classes/guilds.  They will also likely have better versions.  The ability bonuses are not the same as would be elves and bael-elves and account a bit more for Ogres size, that is, they have the same basic mental characteristics but the other four stats vary from the other two races, like higher strength and constitution, but lower agility and dexterity.

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Lizardmen and Orcs

Lizardmen  haven't really changed, but like a few of the other unique skills it took time to come up with a good algorithm to mete out proper damage throughout the levels for Lizardbreath.  It did prove very fruitful when dealing with something new and fun Masterpuppet and I came up with for another class, though.  It will remain on a 7-ish second timer and the damage is increased over typical weapon attacks, to make up for the increased timer.  Of course they will keep double and whether they had it or not before, they will have parry.

Orcs presented a problem, and still kind of do.  I have designed some spell lists that initially cover most of the healer class basics.  I have absolutely no frame of reference for orcs buffs and very little with offensive spells. Their skills and makeup are similar to priests, and if I'm not mistaken that does improve their hunting ability compared to what it was before.

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Goblins and Trolls

Goblins:

Not much to tell here. Chainmail is the "favored" armor, they still have their bombs that they get every 10 levels or so.  I might slip in parry at somepoint since it makes sense they'd be a somewhat defensive fighter, but at the moment they don't have it.  Currently they do have sneak since they are so small. SURPRISE! BOMBS! being the idea behind that.

Trolls:

Trolls aren't a terribly complicated class.  Berserk, Pummel, 2 handed weapons in 1 hand and off the charts strength.  I'm not sure how to exactly describe the method I did for stat layouts and how much bonus each race gets from how many points in what stat, and how that progresses from low to high, but initially it involved 7 levels.  Very Bad, Bad, Weak, Average, Better than Average, Good, Better than Good.  I had based a lot of these off of various stats I saw in logs I found across the internet with a little guestimation.  Each rating had values (-4,-3,-2,-1,1,2,3)  and each class had ratings assigned to each of their stats based on what they were good in.  Take for example, a tamian:

Strength: Good (2)
Constitution: Bad (-3)
Agility: Good (2)
Dexterity: Good (2)
Intelligence: Better than Average (1)
Wisdom: Better than Average (1)

Total: 5

Tamians were designed to be versatile and able to do just about anything, but not be overly excellent in any one thing.

Then I came to Dwarves and realized, when I compared it to my Dwarf Paladin's stats, that "Better than Good" strenght wouldn't cut it.  So I made "Super" and having taken another look, I went back and adjusted some of the other races to have the Super trait, like Elves with Intelligence and Halflings with dexterity.  Then I got to chaos, and Trolls and realized, the highest possible bonus for a 20 str on super, doesn't even come close to the original DFC bonuses.  So I created Super.ii.  Which, after calculating it out, STILL didn't come close.  So I created Super.iii which finally seems to have hit the mark.  I couldn't remember for sure what armor they used before, possibly chainmail, but I upped them to plate.  The changes to Berserk should make it a much more useful skill and a little more viable for hunting.



 Just a side note, each of these "levels" are at equal increments between each other, so there is a uniformity to it and super.ii and super.iii actually have two of these increments between each of them so I suppose technically they should be super, super.iii, super.v.  I'll lay out the mechanics of it after I'm done with all the race/class posts.

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Priests

The final class for the Good realm, Priests have had some slight changes.  I had a good friend in high school who played a priest (Dominic) but as it has been so long he no longer has logs of spells and some details.  So with that I had to make spell lists based on memory.  A single offensive spell casting list, the traditional group shields, level 4 self shields , light/bless/holywarrior etc.  If I recall resurrections Healing, resurrection and cures/remove curses were in seperate lists, 2 or 3.  This is the same for all the healing classes.   In DFC they could wear plate armor and cast through it with divine spells.  I am not entirely sure of how viable that is in comparison to the healer necros and orcs.  I've lowered their "Favored armor" down to leather.  I'll get into more detail about how armor changes will work in another post as it will be quite detailed.  From a physical combat standpoint, and there is a likelyhood that these might be removed, they will also have pummel and parry.  I included parry because they are essentially a defensive class, and pummel because of the crushing weapons nature of the class.  But as this may be too much, either or both may be removed.

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Craftsmen

With craftsmen I didn't do a whole lot of changing anything, the only really unique battle skills/items are parry, which is kind of one dimensional, and their golems.  Most of the work done with crafties was consolidating item/weapon/armor creation lists.  If I recall, before, there were lists for each type of armor, maybe more than one for weapons too, I cannot remember.  The updated version is based on tiers of 10 levels.  Each tier (ex level 1-10) deals with one specific type of item (ex boots,gloves,leggings, helm, shirt etc)  Within those 10 levels are where the difference in material lies, cloth, leather, studded, chain, plate.   There are also a cloth and leather cloak mixed in as well.  Weapons follow a similar patter.  Crushing, Slashing, Thrusting, Ranged, Shield etc.  Right now I have all of the armor enchantments and weapon infusions in their own lists, but at sometime int he future I'll probably split them off to be specific to craftsman/goblins/demons.  I suspect it would be too easy to get full set of gear that has resistance to everything on it if all realms had access to all protections. Walls and Catapults/Ammo are currently equal for all realms.  The slight differences each realm had in DFC were good in theory but, particularly with walls, I don't think it panned out terribly even.  There is nothing saying I can't change that back though, and it isn't out of the realm of possibility.  I did level a crafty to around high-30s and had GM for awhile, so I remember how stupidly hard to get some rather inconsequential components for enchantments and such were.  With that in mind some of the lower required components will obviously be much more available, while the components for the higher level items will be fittingly rare.  In particular, I'm tossing around the idea of having a temporary bonding enchantment.  It would last for some amount of releases of the character, and would require a rather large number of rare items.  Keep in mind that that is just an idea and may never actually be implemented.  Finally, I remember wearing plate as a craftie on DFC, goblins having chain, but chain sucked so they often wore studded leather, and CoX being Studded/BH being leather.  I've bumped crafty favored armor down to chain though.  It seemed more fitting.  If you're constructing things on the battlefield, you're going to want a little more flexibility than plate would offer, plus too many plate wearers can just get silly.

Side note:  I've finished my final program for the class I am in 5 days earlier than the due date.  All I have left to do is study for the quiz and final exam and I'll be done and begin working on programming this again instead of sitting around and making these posts while I take breaks from programming my assignments for class.

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Rogues Kobolds and Imps

Well...Honestly there isn't really much to say here.  I had a heck of a time tailoring the algorithm for backstab and it gets rather complicated, mixing between percept, weapon skill, backstab skill etc.  It is drastically different from basic damage calculation to say the least.

 Weapon type being used might factor in, but at the moment it doesn't....

Well, that was informative.  See everyone tomorrow for  Craftsmen!

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Wizards

Wizards presented a real problem.  I knew exactly where their points were, but I never had a great understanding of how tap factored in to damage done so I had to completely rework it myself through testing.  In fact, tap, backstab and berserk were probably the three skills i spent the most time working on when figuring out the balance between everything.  What I came up with was a multiplier effect.  Base 200 damage with 100 tap is 400 damage, base 100 damage with 200 tap is 300 etc with max tap being your tap skill * 2 (200% in tap, 400 max).  This may sound like its more costly on power, but I should point out again, every realm will have some form of power ward/rune/glyph to counter it.  The other problem was spells.  Wizards have a TON of spells and I had a list of none of them.  I did have a 45ish wizards in DFC, so I could vaguely recall some, but a lot of it I had to make up.  This did give me a chance to balance things out between the tappers though.  I remade the spell lists to have similar spells at similar levels across classes.  I also worked in the remaining wards for good realm (Lethargy, power, anti scry, magic, combat) all at level two except for power (4).

Edit:  Thanks to an anonymous tipster, that is, anonymous because I have no idea who he was in game, I snagged the old help file that had a rudementary list of spells in the game prior to many of the updates.  It is definitely going to help iron things out.

Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Rangers

Rangers are the first class with spells that I don't have enough experience with to remember their spell lists in good detail so it was interesting trying to recreate them.  Pretty much everything else is the same.  Ranged, Volley, track, etc, and I think I got the points setup right.  As for the spells, I remembered pets, some basic "nature lore" type stuff, which would be personal buffs and self heals and glyphs as alarms.  Rangers are also the beneficiaries of the balancing effects.  One of the big things that chaos had over everyone was wards, ogres had good reason for the power ward, with their lower overall power capabilities, but frankly, giving them to a single realm was really tipping the balance, at least if Chaos ever rallied in numbers.  I didn't want to put all of the wards in one place, and it just seemed natural to put healing and refresh "glyphs" with Ranger's already having the alarm glyphs.  Additional note, Ogre wards are still better than the other two realms versions and Ogres/Necros/Wizards all have same power regeneration capabilities.

Tomorrow: Wizards

Cyra vs My Darkness Falls Remake

I knew this time would come so I figured I'd make the post now while its fresh.  Someone who frequents the Cyra forums has found this blog and informed Cyra about it.  I'm actually surprised that it has taken this long as I the first chunk of work I did was for about 2 weeks back in January, then put on hiatus until now, with a few bits here and there.  Anyway, I have no connection to Cyra or what Vassi and Rashka are doing.  Their project has little if anything to do with mine, nor was it really a motivation either.  Last fall I did have a bit of a longing to play the game, went looking and noticed Cyra seemed inactive.  I tried a few other MUDs but like most former DFCers was disappointed.  Eventually it all passed and I went back to other endeavors.  In late December and early January I began playing the Magestorm remake, this is what inspired me to start this project.  I saw the amazing job Sorien did/was doing and realized that I could do the same with DFC.  Not only would it indulge my desire to play again, but it would also be a fantastic project that I could point towards for prospective employers.  Originally it was just a secret between myself, Niteninja and Masterpuppet and one or two Strike Force (SF) members in Magestorm.  At some point one of the SF guys told someone else about it, I can't remember who, but he didn't know I wanted it as a secret, and the word spread through the people who played Magestorm that loved DFC as well.  After that it wasn't really necessary to keep it secret, so I began infrequent posts on this blog which I had normally used for other things.  That is the story of things.

I know that some people have emailed me or replied to my posts mentioning Cyra, but anything that happens to Cyra has no bearing on my remake just as it had nothing to do with my motivation to begin.  I wish Vassi and Rashka well in their attempt.  Even if theirs goes up first and is wildly popular, which would be kinda neat, I'll still keep up with this because its something I want to do, to show that I can do it.  I guess the entire point of this post is, I don't want people to lump the two games in as competing, or as if I did this because Cyra had not released yet. I did it because it was something I wanted to do for fun.  I'm not really too familiar with how Cyra has progressed or anything about it, but I'm sure the two of them have put a great deal of work and effort into it and look forward to seeing the fruits of their labor.