Bt Builder

[sombunall]

Some more bug reports:

-trying to edit a savegame crashes the program
-sanctuary score (impoves AC) can happen at the end of 1 round of combat which then times out making it useless
-monk damage doesn't seem to be increasing with the fists. the # of attacks goes up but I looked at monk tables online and fist damage should be going up but isn't
-push (being monsters to 10') doesn't work sometimes for some reason


for the experience how much more should it be then? I played around with it a bit but I would rather we agree on something. I do feel the experience is not enough.

How cannon does btbuilder have to be? I feel that some experience should be given just for doing damage to something.

[dulsi]

every time I loaded a saved game while the song was playing my attack rate went up by 1 (I had level 4 characters with five attacks a round by the time I figured out what was up).

Found a bug in the saving of spell/song effects. Fix has been checked in.

I've also removed the save game file from the list of files you can edit so no more crash for that.

[sombunall]

I can only get Marcela's Melody in combat to work sometimes so it's not just the dark dwarves. It's the one that brings monsters to 10'

[sombunall]

wish i had [s]strikethrough[/s] on this board.

[sombunall]

This is really wierd.

I changed the experience.xml file to make the experience for new levels 10 times lower than they were before and everything was working (I simply added the changed file to the module directory). Now I can't get it to see the old file no matter what. I tried putting the file in the modules, in the save directory. Made sure the /data directory had the old file. Recompiled. Tried make clean, make, make install. still nothing. Geez What am I missing? I can't be that daft can I?

[sombunall]

Just got it working. I think I needed to have the file in the /module/content/sample2/data and then do a make clean, make, make install. It did not occur to me that files in that directory are hardcoded?!

[dulsi]

Just got it working. I think I needed to have the file in the /module/content/sample2/data and then do a make clean, make, make install. It did not occur to me that files in that directory are hardcoded?!

You don't need to recompile to update the experience chart. Under linux, it does look at "/usr/share/btbuilder/module/content/sample2/data" not the "module/content/sample2/" under the current directory. make install will copy the files to the location. Alternatively if you want to avoid make install everytime you do a modification, you can run "./btbuilder -l." in the build directory. That will cause it to look at "./module/content/sample2/".

Another way to do modifications under linux is to put the files in "~/.identical/btbuilder/sample2/". (You still need to put it in the data subdirectory but this works with things other than the data directory like images, music, etc.)

[sombunall]

ahh thanks!

I also made another discovery. If you compile with gcc 4.9 you get text overwriting part of the character item view where it says :

Con:0
Mag:0

as well as <> just below that sometimes. Using 4.8 compiler solves the problem. Debian Jessie uses 4.9 by default. Using open source driver with AMD 5450

[sombunall]

Hi again

I fixed some bugs in City of Builders (CITYBUIL) map and called it version 2.1 unofficially. It's still hella hard for level 1 players...

city of builders changelog
==========================

v2.1 (modified with 0.4.7):
-stopped the "press any key to continue" message for welcome messages
-added a text clear event to clean up welcome messages
-made priests in temple less greedy and heal in smaller amounts
-added a different message for wine option in tavern
-made it so you don't have to kill the lizards over and over again
-fixed bugs with statue so it can only be repaired once
-added an example 1 time encounter to the city

[sombunall]

I used the heal command in a map event then saved. Then I reloaded the map and whenever I put the arrow on that event the editor crashes. I went in the xml file and deleted just the heal command and now it doesn't crash.

[sombunall]

That's funny. Now I put the heal event back in but this time after the print statements and it doesn't crash. I should have saved that sucker to be sure.

[sombunall]

Found another bug. When I used an item (the item happened to be consumed after using it) I then went into an event IF answer to "Have monster join?" and instead of printing on the first clear line it started at the top causing garbled text for the 'Have monster' part.

Maybe it would be better to clear text whenever the player moves? Bard's Tale did that didn't it? It would make a lot less clutter.

[caars]

So...

I went through and built a complete list of the spells from BT1. Anyone who wants a quick and easy set of spells to use in BT builder that match the BT1 list is more than welcome to download them and use them. The attached zip file contains:

spell.xml - The BT1 spells (See below)

monster.xml - The monsters that can be summoned by the spells in the above spell file. They conform as closely as possible to their BT1 stats (some will not have actual pictures if you don't have the non-GPL image pack downloaded). Technically, when summoned, monsters throw d8 dice for damage instead of d4, but I kept the damage d4's (if you want them to act like "real" summons from BT1, change damage dice to d8's, and set "wandering" to false).

"Notes" - This contains a detailed description of where and how the spells differ from their BT1 versions, and the justification for the ranges assigned to the spells (typically extrapolated from the BT2 ranges).

For those not interested in reading the detailed list, here's the tl;dr version:

If it was possible to perfectly recreate the spell, I did.
If not, I still tried to get the spell to behave as closely to the way it did in BT1.
In cases where it was pretty clear what the BT1 spell did, but the exact number of the buff or debuff is something I didn't know, I followed a "formula" for calculating what the buff/debuff should be (detailed in the "Notes" file).

This "pack" does not contain any archmage spells (since the class didn't exist in BT1). In the near future, however, I will probably add archmage spells, scaling them to match the power of BT1 spells a bit better.

To use the monsters, the best choice is to either just start with the monster.xml file and add whatever monsters you want in your module above and beyond that - or, if you already have a monster list for your module, but you do want to use this BT1 spell pack, copy-paste the monsters in the monsters.xml file to the *beginning* of your monster file. That *should* preserve which monsters the summon spells "point" to.

Of course, if you just want to create them yourself, you'll just need to remember to edit the summon spells to actually point at the monsters you want to them to summon.

One last note: as more effects get added to the spell editor in Bt Builder, I do intend to regularly revise these spells to make them match the BT1 spells as closely as current functionality allows.

[sombunall]

It looks like it's going to be hard to integrate it into my maps as I've already added new monsters, spells and items so the IDs wouldn't line up.

What made you decide to use the ones from BT1? Are they better than 2 or 3? I guess you don't have to wait to level up as much to get a variety of spells. I mostly played BT2.

[caars]

It looks like it's going to be hard to integrate it into my maps as I've already added new monsters, spells and items so the IDs wouldn't line up.

What made you decide to use the ones from BT1? Are they better than 2 or 3? I guess you don't have to wait to level up as much to get a variety of spells. I mostly played BT2.

Actually, if you copy-paste the entire list to the end of your existing spell list, it shouldn't mess anything up (any map specials that point to a particular spell will still point to that spell). You'd really only need to use the editor to edit the conjure/summon spells (i.e. decide what to make them summon), and that's not terribly hard (when you get down to it, there aren't that many of them).

(All of this is assuming, of course, you want to use them).

I'm afraid the answer to your second question is neither deep nor even profound. Eventually I plan to do all three: knowing that, starting with BT1, then going to 2 and finally 3 just makes sense.

Incidentally, I actually don't think one spell list is really better than the other - this is a bit beside the point, but which spell list is 'best' actually varies depending on what the module is most like, in my opinion.

BT1's list is built around a game where you start at level 1 and you don't really advance through the "early" levels terribly fast. In short, you spend a much higher fraction of the game at a lower level, so the list is (vaguely) balanced around spells not being too terribly powerful until you get to the really high end sorcerer and wizard spells.

BT2 and 3 either have you importing high level characters, or if you do create new characters puts you into a starter quest intended to "rapidly" level you up to the game's "real" starting level (a process that is a lot faster in BT3 than in 2, but essentially the same idea). You spend most of the game at a relatively high level, so it makes sense for the spell power to "ramp up" a whole lot faster.

So IMO, if you're (generic "you" here - not you specifically) building a true "start at 1 and work your way up from there" module, the BT1 spell list tends to fit pretty well. If it's more of a "get past those low levels as fast as possible", the BT2 or 3 lists work a whole lot better.