A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

First of, lets get what I've been doing and what I'll do outta the way:

I've been working 2 fulltime (minimum wage) jobs. Since I now am working like 70-80 hours a week, I'm gonna lurk more and sleep less. I am however taking care of business: I am paying my rent and now the electricity that was in question is paid as well (never good if you got kids, they can take them if you cant pay your electric and where I'm at is real unfriendly for poor folk... they wouldn't help me with an electric bill or rent but they offered to let me n the family live in a shelter for $8 a day... no thanx, luck gave me another job WOOHOO)

anyhow, electric paid, internet will be paid (hopefully before they stop my service, reconnect fee sux), and we had the basics (rent food) covered. Now after catching up a little I'll be able to buy a windows XP system disk becuz of all my woes with linux, wine, and DC. Which brings me back to the forum, and ends my drama.

Even with four hours of sleep a day, I still think about what I can and cannot (yet) do with DC. So without futher ado, I have a question:
Lets say you make a spell and design it with the flag that states players cannot memorize. This naturally makes it so you cannot memorize and it will not show up for spell selection during rest or level up. Can you then scribe this spell from a scroll into your spellbook so as to work around this? If so, this would bypass the limitations on making specialist mages and priests!!! I mean think about it: you could have a set of "core" spells for these classes and then in-game you would have to join some kind of faction (church or mages guild, for example) to get a certain set of spells, and you could play in a different faction (rival church and wizard university, for the other examples) to get A DIFFERENT SET OF SPELLS for the same kind of character.

ST
ps, watch out when I finally get DC running properly... all I can say is "watch out!"

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Specialist Mages existed in the first two Gold Box Dragonlance games, the White Robes and the Red Robes have their own spell lists. (In the third and last game, the party was in an area where specialization did not apply.)
Spell specialization would be a good idea, it would really add depth to a class. You would have to forbid learning, scribing or memorizing the forbidden spells. I don't know how you would do this.

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Hey ST, glad to hear that you are taking care of business. :)

In DC, can't memorize means can't memorize whenever the spell is given to the spellcaster, under any circumstances.
With that said, you almost gave the way to do it in your question - make it unlearnable by characters - then the spellcaster will not have the spell unless you give it to her.

Unfortunately, just using this trick does not specialist mages (or priests) make. The designer (you) may intend that certain spells only be give to certain characters, but a player could still create a mage and give them spells from all of the 'special' groups that you have created. Now, with that being said, it may be possible to do this using special abilities - you could have a player choose which specialist mage they want for a partiuclar PC and a special ability is assigned to that PC. Now, you will have added an appropriate SA or flag on each spell that will allow it to only be used by a spellcasting PC with the correct SA (given in the first part). I think this oculd be done right now, but it would be a lot of work - adding an SA to each spell and creating ones to be given to PCs - not hard at all, just a lot of work. :D

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Hey SilentThief, sounds like a rough time, but it also sounds like you are doing good with it - kudos to you, you are working real hard. Hopefully soon you can find a more cushy job that brings more money to the table.

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

You could do it with one spell list per specialist class, that is how it works in Dragonlance.
Manikus:
I clicked the "manikus' Dungeon Craft" link on your post above and I got:
"Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apache/1.3.33 Server at AppStuff Port 80"
Has the domain name expired?

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Re: the "manikus web site" link - I had been mentioning for a while, both here and in the FRUA Community forums that my site was going a way, I just forgot to change the signature here. :) I'll take care of that today.

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

muhahaha! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!! I'm windowed again!!!! Time to show my DC skillz and not just TALK about them!!!! You've been warned!!!

ST

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

In Dragonlance you have three spell lists and three mage classes: Black, Red, White. Specialist mages were handled in Baldurs Gate 2, I don't know how this was done of course.

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Specialist mages in Baldur's Gate 2 were similar to how they did Dragonlance, i.e. they just had different spell lists. (In 2e AD&D, specialist mages can memorize extra spells from their specialization schools of magic, but in Baldur's Gate 2 they just had extra spell slots.)

Dragonlance clerics should also have had limited spell lists (we can say that Dragonlance pioneered specialization for both mages and clerics), but the Gold Box games didn't do that (according to rules, Dragonlance clerics have pretty puny spell lists, and very few clerics even have the Cure Light Wounds spell).

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

It seems that perhaps you want
specialized PCs. At PC creation time
perhaps we could allow you to run scripts
that would assign special abilities......
"Priest of Toads", "Billiard Player", "Superman".
Then you could easily assign annotations
to the spells that only particular specializations
could use. A spell that had no such annotation
("Bless") could be used in the usual fashion.
But....for example.....a spell ("Masse") with the
"Billiard Player" annotation could only
be used by PC with that special ability.

In other words, only a particular class of PC
could use spells of a particular class. And the
PC's class could be pre-generated or assigned
with scripts at PC creation. We might want to
allow scripts to display something on the
PC description screen. ("Billiard Player").

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

I want this VERY much!!!

Would the spells still show up on the list? Cuz you wouldn't want a situation where the spell is not usable, but still is pickable.

This sounds awesome!!! I'm all for it, but i know this is above and beyond FRUA (and hence version 1.0.). I just think that the Dragonlance games were made with "goldbox" engine, and I wish they'd have done more for character classes in FRUA, but they made it based upon forgotten realms goldbox rules.

ST
ps this would expand the rulesets available to DC (like DC is FRUA based which is 1st edition (mostly) based). With this it could expand to 1st, 2nd, boxed set Dnd, ect...

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

What list? What lists? Pickable? Usable?
These words don't mean much to me.

Of course if we were able to do this we would
have to do it in a way that makes sense
to the people who use it.

That means..........
You would have to tell me ahead of time
where changes need to be made. And it
would have to be a rather complete list
so that I don't get it 90 percent finished
and then you say "But you also must" and
I discover it is impossible because of the
way the first 90 percent was designed.

And....as Manikus has discovered....you have
to be very precise when talking to me
because I don't design with the editor, I
don't play games with the engine, and I
do not understand most of the jargon you
people use.

Also...although this feature sounds relatively
easy to implement, I would still want several
people to express an interest, take an active
part in the design, and come to a consensus.
Doing features for one person is not my idea
time well spent.

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

I gotchya. If there is response from the others about this then I will approach you again on this, and with a little more planned out and formulated idea of exactly how/what should be changed.
Perhaps I'll poll the community about this one.

ST
ps As always, you developers don't hear this enough: thank you for taking the time to do this amazing project

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Here! I respond! :D :D :D
If I got it right, the proposed approach would allow to have e.g. different kinds of magic users. This sounds very good and would allow me to turn some story ideas into a design. Furthermore, I assume that you could also use attributes to make items only useable to characters with certain special abilities. This would be like a dream coming true to me... :) Still, as ST already pointed out, I see that this again is low priority since it is beyond FRUA's options...

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

I think we could do something relatively
easily. It is really pretty much in place
except for the "Create Character" sequence.

How would we decide what Special Abilities
a character being created should have?

The easiest thing for me would be for these
"Special Abilities" to be given only to pre-generated
characters. The designer would add them during
game-creation.

The second easiest thing would be to provide
an additional designer-provided screen identical
to the "Race-Selection" screen. The designer
could provide scripts to build the screen and
process the player's selection. There would
be a screen title, a list of possible selections,
("Superman", "Billiard Player", and so on)
and a menu with possible actions "Exit", "Select",
"XXX", "YYY", or whatever. The script would
receive the selection and the action.

And, yes, I think the ability to 'use' items is
already under Special Ability Script control.

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Wow, what a lively little group y'all are. :)

I really, really, really want DC to be able to do this... :D
But, it's not a priority before version 1.0 comes out.

With that being said, I mentioned a way earlier in this thread that this might work now. I say might b/c I haven't tried it, as this isn't my thing at the moment... But, I think you can definitely work this with pre-generated characters - it is very easy to give specific Special Abilities to specific PCs/NPCs.

As the SA scripter, I don't think the problem is with scripting as we can already assign scripts to the race/baseclass/class files. The issue is that DC has a set number of classes and while you can rename them, the editor still treats them the same way because they are hard-coded still. You can add extra classes, and they appear at the end of the list, but the editor/engine does not look at the info in the txt file. If you replace an existing class with another, DC still gives this class the same THAC0 and saving throws, etc, regardless of what the txt files says.

I guess I'm kind of a parade-rainer-oner, but my idea might still work quite adequately. All I can say is that after version 1.0 comes out and we're looking to add features, this is very high on the list (or will be when I get around to prioritizing the list).

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

fair enuff for me. I can wait, considering how fast you all been working lately.

ST

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

So, last night using my idea above, I created a "specialty class" that had access to "extra" spells...

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

really? sweet!

You are going to have to show us how. I'm not sure if I understand...

Add an SpecialAbility to each spell, which governs what type of character can cast it?
So that the SA given either during character creation (or more likely after beginning play) equals the value necessary for the specialist character spell type?

ST
ps, with the special abilities and new design and such, I'm now far behind on scripting... :(

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Get:
http://dianneandpaul.net/UAF/BilliardPlayer.dsn.zip
You must use the runtime and editor included
in the archive.

It demonstrates:

Character Creation - Select "Magic User" and "Billiard Player".
Examine Special Ability "CreateCharacter" script "PostClass"
to see how special ability is added.

Examine special abilites for spell "Masse" to see how
the spell is limited to "Billiard Players".

Examine the scripts for special ability "BilliardPlayer"
to see how the character stats screen is modified
to say "Magic User(Pool Shark)"

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

ST, my idea was to add an identifier SA to each spell, say something like "UsableBy" and then assign different values to the different " to " of spells. Then you would give the PC or NPC a Special Ability that allowed them access to spells of a certain number or range of numbers, etc for the "UsableBy" SA.

But, thinking it over, there is an even better way, that doesn't require you to do this to the spells, but instead by using the list feature Paul implemented.

Paul, I have downloaded your example design and am looking forward to figuring this out. :) My attempts did not include character creation options...

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

I should hope not......I implemented it this morning.

It is ugly but very general......good for trying
things out. The $Dialogxxx feature can be used
in any script for debugging, for example.

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

I assume you mean to list the spells that
a character could use....

",Bless,Poison,Masse"

Searching the list would best be done with
$GREP("\bPoison]\b");
Rather than the functions that retrieve
the sub-strings one at a time.

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Yeah, there are a lot of new functions on the script list that I've never seen before.
I will have to go thru them sometime and try to figure them out. For example,

$DelimitedStringCount( String )
$GET_HOOK_PARAM( String )

are new ones on me.

ST

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Temporarily documented here:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...lities_Scripts

But very temporarily.

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

GREP is noted. GREP is my friend. It makes me feel like I'm using Linux or Unix. :D

I tired out the billiardplayer demo. :) It's kind of ugly still, but as we all know functionality should come first. I don't have the scripts here in front of me, but is there an obvious way to not trigger this by choosing another class? For example, I chose fighter and was still asked if I wanted to be a billiard player. I know that the fighter can't use spells, but the future players might not.

I've got more questions, but I need to try them out first, 'cause I might already be able to do what I want to. ;)

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Yes. Change the script.

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

:P

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

Ok, so Manikus recently went thru the pain of having his site closed. Is there a new one up and running? Specifically, I'm searching for the logic block wall changing tutorial. Where could I find it?

( I hate having lost the internet for so long, and my old laptop is pretty much done so I cant get all the stuff I already had on it , but now do not have access to any longer....)

ST

Re: A question (also what I've been up 2)
 

It wasn't really a pain to lose the site...it's a lot cheaper this way. :D I touched on this in the post I just made...there is no new site, nor are there plans for one at the moment.
I will find the tutorial for you and post it in the other forum as well as here. :) In the meantime, check out Dinonykos' site, as he may have something about it up there, even in the form of a tutorial (from the contest that just finished a little ways back).