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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted April 10, 2012 05:42 PM |
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Updates depend mainly on three factors:
1) Bugs which I find or which are reported here. I am play-testing as Gem, and found a couple of minor things which I thought needed improving, and have updated TDS.rar at Box.net a few days ago - but I didn't think they warranted an announcement. (Some people must be tired of re-downloading the file.) As far as I can recall, there are no bug reports for which I have enough information to work on at this time.
2) Good ideas which people such as yourself report here.
3) New crazy ideas which I have and want to experiment with. Currently I have another vehicle for those, a new map I am working on (and might live long enough to finish), tentatively called "The King In Yellow" (based on some short stories by Robert Chambers, collected under the same name). It is probably a mistake to incite people's curiosity (or other emotions) by showing screenshots, but here are a couple:
The first shows Carcosa, where, according to Robert Chambers, "I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens ... and the towers of Carcosa rose beyond the moon."
The second shows the Maze of the Serpent Mage.
I have a lot of work to do on that map, so I don't spend much time on new ideas for TDS these days.
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master_learn
Legendary Hero
walking to the library
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posted April 10, 2012 05:59 PM |
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Map
Maybe this map deserves another thread!
Screenshot shows in the end of second week hero with good stats,but with only one crusader!
Seems like a campain(remind me of life of adventurer,where you only later can join someone to your army) or a story rich map(thats if the crusader is not with insane HP).
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted April 10, 2012 06:14 PM |
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Warmonger
Promising
Legendary Hero
fallen artist
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posted April 10, 2012 06:20 PM |
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted April 10, 2012 06:37 PM |
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The King in Yellow ("He is a king to whom emperors must bow."--Chambers) is the villain. His Yellow Plague brings insanity and corruption, rotting the flesh from the inside out, until it resembles the ragged tatters of his robe - at least in my version. See Wikipedia for what little is factually known of him. It will be Bron's task, should he choose to accept it, to to remove his taint from the Serpent Mage and ultimately Carcosa itself.
I am having to edit lots of objects in Gimp to make the map as I envision it. It keeps me occupied.
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master_learn
Legendary Hero
walking to the library
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posted April 11, 2012 09:16 AM |
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Few ideas
Few ideas about recolouring,JimV!
1.Instead of black shroud in the begining of the map,everything is in yellow shroud,and our hero(s) reveals the terrain(objects)walking as in normal map the black shroud is removed.
2.Normal black shroud at the begining,but when our hero(s)walk,the yellow objects have a green hex in the circle that his scouting radius make(because blue+yellow=green)and after he moves closer to the objects he can also recolour some of them in blue or other colour.
I dont know if these ideas are doable or worthy to the map you make,but if they are easy,then you can try them.
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted April 11, 2012 06:14 PM |
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I will make a last (I hope) comment here on this off-topic subject. It was barely relevant as an excuse for not having any more TDS ideas lately, and I am grateful for the comments, but as M_L said earlier, it belongs in a different thread (if anywhere).
M_L, those are interesting ideas, but somewhat beyond my competence, although I am sure there are others at this site who could do them. My thinking tends to focus on things I know that I can do. For example, the yellow Tower is a replacement for the first "demolished" state for that Town type, so that by using the ERM CA:I command I will be able to change it back to a normal Tower for the end of the game.
In fact, for some reason, in this map I have to reset the demolished state daily:
!?TM1&10; (Tobyn's Universal Timer) [tried PI, Town reset on Day 2, tried TM3 for 2 days, reset on Day 3]
!!CA111/16/0:I1; set Carcosa Tower yellow
* In Carcosa, strange is the night where black stars rise.
TDS has a demolished Town which is only set once at the start of the game, and I have used demolished Towns in "Stargate Atlantis" (not to be confused with "Stargate Atlantis Rising") and in "New Magic" without having to reset them. In all those cases, the Town was either neutral or belonged to the human player. In "The King In Yellow", the Tower belongs to an AI player, so I guess the AI resets demolished towns which it owns, by some mechanism. In every map, I learn something new about ERM.
Anyway, I guess an artist would first have an idea, then figure out how to accomplish it, whereas I am an engineer, who first inventories his tools, then decides what he can make with them.
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majaczek
Supreme Hero
Work at Magic Dimmension
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posted April 12, 2012 08:50 PM |
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Edited by majaczek at 20:50, 12 Apr 2012.
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Hey JimV thanks for your yesterday post! Are you the same person as famous Jim Vogan? If so I'm reaaaaally sorry for my wrong phrasing on another thread which implied you were wrong, but you were not. If not I'm only sorry a bit more than a bit  . The problem was I wanted to say you didn't understood my question, which could be entirely MY fault, since I tend to phrase english wrong too many times.
Offtop aside: Here is TDS map thread and first post has a link to JimV version of it. The real problem which forced me to write this post is that link is void, that means multiupload link works, but none of mirrors listed there works. So I hope to be able to play the version fixed already by you once upon a time. Gently please do something to fix this link. I also may suggest you mirrorcreator instead of multiupload, as mirrorcreator is one of best sites for multiple mirror upload I found during my quick (but not thorough) search. It even offers Premium for free once your files are popular enough.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted April 12, 2012 09:31 PM |
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Since it seems to me you use ERA, Bersy added ERA2 TDS link in ERA II mods thread. We cannot edit main post, there is 1 year old restrictions.
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Era II mods and utilities
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted April 12, 2012 09:37 PM |
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@majaczek,
I am not very famous but my name is Jim Vogan. I have used JimV as a handle to distinquish myself from all the other Jim's on the internet when commenting at other sites, so I continue that here.
I was a sub-contractor to Salamandre (without whom there would be no TDS translation) on this project and don't own this thread or have the ability to update the first post. I am sorry about the missing links. The link I am using my for updates is at Box.net:
http://www.box.com/shared/bj1eh6b50e
The three versions there were all done under WoG 3.58f. TDS.rar includes them, plus some Data files (e.g., Hero portraits), plus a WoG Update file (.wog) which installs Salamandre's improved smcata.def. Bersy has been nice enough (I think Nice is his middle name) to make Era self-installing packages for versions 2.07J and 2.07Dr. Those are linked at his "Era Maps" thread.
Information on versions: the original Chinese version which we (mostly Salamandre) translated was TDS v2.05. The first translated version was called 2.06E (E for English), since we had to make up a few of our own story dialogs when we couldn't understand the Chinese-to-English translation (no events were changed, just the dialog text--but we could not consider it to be identical with 2.05). Then Salamandre and I agreed on a few changes to the game options, which became v2.07E. Then, since we are not all super expert players like Salamandre, I added some optional bonuses to make it easier to start the game: v.207J. Finally, with some suggestions from posters here, I added some huge bonuses to certain "super Heroes" to make the game almost easy at its highest difficulty settings - mainly because they were fun to do: v.207Dr.
I doubt if we managed to preserve the full flavor of the map as it was in its original Chinese. Perhaps someday someone who is fluent in both languages and a Heroes fan will give us some corrections.
Darn, while I was finishing this long comment I just got an email notice that Salamandre has already responded, so I will skip the rest of my thoughts and let this suffice.
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aphrel
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 15, 2012 08:34 PM |
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help
not sure if this is the right place to ask but im stuck and ive been looking everywhere but cant find a solution to my problem.
i play azrael. and i have 3 quests left wich i have no idea how to do.
1 quest is to turn in cloak of undead king and elixir of life. (i am making litterarly 0 progress in getting the artifacts needed. (can those artifacts even be availible at artifact merchants or in tower city?)
the 2nd is the "boss quest" ive spoken to that scholar and supposedly i should be able to fight vs a phenoix boss and a ghost behemoth. but i cant find any of them. the cordinats i can find on the them seem incorrect, nothing happens when i go to teh cordinates for the phenix boss and the statue that should teleport me to teh ghost behemoth cant be reached with waterwalk for me.
and lastly those 4 towers in the corners. the qguard wont let me pass even thou i got all the orbs, im guessing this is because orange hero Xeron is still alive. but xeron is on the island in the southwest corner wich i cant find a way to get to...
please give me some help. ive spend to much time on this map not to see it completed.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted April 15, 2012 09:01 PM |
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To the first two problems, the two combos can only be get when playing at "the game" in underground, small chance to get those combos.
For bosses, I remember you must be level 100 or more.
For end game, I don't know, it depends of a lot of factors.
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Era II mods and utilities
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted April 15, 2012 10:11 PM |
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Edited by JimV at 22:15, 15 Apr 2012.
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Somewhere about mid-way in this thread another player made some comments about the end-game as Azrael. If I recall correctly, Azrael's goal is not to defeat the Wizard Towers, but to gain ownership of all Towns in the game, ending with the City of Ruins (or was it the Ruined City - anyway the partially-demolished city which is on an island). Taking all the AI Towns and then that Town ends the game for Azrael. To trigger that final event however requires some sequence of events involving Roland's Wisdom Hut and one of the Wizard Towers. I think first Azrael defeats all the AI's (that is, takes all their Towns), then defeats Roland at his Wisdom Hut, but has to run away from Catherine, then tries to defeat a Wizard Tower, but has to run away from that, and finally decides to be satisfied with conquering all the Towns, and goes to the Ruined City. Or something like that.
As I have said before, I think the original Chinese version was intended as a Campaign within a single scenario, in which all colors would be played and the stories would fit together, to some extent. I think the evil characters were to be played first. Anyway, the different colors have different endings.
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Bersy
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted April 30, 2012 06:41 PM |
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Edited by Bersy at 18:43, 30 Apr 2012.
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I'm sorry for offtopic, but it seems that this line: "!!FU&v1<>1:E; [Exit trigger if script isn't enabled]" screwed most of wog objects/artifacts replacements code (script00, "Changes to WoG Scripts by Jim Vogan (2007-2009)"). I removed it and now it's ok.
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted April 30, 2012 07:44 PM |
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That is a great catch, which must have taken you some time to find. I guess it was part of a piece of code copied from another script which I should not have included. I apologize for the effort it cost you, and for the bad effect on players.
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Bersy
Honorable
Supreme Hero
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posted April 30, 2012 08:08 PM |
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We all make mistakes and copy-paste ones are the most frequent 
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majaczek
Supreme Hero
Work at Magic Dimmension
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posted May 02, 2012 09:25 PM |
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Oops! JimV are you sure there no more errors in your changes for ERA scripts? I'm the person who tried to manage produce merged_SU (crossproduct of ERA version of wogify scripts and Script Update one). While I believe SU may have own bugs, and I may have not get enough work on fixing incompability (eg variable clashes), there some people which get horrendal bugs with merged_SU while I fail to catch any bug in latest version. That suggest than on your or SU side there's bad code which triggers a bug very rarily (so is definately not easy to fix - moreover by me who has enough experience with ERM to write script, but not enough to fairly debug one). Also if you don't mind please help me with the Beast (merged_SU) as it seems heavy for only me to do some next steps for compability (I just merged code by hand of both sets of scripts where they were similair except a few cases where SU rewritten script code from scratch, and resolved most obvious conflicts like the function number beeeing used twice for different uses). Also any further answer on this post should probably go to ERA thread.
PS: I have some ERA-dependent fixes on mind so we may discuss a bit on further fixing merged_SU or official ERA scripts.
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted May 02, 2012 10:07 PM |
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Comments on scripts:
1) After finding some bugs in the WoG scripts in the allinon1.zip installation package, I asked several people if there was ever an official update, but no one could point me to one, for some reason (circa 2006), so I fixed the bugs I found, and later added a few variations of my own. (Note: there were many WoG scripts which I never tried as they seemed to me to give human players too much advantage.)
2) A couple years later, I finally found a link to the updated set, and looked at them, but I was not happy with them, for two reasons: a) although they fixed many of the bugs I had noticed, they also introduced some new bugs; and b) they introduced many new entities (variables, flags, functions) which were not in the ERM Help List of the Claimed. This last fact was a deal-breaker for me, since most of the custom scripts I had written were careful to use unclaimed entities so they could be mixed with WoG scripts, and I would have to re-write most of my 100 or so scripts. The update notes did not list the added entities, so I would have to hunt them down, script by script.
3) I would have had to accept these disadvantages anyway had the updated scripts gained wide acceptance, but in my experience (circa 2007-2009), few people had heard of them or used them. For example, the map "Ice Arrow" was downloaded and played by 50-100 people before one person complained of a bug which was caused by an incompatibility with an updated WoG script (which triggered lots of error messages on the first day of play).
Had I known about the updated scripts in 2006 I would have focused my efforts on them and not accumulated all the "sunk costs". However, in this instance of the metaverse, those sunk costs leave me with little interest in tackling a new set of WoG scripts.
Nevertheless, I willing to try to help anyone who has a script bug of any sort, if they will give me access to a saved game which reliably produces the bug (so I can study it and try fixes until one works).
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Rafister
Tavern Dweller
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posted May 02, 2012 10:32 PM |
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So i just registered to post in this topic since i wanted to thank you guys for your hard work so I (and also I guess everyone) can enjoy this great map.
I also had a couple of questions / troubles (quite long ones I supose) I had hoped you guys could help with:
1. I've been playing with Gem and I've noticed the henchmens (both first and second) seem to lose abilities over time or lose them randomly sometimes, and this is pretty frustrating.
In m fisrt run I was using Diamond Dragons as first Henchman , and they were already ace rank (2 swords), and thing is I knew it was working because the dragons had the receptive enchant on, but the 50% Deflect chance to deflect all the damage never worked. Also my Supreme Arch Angels seemed to lose the no retaliation property sometimes (I tried to check using Another no retaliate monster on that same monster in the same fight but they wouldn't get countered).
So after a while I just restarded my game and this time I picked up the last version you guys have in this topic instead of the one found in maps for heroes, and I told myself I was going to use Hydras since I find their natural properties coupled with the vampiric abilities Gem gave was quite a good combination. So everything was going allright, my hydras then chaos hydra worked as they should, with no retaliation and all around attacks, and then I found the Hell Hydra "nest" south fo the rampart castle and got a couple of Hell Hydras, one for my 1st Henchman and the other to use to give the vampiric abilities on my own Hell Hydras. So my first henchman Hell Hydra seemed incapable of using the all around attack and also had no acid effect on his attacks (got the HH on day 7 then day 1 so didn't test to have HH as a henchman without lifedrain), but my chaotic hydra second henchman was working fine. So I just decided to ignore that and keep on going, and the thing is my 2nd henchman reached level 30 and became a Hell Hydra , and as soon as that happened he lost the all around attack (and acid attack never worked), so I decided to save, make a couple of fights and call it a night since no matter what I did it wouldn't fix itself.
So the following day when I start heroes again, I load my save and to my surprise, Hell Hydras are working as they should ! (all around attack, acid attack and life drain), but after a couple of fights I got too cocky and I had to reload, and after reloading my hydras are broken yet again... So now I've stoped for the meantime in hopes I can find a way to fix this because Hydras without all around attack are pretty pointless.
2. On a different note, it would be great if someone who has played Gem could give me a couple of tips on what is a good setup for henchmans or strategys, I usually just play it pretty defensively ,but I find myself VERY hard pressed when fighting Behemots (or any creature that ignores defense) since the "turtling" just won't do and monsters will sometimes almost one hit my own Henchmen if they get double strike + Deathblow (this happens more often that i wish it did), and damage magic seems to be pointless (I guess its only good for the doctor hero) so I have to rely on support magic wich again leaves me vulnerable against certain monsters.
Also what is a good time to reach the emerald tower south of rampart town , because I'm far from being strong enough to be able to handle the even and passing time doesn't seem to help me that much since monsters keep getting stronger
Again thank you guys for the hardwork on the map and I'm sorry on the large wall of text, I wanted to be as precise as I could on my problem with Hydras, since i saw no post or info on what could trigger this.
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted May 02, 2012 11:16 PM |
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Edited by JimV at 23:52, 02 May 2012.
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Thanks for the report on Henchman properties. It sounds like one of the problems which sometimes occurs with scripted experience-based (EA:B) properties (although this is just a guess at the moment). I first encountered similar glitches with the "Stargate Atlantis Rising" map. Quoting from an August 28, 2010 post on that thread:
"Victor (The Pacifist) found two other bugs which have been fixed in both versions. Both appear to be standard WoG bugs which could occur in any map, but which can be patched by ERM scripts. During Quick Combat, perhaps in combination with certain special experience-based skills, the basic attack skill of some fighters is reduced randomly. The total Attack skill (with bonuses) does not change, so the combat is not affected, but after the battle the creatures base Attack skill has been permanently reduced. This was patched by saving the basic Attack skills of each SGA creature at the start of each battle, then restoring at the end of the battle.
The second bug is that creatures with the Block skill sometimes have their Defense-with-Bonuses skill level reduced after a blocking action. It is the reverse of the previous effect: the creature is affected during the combat, but after the combat it still has the same basic Defense skill. This was patched by checking each SGA creature for the Block skill at the start of the combat, then disabling it for the duration of the combat and replacing it with a simulated (scripted) Block function. (Both these patches could be adapted for use in other maps if desired.)"
Also in that map I observed creatures switching special properties. For example, when fighting a group of creatures which automatically cast the Forgetfulness spell after an attack, one of my creatures gained that ability for the duration of the combat, although it did not show up in her experience screen.
So my feeling is that this part of the h3wog.exe code is glitchy. However, I have not personally noticed such problems in TDS - but my experience is not vast, having played to completion only twice, as Orrin and as the Doctor, and I have never used the Hidden Race.
Specific instances of such glitches (even if they are code glitches vs. script gltiches) can usually be patched some way, as in the SAR examples above. However, to investigate and make patches I need a saved game which consistenly produces the glitch (after specific actions). So if you have saved games which I can use, please link to them here, and I will investigate them.
Update - do you recall seeing this message?
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Xixingdafa is the Way of Absorbing Chi from an enemy in battle.
Chi (soul energy) may only be absorbed from a living creature with a soul.
You may choose one of the creatures in your army to learn Xixingdafa.
Absorbing Chi requires intense focus, so other martial effects will be lost, such as Lightning Strike, Acid Breath, Buddha's Palm (deathstare), and Eight-Fold Way (strike foes on all sides at once).
The fee varies from 7 level-1 creatures to 1 level-7 creature.^;
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That is, if you give a creature Gem's vampiric ability, it loses Acid Breath and strike-all-around. Would that explain your problem?
Further Update - it occurs to me that Woodmelon's "Xixingdafa" (a Chinese word which Google Translate and other resources refused to translate) could be implemented in a different way, which would allow strike-all-around and Acid Breath to be retained. (I have already used a different method in "Super Gem"/TDS_v2.07Dr.) I am not sure if Woodmelon's restriction was necessary for his method to work, or added because otherwise he thought Xixingdafa would be too powerful. In either case, he must have consided Gem balanced for the map, although personally I consider Gem to be one of the hardest leaders to play. Anyway, the restriction could be removed, if there is a groundswell of opinion that it should be.
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