Zillameth on 12/3/2005 at 23:44
Quote Posted by jolynsbass
There was also a "Fire elemental" of sorts, shaped like a man, in the Thief Gold mission where you are trying to get to the cathedral for the first time(I forget the name of that mission just now...) I'm not sure, but I think these kind of elementals are only in TG, and not in TDP(nor TMA)... I remember being very scared of said elemental... Your screenshot looks great - scary and vague like the original. :thumb:
Oh, the irony! :cheeky: I have never had a chance to play Thief Gold. It was never published in my homeland.
Eshaktaar on 12/3/2005 at 23:55
They were called fire shadows in TG.
Love the new AI, Zillameth.
ProjectX on 13/3/2005 at 10:35
With a little tweaking we could make:
Water elementals (fast, but not very powerful, killed by moss arrows (they suck up the water, almost silent with possibly some faint blue glow and a quiet trickling noise to show their approach and maybe gurgling noises when they're angry), on death these could leave a water arrow behind, also when walking over blood puddles or oil puddles they have the same effect as water arrows on them. This could have tactical uses. Possibly moss puddles hurt it?
Moss elementals (slow, quite powerful, silent unless angered (bushy noises when angered?) and can fire moss balls, killed by one arrow (maybe a nce effect where they light up on fire and walk around like fire elementals and then need one water arrow to extinguish?)) On death these could leave a moss arrow behind. Perhaps every now and then it could leave moss puddles on the floor? (I'd like to see a battle of water elemental, vs. moss elemental vs.fire elemental - it would be impessive)
Shadow Elementals (Almost invisible except in full light, fast, makes windy noises, with harsher sounds when angered, killed by flash bombs (poss. holy water?) and attack with a powerful melee sound, has good perception in darkness (this would be a very hard AI to pass by))
Light Elementals (Cause the nearby area to be full bright, fast, silent, weak melee attacks, poor perception in darkness, unkillable) Perhaps they leave behind a flashbomb every 20 seconds or something?
What do you think? Are any of these possible?
EDIT: Does it set light to oil puddles?
Zillameth on 13/3/2005 at 11:24
Quote Posted by ProjectX
What do you think? Are any of these possible?
I think water elemental would require modification of moss puddle. Moss elementals should work, but shadow elementals seem hard to implement, mostly because they would need to be invisible to other AIs, and not only to the player. As for light elementals, I think people would take them for a larger version of Pagan will-o-wisps.
Constant object spawning is a tempting, but dangerous idea. It would probably reqire lots of tweaking, or you might end up with a level completely covered with a 20cm layer of moss (imagine the amount of data it would force the CPU to process).
Quote Posted by ProjectX
EDIT: Does it set light to oil puddles?
Oh yes, it does. All these flames ping the surroundings with fire stimuli. They will set on fire all that can be burnt. When I made the first version of elemental, it died after a few seconds, because it hurt itself with its own flames. :)
This is, by the way, an example of gross inefficiency. Each flame has a stimulus and makes other flames redundant. It would be probably better (in spite of some loss of precision) if these stimuli were deleted and a single stimulus with longer radius was attached to elemental.
ProjectX on 13/3/2005 at 12:31
Well, I made your elemental, but with a few changes which I thought looked aesthetically pleasing:
Replaced the fireplace emitter on the head for a magicalfire emitter (makes it look like hes powered by magic)
Changed the movement form to statue_a (the monster statues, gives it a huge, hulking movement that the kind of damage he delivers deserves)
Made it spawn a fire arrow on death
I gotta say: Great work on that guy!!
Oh, and wouldn't the moss puddles die like in the normal game? So if we timed it to produce one at the rate at which they died then there would only ever be 1 puddle per monster?
Zillameth on 13/3/2005 at 13:54
Quote Posted by ProjectX
Oh, and wouldn't the moss puddles die like in the normal game? So if we timed it to produce one at the rate at which they died then there would only ever be 1 puddle per monster?
You're right. I don't remember them dying, but if they do, then you probably don't need to worry about them too much (unless there is a memory leak in game's object manager, but I don't remember having any memory-related problems when playing OMs). You could even produce them more frequently. Even 10 or 20 puddles should be manageable, as long as you're not planning to have hundreds of moss elementals in your mission.
ProjectX on 13/3/2005 at 16:10
I recall that they disappeared after roughly 10 seconds.
EDIT: Having probs with the gas elemental (btw while I'm here, what do you think it's vulnerabilities should be, since I'm making my own vulnerability class), I spawn it in game and the gas emitters just disappear. I was using a modified gas arrow explosion emitter so that it respawns dead particles but they don't seem to be doing it. I tried making my own emitter for it, but the particles don't seem to want to fade, ever.
Karkianman on 13/3/2005 at 21:02
make it so when fire goes near, the gas emitters turn into flame emitters and the thing burns up.
about wil o' wisps, is it possible to make them solid and change their elevation?
Jadon on 14/3/2005 at 06:32
I think you would have to create a new AIpawn similar to creating the Fire elemental except using the will o' wisp emitter but I'm not sure yet on the elevation thing though.
Zillameth on 14/3/2005 at 08:30
Well, it looks like will-o-wisps are not AIs at all. They are elevators. They move, because they think waypoints are floors.
