ACR Update

[Zelknolf]

Some new things:

• Random Dungeons have reached their minimum playable state. Currently, they can only be used by builders in a limited fashion. BG will be acquiring a copyable example in the next week or two, and it should be able to be recopied/modified/overwritten now, and will be easily added to as the system matures.
• We're now using a newer version of PLINK.exe, which will improve our database connections
• ACR Traps now regard the nearest placeable tagged "TRAP_EMITTER" as the source of whatever foul explodey things we're killing the PCs with this time.
• ACR Spell Traps no longer provide an "I can't find that trap" error when triggered.
• Notifications with the acr_notifications_i system which are given callback scripts now have functional callbacks. However, as with all GUI-based scripts, they must be prefixed with gui_ and must be written assuming that they will be called outside of their intended context.
• Servers will retry to create the bodies of dead PCs if they fail the first time they try, and periodically retry until they get it right.
• ACR Traps which are spawned from an ACR Spawns spawn point will no longer spawn multiple copies of themselves on the exact same location, and will respect their respawn cooldowns.
• ACR Item Pricing now correctly prices items which grant immunity to a specific spell.
• ACR AI has the ability to instruct a creature to drop party.
• Only the random part of Ray of Enfeeblement (the 1d6) and not the bonus (the +caster level) is multiplied by 1.5 when cast with Empower Spell
• The tlk is updated-- so things which should've had their text fixed to match their mechanics in the Feb 1 release will now actually have that text.

[Heero]

*hi5*!

[HEEGZ]

Awesome thanks!

[Adanu]

Putting this on WHL would make my life awesome.

[Zelknolf]

ACR updates are automatic; once the team gets WHL back up, it'll update itself.

I can't, however, fix the fact that the host is unavailable.

[kid]

Can you explain in broad brush strokes what's random dungeons?
Curious to know what you mean.
Also, thanks.

[Zelknolf]

Can you explain in broad brush strokes what's random dungeons?

Yeah, I should probably try to translate this into human words.


So, the system is basically the ability to tool a handful of generic areas, with a known set of exits, and doors which call into CLRScript handling for the targets of their area transitions. These areas are regarded as templates by the system, which it will use to build instances (temporary copies of the area that aren't actually the original). Each of them get a coordinate on a three-dimensional map (as "up" and "down" are recognized kinds of exits), which tell the area transitions how to link the areas together.

You also build tables of traps and monsters that might exist, and assign a table to the dungeon, which then populates the instances with creatures of a CR that increases as you progress deeper into the dungeon, until the max of whatever CR the builder specified for the dungeon.


For example, let's say we had five template areas:
-- An area with a single exit to the north
-- An area with a single exit to the east
-- An area with a single exit to the south
-- An area with exits both to the north and south
-- An area with exits to the west and south

So when you bust in the front door to the dungeon, you might find layouts like...

Code: Select all

....|....
....1....
....|....
..3-2....
.........
.........

....|....
....1....
.........
.........
.........
.........

..4-3....
....|....
....2....
....|....
....1....
....|....

.........
-1.......
.|.......
.2.......
.|.......
.3.......

And then if you, say, built a "goblins" table for the spawns in this dungeon, area 1 would have a bunch of mook goblins, area 2 would have mook goblins lead by competent goblins, area 3 would have mooks, competents, and leaders, and area 4 has the mighty goblin champion Gnaz'barakk. (or, depending on what level Gnaz'barakk is you might need to get some lucky dice and a very deep dungeon before you find him).

And if you wanted your dungeons to get bigger and more complex, you might next build a T-shaped area, with exits to the north, south, and west. Or more elbows to introduce the ability of the dungeon to loop back on itself. The only real requirement is that for every kind of exit you build, you also want to have an area which has only the opposite exit (so if the randomness gives us a real crap layout, we can fail over to saying it's a dead end).

[kid]

Sounds fun.
You said: Currently, they can only be used by builders in a limited fashion.

Does that mean that at some point it might be a DM tool or maybe something that happens in the server each time it restarts (A few AT's/caves may appear in random places, with a random dungeon in it or something?)

Or is that impossible/too much work/or unwanted in some fashion?

Regardless, thanks for the stuffs!

[HEEGZ]

I believe the idea is to make them like the infestations, where DMs can place the entrances in game, and the scripts handle most of the rest. Zelk had an earlier version of this system called SECS, where the dungeon was not randomized, but a DM could place the entrance in game for players to access. I used it once or twice on MS with some success a year or so ago. The randomized dungeons would be awesome in comparison, because of randomness, and I believe she is including random spawns based on CR as well.

[kid]

That would be pretty neat.

[ImStrokerAce]

I'll throw out a "hell yeah" on this as well

[Zelknolf]

Complexity means that this is slow-going, though it's mostly that testing is slow, there's some insidious bugs in area instancing (like memory leaks), and the build burden is significant (one tileset of a fully-developed arbitrarily-large randomizable dungeon would be 64 template areas), so labor-intensive bells and whistles (like a GUI to give to DMs) aren't done yet.

The plan is to keep providing increasingly large/complex random dungeons as static content on BG over several iterations before I'm confident enough that the system can accept whatever parameters a DM would like, and then would be able to dump a bunch of effort into making a useful GUI for it.

But yes, in concept, it's very much like the Surprise Encounter Creation System (aka "SECS") but larger complexes (so you get more content per use) and instanced areas (so you can use more than one at a time).

[Rumple C]

Mmmm, secs.

[Brokenbone]

Surprise! Below Underground Twisting Tunnels SECS!

Sounds like a lot of work, which hopefully results in a lot of fun.

[Zelknolf]

Surprise! Below Underground Twisting Tunnels SECS!

Sounds like a lot of work, which hopefully results in a lot of fun.

I dunno about that name. It's quite a stretch.


But yes, JaydeMoon and FanaticusIncendi already compiled lists of the hilarious areas we'd have to build into SECS for the jokes about it, as they were pretty active and were actively grumping about their lack of ability to just drop areas for the sake of DMing. And I eyed this project/request somewhat dubiously on account that we've had the old since JaydeMoon and FanaticusIncendi were here to compile hilarious lists of area types, and most people here have never seen/ heard of it.