Partially Used: Ideas 5/4/08

Any chance we could have the map areas we have "discovered" stay saved in our
character files so they would be retained after a reset? Not a huge deal, but would be
super to at know where I have been and where I havent.

The other thing was if maybe somehow Ioun stone status (active/inactive) could be saved
when we log out... cuz each time I log in, I have to re-activate my intelligence bonus
stone, and that changes my spell slots, and that means I have to reselect spells and then
rest and rememorize first thing every time.

Two more ideas:

1. When a player uses a Gift of Zolaras token, or has a raise dead/resurrection cast on them, could that newly revived character have a couple seconds of invulnerability (or have their faction changed for a few seconds so that the enemies do not automatically and instantly go hostile and attack)? Only enough to perhaps make using an item a possibility before they are gangbeaten to death by the enemies hovering over their corpse? About 5 or 6 times now, I have used the token to save my XP, only to be killed by the enemies around my corpse before the loading screen actually finished. Hence, losing MORE XP and wasting the token. No time to react whatsoever... and the part that makes it so painful was that I had invisibility items on my quickbar, ready to go... if I had two seconds time before they all jumped me, I would have been fine. I also had healing items, if the enemies happened to have true sight active. The instant death thing is very, very, very... frustrating.

2. When a character's patron deity aids them in one of the various ways, could there be a pre-established "piety cost" for each type of aid? I had my piety up over 500, died due to the above issue twice in a row(total of 3 deaths), ran out of tokens, and had to respawn in VV... I got the XP from the most recent death back... but then my piety totally zeroed out... I imagine I would have had a VERY solid chance of getting the same result with half of the piety I had... so it seems like I was penalized for having more...

daveyeisley wrote:Any chance we could have the map areas we have "discovered" stay saved in our
character files so they would be retained after a reset? Not a huge deal, but would be
super to at know where I have been and where I havent.

It's possible to record which areas you have been in, but not the portions of those that have been explored. This means that if I scripted it so that the area was automatically explored next time you log in, you could have spent 5 seconds in an area, come back after a reset, and the entire thing would be explored. Not quite fair to those that have explored the whole thing, especially with large and/or dangerous areas.

I have thought of this one in the past, and I like the idea, but couldn't figure out a way around the limitation of the scripting (partially explored vs. fully explored).

daveyeisley wrote:The other thing was if maybe somehow Ioun stone status (active/inactive) could be saved
when we log out... cuz each time I log in, I have to re-activate my intelligence bonus
stone, and that changes my spell slots, and that means I have to reselect spells and then
rest and rememorize first thing every time.

I'll look into the ioun stone scripts to see if I can change it to a database variable vs. local variable. I didn't code the ioun stones myself (one of the few things I haven't), so I'm not really familiar with the inner workings of all of them.

daveyeisley wrote:When a player uses a Gift of Zolaras token...

Excellent idea. I'll work on that next time I get a chance. The original intent behind Zolaras' Gift was to be just like a raise dead spell you could use on yourself (which returns 75% of your xp lost to dying, returns you to life at the spot you died, and leaves you with 1 hit point), for those adventuring alone and willing to pay money for the gift item.

I'll make it so that it makes you invulnerable for 2 rounds.

daveyeisley wrote:When a character's patron deity aids them in one of the various ways, could there be a pre-established "piety cost" for each type of aid?

I'll think about this one. Right now, the xp returned on respawning in Valorian's Vale (stepping on the dais) scales based on the amount of your piety score (less piety = less xp and gp you get back). No matter how many points you have, it returns your balance to 0.

The same thing happens when you ask for a favor at an altar to your patron deity. Depending on your piety score, you can get a small bonus or a bigger bonus. This returns your balance to 0.

In either situation, it's still a deity doing you a favor, rather than something they owe you.

Just wanted to throw out an idea.

Currently with the summon gloves and teleport gloves, we have 20 items to keep in inventory for those 2 spells.
Also, I happened to do a stupid, and when I created my custom gloves, I put an intelligence
bonus on them... I am sure you can see where I am going with this...

If I take off my custom gloves to put on a summon or teleport glove, it drops my int and changes my spell slots. So after I am done summoning/teleporting, I have to put my custom gloves back on, reselect spells, and rest again (if I am fortunate enough to be able to rest at that moment).

My idea to improve this and make it "simpler" was to have two items a Wizard/Sorcerer could keep in inventory (one for teleport, one for summon/magehound), like a scroll, that when used (without needing to be equipped), would bring up a dialogue window. On the dialogue window would be 10 slots numbered one through ten, that would either list the location they are attuned to, or say "not attuned". One of the slots would have an "Active" flag. If the spell appropriate to that item is cast, it would send the character to the location in the "active" slot.

When one of the slots is clicked on, it would bring the user to a menu very similar to the current gloves' dialogue, where they could select to re-attune to their current location, erase the slots currently attuned location, or make that slot the "active" slot... any of these options would return them to the list of all 10 slots with the data updated for any changes made.

daveyeisley wrote:Currently with the summon gloves and teleport gloves, we have 20 items to keep in inventory for those 2 spells.

Could be more. You can buy up to 50 gloves of teleportation and 20 gauntlets of summons (total of 70).

daveyeisley wrote:Also, I happened to do a stupid, and when I created my custom gloves, I put an intelligence
bonus on them... I am sure you can see where I am going with this...

If I take off my custom gloves to put on a summon or teleport glove, it drops my int and changes my spell slots. So after I am done summoning/teleporting, I have to put my custom gloves back on, reselect spells, and rest again (if I am fortunate enough to be able to rest at that moment).

One of the sacrifices spellcasters chose to take on if they choose to wield the power of long-distance teleportation, I'm afraid. The way I had to code teleport (so that your desired locations stay set over server restarts) is to save data to the game database. The simplest and most bug-free way I discovered was to tie each location (an entire set of data: area, position, and facing) to a single item that could be attuned/reattuned at any time. The summon ally spell works in a similar way. The magehound spell simply piggybacks off the summon ally gauntlets data.

The placing of the desired attuned item into the glove slot makes it quick to swap out chosen locations/PCs. I chose the gloves slot because wizards/sorcerers hardly ever use such equipment, except for things like bracers of armor (which are quick to swap back in without penalty, even in the heat of battle).

Just to be clear, the problem with the teleport/summon item idea was that there is a bug with storing 10 variables to one item, rather than 10 separate items?

It's not so much a problem with 10 variables stored on 1 item, but rather 3 variables for each location, plus a way to quickly identify and swap out intended locations in the heat of battle (which usually tends to block any use of scripted conversations anyway).

For some reason, the database cannot actually store a location as a valid variable/data. Instead, there has to be a workaround that stores the three different pieces of information that make up a single location:
the area (of the intended location)
the position (on the x, y, z coordinates within that area)
the facing (the direction you end up facing at the location)

The use of a glove item enables the game to store all three of these pieces of information in the database under easily found variable names (based on the specific tag of the glove (each glove has a different tag) and associated with your character). The teleport spell then goes into the database to gather the correct pieces of information and assembles them into a valid location, which the game then sends you to.

In addition, it's not just 10 locations you can attune gloves to. It's 50. You can purchase multiple sets of the gloves from All Things Magical. I didn't want to limit a spellcaster to having just 10 locations to teleport to.

And as a side note, I intend to reduce the weight of gloves/gauntlets/bracers to 0 after the 1.69 patch comes out, so all those gloves don't weight down low-strength spellcasters that can't carry multiple bags of holding.

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:

Excellent idea. I'll work on that next time I get a chance. The original intent behind Zolaras' Gift was to be just like a raise dead spell you could use on yourself (which returns 75% of your xp lost to dying, returns you to life at the spot you died, and leaves you with 1 hit point), for those adventuring alone and willing to pay money for the gift item.

I'll make it so that it makes you invulnerable for 2 rounds.

Is that change in at all? I just used a stone of zol, and was killed so quick that I literally saw two load screens one after the other...

I have seen this change in action yes.... when next i see you in game, i will log mythgar and refund your xp.