Spell Modding - Guide Version 0.11
 

IMPORTANT TIP ON SPELL TESTING: When testing a spell, DO NOT simply paste in an additional block of researchlevel etc. information. The replacement will *appear* to work, however, the spell itself will be busted.

Attached file includes the bare bones information you need to use the effects and special abilities not documented in the manual. All of this is probably going to be redundant when KO finishes the documentation - but I'm entertaining myself. If you can't wait to make a spell that turns all of your sacred undead into hasted tramplers - well, now you can do that.

Several features are included in the binary but do not appear to be currently accessible to modders. The most notable is the ability to give a spell a "secondary effect" - another spell that goes off at the same time (e.g. the shock wave from thunderstrike.) Ir'a immediately obvious from the executable code-dump how this works (there's a field with a spellID in it), so I'd bet dollars to... er... krone, right? that this capability will be added in a future patch.

Rather than trying to explore every possible effect/damage #/special ability combination and see what it does (by which time Sol will be a brown husk), I'm trying to code-dive and see what we can figure out from the existing spells.

It's possible that some of these flags are historical - does anyone know where I could get a list of which spells were *added* in each version of dominions? Maybe the older ones have older forms of flags or bitmasks grandfathered in?

ALL of the actual findings are now in the attached .zip file. It's simply too much data to fit into the main body of a post.

Anyway I'll update this post as I continue working - anyone else who figures out anything in this file, feel free to post your findings. Take this stuff and repost it. Use the knowledge for your own sick, twisted purposes. Call my mother a whore. Do I care what you do? No.

UPDATE: added the results of the first round of experimentation. Also, fixed a typo in one of the spreadsheets. Added a spreadsheet for easy calculation/interpretation of bitmasks.

MINOR UPDATE: Improved bitmasker spreadsheet. Confirmed a few #spec bitmask assignments.

UPDATE: Considerably improved bitmasker spreadsheet. Figured out what (almost?) all of the bitmasks for effects 10, 11 and 23 do - some have no obvious effect but might do something. Misc improvements in text and organization. Version 0.1.

FYI: This isn't in the attachment, and I don't want to make another version just for this.
Bytes 40+ of the spell record represent additional instructions of some kind or another.
Bytes 60-63 are the *argument* for the instruction found in bytes 40-43 - 64-67 for 44-47 ... 77-79 (the end of the record) presumably for 57-59.
No spell ever has more than three of these additional instructions, however.
These are of purely academic interest since you can't mod them directly.

The additional instruction types that seem to exist are:
code 278 - restricted spell. Argument is nation # + 100 that gets the spell.

Of interest - the regular divine spells (which Ermor doesn't get) have no special values in this field. This means that the "everybody except you" spell feature may be hard-coded, and thus never become available to modders.

dreams of R'lyeh, the various site-searching spells and faery trod also have values these fields, with instructions in the 40x range - but on those few examples and with no ability to change them (except by hex-editing the executable and I don't want to go there) I have no idea what they do.

The inability to put instructions in those fields may be what makes homebrewed site searching spells behave oddly (or I may just not have been being careful.)

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

You might want to drop it into a word processor and set the screen wrap shorter. Otherwise its hard to respond to.

Impressive work. When you finish it I will gladly host it if you'd like. Then you can link to it in the "tools" stickie here.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Oh, I already added it to the tools thread.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

New version.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Oh, nice.

If I understand, to make a new site-searching spell for Holy sites, I should use the effect 10048 with damage 8 for holy/priest, correct ?

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

I believe so, yes.

But you might also need certain values in the #spec field - trying copying the value from an existing site searching spell and see if that makes a difference.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Well, I post this mostly just for discussion sake. I decided that the Death school of magic needs some form of "Dome" spell, since it appears to be the only school without one. So, I tried mixing and matching the listed Dome effect numbers with other spells like Soul Slay and 7Year Fever and the like, all with no luck whatsoever. In my test games, I could cast the spell, and it shows as a protective spell for that province - but nothing ever triggers it. In fact, recreating the Dome of Flaming Death (listed below) but no remote attack spell I try ever triggers it either. Thoughts appreciated.

Note - effect 10082 creates a temporary dome (based upon the number of gems invested), 10084 creates one that appears to last until triggered.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

I can't figure that one out either.

The only possible way in which your spell *might* differ from Dome of Flaming Death is in the sound and graphics fields, which I haven't quite figured out yet.

In the field that "Acid Bolt" has at 10070 (flyspr?) dome of Flaming Death has a value of -1 (or 65535, if it's unsigned.)

In the field that "Acid Bolt" has at 10130 (explspr?) dome of Flaming Death likewise has a -1.

So you could try setting the flyspr and explspr fields to -1 and see if that helps.

What about the other dome spells? Do they work? It ought to be easy to check if the effect # for Dome of Solid Air works or not.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

I had tried Solid Air, and the Blood Magic equivalent as well, with no luck! Too bad, I was hoping one could really come up with some interesting dome effects by matching other spells as effects.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Curious - has anyone ever come across the bitmasks for "awe" or "animal awe"? "fear" is covered quite well already.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Try 23/256 and 23/512.

If neiter of those effect/damage combinations does it, I doubt they exist as spells.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Ah, I tried them both. Tried setting them as rituals, to force- cast, tried setting them as battlefield spells, and they looked like they were set up properly but the AI would never cast them (even if ordered to). So, maybe there is a bitmask or something missing, who knows. Thanks for the suggestion.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Oh, sorry. A lot of effect 23/(bitmask) combinations, the AI will refuse to cast them because it doesn't think the effect is beneficial (?).

So if you pair them with a beneficial effect (twist fate, say), you can get them to cast.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Aside from the "death dome" spell, It would be nice to beable to craft a ritual spell to temporarily cast "gluttony" on a number of enemy army units. That would be an interesting twist. However, you haven't teased out whether the spell bitmaps cover all the possible unit attributes, have you?

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

I've tested all the digits in the bitmask - and none of them appear to do that.

I believe that you can induce starvation, if that's any help.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Perhaps! When I am next overwhelmed with free time, maybe I'll try it out. I was thinking it would be an interesting spell defense against mega-armies.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

i just found that if you halve the damage on dragon master, instead of giving you dragon mastery, it gives you a permanent regeneration.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Are you sure that it's permament? When I tried that, it gievs you regeneration, but it vanishes next turn. Could be a special ability setting or something, though.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Sorry for being thick, but on the last page Dr P you suggest pairing a spell with a different effect, such as Twist Fate, to get it to cast. How do you do that?

I've read the modding manual now, but still not really on the ball.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Add together the bitmasks. So, for example

#effect 10
#damage 262656

Will give you both pain transfer (512) and Quickness (262144) at the same time.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

it certainly is (i hosted again to check, just now)

oh, wait, it goes away in battle.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

DrPraetorious, I have some new information for you that I hope helps with this initiative.

I tested Farsummons. Here is what I have found. If you choose a random creature to farsummon, a commander version of the unit and a standard version of the unit will appear in the province. So there is no way I have found to farsummon just a commander into a province, he will be accompanied by a standard unit of the same type.

Now here is the COOL part!
What makes farsummons unique seems to be tied into the unit you choose for the farsummon. For instance, if you choose monster #284 "Wolf" as your unit type in the damage field, the same rules apply to the farsummon that apply to the spell "Call of the Wild". I created a custom spell and used 284 as my damage type, the force was led by a werewolf! And on top of that, the fact that I did not choose a forest province for my farsummon reduced the effectiveness of the spell.

My guess is the other farsummons work the exact same way, with the unique commanders and effectiveness being tied to the monster chosen as the damage type for the spell.

Also, I tried effect 68 in combat to try to get random animals to spawn. I had no luck.

I hope this helps you some on your ambitious project if your still working on this.

Your spell modding guide has been extremely helpful to me and I appreciate your effort. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

I put in a request to make this "lead by" field modable at one point - didn't want to put that in the guide until there was some way to change it.

I hadn't known that increased nr. of effects in forests was a property of the unit, although I should've been able to figure that out. Seems like an odd thing to attach to the unit itself. Maybe any unit with forest-survival generates extra effects when farsummoned into a forest? It's worth examining.

I hadn't known that effect 68 doesn't work, though. Odd. Did you try fiddling with the special ability field?

I'm definitely going to do another edition at some point - I was planning to incorporate what I learned from my Black Tome mod, but that's been falling behind schedule as well.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

I did not try messing with the special ability field. I will give it a shot when I get a chance.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Dr. Praetorius said:
Hmm, I found some time to play, and I think I see the bitmask you were referring to (#effect 11). However, that would make it a battlefield spell, and I was thinking more of a remote-province attack spell (#effect 10041).

While that leads to some ideas for new battlefield spells (mass disease/7 year fever, mass battle fright, mass hunger), I guess there's just too many unmapped masks to figure out how to combine the mallus effects for remote casting.

It would be really nice for the devs to shed some light on this!

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Another thought... We have magic items that increase "penetration" (e.g., spell focus, etc.). I was trying to brainstorm a way to make that into a spell equivalent - the hostile opposite of "protection" and "mass protection". But, I got nowhere. Does anybody have any suggestions?

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

As far as I'm aware, ritual spells do not reference the bitmasks for effect 11 at all.

I haven't tried effect 10011, though.

Most of the ritual mallus spells either deal damage and have their own effect number (flames from the sky, for example), or trigger events, and the ones that trigger events reference an event list not a bitmask.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Most of the logic for Call of the Wild is probably hard coded to the wolf's unit number.

A lot of dom3 works like this... otherwise there would be fewer spells and features that are different.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

More feedback for the Bitmasker spreadsheet. I think Effect 23 / Damage 16 is incorrect; the following spell produces "susceptibility to fire 25%" on friendly troops rather than the desired "Fear +0". Tried a couple versions. (note, spell 534 is Fog Warriors, and no, different "damage" versions of Fog Warriors doesn't give the Fire Susceptibility but rather the correct bitmask as listed)

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

I've been messing around trying to make a poison res spell for the skaven, to make globadiers and censer bearers a bit less painful to use. These spells are currently using test values and aren't intended to be balanced.

---- Nurglitch's Favour 1

#newspell
#copyspell "poison ward"
#name "Nurglitch 1"
#descr "The priest invokes the incredible resilience of Nurglitch, Lord of Decay, granting a number of troops further resistance to poison."
#restricted 73
#researchlevel 0
#path 0 5
#path 1 8
#pathlevel 0 1
#pathlevel 1 1
#fatiguecost 10
#range 20
#end


---- This one adds poisonres 50. Only casts on friendlies, doesn't keep casting once they're ressed up. It won't cast on anything with poisonres over 50 though, making it useless if I leave my plague monks at poison res 80.


---- Nurglitch's Favour 2

#newspell
#copyspell "poison ward"
#name "Nurglitch 2"
#descr "The priest invokes the incredible resilience of Nurglitch, Lord of Decay, granting a number of troops further resistance to poison."
#restricted 73
#researchlevel 0
#path 0 5
#path 1 8
#pathlevel 0 1
#pathlevel 1 1
#fatiguecost 10
#effect 599
#damage 200
#range 20
#end

----- this one gives them poison immunity. It doesn't cast on enemies, but it keeps casting on friendlies even after they're immune. This is not good, obviously.


---- Nurglitch's Favour 3

#newspell
#copyspell "resist poison"
#name "Nurglitch 3"
#descr "The priest invokes the incredible resilience of Nurglitch, Lord of Decay, granting a number of troops further resistance to poison."
#restricted 73
#researchlevel 0
#path 0 5
#path 1 8
#pathlevel 0 1
#pathlevel 1 1
#fatiguecost 10
#range 20
#aoe 15
#spec 4194304
#end

----- this one gives poison immunity. It doesn't cast on enemies, doesn't cast on friendlies once they're already immune.



Now poison itself is pissing me off somewhat, because poison res of 80 doesn't actually seem to help that much vs poison clouds,.. but anyway,....

Unless someone can help me with suggestions about how else I could do this, I have a choice here between Nurglitch 1 and Nurglitch 3 (2 is just a dodgy version of 3 really).

If I go with Nurglitch 3, any skaven will get total immunity. This seems a bit much - I don't want it to be a total no brainer combo with the poison cloud and globadier units - skaven should take casualties from their weapons most of the time.

If I go with Nurglitch 1, I can alter the poison res of certain units (such as plague monks) to 50, making them perfect targets for it. It will also be able to bump the average skaven with poisonres 35, to a respectable 85 res. I think I prefer this option.

I'm just wondering if any of you have any input. Particularly you Dr P - is it possible for example to give an amount of poison res other than 50?

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Sombre -
Why are you doing the #copyspell stuff?

Are you using any of the copied attributes or ar you resetting them all?

Psientist -
Yes I noticed your comment, I'm still trying to figure out what is going on http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

I'm replacing some, not all, of the attributes. That's the difference between the three spells. When I've made spells from scratch I've had a harder time of it than when copying them and changing them. For example in Nurglitch 3, the graphical effects and the poison immunity effect are from the spell - I'm just increasing range, aoe, adding that it can only target friendlies. It's quicker and easier than making a new spell.

If I did make a new spell it would be much like Nurglitch 2, which has the problem of being castable over and over again on the same unit. I guess I could remove the copyspell from Nurglitch 2 and see what happens.

In the case of Nurglitch 1, I don't know how to get the poisonres + 50 effect outside of copying poison ward.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Maybe this is obvious, but if you summon a unit with special abilities (create gems, domsummon, etc.) with #effect 10001, the effects are stripped. You have to summon the unit as a commander (#effect 10021) to retain those abilities.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

are all the globals hard-coded? (effect 10081)

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Yes.

I haven't done extensive testing to see what novel combinations of effect and enchantment # do. It's possible that you could utterdark for a single battle, for example.

Also, it has been reported that modded dome-spells do not work at all.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

that's mostly true (Dome spells)... and I think you are referring to my own posts earlier in this thread. I have experimented extensively with modding the domes since then, and have only been successful in changing the school/path/pathlevel etc., but not the effects.

I will play with the globals when I have time.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Oh, also, found a consistent hard-crash bug. If you create ANY ritual with the Priest path, the game will crash if you "auto-cast" that ritual.

I suppose that should go under the bug list, but it will only come up with specialty mods so it would probably never get attention anyway. At least this way, modders will be warned.

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

Auto cast?

Do you mean monthly cast? Does this apply only to rituals with holy magic as path 0?

Re: Spell Modding - Guide Rough Draft
 

I do indeed mean "monthly cast", sorry for any confusion.

And only rituals with holy magic as path 8 (0 is fire).