SE4 Templatizer - want a special mode for DO?

[Ed Kolis]

Say, I thought I'd mentioned this already, but a forum search for "templatizer" in the DO forum turned up no results...
I have a program I wrote called the "SE4 Templatizer"... basically what it does is it takes SE4 items like starship components and generates whole series of them based on mathematical formulas - so for instance a Polaron Beam level 1 might do 30 damage, a Polaron Beam level 2 might do 35 damage, and so on, where a Polaron Beam level N does N * 5 + 25 damage. Or you could have much more interesting formulas, like linear increases in cost with logarithmic increases in damage and range and exponential decreases in size
What I thought I'd offer is, since I'm making a new Version of the program anyway, I could make a special mode that works with Dungeon Odyssey data files, so you could have a Healing Potion level 1 that heals 50 HP, costs 100 gold, and weighs 1.00 pound, a Healing Potion level 2 that heals 55 HP, costs 120 gold, and weighs 0.95 pounds... well, you get the picture
It's really not much extra work for me, because my program can already handle any data file in Malfador's "name := data" field format; all I'd need is a list of all the "weird" fields and how they're processed by the game - by "weird", I mean fields that aren't single numbers or text strings; weird fields are things like lists of numbers such as SE4's "Weapon Damage At Rng" field which lists the damage done by a weapon at each of 20 range values.
Any interest?

[DarkStar]

That is a kind offer.

If it's not too much trouble I would say to go ahead and add that feature to your tool. I haven't made a mod yet but it seems like a good tool to have for those that do.

Maybe with a few more tools we can get more people making mods for DO (including myself).

I'm not sure why the mod functions of DO never caught on.

[henk brouwer]

The Dungeon odyssey data files and engine already have a quite elaborate build-in automatic level adjustment for most item and monster characteristics. You only write one entry into the appropriate file and the game will also create higher level Versions of that item, to give an example:

A level 10 sword [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Dagger.gif[/img] will likely do more minimum or maximum damage (or both), it will likely cost more money, it will have a bigger change of having special abilities like being a vorpal sword of death and having mana drain, and it might have much tougher requirements: (a level 1 sword might be wielded by a character with a strengt of 11, a level 10 sword might require strength 20)

The same goes for potions and monsters.

But there are probably some other values that currently do not automatically change when an items level increases, like light radius for items, and for such cases the proposed utility might be usefull.

I don't know how the DO engine would handle higher level creatures or items that are generated using such a tool in combination with it's own levelling system, it might be messy. My advice would be to study the DO data files a bit to get a feeling for how DO works, before deciding to put too much effort into this utility.

[Ed Kolis]

Hmm, a built-in leveling system... you say it's quite elaborate? More so than Starfury? In Starfury you could do a base value and a linear increase or decrease per level, that's about it...
But Starfury does have a "Uses Levels" field in Main_Components.txt which you can set to false in order to disable the whole leveling scheme for any particular item, leaving it pretty much open to "templatizing"; does Dungeon Odyssey have the same field for its items and such?

[henk brouwer]

I don't have starfury (my system doesn't meet the requirements) So I can't really compare the two but I'll try to give a summary of DO item/monster levelling

The main_itemclasses.txt and main_monsterclasses.txt files have the descriptions for all items and monsters. At the top of each of these files there are a number of lines that tell the game how items should change when they are of higher level. changing these lines will influence all items/monsters in the file. This part sounds simillar to what you describe for starfury, you can set a linear, and a value increase for each setting. there is no 'uses levels' field here, so this file might prove difficult to mod.
It seems you can use different files for each map in your module.
In addition to this each individual item in the file can have one or more requirements, like a strength of 12 for a heavy axe, which can be set to increase per level for each individual item (percentage or number).

There is also always a chance that an item has special magical abilities, the chance for this can be set to increase or decrease per level, and this chance can be set differently for each map or shop in the module.
The magical abilities themselves are described in the itemmodifiers.txt file for items or the monstermodifiers.txt file for monsters. This file shows some promise for a templatizer program . it has a minimum and maximum level setting for each entry, and no built in levelling, just lots of entries like the SEIV files.

In addition to this there are spells, each spell can be set individually to increase or decrease when gaining levels. there are *a lot* of level dependent settings here. To make things complicated: Items and monsters can have spell abilities.

I probably missed some options/features here, but it should give you an idea.

A summary:
The DO item system seems to be designed to generate a truly huge amount of different items with random (but level dependent) characteristics and weird magical abilities, it is very different from SEIV where you have a only a small fixed amount of different items you can discover.