SubClasses

F8_AL wrote:

you could use some off tony-the-slayers new monsterpack!

Probably not, but that would be nice!

If you didn't know this already, they are on the DeathWarrant servers. You should check them out sometime, but beware, they are extremely tough and show no mercy for low levels.

Espescially the "creations," they wipe out at least 15 players on wave 15.

tgroombr / Tony, I sincerely doubt it is the Creations that wipe out a substantial quantity of MM players. Seekers and Titans are the usual culprits when it comes to Wave 15 deaths because they can pull people out or insta-kill them with buggy projectiles.

I actually think the Creations are pretty well balanced. The issue is that the vast majority of maps that get voted on Monster Mash are maps where players sit in one location and are nearly invulnerable as they auto-fire mines or link mindlessly. Well balanced creatures are actually extremely easy when players are voting maps where they have near-complete geographic protection, access to all the weapons, ammo, and adrenaline that they could possibly need. Kind of leads me to believe that all monsters that want to actually be a threat need to have built in tools for removing these advantages. (Of course, this problem wouldn't need to be "addressed" at all if Monster Mash actually had reasonable, standard maps on the server, instead of a glut of guaranteed-win maps and maybe a handful of maps that are challenging.)

More on-topic. Szlat, how does the subclass section of that menu work. Is it a drop down? Also, does this update to the menu hide non-relevant abilities for your class?

The Class buy button is only available if you do not already have a class. It shows the following screen:

The SubClass Buy button is only available if you have a class, but haven't bought a subclass yet. It only shows the subclasses available to the class that you have.

Note that you can set the minimum player level each subclass can be bought at. Although it doesn't say, buying the subclass costs one point.

And yes, the only abilities you see in the list are those that are available to the selected subclass.

(Note that you do not have to buy a subclass. As such, you get the abilities available as now. The abilities available and max level per subclass are in the ini file)

Have added a new ability for the Extreme Monsters subclass - AbilityMonsterDamage, which increases the damage done by Pets.

Very nice work! Can't wait until the next build of DruidsRPG.

tgroombr wrote:

Very nice work! Can't wait until the next build of DruidsRPG.

Assuming that Druid wants SubClasses

Also added an extra keybinding that tells your pets to target a certain monster. So you can stop your warlord wasting his time hitting another warlord, and get it to beat up a brute instead. Only available to Extreme Monster subclass.

On my test config I let the Extreme Monster subclass buy Loaded Monsters 20, and added Lava skaarj at 10 points each, for level 16. Two lava skaarj can do an awful lot of killing

I might put that into the main config.

ooooh nice i like that idea... any ideas on the ultima bunny

... just wondering?
And since this is for the extreme monster class what about the extreme engineer class can they make anything newer out of the ordinary? explosives maybe ... just ideas

Elite wrote:

ooooh nice i like that idea... any ideas on the ultima bunny ... just wondering?
And since this is for the extreme monster class what about the extreme engineer class can they make anything newer out of the ordinary? explosives maybe ... just ideas

I'm sure that if this were to happen, the bunnies would have to do decreased damage for pets, and that they would cost an awful lot of adrenaline. The problem is that since the bunny as an enemy doesn't target other monsters, it might take a bit for it to blow, unless there is a lot of fire going around or the pet owner will simply kill it himself/herself.

Edit: How about summoning a queen? One that doesn't spawn other pupae, maybe a subclass of SMPQueen? (The Unreal Actor Class, not the DruidsRPG class)

i have some ideas for the extreme monster master. they could have a skill that lests then "order" their pets like you can order the bots around. so you could have a "search and destroy" comand and a "patrol area" command. also you could have a skill that teleports all of your pets to you incase one gets stuck.

Elite wrote:

.....what about the extreme engineer class can they make anything newer out of the ordinary? explosives maybe ... just ideas

I don't know. The standard engineer will be able to summon exploding barrels. Perhaps we add extra bigger barrels, perhaps we do something along the "spider steriods mod" line, or perhaps give them extra vehicles to summon. I am not sure - at the end of the day it will down to Druid to add the entries to the ini file for what can be summoned. The extreme engineer isn't that extreme - it only loses shield healing and shield regen - so the benefits it gets can't be too great as it already has better rapidbuild and armor vampire, and more engineer points to spend.

tgroombr wrote:

How about summoning a queen? One that doesn't spawn other pupae, maybe a subclass of SMPQueen? (The Unreal Actor Class, not the DruidsRPG class)

There are already sterile versions of the SMPQueen and the Giant Gasbag in the DCMonsters pack - Moof submitted them

F8_AL wrote:

i have some ideas for the extreme monster master. they could have a skill that lests then "order" their pets like you can order the bots around. so you could have a "search and destroy" comand and a "patrol area" command. also you could have a skill that teleports all of your pets to you incase one gets stuck.

I did consider this. It is possible, but there is quite a bit of code to change. Firstly generating the menu isn't trivial - especially if it is to be patched into the existing voice menu. And the FriendlyMonsterController is quite involved - any changes to allow commands to be sent from the player will require significant reworking of the code. So I thought leave it for another day.

I just went for the easy option of letting you change what their current target was.

The teleport option wouldn't be difficult to do, and would be useful if you had just teleported across the map.

The only downside I have found yet to the SubClasses is that it does give a couple of seconds delay when the map starts - due to all the configuration that needs to be replicated from the server to the clients.

I could obviously get around this by hard coding the subclasses, but I think the benefit of allowing site admins to be able to create their own subclasses via the ini file is worth the delay.

But again, that will be Druid's call.

It really would be nice to have pets stop following you for once. I need a big score, and my skaarj can't help if they always shoot at whatever I am shooting at.

Szlat wrote:

The only downside I have found yet to the SubClasses is that it does give a couple of seconds delay when the map starts - due to all the configuration that needs to be replicated from the server to the clients.

Ok, fixed this one. Instead of replicating the complete subclass configuration (around 630 records) at startup, I now replicate the minimum class information at startup (around 35 records), then replicate the information for the selected subclass when the user enters the L menu (around 30 records). After all, a player is only interested in what abilities he can buy, not what some other subclass could buy.
This now gives around 0.1 sec delay on startup, and around 0.2 sec delay the first time you go into the L menu.
Much better.

One extra change that will not affect DC users but may be of benefit to other servers.
Each ability has in it a hard coded maximum level. For example, DruidVampire is hardcoded to have a maximum level of 10. The subclass configuration cannot up these maximums, only reduce them. So individual sites can use the subclass configuration to limit DruidVampire to a max of 5, but not to a max of 15.
Since lots of servers have radically different setups from DC, it may be that some abilities should be allowed to be higher than what the hard coded values currently allow. Especially if they want to add radical subtypes.

So basically I have upped the hardcoded maximums.
e.g. Druidvampire, ArmorVampire, EnergyVampire, EnhancedDamage, EnhancedReduction all upped to a maxlevel of 20, Surge upped to 4, drip to 6, MonsterPoints to 30 ... and so on.
This does not affect abilities with more definitive limits e.g. LoadedWeapons, where setting it to have a maxlevel of 10 would be pointless.

This will not affect DC, as the SubClass configuration will keep the MaxLevels as they currently are.