Monster Descriptors

[rav3n]

ok until i finish setting up the page here's some cool updatesa and info:

Monster Descriptor
in DoomsDay, Monster Descriptors, aka the small text under the Monster's life bar will be extremly important. 90% of the monsters have something as descriptions which can be:

Resitantances: Although no monster has 100% immunity to a single source of damage, some monsters have high resitances (up to 75 in Hell) to some elements. the first example you find in the MOD are the Wight, a new undead monster who have a 50% Poison Resistance. under his life bar you can see "poison resistant".

Elemental Damage: This works the same way as resistances. Some monsters do elemental damage instead of normal damage. For example, the new monsters called Harpies who wanders in Dark Wood have "flaming hit" in their Descriptor.

[color=yellow]Miscellaneous Abilties[color=white]: Some monsters have special abilities, such as raising another monsters or laying eggs. Right as you walk off the Rogue Camp u'll see ghostly white creatures called Spirits who have "drain stamina" under their lifebar.

[color=yellow]Player-like Abilities[color=white]: In DoomsDay lots of monsters have Skills that are also used by players. Examples include the Quill Rats who now have "[color=orange]bone caster[color=white]" as Descriptor, which means he can use skills from the Poison And Bone skill tree from the necromancer. The new Desert Samurais encoutered in Act 2 have "[color=orange]berseker [color=red]flaming hit[color=white]" which means they cause Fire damage every time they hit you, and that they can use the Barbarian's Frenzy.

All of these will be very common. The color of Descriptors are like this:
[color=yellow]Yellow[color=white]: Random Uniques Abilities, such as Stone Skin or Extra Stong
[color=orange]Orange[color=white]: Player-like Abilities
White[color=white]: Miscellanious Abilities, such as Drain Mana or Lay Eggs
[color=red]Red[color=white]: Fire Damage or Fire Resistance
[color=#00bfff]Blue[color=white]: Cold Damage or Resistance
Bright White: Lightning Damage or Resistance
[color=lime]Green[color=white]: Poison Damage or Resitance
[color=pink]Pink[color=white]: Magical Damage or Resistance

I hope you guys find it interesting... soon i'll post some screenshots of the Descriptors working

[Alkalund]

As I said before, this is a nice idea as long as you can select the colors in a smart, good way so there is no confusion and the modifiers can be easily identified by the colors, it will be cool 8)

[Nisaea]

Hello Rav3n,

New here, but extremely excited about your mod. Hope you get better soon and get back to modding full-time! ;-)

I'm really looking forward to playing with your mod, "but" this extreme description seems a little weird. Why should characters know so much about monsters? Does it make sense to see the strength and weaknesses of our every ennemies before even having fought them?

My suggestion is this (if this is possible in a mod, of course): bring back to old Diablo 1 way of handling this kind of info. First time your fought a monster, you knew nothing about it. After 25 or so kills, you learned something and it was written beneath the monster's name.

And since in Diablo 2 there are so many kinds of info and powers, this discovery could be gradual. After 25 kills of the same monster type, you learn one thing. 25 kills later, something else. And so on... Doesn't this feel more realistic?

And as for SuperUnique bosses: we shouldn't know anything at all. You could even make them have (some) random powers. Even worse, you could even remove their life-bars. The only way to know what works would be actual experience from the player (not the character that player plays).

That would make the game more realistic and quite a bit harder. And after playing Diablo 2 for 5 years, a harder game is what most of us are looking for!!!

Thanks for reading, and keep modding!!!

Nisaea

[Alkalund]

[quote="Nisaea";p="67822"]My suggestion is this (if this is possible in a mod, of course): bring back to old Diablo 1 way of handling this kind of info. First time your fought a monster, you knew nothing about it. After 25 or so kills, you learned something and it was written beneath the monster's name.

And since in Diablo 2 there are so many kinds of info and powers, this discovery could be gradual. After 25 kills of the same monster type, you learn one thing. 25 kills later, something else. And so on... Doesn't this feel more realistic?[/quote]

Unfortunately this is a modification that would involve a good amount of work in the game's dll files. It is not easy to do at all

Welcome to the Phrozen Keep by the way

[rav3n]

hello there, welcome to Phrozen Forums and to the DD Forum

thx for the suggestions
but I don't that's possible at all
I don't have such programming knowledge... altough i've been reading a lot lately about offsets and such I'm still unable to do such things. sorry...

but one thing that sounded really interesting was removing life bar
I believe that this might be possible... altough I'm not sure.

I'll take it a look since currently I'm doing some monster editiong anyway...

well cya

[ChaoticDeath]

just make the original life bar black instead of red. then when the monsters life goes down and is supposed to leave black, black should already be there! hope that helps, and good luck with your mod.

[rav3n]

[quote="ChaoticDeath";p="68126"]just make the original life bar black instead of red. then when the monsters life goes down and is supposed to leave black, black should already be there! hope that helps, and good luck with your mod.[/quote]

i don't know if doing that withouth editing ALL monsters' life bar would be easy

[Xenobi]

life bar or not, there all gonna die

[ChaoticDeath]

couldn't you just highlite a big area where it keeps it and just type one big thing to get all the monsters? I dont think that they have an EXACT life bar for each monster...
and besides, it may not even require hex editing!

[Joel]

[quote="Alkalund";p="67827"][quote="Nisaea";p="67822"]My suggestion is this (if this is possible in a mod, of course): bring back to old Diablo 1 way of handling this kind of info. First time your fought a monster, you knew nothing about it. After 25 or so kills, you learned something and it was written beneath the monster's name.

And since in Diablo 2 there are so many kinds of info and powers, this discovery could be gradual. After 25 kills of the same monster type, you learn one thing. 25 kills later, something else. And so on... Doesn't this feel more realistic?[/quote]

Unfortunately this is a modification that would involve a good amount of work in the game's dll files. It is not easy to do at all
[/quote]

Hmmm , that's an idea ... let's see how it's coming

[Alkalund]

[quote="Joel";p="70705"]Hmmm , that's an idea ... let's see how it's coming[/quote]

Cross your fingers everyone, Joel has seen the suggestion... perhaps he will get something similar working

That is indeed more realistic, until you finally know all monster resistances/immunities by heart. When you start a new character, you know all beforehand... this happened in D1 as well. But probably this would be harder to do in D2, since there are so many more monsters.

[Nisaea]

Hello,

Thanks for the hope, Joel!

But if it's not possible to implement the counter, would there be an easy way to make the descriptors disappear completely? Is there something like a boolean switch we could turn off, or would a modder have to edit all the monsters seperately?

I'm not asking this for the official DD Mod, but it's something I'd like to do to the mod for myself. (Once we can get our greedy little hands on it!!!)

I think that all those descriptors make the game too easy. For me, the ideal would be this: no descriptors and no life bar. Of course, there would be no immunities in the game, only high resists. That would make for an interesting game for all of us who played Diablo 2 for too many hours already!!!

Thanks,

Nisaea

[Joel]

ok got some infos ...

Using the SG kill counter in a simplified form to keep track of the kill per monster ID.

Now I've to find the part of code that display monsters description and add some test on these value.

[dafox]

Well i hope some1 knows what hes talkin about lol :iamwithstupid:

[rav3n]

in alpha-testing doomsday, it came out that descriptors did a nice job. they are nice, easy, inovative. what makes them shine is the fact that there are so many new monsters, and it's cool to know something about them right away

also when dealing with bosses you can always pick appropriate skills.
today this happened when i encountered daggoth - a new boss monster cold enchanted.

i was using a javazon with shiver javelin (cold damage skill) and when i encountered him, i simply switched to storm javelin (lightning damage skill) for a much easier combat.