ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Odd topic name, but wasn't sure how else to put it. Quick explanation, in case anyone has further advice for me beyond the basic question I have, I'm looking to make an arcane staff specific skill tree similar to psi-fighting, with a few other things pulled in. Most of the bits and pieces of individual talents I've found, and can plagiarize...errr borrow. Psi-fighting is easy to find, other.lua in psionic talent has the actual telekinetic grasp and beyond the flesh. What I'm not clear on is where anything checks to apply the other.lua talents if you take psionic/psi-fighting AND even more specifically where the code is that creates/reveals the PSIONIC_FOCUS inventory slot. If someone could point me to those two spots I can probably brute force my way through figuring out how it works.

In case it isn't obvious, I have little clue what I'm doing and mostly rely on cut and paste and then painfully figuring out the parameters I want to change. So if anyone has further advice like, "That's kind of main file stuff, maybe don't try." Please feel free.

If anyone wants to know the basic outline here's what I've worked up/found to copy so far. Basic premise is something of a combination of advanced staff techniques, cunning-shadow magic, and obviously psi-fighting.

Staff of the Magi short name advanced-staff-combat

Talent 1:
Originally I was considering a copy of staff mastery with some slight additional bonus, about on par with for example the duelist or reaving combat t1s, how they give a basic combat ability but also a little something something. BUT since staff combat is available for training to all arcane it feels redundant just to not have to take the generic tree, even if I figured out how to make them mutually exclusive in terms of bonuses. I think I may just reflavor telekinetic smash or the first talent of magical combat. Or maybe just t1 shadow magic? Magical combat's proc might be a bit too similar to what I want to do for the t4. That also ties into thoughts on reworking telekinetic grasp.

Talent 2:
going with something like the buff from t2 shadow magic or reaving combat. I like how that feels as a t2 in those trees. Not sure exactly the form, but likely a sustain and definitely a spellpower boost.

Talent 3:
Instead of warding weapon, I think I'm going to borrow the dagger block code chunk from objects.lua to make blocking with the Magical Focus possible, and maybe give it a version of Stonewarden's ability to block spell damage. Also, a blocked damage to mana feed. Takes the place of the shadow magic t3 and psi-fighting t3, in one thematic package.

Talent 4:
I'm thinking a double-cast sustain. Haven't really found anything I can steal to copy that yet, although I could have sworn there is one somewhere. % chance for your magical focus to cast a %power version of any spell ability you cast at a target. Honestly might make the t1 the magical combat proc after all so someone could choose between being a melee staff or caster staff and still get full use out of the tree.


Telekinetic Grasp:
reworked and just called Magical Focus. Only Staff objects (maybe gems, that does feel like it would play nice as an alternative with stone alchemy escort pickup). Reflavor and rename things, otherwise a straight heist. I hope. Except I don't know where/what/how it actually calls to inventory to create the psionic focus slot, and if/how much of that I can interact with. I don't think it ever specifically calls that slot out by name, so I might be able to leave it as PSIONIC FOCUS and just rewrite flavor text, but I want to look at it and see if there is anything I need/want to modify.

Beyond The Flesh:
reworked into an auto-fire Channel Staff, range based on talent level. Ideally, I think I would like the power/damage to be based on the actual staff combat t1 skill level, making having both trees a little more useful/integrated. Between Channel Staff itself and Beyond The Flesh's bow shooting, pretty sure I can work this one out by pure trial and error. Integrating cross-skill talent level checking for the damage...I'm pretty sure I can find examples in some other tree somewhere.

Searching the code base for PSIONIC_FOCUS should find what you need.
However, what you want to do with manipulating the Psionic Focus slot, Talent 3 and Talent 4 will require Advanced Black Magic.

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My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.

Good call. I know so little about what I'm doing I'm usually content to just open files that seem likely and skim through them, because before I inevitably go cross-eyed trying to figure out what means what I often learn something even if it wasn't what I was looking for. I'll try that at some point, thanks.

I *HOPE* the T3 isn't too bad, really. Even if I have to fudge it to just be magic. Should amount to checkinventory for Magical Focus = staff (I know that's wrong syntax, just off the top of my head explanation. Psi-fighting has a couple of similar checks to make sure a weapon is equipped I'll be steali...borrowing.) Then it's just a matter of 'creating' block value like the dagger block code in the object file, and applying it...somewhere. Directly to self if need be, although now that I think about it that means I need to check the block display text to make sure it doesn't try to reference the shield/weapon doing the blocking. (and a block skill on the hotbar, that one seems fairly straightforward, too). Block value will probably be some TalentLevelxgetinventory magical focus quality level formula, I'd think. Maybe +%spellpower. Forcing in spell block as well may be beyond me. I haven't looked at the Stonewarden real hard or Spirit Shield. Tacking on a damage taken to mana conversion shouldn't be terrible, again I think I can steal from...Harmony? Maybe, Anti-Magic. One of them has a damage to resource conversion.

Manipulating the PSIONIC FOCUS slot itself to be slightly different...yeah, not sure I can pull that off at my skill level. I believe if not, I might be able to largely ignore it and still make use of it, all of the actual effects are determined by skills in psi-fighting and psionic/projection (and t4 finer-energy-manipulation). As well as the filters for what can be grasped in Telekinetic Grasp.

I'm pretty sure you're right about the T4, too. Any talent that does anything remotely on that level makes me go cross-eyed trying to figure out what it's doing.

I don't mean to be condescending here, but I really don't think you are ready for what you want to try.
However, it would be a great idea for you to have a look at the code to get some idea of why you can't do it yet.

The Psionic Focus slot is very confusing and a bit awkward to work with.

Effects like Warding Weapon and Parry are buried inside the Combat/attackTargetWith() function, and can't be duplicated without overwriting the entire function. (A quick way to break compatibility.)

The double cast sustain is likely fairly easy to do. But you will need to have a good level of coding finesse to pull it off.
For something similar. I suggest looking at my Midnight addon, and examining the Chromatic Flash talent. It doesn't actually do anything close to what you are after so in some ways its an example of how not to do what you want. But if you can't work out a good way to do your double cast, it should give you some ideas on how to make something a bit simpler.

_________________
My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.

No worries, that's exactly the sort of thing I was wondering. I appreciate it.