This thread is to generate some awareness about SEVERAL huge updates happening to my Quality of Life series of add-ons, as well as the addition of THREE entirely new ones! In general, they will improve their core behaviors, as well as add various new features to what they already did.
However, I DO regret to inform that (as this is required for the update and improvement of the code) there WILL be some incompatibility between the old and new versions of Qol#01 (Particle Effects) and QoL#04 (Healing Reduction). I HIGHLY recommend that players DO NOT update these add-ons if they are currently using a character that is utilizing an old version, as I have NOT tested exactly what would occur in the transition between such (nor do I really intend to generate a compatibility).
If there are any questions or things that someone wants to discuss about these add-ons-- Anything whatsoever-- This is the place to ask! However, if it's error/bug reports about the old versions, please hold onto those until the new versions come out! I have done MUCH extensive testing and bug-fixing to all of these, so it may no longer exist anymore!
Anyways, disclaimers aside-- Here's some of the new add-ons and updates you can expect as of the start of July!
UPDATED
Quality of Life #01: Particle Effects
Some of the changes are new particles, more "extensible" coding, and the tightening of various graphics.
There are also a few functions within that allow you to delegate particle effects and actor shaders in a much more organized way. This is simply under the assumption that this add-on becomes a standard for ToME gameplay (since there seems to be extremely high demand for it).
Stability: Very High
- Enemies that clone themselves or things that might otherwise "duplicate" effects tend to mildly confuse QoL#01-- But not in any kind of game-breaking way. I am still investigating an "elegant" way to fix this!
SCRAPPED
Quality of Life #02: Stealth Indicators
This add-on would cause "visual indicators" to appear when stealthed or invisible, showing you precisely what tiles enemies (you could see) currently thought you were. This was intended to "improve" the "sneakiness" factor of playing stealthy and cunning characters (since the AI is actually PROGRAMMED to be deceived and stupefied by your disappearance!)-- Until I realized that knowing exactly where enemies THOUGHT you were was a form of cheating and/or enhanced knowledge via DLC. I don't advocate this, so I decided not to release this one. If there are disagreements, I will be opening a thread for this add-on at the same time that I release everything else. Until then, I do not intend to release this one.
Stability: Perfect
- No changes to gameplay; It only adds visuals.
unchanged
Quality of Life #03: Summoning Timer
This add-on is mostly unchanged. In the future, I want to have different visuals for different kinds of temporary modes (such as "Ambuscade", "Shivgoroth/Telugoroth Form", etc...)
Stability: Perfect
- No changes to gameplay; It only adds visuals.
And now, here are the new ones coming down the pipeline!REVAMPED!
Quality of Life #04: Healing Reduction
It now has a new feature: It can display exactly how much healing you are NOT receiving in situations where you should be getting healed-- For example, when trapped in an iceblock, all healing is reduced to 0-- Or if you are "blood locked", you may be unable to heal beyond a certain boundary. It will display this amount of healing that DIDN'T occur as a damage number: "(X anti-healing)"
And so, in regards to the former, the "multiplicative" reduction can now be turned off so that anyone can utilize this feature WITHOUT the... Ahem-- "challenge factor" involves in activating it. Beware though: The setting is permanent to your character once their level hits 10!
Stability: Moderately High
- Despite all my testing, there are still some "funny" situations where the add-on might get confused by duplication/cloning enemies/effects. It has been fail-safed and foolproofed as much as possible though.
- There is no real way of "discerning" when a "loss" of healing factor should be additive or multiplicative (for example: "Cursed Body" or "Goedalath Rock"). If there are other add-ons that utilize effects that reduce healing, there is a parameter to temporarily suppress it-- But otherwise, it can't know what to do.
Quality of Life #05: Various (Fatal) Warnings
This add-on will produce a warning message if the player's character attempts to make a movement in the presence of enemies if that movement would require 3 or more turns. This is to prevent the single most common (and unfair/lame) cause of death in the midst of Tales of Maj'Eyal combat: Thinking that it's okay to make a movement when it's totally not (how dare you!). For reference, this is usually caused by the "additive" nature of movement speed reduction-- Such as when a target has two stun effects on at once, or their movement/global speed is being reduced by something while they're stunned.
It can also display a message whenever you have a pre-talent usage type of failure-- Such as "Spell Feedback", "Confusion", equilibrium failure, and so on.
(You can turn these warnings on and off in the game settings.)
I intend to add more various types of warnings in the future-- But for now, let's see how well this operates.
Stability: Near-Perfect
- I have detected absolutely no strange interactions with ToME while this is active-- But there are still certainly ways I could imagine other add-ons could find to break it!
THIS is the one I'm MOST proud of and anxious to release!Quality of Life #06: Turn Delay
This very special add-on does something that I always felt has been missing from ToME gameplay: It places a "delay" between the individual actions of those around you, allowing you to PRECISELY see what exactly is happening, one action at a time.
In game settings, you can choose exactly how long this delay is, and in the future, I'm going to implement a way to choose exactly what types of actions are delayed, as well as allowing the player to choose which actions should be "spotlighted" by the camera (I know, this is a potentially annoying feature, so it currently only activates if your delay time is VERY long).
Stability: Moderate
- There is overloaded behavior in "GameEnergyBased.tick" and "GameEnergyBased.tickLevel". Attempts to superload this behavior only resulted in unstable behavior, so I've decided to just have it overload these for now. It is upsetting too, because the changes are pretty much trivial, and are entirely an issue of the logic being impossible to triumph.
- I have not tested EVERY type of circumstance possible, and there is simply no way I could! I must CAUTION those that use this add-on that some unstable behavior may occur, so play on Developer/Cheat mode to keep your save file as safe as possible!
Quality of Life #07: Visible Size Categories
Simply put, this add-on makes every character's visual tile bigger or smaller based on their Size Category! Now, all those mice, rabbits, ants, and snakes you find will appear smaller than usual, while those Trolls, Bone Giants, Dragons, and other nasties will appear towering and mighty!
This add-on will give you a new appreciation for the "scale" of what you face in the world of Eyal!
Best of all: The effects are dynamic! If the ability is available to you, the add-on WILL respond to sudden changes in Size Category. Marvel as your character, at will, becomes giant-- Then puny! Pwahahaha!
Stability: Near-Perfect
- This add-on is ENTIRELY aesthetic and does not actually "change" gameplay in any way (asides from changing visual sizes and somewhat repositioning tiles).
Here's hoping I didn't miss anything!