[v1.7.0+] Race: Jury-rig

[Zizzo]

Amazing what can spring up out of a stray wacky idea… In this case, for instance, I was thinking, "a character that could wield lots of gems would be neat". That got me thinking about how to do that, and ideas kept piling up on top of other ideas, until it all came together in the form of my new Race: Jury-rig addon.

Jury-rigs are constructs built out of mismatched golem parts, built around a multi-gem core. They can wield up to five gems based on one of their race talents, and another talent lets them add "mods" to add more equipment slots:

• Weapon mounts (adds mainhand and offhand slots; up to 2)
• Articulated "hand" actuators (adds gloves slot; up to 2)
• Foot-based locomotors (adds boots slot; up to 2)
• Head mount (adds helm and amulet slots; up to 2)
• Ring spindles (adds 2 ring slots each; up to 3)
• General utility mounts (adds tool slot; up to 3)
• Not a "mod" per se, but some rearrangements to allow you to fit into body armor (adds body and cloak slots; up to 1)

They start with a weapons mod and a tool mod (plus light and quiver slots, because that would be just cruel), and can add up to five more mods. In particular, you'll get an opportunity at the start of the game to add one mod immediately; Brawlers and similar classes will obviously want to take a hands mod.

(Now, fair warning: the player tiles are… rough for now. One of the features I'm proud of is that the player actually visually changes shape when you take certain mods like hands or head. That involves a lot of tile overlays, though, so making proper graphics for all of them is going to take a while; for now I'm using… well…

juryrig-body-samples.png (20.23 KiB) Viewed 100 times

)

Now, I think I've covered all the cases that could break (famous last words… ), but there are no doubt still bugs; as always, this is the best place to report them.

[Implementation notes:]

Code: Select all

Hooks:
  ToME:load [to load all our stuff]
  Entity:loadList [to add a worldmap entrance]
  Actor:updateModdableTile:skin [character tile juggling]
  Actor:updateModdableTile:middle [character tile juggling]
  Actor:updateModdableTile:front [character tile juggling]
  ToME:playerDumpJSON [tweaks for online character sheet]
Superload:
  mod.class.interface.Combat:
    combatDefense() [changes from a race talent]
    combatDefenseRanged() [changes from a race talent]
    combatArmor() [changes from a race talent]
    combatArmorHardiness() [changes from a race talent]
    combatCritReduction() [changes from a race talent]
  mod.class.Game:
    changeLevelReal() [to deliver a message on entering certain towns]

[Zizzo]

Frequently Asked Questions:

Wait, no gloves slots? How do I play a Brawler?

At the start of the game, you will have an opportunity to add a mod, including one that gives gloves slots. (Indeed, if the addon can detect that your class relies on unarmed combat, it will encourage you to take a hands mod at this point.)

How do I get mods in Infinite Dungeon or the Arena?

This race is currently only supported in the Age of Ascendancy campaign; We Apologize for the Inconvenience.™ We hope to add support for other campaigns in future releases.

Hey, my character looks different on the character sheet!

That's unavoidable. The online characters vault obviously doesn't know about our custom body tiles for the Jury-rig race, and in their absence the character doll on your online character sheet would end up being just your worn equipment floating in mid-air, as you may have seen with characters of other addon-provided races. We avoid that by modifying the character sheet for export to the server, replacing the custom Jury-rig body tiles with the standard runic-golem body tiles used for Alchemists' golems. We Apologize for the Convenience.™

[Zizzo]

And first bugfix. I was so proud of my trick of using a shrunken gem image as a moddable tile to show the gem the player is wielding. Turned out to be about half functional; it shows up on the inventory dialog and character sheet dialog, but not on the map (which is really annoying…), and it does show up on the online character sheet — full size. Well, we're already fiddling with the character sheet JSON on the way out to the server, so another tweak to remove the gem is easy; that's going out as v1a. We Apologize for the Inconvenience.™

[Just a dood]

Love the addon so far, had a few characters die horribly. Currently the last talent in the racial tree gives a Lua error, removes the debuffs, and does not go on cooldown. Also, while testing having multiple sets of weapon slots, some talents hit only a set amount of times like arcane strike and dual strike, which I sort of get, but flurry seems to hit 12 times instead of 6. Not sure what the intended behavior is, and I don't know what is going on under the hood to make them different. also, it would be cool if you could see all your weapons at once.

[Zizzo]

Love the addon so far, had a few characters die horribly.

Yeah, still not sure whether the starting zone guardian is too deadly…

Currently the last talent in the racial tree gives a Lua error, removes the debuffs, and does not go on cooldown.

*slaps forehead* Of course, the one talent I didn't test… I'll work on that; We Apologize for the Inconvenience.™

Also, while testing having multiple sets of weapon slots, some talents hit only a set amount of times like arcane strike and dual strike, which I sort of get, but flurry seems to hit 12 times instead of 6. Not sure what the intended behavior is, and I don't know what is going on under the hood to make them different. also, it would be cool if you could see all your weapons at once.

(shrug) AFAIK, I'm not doing anything differently from any other race addon that gives more mainhand/offhand slots. I'll investigate.

In the meantime, got another update, more a compatibility update than a bugfix. You'll recall (or not ) that over in Automatic Notes, we make an effort to discard collected notes for zones like Blighted Ruins that we can't go back to. Well, the Jury-rig racial starting zone is basically a re-skin of Blighted Ruins, so it needs the same treatment. Fortunately, Automatic Notes provides a hook for other addons to let it know about zones like this that need the "no-return" treatment. That's going out as v1a.

[Shad3]

An insight on why some talents hit more (or less) times than expected: using Arcane Strike and Flurry as examples, Arcane Strike uses AttackTargetWith function which specifies the weapon to use, while Flurry uses AttackTarget (which does attacks with all equipped weapons).

[Zizzo]

An insight on why some talents hit more (or less) times than expected: using Arcane Strike and Flurry as examples, Arcane Strike uses AttackTargetWith function which specifies the weapon to use, while Flurry uses AttackTarget (which does attacks with all equipped weapons).

That makes sense, thanks. (I might even go back and add an FAQ about that, since other people are bound to ask.)

Currently the last talent in the racial tree gives a Lua error, removes the debuffs, and does not go on cooldown.

Okay, that should be fixed in v1a.2, just pushed out; We Apologize for the Error.™ (Backstory: I basically copy-pasted this talent from an earlier abandoned race idea, and forgot to change some of the internal talent/effect names.)