Chronomancy Development

[edge2054]

Speed Control done.

Thought more about premonition. I think creating a savefile, giving you x turns to goof off, and then autoloading the savefile would be fun. Let you see what's in a vault without opening it or gauge the abilities of a new creature you've never fought. Note that the savefile would autoload when the effect wore off so it wouldn't be a free death ability anymore, just a glimpse of a possible future

[Grey]

That would be quite cool! If you die whilst premonitioning you go back to the original point though? One worry I'd have is that long save times would make the ability too annoying to use.

[yufra]

I believe it is possible to keep a savefile in memory rather than send it to the disk... that would greatly speed up the performance at the cost of memory.

[edge2054]

If you died with Premonition active it would just reload.

As to the save times, they've been nearly instantaneous for me for a few betas now. Other people are still experiencing long save times?

I'm more worried about load times myself.

[edge2054]

Thoughts on the Infinite Traveler talents?

Code: Select all

	talents_types = {
		["chronomancy/chronomancy"]={false, 0},
		["chronomancy/probability"]={true, 0.3},
		["chronomancy/speed-control"]={true, 0},
		["chronomancy/temporal-combat"]={true, 0},
		["chronomancy/threading"]={false, 0},
		["chronomancy/timetravel"]={true, 0},
		["chronomancy/weaving"]={true, 0},
		["technique/dualweapon-attack"]={true, 0.3},
		["technique/combat-training"]={true, 0.2},
		["cunning/stealth"]={false, 0.3},
		["cunning/lethality"]={true, 0.3},
		["cunning/dirty"]={true, 0.3},
	},
	talents = {
		[ActorTalents.T_DUAL_STRIKE] = 1,
		[ActorTalents.T_WEAPON_COMBAT] = 1,
		[ActorTalents.T_BACKTRACK] = 1,
		[ActorTalents.T_LETHALITY] = 1,
	},

[Sradac]

Looks good, backtrack is a good starting skill. They remind me of the Planeswalker Thief kit from AD&D.

[edge2054]

Reworked Static History. It now removes half the caster's paradox for a few turns and then give it all back.

Fixed the weaving tree otherwise, added a swap talent, moved damage smearing to another tree so it's not generic, and updated the talents to use the new format.

[edge2054]

Got some more work done yesterday as per my blog post.

Anyway, anomalies aside, the Infinite Traveler is close to done.

Here's the talents left.

Time Skip - Still debating how to work this one. It'll remove an actor for a few turns and then drop an unresistable knockback down on the tile it occupied. My current thought is to save the actor to the game level (I'll need some help with that), create a Temporal Distortion object on the tile, then when the object decays have the knockback go off and reload the actor.

Premonition - Outlined above. Note that I changed it up a bit so it's really just a premonition and not a free life.

See the Threads - Uber awesomeness. DG knows what we're doing here.

Revision - Reloads the level.

[Final Master]

Looks good edge; I'd love to test play one of them. :)

[Grey]

I'd suggest changing the name of Premonition to something like "Fork in Time" to stop it being confused with the other Premonition.

Glad this is shaping up more - I'm looking forward to finally getting to try the new classes out.

[edge2054]

Well when DG had made the other Premonition I renamed the chronmancy version to Darkgod Stole my Talent Name but I decided that that name was a bit to long.

[Grey]

"DarkGod = Thief" :)

[edge2054]

Time Skip is finished for the most part with some help from yufra!! (because yufra's the man and all that ) I'd still kinda like it to do a knockback when the time catches up with the target but it's alright as it is.

Doing some playtesting on the Infinite Traveler and they start off really weak, just like Rogues Not sure really what to do about it or if anything should be done about it. I did rearrange the Temporal Combat tree so they can learn the ranged weapon attack at level 1 instead of the spellpower increasing talent (which wouldn't be useful really at level one anyhow).

Also made fatigue effect Paradox failure chance. Basically whatever your fail rate is will be multiplied by your fatigue.

Code: Select all

local chance = math.pow (((self:getParadox() - self:getWil()) /200), 2)*((100 + self:combatFatigue()) / 100)

Note that that code will change a bit once I get to the Paradox Mage talents. It'll probably replace the self:getWil() line with a minus modifier with the modifier being will * 1 + (sometalent/10) or 0. In other words paradox mages will have a talent that lets them act as though they have higher willpower then they really do for purposes of calculating paradox backfire and failure rates.

Anyway, I went through the Temporal Warden trees and they're pretty much done too. I'd like to do some tweaking but all except for one or two talents are done I believe.

[edge2054]

After much thought and discussion on IRC last night I decided to ditch the Infinite Traveler and Temporal Warden in their current form and merge them into a dual-wield/archery hybrid that will use the name Temporal Warden.

To facilitate this we'll need a new tree.

Temporal Archery
Celerity - Zero energy cost, short duration +movement speed that lets you switch weapons without spending an action.
True Aim - A single ranged shot with physical resist penetration.
Quick Fire - A single ranged shot that costs zero energy to fire.
Phase Shot - Phases your shot, turning it into a beam that deals temporal damage.

Also going to change up Temporal Combat a bit.
Strength of Purpose - Increases strength by a percentage of willpower, sustained.
Kinetic Folding - A ranged melee attack.
Quantum Feed - Increases spellpower by a percentage of willpower, sustained.
Damage Smearing - Nerfed the duration on this a bit.

[edge2054]

Temporal Archery tree is finished.

Decided to give Temporal Wardens the following talents.

Code: Select all

		["technique/archery-bow"]={false, 0.1},
		["technique/archery-utility"]={true, 0.1},
		["technique/dualweapon-attack"]={true, 0.1},
		["technique/dualweapon-training"]={false, 0.1},
		["technique/combat-training"]={true, 0.2},
		["cunning/lethality"]={false, 0},
		["cunning/survival"]={false, 0},
		["chronomancy/chronomancy"]={true, 0},
		["chronomancy/speed-control"]={true, 0},
		["chronomancy/temporal-archery"]={true, 0.3},
		["chronomancy/temporal-combat"]={true, 0.3},
		["chronomancy/timetravel"]={false, 0},
		["chronomancy/weaving"]={true, 0},

Initially I was going to go with the base Archery tree (the one with steady shot) with Archery Utility trainable but the base archery tree could probably use some help and the two stance talents don't really fit with the mobility I'm trying to impart in this class.

Right now I'm looking at the stamina issue though. The class already has a couple of deep talent sinks to get around stat issues plus two methods of fighting they can focus on. I could give them the utility combat technique tree for stamina regen but I might instead do a stamina regen over time talent in the Temporal Combat tree (and remove Kinetic Folding for now, it'll probably come back though for the melee hybrids in another tree).

All that aside...

Also have 10 or so anomalies coded. All of them pull random targets and have varying effects based on paradox level. So even though it's only 10 so far it should create a lot of random chaos anyhow. There's a list below.

Long Range Teleport, Short Range Teleport, Random Stun, Random Slow, Random Haste, Spacetime Correction (Paradox Loss), Spacetime Damage (Paradox Gain), Temporal Storm (centered on caster, nasty random status effects each turn), Bubble (random Time Prisons).

Still have another ten ideas or so beyond that to get coded but I'd like to do some Warden playtesting.