Mazz VI: Wisdom of the Mancers

[ChrisP]

Yeah, Dac, the game we played last night was pretty easy too. I grossly miscalculated the mancer mana regen rate (this is what betas are for though) and it will be lowered to about 15% in b04.

I also played the Electro last night. Once I figured out there was no way I'd run out of mana, I started using Bolt on everything, even lone units. Tons of Storms didn't hurt either. We still lost though, but mostly due to bad luck with the Watcher.

The mana regen is easily fixed, but I discovered a serious bug in Loathing that also nerfed the game. Turns out that after adding additional lines of script, seemingly random links point to the wrong actions, which is about the worst thing any script or code could do. Either the map has gotten corrupt over so many revisions and saves, or Loathing just freaks out when you cram too much script into it.

I found and corrected a half dozen errors, but there's probably over a thousand links and chances are some of them still do either nothing or the wrong thing at the wrong time. Needless to say, after fixing this, I won't be adding any more script to the map. At least most of it was done anyway.

[dac]

one more time here cp, if you really want to make mazz harder you'll have to throw boss units at us earlier. The slightly larger waves are still pretty easy to deal with - the only real time i even feel a little pinched is the styg wave that tends to come from mid and is at least double in size, particularly if you had to move west and you get the same wave from the east. The only issue there though is that the mort may have to use an extra splash, but vetting up so much it tends to be worthwhile.

i also like hmp's idea of starting with iron thrall - that way mort cant just splash it and be done with it, and the fg has to give more time to vetting up.

[Archer]

Version control! You know you want to.

I've noticed that at long ranges, a Storm will often come up short of its target, sometimes well short, usually wasting a very large amount of mana. Is there any chance for a fix for this, or if not, do you have any insight as to what might cause it?

~J

[Graydon]

I'm curious about the specifics of your 'script limits' CP.

There are two limits that you can read about in the Loathing Mesh Limits window, one being physical map actions out of a total of 1024, and the other is map action paramater size, which is out of 65536.

Back in the day people would comment about how it seems map actions stop running around the value of 700 actions (out of the potential 1024 limit). The reason for this is that the map action param size has reached its brink, which usually happens a decent time before the map actions ever have a chance to hit their proper limit.

When you say you've run out of map actions, is it that 1024 limit, or is it the other?

I'm working on a map that's super super heavy on script so far, but I've managed to work out a system. I'm sitting at about 680 map actions right now, but my map action param limit is still at about 50k/65536, allowing me tons more room to add actions.

Curious what limit you're hitting, cause if it's not the 1024 limit, there might be ways to squeeze a few more MAs out of the mesh.

[GodzFire]

I might have the answer then. I opened up b2 of the new Mazz in Loathing, and the map action paramater size was actually 82000/65536; you're reading that right, about 17,000 over. I even asked Myrd, who was on Hotline, "isn't that bad?".

[Myrd]

Stop making up stories about me.

[gvari]

I agree completely with DAC and HMP, making first enemies tougher(Iron Thrall) and adding bosses at beginning would make the game so much much more interesting.
Viles also. They're more of a nuisance than a threat when the mancers and dwarves are vetted, but at the start they could perhaps pose a nice challenge.

Do you have any plans to edit unit resistances as well?
I realize it might be risky, but one instance I can think of is giving boss units more res to explosive damage, but that's only because I feel it should be the melees job to take care of them, rather than dwarves, also editing the Lich/Arch Lich,(repelling field perhaps?) since theres a number of ways to make short work of them, they pose almost no threat to an experianced team.

Oh, and while I don't know what you've changed about the mancers already I want to ask if it's possible to lower the cost of Hellfire?
It's much more expensive than a Wall of Fire, and isn't all that much more usefull, since a wall always hits what you want it to hit, but Hellfire isn't very precise.

[dac]

hey ing,

i wanted to chime in again. dunno why im finding this so fascinating and cp feel free to tell me to shut up anytime, i wont take it TOO personally

ing brings up an interesting point about liches. the fountain from lich kills archers in one hit - which goes back to hmp's point about suiciding the units being a good idea. i think that if he successfully hits something with fountain, that unit should just about automatically die (exception would be mazz or pyro in my book, due to natural resistance or a bajillion life)

the fg shouldnt be able to walk into fountains, freeze for a sec and act like its nothing. sooo my suggestion is that if a non leveled unit gets hit by fountain it should die. that way the arch lich is a legit threat, and he's already superb versus non-forestgiant melee!

second is the regular lich. this actually goes back to i think archers question about the storm clouds not having reach. the storm clouds that the liches put up are incredibly good at killing things. the pathfinder basically wont survive it and ive even lost mazz to a storm with about 3 pus arrows freezing him when he had a chancce to move. its a legit spell. i think the storm cloud radius should be increased so that the lich autotarget with the storm doesnt fall patheitcally far away from the group. they really dont do anything unless a unit gets caught in between the lich and his actual target, or if a unit is standing on the edge right next to the lich's spawn point. i know about 3 shots from the storm cloud will kill a pathfinder, likely similar for archers so i love the way the spell is already - damage wise. give it some distance, but im still in favor of our own ELE having a very limited range to cast storm. ive also noticed that you cant be too close to cast storm either, it seems almost like a fetch shot in that regard. i like the radius and not being able to autosave just about any unit thats about to die.

beholder stonings are already great, and i love the repelling field. i think an idea might be to still let them fly across the map if they are pussed and whacked by a fg or hit by a ranger or something - currently they stay in place even if hit by strong attacks which doesnt really make a whole lot of sense to me, although it is useful. taking some tools away from the players will make the map harder.

speaking of tools, i also like that attract can nerf an arch lich in one spell - mazz crystal use should be encouraged (mandatory?) during game - its part of why i love the 4man format so much. also, the fire breath doesnt seem to do much damage to the army, the units automatically run out of the fire (meh i think id change that, but it might be default myth unit behavior) but the fire breath should definitely do more damage to the players. my ohter thought was to give specific waves (thrall, pigs, whatever) immunities to certain damage types - having red thralls for example being rsistant to fire, black pigs resistant to FG slaps and white thralls resistant to dwarf throws would make things harder - especially because it would help you mix it up with the "pyro kills all of this one wave with one spell and vets ridiculously" problem, or the fg tanking every thrall wave problem, or whatever. it might force players to keep varied unit types instead of suiciding a good 30% of the army in the beginning.

anyway gotta go, lemme know what you think!

[dac]

double post omgz.

there are length limits to posts that are rather annoying, so forget the edit!

i wanted to say, not allowing black thrall to be healed to death made my heart smile. a lot ofpeople hate it but i absolutely love it. love love love love it. gj cp

[ChrisP]

Hi guys, great input, thanks! Much of the stuff I may not implement directly, but its good food for thought and often I'll capture the essence of what's suggested or needed while doing something a little different to address it.

Gray & Godz, I'm pretty certain I haven't breached any known scripting limits. My loathing shows 96K as the map action param limit (as does the game) and I am well below that and the 1024 map action limit, which my copy of Loathing also allows. I suspect instead it is a corruption issue.

Sorry for not replying to specifics, but I've been super busy. I do have a new beta ready, however, and will upload it when I get some time. Perhaps Sunday night I'll be on looking for another test game.

[GodzFire]

Chris, do you have a special version of Loathing? I ask this because I have Loathing open as I speak, and the max MA params size = 65536. Again, I saw the 85k number in b02.

I tried to open b03 with Loathing to take a screenshot, but it crashed while trying to load the map. It did NOT do this with b02.

Not sure what's going on.

[Pyro]

Not sure what's going on.

You don't need to know what's going on.

[dac]

cp if you dont invite me to give the game a run im going to murder your children (yes, im going to murder every single mazz map ever create dthe way we killed mazz 6 v2 with the 4man sl leg win) and i'll be otherwise unhelpful (okay, so normal) and abrasive (ok... more normalcy) and will have to disown my fog n dog friends (that would suck)

[Deqlyn]

^^^^^ Dac's insane plea for attention someone talk to him before he goes postal and starts bringing up topics from 10 years ago on this forum.