9 réponses à ce sujet

[Shaughn78]

This was a project I started quite a while ago. I ran into a few issues and put it off to the side. The other day I picked it back up and finished it off. I have done some testing and everything seems to be working correct. There may be a bug or 2 that I can correct if they arise.

Swarms!!!!
http://neverwinter.n...ds.com/mods/258

Essentially this is a scripted monster with a few heavily tweaked VFXs found on the vault. These creatures should add a new and different challenge to the players. Evil builders rejoice!

The swarms work off an aura effect to apply damage and effects. The effects are based on variables placed on the different types of swarms allowing them to apply poisons, disease, bleeding and bonus damage in addition to their base piercing attacks. Everyone within the aura of a swarm will be attacked once a round, the only thing that limits the number of creatures a swarm can attack per round is the size of their aura. The base piercing damage is applied every round, the only protection will be resistances and immunity. Armor and shields will offer no protection to a creature completely enveloped in biting insect and vermin (they will find the cracks in your armor). The swarms immunities are based on their creature size. Tiny creatures (rats, bats and other vermin) have a 50 percent immunity to slashing and piercing. Diminutive creatures (insects and such) are just brushed aside by your attacks and are 100 percent immune to physical attacks. I have included a spell hook (it will need to be assigned to your module or merged with your own spell hook) that makes all individual target spells fail against swarms. The player will have to set aside their magic missiles and inflict massive wounds and rely on fire balls. 

I have tried to make the system be easily expandable for builders who want to add more swarms. New swarms must have the appropriate prefixes and suffixes on their tag and several local variables to function in the system. It runs off of 4 scripts not including the spell hook.

The creatures do use 2 2da files. Appearance.2da (with appropriate reserved lines). This adds the three swarm sizes with the appropriate selection circle. Persistant_VFX.2da. This is used for the auras. I have created several effects that have different radiuses of effect with no scripts attached to them. These are very useful for custom auras and I have used them with numerous creatures.

So there it is. Enjoy the swarms of vermin and insects.


-On small fact I discovered that caused me all sorts of issues. (bit of a long story for a small point)

One feature I added was to have a tag on the swarms as a local string. The idea was that any creature with that tag would be ignored by the swarm. In the source books the bloodfiend locust swarm have the ability to raise their victims as a mindless corrupted body. Without the ignore feature they would destroy their spawns which was not the behavior I wanted. In the script I checked the target's tag against local string. During testing I discovered the player created character was not taking damage from the swarms. This was the point I put down the project. The issue turned out that with the majority of the swarms I had no value put in the local string, so when the player created character was checked against the empty string they were considered immune to swarm attacks. Once a check was added to ensure the string had a value the player was quickly destroyed by the swarms.
Fun fact: A player created character is considered to have a blank tag in script checks.

[Morbane]

Once a check was added to ensure the string had a value the player was quickly destroyed by the swarms.

Did you do it with help from the GetName function?

[Shaughn78]

I check the variable.
if(nIgnore != "" && nIgnore == GetTag(oTarget))

[rjshae]

Sounds cool! Do you have a pic of the rat swarm, per chance?

[MokahTGS]

 This is the kind of thing the game needs...I love encounters that make the player think.  Great addition and you can bet I'll be using this.  Players have been warned.

[Tchos]

rjshae wrote...
Sounds cool! Do you have a pic of the rat swarm, per chance?

http://neverwinter.n...-1362364765.jpg

[Shaughn78]

Thanks for the link Tchos. The rat swarm tga is a bit clunky. I did the best that I could with the VFX, not my strongest point. The rats will likely be in a dimly lit area anyways. When a player enters the swarm the swarm will add a VFX of the critters crawling up the characters. About the abdomen of a human and neck of a Halfling.

The only issue I problem I have found is spell targeting. The AOE needs to hit the center of the creature to inflict damage. I haven't been able to find a way to have the whole area of the swarm be effected. The air elemental has this same problem but to a much lesser degree. If you have a fireball spell overlap just a bit into the selection area of the elemental it will not damage it. This same flaw makes melee work better though. The player must be inside the radius of the swarm to damage it.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

Shaughn78 wrote...
Fun fact: A player created character is considered to have a blank tag in script checks.

Yep.  See this thread.

Thanks for your work.

Regards

[ColorsFade]

This is really, really cool

[Muazen]

Shaughn78 wrote...
There may be a bug or 2 ...

Hee hee, I get it.

But this is awesome, I think swarms are one of the best things for tormenting players.