Akroma GUI Pack [Abandoned]

[sapientCrow]

I was amazed by your LoG 1 Mod and am looking forward very much to this one!

[Eleven Warrior]

This project is dead atm mate so sorry ahy

Its sad because Aka was a cool person and took on to much I guess. You can only eat so much in your mouth and it's full so yeah he wanted to do it all but it went ???? I'll let him fill the gaps in here guys sorry.

[kelly1111]

Wait what?

Akroma is still active on the forums. Havent seen any mention from him that he is not working on his project. Are you sure?

Would like to hear it from himself (so akroma, if your listening )

And it doenst matter if the release is still a long way ahead... it will be done when it will be done... right?

[akroma222]

(so akroma, if your listening )

are you kidding? Im forever listening, Im like part of the furniture around here
Thankyou for your suggesting my mod in the simple answer thread, Im flattered

This project is dead atm mate so sorry ahy
Its sad because Aka was a cool person and took on to much I guess. You can only eat so much in your mouth and it's full so yeah he wanted to do it all but it went ???? I'll let him fill the gaps in here guys sorry.

Nice to hear from ya! Here is some gap filler.... project is actually very much alive.
But you are certainly correct about my ability to be able to chew on what Ive bitten off...
My eyes are forever deceiving my stomach, you should see me at a bakery

I guess the quickest and easiest way for me to visually show you guys what Ive been up to is this Imgur album:
https://imgur.com/a/Q6vFqRd

....And an explanation of where I'm at now:
I had planned to be ready to start building levels more than a year ago... and for the most part, had combined all the diff mod packs and assets that I wanted to include (as many of our communities creations as I could manage!) ... but still, completing such a task - and altering all these assets so that they played nice with the modded systems Ive created myself - was / is an ongoing mission. Admittedly, the scope of this mod is large enough so that I often end up chasing my tail, reinvent wheels and overhaul / redo areas that weren't actually broken to begin with.
The long delay, however, is mostly attributable to me eventually getting the hang of the GUI coding. Once this happened, I wanted to add some extra Stats (like AndakRainor did with the Health / Energy regen rates in the STATS mennu). So I added some stats, more initially, but now it has been cut down to just:
--Charisma (5th main attribute, effects course of game events, NPC + RPC interaction, ... )
--Max Stamina / Stamina Rate (secondary stat, tracks how exhausted / sleep deprived you are)
--Resist Arcane (pure magical resistance)
So I redesigned a bit of the STATS menu.... then all of it.

SpoilerShow

Which meant the top champion panel of the menu system needed looking at....

SpoilerShow

Then the Attack Panels were next.... Obviously each Race has individualized empty hand icons now, ....added another Bar to fit below the Health and Energy Bars (Im very excited to see what people think, ill post a video soon, but.... can you guess what it is???)

SpoilerShow

SpoilerShow

SpoilerShow

SpoilerShow

Then I redesigned the Inventory menu as well .... and this is all taking a bucket load of time, as its new territory for me and didnt realize, again, what I was signing up for.... because I had drawn over the top of the vanilla games GUI, some hardcoded stuff (champion:showAttackResult(), gui effects from conditions, visual cues for champion readiness, portrait tinting etc etc, for instance, couldnt be seen at all anymore. So Ive then had to re implement a ALL of this hardcoded stuff, and redo all of the menus ToolTips so that the explanations are accurate with the channges Ive made.... Container Item Gui, Runepanel Gui... seriously, the list goes on and on...

SpoilerShow

SpoilerShow

(please excuse the race background in this^ screen shot) Here is a - rough - group photo of my Races:

SpoilerShow

And that is where Im currently at

And it doenst matter if the release is still a long way ahead... it will be done when it will be done... right?

I will post again soon and discuss my ideas for what direction the project will take from here.... however,
one thing I can say with a high degree of confidence is, unless my hands are cut off and my vision completely destroyed somehow..... I will likely be modding Legend of Grimrock for 1000s of years to come

I was amazed by your LoG 1 Mod and am looking forward very much to this one!

SapientCrow, thankyou sir!
Do you know what, your review of Labyrinth of Lies is where I direct people (who want to know about the mod) to.
Actually, I reread it every now and then when Im feeling lost in the woods.
That review means a hell of a lot to me hey Thank you again

[Pompidom]

Most of it sounds great
And I hope you have at least some fun while undertaking all of it.

However sometimes you have to wonder, if it's all worth it or if it actually makes the mod more fun to play.
When you're adding extra stuff/layers you have to be careful if it's actually a blessing or just extra layers of annoyance.

For example, extra stats like tracking stamina, sleep deprived etc...

I'm going to take Eternal Recurrence as a prime example.
When I was playing eternal recurrence, I hated the extra layers.

I can tolerate that your characters have to eat. But that's it.

A hydration stat? Really? Making sure your character drinks water in time? Ugh! Annoying!

Heat/cold stats? A low strength character losing health when running around in a lava map? Ugh! Annoying!

A sleep deprivation stat? I just... no...

The custom spell system: 100+ custom skills added. Great! ...
Until you realize, you have to simply spam every single passive skill to make your party godlike and only use your strongest offensive skill over and over again. Or simply reduce cooldowns to 0 so you have 1 character that can attack so fast that your other 3 characters become dead weight.
Most skills acquire a shitload of random skillpoints in various spell/skill classes and traits before you can actually use them.

Also, skills being affected by traits. There is no way to theorycraft a good party. For examply your custom spell spirit slash or something that will have additional stun effects when you have the trait: Strong Mind.
There is no way to theorycraft anything in advance during character creation until you have completed the mod at least once.
Resulting in the possibility that your playthrough sucks since you created a party with the wrong skillpoints/traits.

The spell also has the possibility to % stun multiple times with the right traits selected.
So 1 person will have 0 stuns in his/her playthrough getting pummeled to death with every single encounter while somebody else will break the game having a permanent stun skill available cheesing through the entire game.

The spell sounds broken as hell as the number of strikes can become insanely high with each individual strike having a 15 % stun chance. That is IF you have taken the trait Strong Mind at character creation. If you haven't taken that specific trait. The skill will be utter shit.

Andak's custom spell system broke both Magic of Grimrock and Eternal Recurrence in so many ways that resulted in an immortal Godlike party where everything simply dies by just looking at it, "if" you know what you're doing.

Please don't make the same mistakes. I like custom spells, as long they don't break balance...

Also your plans of % chance of success when picking locks/traps etc... Basically any skill/trait that's % based on chance is DOA.
If I play your mod and I have to do an action where the result is based on luck or % chance by the amount of dexterity points my character has. I simply save, attempt to do it and then simply reload until the party succeeds. You can gate it behind fixed amount of skillpoints, but then you run into the issue of forcing people to pick the skillpoints anyways simply to pass/open stuff.

Basically if a mechanic can be avoided by save scumming, simply don't add it. Because it's gonna be utter shit and people will save scum around it anyways.

The only % chance things I can tolerate in games is basic stuff like critical strike and evasion.
Most other stuff simply makes the game playing the lottery and annoying as fuck.
% chance of stun/freeze is hard to balance. And the only way to balance this out is to make it 100% but at the cost of a big energy cost. For example: a fireball for 50 energy that deals 50 damage is ok.
a frostbolt that deals 50 damage and freezes an enemy for 5 seconds is only balanced if the energy cost is 3x the amount of a fireball for example. As soon the freeze becomes % based, it becomes unreliable and annoying as fuck and you're simply better off focusing on skills that deal more raw damage/second or simply more raw damage for each energy point spent.

If I come into a difficult fight and the outcome of the fight is 100% decided by the amount of luck in % chance stun/freeze successrate, I feel cheated. It doesn't matter if I win or lose the fight, In both cases I will feel annoyed as the fight was % based on luck. Not on positioning skills and actually using the right skills for the occasion.

As for the 3rd bar under the energy bar:
There are 2 possibilities:
It's a visual for cooldowns or it's an actual stamina bar that depletes when using melee attacks in rapid succession, as long it has a passive stamina regeneration behind it like health and energy.

I like both ideas. And this would be an example of a great extra layer.

[akroma222]

Hey Pompidom,
Thank you kindly for taking the time to provide feedback at that length
Now Im going to assume this feedback is based on:
1) the original post and/or
2) from the images in the Imgur album
It is clearly my fault here... but not all of what you may have read or seen will be included in my mod.

Many things have changed / improved / been scrapped... and I should have mentioned that in my last post (apologies).
For example, most of the images showing spell scrolls, traits skills, race, class etc etc are not 100% accurate - most have had tweaking and balancing changes (and will continue to for some time I guess)

So to start with, let me assure you - I have gone out of my way to remove all RNG and % chance calculations from the features I wish to include. I am also very aware of how save scumming works, and have done everything I can to minimize opportunities to do this. So, sorry again if some of the images and or original post led you to believe otherwise

For example, extra stats like tracking stamina, sleep deprived etc...

I hear your argument re needing to fiddle around constantly with -another- potentially hindering statistic. I am considering changing this statistic as I think it overlaps too much conceptually with a number of the other stats... What do you think? Should I remove it entirely? or alter its definition? Or replace it with a diff stat that isnt such an attention sink...??

I should explain here Ive come straight from the Wizardry series camp and as such - in favor of more detail and depth re champions, their skills, stats, status and more choice in the number of ways you can shape / build them

Andak's custom spell system broke both Magic of Grimrock and Eternal Recurrence in so many ways that resulted in an immortal Godlike party where everything simply dies by just looking at it, "if" you know what you're doing.
Please don't make the same mistakes. I like custom spells, as long they don't break balance...

I cant speak to how AndakRainor's spell pack affected the vanilla play through or his mod - I haven't played them yet.
However, I believe credit and recognition are warranted here - Andak led the charge with providing myriad options spell wise for all of us working on other things. I hear your criticisms and I have my own too, but I do believe he did an excellent job considering.... and I would know the struggle - Labyrinth of Lies offered 120 spells (each with 1 or 2 trait based upgrades). Trying to keep things balanced, making even low level spells still relevent late game and ensuring the game doesnt allow you to just spam the same powerful spell over and over regardless of the situation the party is in, is exceedingly complicated. I learned a lot from my last mod's spell system - and have made adjustments so that.....

SpoilerShow

- Total # spells is pitched at 60 - 75
- Total # of alterations / upgrades for each spell is now 2 - 5
- Spells predicted to be used less frequently or spells too similar have been collapsed into 1 spell
- Spells are divided into 6 spellbooks, which represent a themed selection of spells. Champs can only access 1 - 2 spellbooks

The custom spell system: 100+ custom skills added. Great! ...

A little confusion here - I havent just dumped Andaks spells + system into my mod, but I have cannibalized his coding and repurposed it for my spell system. As aforementioned... 60 - 75 "spells"

Until you realize, you have to simply spam every single passive skill to make your party godlike and only use your strongest offensive skill over and over again. Or simply reduce cooldowns to 0 so you have 1 character that can attack so fast that your other 3 characters become dead weight. Most skills acquire a shitload of random skillpoints in various spell/skill classes and traits before you can actually use them.

Just to clarify - are you talking about the requirements for my spells or Andaks??

There is no way to theorycraft a good party.
There is no way to theorycraft anything in advance during character creation until you have completed the mod at least once.

Saying that spells using upgrades based on Traits prevents you from theory crafting an effective party at creation is just plain incorrect, Im sorry. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of new, custom things included in the mod (RPCs, recipes, items, monsters, power attacks etc etc...) that you could make the very same argument about. Most mods do have custom content that is meant to be a surprise. Expecting to know every little bonus or synergy between this content before you even start the game is grossly unrealistic There are 13 Races, 19 Classes with all manner of ways to craft a very synergistic party

......possibility that your playthrough sucks....... wrong skillpoints/traits.
......So 1 person will have 0 stuns in his/her playthrough getting pummeled to death with every single encounter......
......break the game having a permanent stun skill available cheesing through the entire game.....
.......The spell sounds broken as hell as the number of strikes can become insanely high .........
.......If you haven't taken that specific trait. The skill will be utter shit......
.......broke both Magic of Grimrock and Eternal Recurrence in so many ways ........
.......an immortal Godlike party where everything simply dies by just looking at it........

I got to be honest here, Im going to stop my reply here as I do feel you are catastrophizng - throwing extreme scenarios + descriptions around without really knowing exactly what is and isnt included in the mod. This is partly my fault - I didnt mention that many of images (and inferences made from them) are outdated / changed.
Im also going to say that your reply / criticism, while I appreciate the time and effort, is a little insulting. Seems like you dont think I know the first thing about building and balancing (or how terrible random % outcomes are)

EDIT: and yes, its a Cooldown Bar

[Pompidom]

It was just a reply and worst case scenarios based on experience from past games, other games, and other Grimrock mods.
Also my reply was based on the info I had on hands, your older screenshots and imgur folder etc...

I'm just a person that emphasizes a lot on balance. As I'm one of those persons that plays most games on the hardest difficulty settings from the very first try.

As soon I come across rookie mistakes in commercial games where save scumming bypasses certain gameplay mechanics, then I'm out. Also poorly balanced games are instantly wiped from my harddrive

My posts sound harsh, but they're honestly constructive and simply detailed in the what and how things can go wrong if you go a certain path.

I loved Andak's Magic of Grimrock mod!
However I didn't care much for Eternal Recurrence in its current state. But that's because it's a work in progress and I'm sure he will find a way to balance it out.

Both mods use the same expanded spell system / expanded alchemy thing however. So it's a bit weird. It works well in 1 mod, but doesn't work well in low lvl mods with low level monsters.

In Magic of grimrock it simply works as the difficulty is raised by 5% every time you level up. So at level 30 I was sitting at an increased +150% difficulty factor on top of Hard and that is where the mod truely shines. An unbalanced overpowered custom magic system to overcome the increased hp and damage pools from enemies.

So I'm glad that you already have taken care of all the random factors and anti save scumming mechanics.
And at this point, I have absolutely nothing more to contribute As I'm happy that you share my vision about gameplay balance and try to elmininate random stuff as much as possible

I just saw your spell Spirit slash spell, theorycrafted where it could hit for more then 10+ times each cast with 15% stun chance each consecutive hit IF you had taken a certain trait and I was like... no...

As an example I will take shield spell from Andak. If you put 3 skillpoints in accuracy, the shield spell will be cast on the entire party.
Now explain to me why I should waste 3 skillpoints in accuracy on a Mage?

So at this point ignore my rantings, as they are based off 2 year old info
And don't take my posts as insults. I care, because I would like to see you succeed, therefor I'm just honest in my opinions and am concerned and yes sometimes it's done by pointing out possible flaws

[Pompidom]

A visual cooldown bar sounds awesome

Stamina as an extra statistic can work.
And it would be a very interesting concept where it works like a 2nd energy bar.

Energy is used for magical skills, where Stamina is used for physical skills.
You're in a boss fight, unleash all your energy, then unleash all your stamina.

However that means displaying a 4th bar unless you change the cooldown bar into the stamina bar.

It will make things interesting, but also more complicated offcourse.
But i like the idea where characters have both a good magical skill and a good physical skill to use.

Or simply make special attacks from physical weapons consume stamina instead of energy.
Your classes/characters more sound like a mixup between magic and physical anyways

There are many possibilities, but they're hard to implement or balance. So i really don't know what to suggest.

And the current system where a physical character uses his energy as stamina works like it is in the default campaign works just as well and is less complicated.

I have thought about many different systems, some include disabling natural regeneration with checkpoints/safe zones where you can sleep/regen. But in the end it's just not worth the trouble. And I will just keep it default in my mod and make sure that the mod is a challenge to begin with. In the end mostly it's just not worth it to go too deep.

[kelly1111]

Just curious Pompidom, have you played the grimrock one mod labyrinth of lies?

Good to read your feedback. And even better good to know that akroma is still working and lurking here in the forums.

[Pompidom]

I don't like LoG1 mods in general, I haven't even finished the log1 default campaign.

I did try labyrinth of lies some time ago, but haven't progressed far in it and forgot about it.
I'll try to play it when I can.