SurvivalXtreme: Version 2.17.9!

[voris]

Welcome to the new SurvivalXtreme thread!

If you need to find something in the old thread:

(or are masochistic enough to want to read all 38 pages of it to "catch up") I've put a link here so it can be found easily: http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16443

Again, that is for reference purposes only, please post new stuff in this new thread only!

Latest news:

Version 2.17.9 is released

Features added in 2.17.1 - 2.17.9:

*Tweaked the bulk discounts to not be so ridiculous.
* Added a warning to remind you to heal if your hitpoints are at less than 40% of max.
* Added a "quickbuy" category to the Enhancements section. Lets you spend all remaining gold in one shot on various enhancments.
* Made minor changes to SX Curve Prime.
* Increased cost of movement. It still starts out cheaper than 30 and ramps up in cost as you get more, I'm just tweaking the exact costs based on feedback. This will probably change once more before we find the sweet spot.
* All gold chests are shared equally now. All the existing scenarios had their chest gold increased by 5 times to account for a full party needing to share it. If you are running with less, the chest size stays the same so more gold each. This means "death chests" are now using the exact same code and are also shared equally.
* Added a new scenario, SX Curve Prime, that is a variant of SX Curve. Thanks to Newt who took that next step from "this could be better" to actually putting the work into making some modifications and submitting them.
* Added new abilities, Mirage and Cavestalk. Cavestalk plenty of people have done before so I'm sure it needs no explanation but it's hiding in caves. Mirage is hiding in sand.
* Added a Trapdoor Spider that uses Cavestalk and a Deathstalker scorpion that uses Mirage. Look out for them to pop up in scenarios new and old.
* Abilities shop is added
* Color coding and text change to indicate when you already bought weapons or abilities, or do not need healing
* Current hitpoints, poisoned, and slowed status shown on main shop screen

Version 2.17.0 is released:

New this release:
* Added a notice when people stop on shops and a warning if they have a lot of money. Thanks -stf- for that idea!
* More bulk options in the enhancements section and bulk discounts too!
* Movement costs more as you buy more now.
* Enhancements and Weapons sections let you toggle the visibility of melee, ranged, and both options.
* Terrain costs went up. It seems I had them a little too low to start. Hopefully this will be more challenging at least at the higher difficulties.
* Added images to the Weapons section. Combined with the ability to collapse the ranged and/or melee sections that should hopefully make it a bit easier to read and choose what you want.
* By popular demand, the sx prefix on weapon names is gone.
* Weapons improve as you train up in strikes and damage so buying later in the game doesn't mean losing out on all your previous training anymore.
* You get movement as soon as you buy it now.
* Put back in the brutal bump when a human player dies.

Recapping recent changes:
* The Yeti in the SurvivalXtreme eras has been replaced with an SX Yeti that has snowblind (it can hide in frozen terrain).
* SXGE Mythos no longer causes an error (but it and at least one other of the SXGE maps has an odd bug where the creeps won't wander toward you...I'm working on that!)
* SX Battle has the center closed off until the second earthquake and the enemy bosses don't die just because a human died.

And, of course, the complete list of 2.15.0 changes:

* All the SXGE maps are included now. Yay! They still use the old shop (old SXGE shop, that is) since it is currently more full featured than the basic SX Shop. As time goes on the two should slowly converge.

* Speaking of shops, in the classic SX maps getting into the shops is completely changed. Instead of popping up when you move to them, you have to right-click on the shop hex after your leader moves there. Combined with the fact that movement is now updated immediately in 1.6, there is no more asking "are they in the shop?" The first time you land on a shop there will be a dialog, but it is just to tell you how to get to shops the new way and offers a choice to be reminded every time you land on a shop or to not be bothered anymore for the rest of the game.

* Only leaders can shop in the new SX shop. 'Nuff said.

* Landing on the shop is an undoable event in the new SX shop! What this means is, just by having landed on a hex with a shop, you haven't committed yourself to an action that can't be undone. If having moved there would not be undoable because of shroud updates or ambush or whatever, then you're still out of luck but that's not the shop's fault! Remember to turn on delay shroud updates if you really want to make sure you can undo accidental shop blocking moves, basically. Once you shop, however, you are now committed to that hex and will not be able to undo your movement, of course.

* Healing will only charge you if you need to be healed (or unpoisoned or unslowed).

* Weapons can only be purchased once! No longer will you accidentally buy a useless extra weapon! The weapon names also all show "SX" in front of them so you know which you bought and which you naturally have.

* Amory and terrain purchase screens show current status instead of what you've bought. It updates as you buy so you can see the effect of your purchases in real time! The Terrain Training section also only shows terrains you can buy down when you enter that section of the shop.

* Terrain Training is completely reworked. Rather than setting an arbitrary limit to how many terrains can be improved and rather than having each improvement just set the movement cost all the way down to 1...it now uses economic disincentives to excessive training (read: the cost goes up the more you buy) and you only purchase one movement point at a time. Don't worry though, once you hit one movement cost it will stop letting you buy moves for that terrain so you won't waste money on moves you didn't need.

* ALL dialogs have been changed to screen prints. This means the game no longer stops because somebody didn't notice a dialog and click on it! Please tell me if I missed a dialog somewhere. The obvious exceptions are the first time you land on a shop and the difficulty chooser at the beginning of the game...

* Speaking of the difficulty chooser...it now plays a different sound, chooses a custom playlist, and flashes a color on the screen to match the color of the choice in the list (in addition to printing the chosen difficulty on the screen).

That's about all for now. I also cleaned up the grammar in a few places and polished the intro screens a little bit. I'm going to keep working on porting the rest of my SXVE changes to the shop system and homogenizing the shop systems between SXGE and SX. Oh, typing out all those abbreviations reminds me that I also changed all the SX scenario titles to be "SX <foo>" where <foo> is the rest of the name. That way you can actually read the entire titles in the list.

[MCP]

Keep up the good work! You, Mabuse, and -stf- are pushing us into the future: Wesnoth 1.6 and beyond

[Golbeeze]

Excellent. Sounds like good work is coming our way! Thanks for keeping the old SX maps alive.

[Mabuse]

well, im of course also happy
i think i dont need to mention that,
but i do it nevertheless

gj

[Aemo]

First of all, I absolutely love this mod! Big thanks to the devs!

Now, not sure if this's the right place to put bug-reports but I didn't find any thread that seemed more suited..

The lichs' drain ability on the melee attack seems to have vanished in the version currently on the add-on server, is this WAI or a bug?

I'm using SX + SX addon.

Thanks
/Aemo

[Mabuse]

The lichs' drain ability on the melee attack seems to have vanished in the version currently on the add-on server, is this WAI or a bug?
I'm using SX + SX addon.

For the ADDON its WAI.
Drain (and absorb) was completey removed for all PlayerChars. Regardless of the Era you are using. (it will be removed in-game)

There are also other "forbidden" specials like plague (and similar), stone. These two mainly because it is rather annoying havin' weakest units spawned (that just block hexes) everytime you kill something, or having stoned units that obstruct the map

Drain was removed for all Players since its an OP (overpowered) special that seriously affect and destroy gameplay. Sure it can be handled somehow by mapdesign (for example placing undeads only as enemies), but why not simply get rid of it anyway, if its just annyoingly OP in most cases.
And its also not really needed, the lich and also the bat stay useful for what they are (a very powerful ranged unit and a very agile, flying unit with 50% pos. armor at start), and all addon maps can (and should) be beaten without drain.

for enemies it is kept of course.

[voris]

I posted a minor bugfix today. See the first post for details.

[voris]

Bigger bugfix this time. Seems SXGE Mythos has a problem. I'm debugging it now. I left it in a quarantine folder so if someone else notices what is going on, let me know here.

[Golbeeze]

Mythos uses EoM, so odds are good it has to do with the era. I don't know if EoM has come out for 1.6 (i really haven't been able to play much wesnoth for a long time now) but if it has you may need to check some/all unit IDs.

[voris]

Ok, after running through a few minor bugfix releases yesterday, I've released 2.16.0 because I'm pretty confident after some playtesting that all problems are solved.

The SXGE Mythos scenario was causing problems because of its dependency on the Era of Myths and the many changes to that era I hadn't accounted for. I went through it line by line and fixed all unit name changes, removed units that no longer exist, and changed the inclusion paths. It now works like a charm. Since it's only one scenario that needs that era and the description warns you of the need, I'm hesitant to make the entire SurvivalXtreme addon dependent on it. I'm open to feedback on that point.

SX Battle has been changed in small ways. The center is no longer open at the beginning so you can't rush through the center in the first several turns. The bosses also no longer die just because the hero in that quadrant died. The other idea I had was to get rid of that boss's chest along with the boss. Basically I just thought it was weak to get a free chest because that hero died. I'm open to making the chest go away with the boss rather than making the boss stick around if people think it slows down the game too much the way it is now.

Finally, I added some extra options to the Enhancements section of the shop to let you buy up damage and hitpoints in larger chunks so it doesn't take quite so many clicks to get what you want when you have a lot of money to spend.

[Golbeeze]

Just in case you didn't know, SXGE Extended is dependent on the Extended Era. I guess that didn't cause problems or you'd have mentioned it? I don't know how many SX maps depend on non-default eras, but if there are enough you could make a non-default SX add-on. Or just make sure there are easy warnings for the maps that aren't default eras. I know I left warnings in the descriptions, but I don't know how many people read them. Also, I named them closely after the era (Extended and Mythos pretty obvious) in the hopes that people would notice it.

EDIT: Also, the 4 maps i made using mercs could use some balancing with the stationary guards. I never had a chance to fix them up. A good deal of them are too strong.

[voris]

Just in case you didn't know, SXGE Extended is dependent on the Extended Era. I guess that didn't cause problems or you'd have mentioned it?

Mythos didn't cause problems either until I'd downloaded the Mythos era and then only because there were so many large changes to it that your old hooks no longer worked correctly. It was only because others alerted me that I noticed about EoM since I just hadn't gotten around to downloading it for 1.6 yet.

So, it's possible once EE ever gets published that a problem may arise, but it's not out yet and no problems have arisen with it not released yet.

I don't know how many SX maps depend on non-default eras, but if there are enough you could make a non-default SX add-on. Or just make sure there are easy warnings for the maps that aren't default eras. I know I left warnings in the descriptions, but I don't know how many people read them. Also, I named them closely after the era (Extended and Mythos pretty obvious) in the hopes that people would notice it.

Yeah, I kind of forgot how much yours all used outside addons. I think I will ultimately just bundle them up as a dependent era like you say. But, for now, I've got Merc, BEEM (closest thing to EE out there I can find for 1.6), and Myths all loaded and no errors so I'm going to leave well enough alone as I work on modularizing the shop some more and turning *it* into a core dependency addon of its own.

EDIT: Also, the 4 maps i made using mercs could use some balancing with the stationary guards. I never had a chance to fix them up. A good deal of them are too strong.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll play around with that soon.

[voris]

Very minor update. I created the snowblind ability which is just like ambush but for frozen terrains. Yeti has been replaced with SX Yeti and has this ability.

[voris]

Version 2.17.0 is released

Short summary in first post: http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 32#p349932

Longer summary here:

There is now a warning every time someone steps on a shop. Even though movement updates on the display for everyone right away most of the time, sometimes it seems like a slower computer or laggy connection can make it wait to update movement until after the unit has left the shop still. This warning will show up no matter what so you'll always know when someone's on a shop and it even warns that shopping might take awhile if they have 500 gold or more. Thanks -stf- for that idea!

The enhancements screen now has more options for bulk purchases which means even fewer clicks to get what you want later in the game when you've built up a lot of money to spend. It's also offering discounts the more you buy at once. These bulk purchases (and discounts) are offered for ranged damage/strikes, melee damage/strikes, and hitpoints only. The both damage/strikes and movement options don't offer bulk purchases at all. For the both, it just isn't the sort of thing you usually need more than a couple of to tweak something like a net. For the movement, this is taking away the bulk movement buy that used to be there but that's because I didn't want to do all the coding to tally up the cost for a bulk buy now that it increments the cost for each movement you buy.

Which brings me to: movement now increases in cost for each movement you buy. Even on Xtreme mode, it actually starts out cheap which gives you a slight early game advantage. By the time you get above 10 movement, however, it gets increasingly prohibitive to buy more movement. On Xtreme I think it is at 14 movement that you hit the point where you will have spent more in total on movement than you would have under the old straight 30 gold/move system. This will probably get tweaked based on feedback just like the terrain and other increasing cost items will.

Speaking of terrain, I upped the starting costs for every difficulty but easy. If you're playing easy, it should not be difficult to buy all terrains down to one move eventually. On Xtreme, depending on the type of leader you're playing, this is much less likely now. It might still be too cheap but I didn't want to make it too bad on my first tweak. As always: feedback welcome.

Back to the enhancements screen, I added options to toggle the visibility of the melee, ranged, and both options. The default setting is to show melee and ranged but hide the both. Your preferences stick between visits and are tracked for each player.

Weapons options have images which should make that long list a bit more readable. There are also options to toggle the visibility of the melee and ranged weapons which should also help make that list a bit more manageable. Also, I have heard you and the sx prefixes to weapons are gone! I agree they were ugly and it wound up not being as interesting as I thought it might be to be able to tell which were bought in shop and which weren't. Don't worry, the second reason I was using the prefixes, to filter the weapons so you can't buy extras, is being handled without using the visible name now and you still can't buy the same weapon twice.

Weapon damage and strikes values are increased as you train up in the relevant damage and strikes. This means buying a weapon later in the game can actually be worth it now.

It seems like Clonkinator had unintentionally taken out what I consider one of the more important features of the core SX engine: that the enemies get a bump in power when a human player dies. They were still getting the money but not the turn boost. I've put that back in so watch out!

[A Guy]

Well, I'm willing to assist, provided that I have computer time.