Grimrock

I wouldn't expect an experienced party to level up as quick as a starter party. But there shouldn't be a point at which all the mods are unplayable as my party is too strong. I should, if I want, be able to import a level 99 party and have monsters that challenge me. I should be able, if I want, to build up a super party who are maxed out 5 out of 5 in all stats. It's up to me how I play a game and I genuinely hate having to start from level 1 every time I play a new game. I'm annoyed that I couldn't import my Grimrock 1 party into Grimrock 2.

I don't particularly care how the mechanics work, to be honest. I just want to be able to load up any mod, import my level 15 party, and have a challenging game which I come out of at level 25 (for example). Then I want to import my level 25 party into another mod and have a challenging experience which ends with my characters being, say, level 31. I want to infinitely use the same party forever, and keep levelling up like I do in World of Warcraft where I've spent years getting to level 90.

I've been working on a Grimrock 1 mod for years in my spare time which has 24 levels and is suitable for characters imported from the end of the main campaign - I've done it by creating areas with lots of monster fights and battles interspersed with hundreds of puzzles. When you solve the puzzles, or go to the next dungeon level, the game gives you experience points as rewards as happens in other RPGs. In this way, you level up as you would in the main game. Yes, it's artificial but it works

There is currently only one mod that does what you ask for and that is Komag's Master Quest for LoG 1. There you can build a lvl 30+ party rather quick but in the process the monsters get real beefy; up to the point that they can one-hit-kill a character no matter how strong and well equipped s/he is.

I'm ok with your request, seems legit (unless you played rogue or mage in which case you should not be authorized to enjoy any mod !!!).

I'm just interested to discuss the design details we could come up with. It would be a good thing to share a standard code among us used in any mod. So what is the minimum level ups we should get in the average mod for a high level party ? Does Grimrock 2 have a maximum level ? If not what happens to skills points when every skill is filled ?

TheAdder wrote:I should, if I want, be able to import a level 99 party and have monsters that challenge me. I should be able, if I want, to build up a super party who are maxed out 5 out of 5 in all stats.

I've done that using Script and really, there isn't much of an advantage, even against high level monsters. I can't exactly put my finger on the exact reason, but RPG Fighting in Grimrock doesn't really cater to God Mode. And because of Square Dancing and other forms of "cheese tactics," a newbie party can take out some high level monsters with ease.

Importing a level 99 party shouldn't mean that "challenge" comes in the form of stronger monsters - that sounds more Hack n Slash genre. Instead, a level 99 party should be screwed unless the player uses his/her human brain to solve some very intriguing puzzles.

I don't think the request is bad, I just don't see it working in Grimrock without some serious overhauling of character classes and monster scaling. At which point, you're probably better off just making a Mod in another environment that supports this by default.

To be honest, I like the fighting but I have a very logical brain so I love creating puzzles. In my mod, I have the game give experience for finding secrets, solving levels and puzzles, and it works well. Hopefully, if I ever get the editor to run again as described in my other thread (although it does work on my MacBook but is irritating staring at a smaller resolution screen and having the fan go crazy all the time) I'll get the Grimrock 1 mod finished. It uses pretty much all the tilesets on Nexus with multi-level puzzles and is full of surprises and puzzles and unexpected twists. Just need to get that editor working...

Master Quest's leveling system was not easy to implement, it's FAR more than just upping the monster levels. There were balancing issues all over the place, and it was quickly obvious that AH never meant for high level parties and high level monsters to really come into play, so I had to reinvent the wheel all over the place.

- Every single monster definition had to be customized to scale well.
- There were issues with monsters having so much evasion or so much armor at higher levels that they became impossible to hit, no matter how strong you were, without having a lucky special attack occur.
- Every script that spawned or re-spawned monsters in-game had to be set up to spawn the right level.
- All the magic damage traps in the game had to scale.
- High level parties started to become entirely immune to one or more elements, so traps had to be updated with multiple damage types just to ensure at least one kind got through (hopefully!)
- Various xp rewards had to all be set to scale properly
- Custom magic weapons like fire swords and lightning staffs had to be swapped out for more powerful versions to be useful to higher level parties
- Almost all spells had to be revamped for the leveling system
- Health potions and Energy potions had to re-worked to scale up so you don't need to drink 15 potions!
- etc
- etc
- etc
- this list is just what I remember off the top of my head from working on it all two years ago! I worked on it and balance-tested it a TON, and I'm pretty happy with the results, but it's not perfect (for example, even with all the planning I could do, it still all starts to break down or get ridiculous after level 30-35 or so).

Hmm, sounds like I might enjoy Master Quest. I vaguely remember downloading it, can't remember if I tried it or not. I was probably too wrapped up with my own dungeon at the time lol.

TheAdder wrote:....

I understand what you are saying, and even I agree for some mods, BUT... is the difficulty of the fights the real challenge in LOG? I am stuck in The Mountain because I haven't yet find how to resolve a puzzle, and at this point a good fight instead would seems easier to me, because my party is level 15 and monster are so easy to kill in LOG!! If you like the shoot of adrenalin of difficult fights, choose another game, there are plenty of them where monsters are VERY difficult to kill. Who could think to fight a boss in World of Warcraft alone??
LOG is another kind of game, based more on though than action, and I hate the poor solutions of some mods where you have to kill a bunch of monsters to pick a key which allows you... to fight another bunch of monsters. It's not funny, except if a strong story gives the desire to go further, or if the world is so well designed that you wish to go on and discover the whole thing. Fights are necessary to give a rhythm, to mark some stages, to animate the story, not to levelled up your party. Players (the real ones) are like monsters: whatever is their level, their intelligence is the same, and with my 15th level party I am as dumb as before when I can't figure out what the hell I have to do to pass through a difficult puzzle!
Nevertheless, you made me think that experience gain has to be planned carefully, scripted and not leaved to the game mechanic, to take in count the real challenges of the game. But it is very difficult to do that, not because the scripts to write, but because if you read some threads about mods, you would see that the modders are very often surprised when some players are stuck somewhere. Evaluate correctly the difficulties of the mod is rather an art than a technique...
Duncan

Interestingly, I just found that I've obviously played Master Quest through as all my characters are level 24 and I have a save game called Master Quest - Level 13. However, if I select "Master Quest" from the custom dungeon menu option and then import this Level 24 party, it immediately crashes with "Attempt to perform arithmetic on a nil value in RaiseBase". So... lol

Anyway, I think I saw that the source was available? Might have a grapple with that - again, if I can get the bleepity bleep editor not to crash one day

Duncan: I think you'd probably enjoy my mod if I release it and people still want to try a Grimrock 1 mod - I reckon it's a worthy sequel and full of puzzles and monsters spread evenly over 24 levels. If you get stuck, you can usually go and do something else because the game is designed so that, for example, you need three keys from three levels to unlock a gate so you can do those levels in whatever order you like, and then a similar thing happens on the next few levels. It's a lot less linear than the main campaign. Plus, I've used so many dungeon wallsets and custom monsters from Nexus that the game won't even compile unless I reboot my computer and compile immediately without doing anything else to fill memory first - and I have 8GB of Ram!

TheAdder wrote:I wasn't aware that monsters in games had any intelligence anyway

Yes well they have Artificial Intellgience. And in Grimrock 2 not all monsters react the same way. The Zarchton, for example, jumps backwards when you try to side-step him for the standard Square Dance attack routine, the Troll charges, the Twigroot rolls in odd directions, the Crab alternates movement patterns, etc.

Of course, this is not an AI to rival NASA robots or anything, but definitely more intelligent than a Mob that just stands and whacks