Castle Paradox

[Camdog]

Hey all. I'm having trouble implementing some pseudo-battlescripting and thought I'd ask for help. My idea is that certain enemies can come equipped with various things that improve their battle prowess. The player can disarm this enemy by attacking the items directly, which, once destroyed, will return the enemy's prowess to normal.

I do this by creating enemies for stat-boosting each item, giving them 999 speed and a 1 mp invisible attack which will raise an ally's stat by the desired amount. I then set the bitsets so that the attack can only target the enemy in slot 0, and ensure the equipped enemy is always in slot 0. When the equipment dies, it spawns an invisible, untargetable enemy that, with a similarly restricted to slot 0 attack, returns the enemy's power to normal. The attack costs 1 HP, which is what the enemy has, so it kills itself doing so. It hits itself while alone, in case the player kills the enemy without disarming it.

All of this works fine with the enemy and one piece of equipment, but if more things are added to the mix, the stat boosting will go random places despite the slot restriction. The slot restriction mechanism seems pretty simple, so I'm not sure how I'm screwing it up. Any ideas?

Secondly, a more cosmetic problem. I posted this earlier, but have only recently gotten back into working on my game, so I'm dealing with it again. An equipped enemy will obviously have it's equipment "enemies" drawn over, but I'm having trouble controlling the z positioning. Specifically, the shield in game is always drawn under the enemy, though it appears on top of the enemy in custom! The shield's y positing is further down on the screen than the enemy's, and I've tried switching their slots (yes, I even changed the slot restriction on all the stat booting stuff). Needless to say, none of this has worked. Does anyone know what precisely controls z positioning, and how to get this to work?

Thanks.

-Cameron

[Onlyoneinall]

I think the target only slot so and so function is bugged. I have the same issues in my game, where attacks ignore when I say to only target a specific slot.
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http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=750 Bloodlust Demo 1.00

[J.A.R.S.]

wait, are you actually putting the shield as another enemy over the enemy you're wanting equiped? (and the shield diesd without that enemy)?

[Camdog]

Yes

[msw188]

See bug 102 about the slot restrictions:
http://gilgamesh.hamsterrepublic.com/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=102

I am not sure why you need to have the equipment give stat-boosting attacks. Why not just make the actual enemy have all of the 'higher' stats, and then have the dying equipment lower the enemy's stats by the desired amount?

Actually, I've also thought about a partial workaround. If you have an enemy bitset left, you could call it 'equipment' and have your stat-lowering attack fail on 'equipment' types but target all. This only works as long as there is one fighting enemy, however.

I remember discussing the 'z position' thing (the thread is around here somewhere). We worked together and figured out how it worked in custom, but I had never thought to test it separately in game. I'm not sure what to tell you there...
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My first completed OHR game, Tales of the New World:
http://castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=161

This website link is for my funk/rock band, Euphonic Brew:
www.euphonicbrew.com

[Camdog]

[Bob the Hamster]

[Camdog]

Ok, switching tatics to equipment using stat-boosting spells that affect every enemy, and fail for all enemies except for one works fine. However, the spell fail text pops up for every other enemy, including the equipment. Is there any way to disable this, short of creating an empty spell fail text string?

Also, I haven't tested the y-sorting that James suggested, but I plan to tonight and will file a bug report if appropriate.