Vanilla monster renaming mod

[Infinitum]

So, phaethon actually implementing one of his proposed changes in the wishlist tread (and having another six months to go before potentially getting a new release) inspired me to implement a few ideas that has been thrown around to 'fix' some non-Tolkien vanilla creatures in the monster.txt file to adhere better to the setting. Also there's some minimal gameplay changes because tinkering.

DOWNLOAD for those interested. Just replace the original monster.txt in the sil/lib/edit folder (you might want to copy the old file just in case).

--

Changes 150719:

* Worms have been changed into whispers; the lingering spirits of maiar whose bodies were destroyed in the wars before the first age. No bodies of their own, but will slowly swarm any enemy of the enemy they come across (think the dark wind in the wheel of time). Stats unchanged, albeit whispers hits the player instead of crawling on him and have the undead, resist cold and hurt-by-bright-light flags.

* Green and red centipedes have been changed to hatchling and young serpents, respectively (think of the c glyph as half an s and it makes sense in context). Muted the colors to reflect them being born gray and turning garish over time. No gameplay changes.

* Mewlips no longer maprots the player.

* Ancalagon is now a capital D glyph.

Changes 150723:

* Reimaged shadow molds. Some gameplay changes.

* Added Gostir.

* Added Fell Beasts.

* Removed remaining insects and molds.

Changes 150725

* Fixed some descriptions and typos, including a more coherent use of quotation marks across descriptions (only single ' are used, and all direct quotes from Tolkien's work is within quotation marks).

* Tinkered some with new monster power levels. Also, Ancalagon is now templated on D rather than d (about halfway in power level between red D and Glaurung).

--

Future ideas:

* Reimplementing (m)olds and (I)nsects into something that makes sense. Current best ideas are to rebrand insects as errant curses/corrupted words of command (? glyph), and molds as runic wards (; glyph). Alternatively, minor maiar (r glyph) could probably use about the same design space as insects and is in keeping with naming conventions.

* Adding other monsters - there's an approx. 500 - 1000 xp deficit in the early to midgame compared to unmodded Sil.

* Remove Death Swords? Cool as they are, they're not exactly Tolkien compliant (tm).

* Putting other gameplay changes I want to have at on hold for since those would require at least minimal changes to the code itself.

--

Thoughts? Typos? I realise I'm somewhat pants at writing good descriptions (that doesn't, like, use a ton of commas) so feedback is kind of wanted there as well.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Confusing thread title. "Vanilla" but it's for Sil, right?

[Infinitum]

Vanilla as in it's aimed at repurposing classic (vanilla) Angband monsters that made the transition to Sil.

[Serephina]

Originally Posted by Infinitum

[*] Mewlips no longer maprots the player.
[*] Removing the acid flag overall

You wouldn't happen to be a crawl dev, would you?

Mewlips are honestly charming for their pseudo-danger, and it's usually not a big deal at all since, at the depth they appear at, an average person can reconstruct their map by feel.

Acid adds a lot; it highlights the value of otherwise mediocre artefacts, and it damages the player in ways that last beyond the current encounter, much like forced consumable use.

The other changes all sound good, however.

[Infinitum]

Nah. I just happen to dislike item destruction in general since it encourages some truly tedious behaviours, further pushes artifact gear and at the end of the day is just another random number check in a genre ripe with them (eg doublefine gauntlets of strength --> discolored spot).

Maprot is just that. Pseudo-danger. It doesn't waste any resource but time (and no, not talking about minmum depth here).

Also, update! Succesfully purged the last pest monsters. I've yet to playtest this one myself, but at least the game starts up fine.

[debo]

Where did you get the Gostir idea from? I think you might be either completely surprised or unsurprised by 1.3...

You may also be interested in this: https://github.com/MarvinPA/mpa-sil especially re: maprot changes.

[Infinitum]

Originally Posted by The History of Middle-earth, Vol. 5: The Lost Road and Other Writings, Part Three: "The Etymologies"

GOS-, GOTH- dread. .... Gostir 'dread glance', dragon-name [THE]

It's literally a scribble from ol' J.R.R (it's not even clear whether it's a dragon or another name for dragon in quenya). Still, it was expanded upon by the MERP designers, and considering Tevildo & his crazy cats made it in I figure its good enough. mpa-Sil I know about (and agree with for the most part) but I'd rather muck about the main branch (most of the good changes have been merged anyhow).

Oh, and you got word on 1.3? Care to share? =)

EDIT: Oh, and updated a bit. New glyph for the shadow mold replacement and boosted Gostir, cold-drake hatchling by quite a lot.

[Dragonmage]

I'm new to Sil, so I'm not sure how to do the modding to put this on my game, but I'd rather have it this way. The more Tolkien fitting the better, since that's why I downloaded it in the first place. Could someone walk me though how to mod the monsters by PM or on this thread?