A Few Questions/Observations From an Old Player - Page 3

ekolis · July 14, 2012, 19:58

If you set the base delay factor to something above zero, you should be able to see a line of stars appear briefly when your spell beams, as opposed to a little dash flying toward the target when it is a bolt...

Derakon · July 14, 2012, 23:40

To my knowledge, there's never been a message telling you that a beam happened. Just increase the delay factor, as ekolis mentioned.

Looking at the source, the chance to get a beam seems to be a bit weird. The base chance is your character level / 2. There's a flag PF_BEAM that doubles your beam chance, roughly, but it's never set, as far as I can tell. It'd make sense to have it set for mages and priests though, so maybe it's set somewhere I didn't find. Then, beam chance is modified depending on the spell:

Magic Missile: -10
Frost bolt: -10
Fire bolt: +0
Acid bolt: +0
Rend soul: divided by 4
Chaos strike: +0

So at level 50, you'd expect to get Magic Missile to beam 15% of the time, or 40% if you have PF_BEAM set. Meanwhile Rend Soul would only beam 6% of the time, or 12% with PF_BEAM.

myshkin · July 15, 2012, 09:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derakon

Looking at the source, the chance to get a beam seems to be a bit weird. The base chance is your character level / 2. There's a flag PF_BEAM that doubles your beam chance, roughly, but it's never set, as far as I can tell. It'd make sense to have it set for mages and priests though, so maybe it's set somewhere I didn't find.

The algorithm is pretty clunky. Meanwhile, devices just get a flat 20% (wands) or 10% (rods) beam chance...that should probably vary with device skill.

Mages (and only mages) get PF_BEAM in lib/edit/p_class.txt, for what it's worth.

Derakon · July 15, 2012, 17:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by myshkin

Mages (and only mages) get PF_BEAM in lib/edit/p_class.txt, for what it's worth.

Ahh, my problem was that I was searching for "PF_BEAM" and it shows up as "BEAM" in p_class.txt. Bah.

Oramin · July 16, 2012, 00:13

Thanks, folks.

A couple more questions:

Do artifacts get a chance to beam (e.g. Narthanc)?

Do skills/wands like Life Drain and Annihilation get a chance to beam?

Derakon · July 16, 2012, 02:20

I believe the answer is no in both cases. Certainly I've never seen Life Drain / Annihilation beam, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen artifact bolt activations beam either. Come to think, I don't think there are any artifacts that activate for a beaming effect, period. All of the offensive ones are bolts or balls. Or "everything in line of sight".

Timo Pietilä · July 23, 2012, 05:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derakon

I believe the answer is no in both cases. Certainly I've never seen Life Drain / Annihilation beam, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen artifact bolt activations beam either. Come to think, I don't think there are any artifacts that activate for a beaming effect, period. All of the offensive ones are bolts or balls. Or "everything in line of sight".

IIRC one of the elemental gauntlets had lightning bolt that always beamed. Not sure if that exists anymore though.

Magnate · July 24, 2012, 09:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

IIRC one of the elemental gauntlets had lightning bolt that always beamed. Not sure if that exists anymore though.

The gauntlets do, but the auto-beam flag doesn't. Trivial to bring it back though (but in fact better done as a property of the activation than as an object flag).

Oramin · July 25, 2012, 07:05

1. I recently tried using a Rod of Drain Life to target a monster on the other side of a group of monsters. I ended up killing one of the intervening monsters so apparently Drain Life uses the bolt targeting code instead of the ball targeting code. Is this working as intended?

2. Gnomes have wand/staff ID and free action? It would be nice if the character screen specified the racial advantage.

3. When you hit monsters with Meteor Storm (or whatever the name is from Raal's), the message includes monsters fleeing after they've already been destroyed, which seems a bit odd. Probably a result of a flag being set for fleeing in the middle of the 4 separate attacks.

4. Just nitpicking but I ran across a message where I "freez" a monster - I would normally expect to "freeze" monsters.

5. Does anybody happen to know the Teleport percentage for Rift?

6. Is there any way to stop monsters from teleporting me? Apparently Boots of Stability don't manage to do that in 3.3.2; I thought I recalled them working that way in an earlier patch.

Timo Pietilä · July 25, 2012, 07:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oramin

6. Is there any way to stop monsters from teleporting me? Apparently Boots of Stability don't manage to do that in 3.3.2; I thought I recalled them working that way in an earlier patch.

Nexus resist and perfect saving throw prevent all forms of teleport level and nexus resist prevents all teleportations by nexus side-effect, but you don't get any protection against any other forms of teleportation. Nexus Q teleportation is not nexus effect, just plain teleportation.

July 14, 2012, 19:58	#21
ekolis Knight Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA Age: 29 Posts: 814	If you set the base delay factor to something above zero, you should be able to see a line of stars appear briefly when your spell beams, as opposed to a little dash flying toward the target when it is a bolt... __________________ You read the scroll labeled NOBIMUS UPSCOTI... You are surrounded by a stasis field! The tengu tries to teleport, but fails!

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July 14, 2012, 23:40	#22
Derakon Prophet Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 4,755	To my knowledge, there's never been a message telling you that a beam happened. Just increase the delay factor, as ekolis mentioned. Looking at the source, the chance to get a beam seems to be a bit weird. The base chance is your character level / 2. There's a flag PF_BEAM that doubles your beam chance, roughly, but it's never set, as far as I can tell. It'd make sense to have it set for mages and priests though, so maybe it's set somewhere I didn't find. Then, beam chance is modified depending on the spell: Magic Missile: -10 Frost bolt: -10 Fire bolt: +0 Acid bolt: +0 Rend soul: divided by 4 Chaos strike: +0 So at level 50, you'd expect to get Magic Missile to beam 15% of the time, or 40% if you have PF_BEAM set. Meanwhile Rend Soul would only beam 6% of the time, or 12% with PF_BEAM.

July 16, 2012, 00:13	#25
Oramin Swordsman Join Date: Jun 2012 Posts: 257	Thanks, folks. A couple more questions: Do artifacts get a chance to beam (e.g. Narthanc)? Do skills/wands like Life Drain and Annihilation get a chance to beam?

July 16, 2012, 02:20	#26
Derakon Prophet Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 4,755	I believe the answer is no in both cases. Certainly I've never seen Life Drain / Annihilation beam, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen artifact bolt activations beam either. Come to think, I don't think there are any artifacts that activate for a beaming effect, period. All of the offensive ones are bolts or balls. Or "everything in line of sight".

July 25, 2012, 07:05	#29
Oramin Swordsman Join Date: Jun 2012 Posts: 257	1. I recently tried using a Rod of Drain Life to target a monster on the other side of a group of monsters. I ended up killing one of the intervening monsters so apparently Drain Life uses the bolt targeting code instead of the ball targeting code. Is this working as intended? 2. Gnomes have wand/staff ID and free action? It would be nice if the character screen specified the racial advantage. 3. When you hit monsters with Meteor Storm (or whatever the name is from Raal's), the message includes monsters fleeing after they've already been destroyed, which seems a bit odd. Probably a result of a flag being set for fleeing in the middle of the 4 separate attacks. 4. Just nitpicking but I ran across a message where I "freez" a monster - I would normally expect to "freeze" monsters. 5. Does anybody happen to know the Teleport percentage for Rift? 6. Is there any way to stop monsters from teleporting me? Apparently Boots of Stability don't manage to do that in 3.3.2; I thought I recalled them working that way in an earlier patch.

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