Took me some time as well, which was nice to actually be challenged by a boss and actually have to THINK about how to beat him. Pillars, throw some bombs, hope you can kill him before he kills you.

Seriously though, the bomb throwing -1 damage is >>>>> than the .5 sword swing damage when it comes to this guy.  

Any news on the facebook update?  

Woah, I never thought of the bomb throw, it could really change the battle.

Nothing new on FB.  

Don't worry guys, even without Facebook, you guys can come play with me. I get bored.  

Posted by Nelm

Took me some time as well, which was nice to actually be challenged by a boss and actually have to THINK about how to beat him. Pillars, throw some bombs, hope you can kill him before he kills you.

Seriously though, the bomb throwing -1 damage is >>>>> than the .5 sword swing damage when it comes to this guy.

Yea, I was trying to avoid spoilers, but I couldn't get him with bombs because of massive lag.  

You know, why not make bombs clientside in quest mode just like pretty much everything else? I really want to beat that boss, but I've been having >1000ms ping for the last three days.  

Good news is that you'll be able to beat the boss when you're done lagging.  

I'll be playing !  

It isn't impossible to beat him without bombs. In fact I fought him twice yesterday again and was only able to use the bombs early, when he was still, then I had to use my sword.  

Posted by deadowl

You know, why not make bombs clientside in quest mode just like pretty much everything else? I really want to beat that boss, but I've been having >1000ms ping for the last three days.

I've thought about doing this for Quest levels before but as it is not possible to create new NPCs clientside, you either still have to place the bomb serverside or create a pseudo npcs object and tie it in to systems such as wall checking.

That said it is not actually necessary to have Bombs (or Bow) to defeat Voluran, it's possible to do it using the sword alone and without taking a single hit, much in the same way an adept sparrer might defeat a rushing newbie flawlessly.  

Posted by Thor

I've thought about doing this for Quest levels before but as it is not possible to create new NPCs clientside, you either still have to place the bomb serverside or create a pseudo npcs object and tie it in to systems such as wall checking.

You could always get around that first issue by pre-loading them since there should be an upper limit to the number of bombs a player can use at any one time anyway.  

Posted by deadowl

You could always get around that first issue by pre-loading them since there should be an upper limit to the number of bombs a player can use at any one time anyway.

That's actually how the thief chase at Christian's Shop was made, but that required having 3 dormant NPCs in every level which isn't really an elegant solution to apply for every quest level.  

Posted by Thor

That's actually how the thief chase at Christian's Shop was made, but that required having 3 dormant NPCs in every level which isn't really an elegant solution to apply for every quest level.

An elegant way would be to write a simple preprocessor. You can either base the preprocessor's evaluation of levels on a database that contains certain attributes for levels. You could also base the evaluation on scanning the level for some type of indicator. You can either do a src -> dst architecture or have the preprocessor flag its own scripts so that it cleans up after itself if it's reprocessing the level.

A preprocessor could also be useful for other things like generating underwater levels that reflect changes in above-water levels. So it wouldn't need to be just a one-off hack to make it easier to preload clientside bombs in quest levels.

Com013 had built something like this at one point, although he was trying to mass-convert scripts for NPC-Server compatibility rather than adding more powerful features to levels.

Edit: I imagine you could even do it on the server without having to deviate from GScript, since online level editing became a bit of a push ~v4 of the client. The loadlines, savelines and maybe copylevel functions look like they could potentially be used for preprocessing functionality.

Edit 2: Now that I think about it, you could also use it to be a clean substitute for the built-in baddies and built-in chests that the level editor currently provides.

Edit 3: And the gajillion signs, bushes, swamp tiles (if those are NPCs now) that a lot of places have.  

Okay, so to my previous post, it would probably save you more time than you would need to invest.

As for playing GtA recently: some of it is ridiculously esoteric. Missing 5 gralats, and I've looked pretty exhaustively. I did the same for the card in Ebon's keep, but only ever tried pushing in the middle of book cases.

Overall though, good work at teasing players to explore.  

Did you pick up the rock-turtle in Castle Quest with the crane? Drops a blue rupee.