Auto Walk/Run, Toggle Walk/Run, and Pause

Lofgren, didn't you ask if we could make an Auto Walk/Run feature? Well your wish is Childe of Malkav's command.

He emailed me an extensive PM about how to create a Auto Walk/Run feature. Then he proceeded to tell me about how some guy in a galaxy far far away had setup a script so you could pause the game, but still be able to mouse scroll powers and use hotkeys, in fact you could even activate powers and it would turn on after you paused it. That sounded like an awesome idea, especially when we're switching weapons n such!

Child of Malkav flat out showed me the code for Auto Walk/Run and set me on the path to do what it is that I did....

Let me introduce to you guys the NEW CE 1.2 User Interface System... (WoW that sounded all serious haha)

1. Not only did I take Childe's suggestion about binding a Pause feature, but I took it a step further and managed to integrate it into the Keyboard Options Menu in the game. Not only that but you can bind it in game and it works, no need to reboot the game after binding a key to it. It works like all the other options, totally professional.

2. I took Childe's Auto Walk/Run script and implemented it into the game binding it to the ALT key. Then I took the Toggle Walk/Run script AND the new Auto Walk/Run script and did what I did for the Pause feature, I integrated it into the Keyboard Options so now it's in the list. Here's the only thing, I couldn't make it so you can change it on the fly, instead I set it up so you CAN'T change it, meaning players won't be able to break it.

If for some reason you forget which keys Toggle and Auto Walk/Run are set to, you can hit the Default button and it will show you. Of course then you'll need to reboot the game because that temporarily wipes out the binding.

Either way you can now see that there IS a Toggle and Auto Walk/Run feature, and you can't bind the keys because it's grayed out as a fail safe for users.


Thanks for Lofgren and Childe of Malkav for their help with this... once again...

YOU GUYS LIKEY? TOMMY BOY LIKEY VERY MUCH!!

Zer0Morph wrote:

Lofgren, didn't you ask if we could make an Auto Walk/Run feature? Well your wish is Childe of Malkav's command.

He emailed me an extensive PM about how to create a Auto Walk/Run feature. Then he proceeded to tell me about how some guy in a galaxy far far away had setup a script so you could pause the game, but still be able to mouse scroll powers and use hotkeys, in fact you could even activate powers and it would turn on after you paused it. That sounded like an awesome idea, especially when we're switching weapons n such!

Child of Malkav flat out showed me the code for Auto Walk/Run and set me on the path to do what it is that I did....

YOU GUYS LIKEY? TOMMY BOY LIKEY VERY MUCH!!

HI out there! Glad youl liked it

The way I understand it, the pause function was implemented in the original game, they just decidet not to use it. I think thats why you had no problem getting it into the options.

And Auto walk/run was actually your idea, so you dont have to glue your finger to the SHIFT key. What logfren asked for was auto go/stop. So I only tried out if the script for the auto walk/run also works for moving forward and it did

Zer0 you should really read your own manual once in a while, that's where I got the idea for that toggle

Hello everybody. I just registered in your cool forum.

Great job with the new interface features. This game is truely getting better with every hour.
I've been watching the community progress since the release of the game. There used to be only Wesp's amazing unofficial patches. Now there are so many mods that differs greatly from one another.
I'm really happy to see that you are helping each other and due to your hard work we are getting things that we couldn't have even dreamt of a year ago.

Godlike

Seriously though, I love those changes, will make everything feel more RPG like

So Bloodlines in now officialy Real Time with Pause, like Dragon Age?

Never thought I'd live to see this day.

WE WANTS IT NOW!!!!

WOW! What a huge response, I guess these changes are a keeper then? lol

Seeing how excited you guys are is making me excited, now I feel like I'm sitting on a gold mine here, lol. After making this post last night I went back and thought to myself, man there's gotta be a way so people can see what Auto-Walk/Run and Toggle-Walk/Run are bound too, so you don't have to hit Default key.

So I went back in and changed the text in the Options Keyboard menu, now it says Toggle Walk/Run (SHIFT) and Auto Walk/Run (ALT) and all the keys are cleared and grayed out so you can't change it. Perfect eh? YAY!!

Here's a screenshot of what I'm talking about...



As you can see from the picture, PAUSE (In Real-Time) can be bound to any key on the fly, you don't have to leave the game and it works just like any other key.

Toggle and Auto Walk/Run now show up in the Options menu and after the name they show the key they are bound too. You cannot change the keys in the game, you would have to manipulate the script to do so. The reason they are shaded in green is because they are unchangeable, if you try to highlight them the "Set New Key" and "Clear Key" stay blacked out as a fail safe for players.

And someone asked if PAUSE worked in real time like Dragon Age, this is correct. While paused you can switch weapons and disciplines, activate disciplines, and even change and setup your hotkey menu. When you Un-Pause the game everything will immediately take effect. If you guys have ever played RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, etc.... it's just like that. It adds an element of strategy so your not dying trying to remember which key whips out the sniper rifle, HAHA!

This new UI "Make Me SOOOO HORNEY"!!!

lofgren wrote:

WE WANTS IT NOW!!!!

We'll never get it!

We are way to creative for that. For every good idea that gets implemented two new ones creep up.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

lofgren wrote:

WE WANTS IT NOW!!!!

We'll never get it!

We are way to creative for that. For every good idea that gets implemented two new ones creep up.

It's so true, man the past 5 things I've created for CE 1.2 were not even my ideas and were not even thought of when I posted the hesitant deadline for release. These awesome ideas are definately going to push a public release back a little but I think it's going to be worth it.

Man I'm taking a break after CE 1.2.... so if you have any other ideas make sure to speak up now because it may be awhile before you see a CE 1.3 lol.

Do you have anything planned for dementation? I feel that the level 4 ability should be level 3, and level 4 should do something else. Instant kill is a pretty dull ability, and in my experience level 4, while it sounds cool, works out pretty much like level 3. It takes several seconds for the guy you tagged to come out of his trance, and during that time everybody else on the screen has already registered him as an enemy, so they usually just kill him before he can squeeze off a shot anyway. Since you're replacing dominance and animalism abilities with much more interesting versions, I wondered about these.

I think that's my last suggestion for now...

lofgren wrote:

Do you have anything planned for dementation? I feel that the level 4 ability should be level 3, and level 4 should do something else. Instant kill is a pretty dull ability, and in my experience level 4, while it sounds cool, works out pretty much like level 3. It takes several seconds for the guy you tagged to come out of his trance, and during that time everybody else on the screen has already registered him as an enemy, so they usually just kill him before he can squeeze off a shot anyway. Since you're replacing dominance and animalism abilities with much more interesting versions, I wondered about these.

I think that's my last suggestion for now...

Actually Tier 4 Dementation (Voices of Madness) is broke in vanilla. The Do_Berserk command kills any AI for any character in the game, which is especially bad when used on a respawnable NPC like a hooker. Try it sometime, use it on a hooker, she dies, zone to another zone, come back and she'll still be in berserk mode, it's all messed up.

Therefore Voice of Madness needs to go, as well as the command associated with it. I'm not sure yet what I plan to do but it will get overhauled before release.

What do you think of something like "Mass Hysteria"?

It doesn't kill anybody, but the target and everyone else in a certain radius will break off combat and start doing funny things: stand around, get the laughing fits, wander away, grab a random victim and dance with them...

It could be targeted or centered on the character and have a predetermined radius and duration like e.g. Celerity.

I think that would be something truely malkavian; it doesn't kill but it makes everybody look absolutely silly

Edit: On second thought
It should absolutely be centered on the character and (to a lesser degree) also affect him. That's what Dementation is all about: channeling one's own madness to others

Childe of Malkav wrote:

It could be targeted or centered on the character and have a predetermined radius and duration like e.g. Celerity.

OOps, now I dementated myself. It should have read "...something like Presence"

It's still a tier 4 discipline. It's true that Malkavians are funny because of their madness but it's also their insanity that makes them scary and deadly.

I checked the tiers of dementation in wiki and I can't think of anything suitable, because I'm not quite sure what can be done. Maybe something like these:

Lunatic Eruption: Invoke a mad frenzy in all sentient creatures within up to several miles
The Haunting : Inflict maddening visions upon a victim
Mind of a Killer: Temporarily make someone a cold-blooded killer until they take it out on someone

YamiRaziel wrote:

It's still a tier 4 discipline. It's true that Malkavians are funny because of their madness but it's also their insanity that makes them scary and deadly.

I checked the tiers of dementation in wiki and I can't think of anything suitable, because I'm not quite sure what can be done. Maybe something like these:

Lunatic Eruption: Invoke a mad frenzy in all sentient creatures within up to several miles
The Haunting : Inflict maddening visions upon a victim
Mind of a Killer: Temporarily make someone a cold-blooded killer until they take it out on someone

Mind of a Killer seems like the berserk ability we have now. If the ability can be fixed, I actually like it a lot. Very flavorful and fun to use. It's just that in practice it's not much more powerful than vision of death, because like I said the way it works out is no different from your tier 3 ability about 90% of the time. At best it takes one or two guns off you of you for one or two rounds, and then the guy you berserked is dead and really you might as well have just killed him outright with your tier 3 power for all the good he did you.

Lunatic Eruption sounds like the tier 5 ability we already have.

Would the Haunting be an upgrade of mass hallucination?

A version of "Forgetful Mind" might be cool, except instead of going to sleep, everybody starts doing silly things, like the mass hysteria description above. That could be the tier 3, and then you could keep berserk as tier 4.

Isn't the current tier 5 ability this:

Bedlam: The target and any others near him all randomly suffer one of the first four levels of dementation.

Actually, how about this for tier 4:

Mass Hysteria - a toggle ability that gives NPCs near you a 50% chance of becoming as insane as you are. Unlimited duration.

Affected NPCs would break out laughing, start dancing, or do other silly things. NPCs who resisted would not be affected at all.

That way you could run around all day causing mass insanity. In combat, it would have a chance of simply removing on average 1/2 of the combatants, and since malkavians have obfuscate you could know who you have to be concerned with and who you can ignore before you even make your presence known. Just like hysteria, anybody bumped or attacked would recover.

Sounds interesting but I think that new name will be better.
The only bad thing is that tier 2 and tier 4 will be absolutely the same.
Also tier 3 will still be "kill a human or damage a supernatural"

OK, how about this:

Tier 1: Hysteria
Tier 2: Mass Hallucination - This is an extremely useful power since malks have no offensive abilities, but it's not very interesting. I'd rather people run away in terror, break out laughing, or otherwise react to their hallucinations in some way.
Tier 3: Paranoia - You pull this one in dialogue sometimes. The target chooses another NPC nearby and attacks him until one of them is dead.
Tier 4: Lynch Mob - The target flees in terror and everybody in the area chases and attacks him until he is dead.
Tier 5: Bedlam - Everybody in the area attacks everybody else.

I've really enjoyed reading your guys's ideas, problem is I think you missed what I said up top. Do_Beserk does not work so any and all Beserk functions are broke and won't be used. NPCs won't be attacking anyone but you. Thats the whole reason I'm overhauling Dementation, because both Do_Possesion (Dominate) and Do_Beserk commands break computer AI permanetly.

I was thinking there might be a way to give NPCs specific targets who are not you. For example, NPCs obviously attack Mitnick and Ash. But if that is not possible I'm sure there are plenty of other things we can do with insanity.

If there is a way I have yet to discover it, Dementation is going to be tough because I don't want to copy Dominate but I'm very limited... That whole make people do different crazy stuff should work but attacking other NPCs as of now is out. I can't get that to work without breaking the AI, which isn't a problem on enemies, but using them in town really screws up the game.

YamiRaziel wrote:

Sounds interesting but I think that new name will be better.
The only bad thing is that tier 2 and tier 4 will be absolutely the same.
Also tier 3 will still be "kill a human or damage a supernatural"

What's so bad about "Kill a human..."? There are situations in the game when it is quite handy to dispose of a person without causing attention. And I like the animation

Something else about Malks. The disadvantage of every other clan can have serious effects on the character: Brujah and Gangrel frenzy more often, Nos have trouble dealing with humans, Ventrue have a difficult time finding acceptable food...
What about the malkavian madness. I haven't discovered any effects except the funny talking and that is more fun than hindrance.

I dont know if you can do it, but it could be amusing if he sometimes gets "madness frenzy". The effect would be: The character behaves oddly and you can't control it. If your BloodDoll sees it you'd have to reseduce her -needing a better stat.
Perhaps you could stop that, spending blood if it happens at a very inconvenient time.

I also like the animation of tier 3. Malkavian powers need more variety. It will be just stupid if 3 of the 5 tiers are for example : Make people laugh, make people hallucinate and make people do silly things with the same effect.
We need more deadly abilities. I checked the dementation thread in wikipedia and the problem is that most of the abilities seem to give one or more darengements to someone and I don't see how can this help us.
Here are few interesting abilities of dementation:

The Haunting [3]: Inflict maddening visions upon a victim
Shattered Mirror: Twist a victim's personality into a copy of your own
Childmind: Give someone a "psychic lobotomy", reducing their Mental attributes by up to seven points
Mind of a Killer: Temporarily make someone a cold-blooded killer until they take it out on someone
Coma: Place someone into a catatonic state for an extended period of time
Prison of the Mind: Lock someone's mind in a delusional state and leave his body catatonic
Lunatic Eruption: Invoke a mad frenzy in all sentient creatures within up to several miles

Zer0Morph are there limits to the graphic effects of the disciplines?
Hm... maybe we should think of Alister Grout. We've seen his mansion... what powers could he have possible had ?

I think what Grout did was mainly just simple frankensteinian brain surgery.

Listen to those records he has around (but be sure to wear a straitjacket when you do so )