Need Suggestions on Making a Necromancer

[fildred13]

Hey all,

I've been planning a necromancer unit for awhile now but work on the first four levels of my campaign have put that on hold. Now map 5 comes, and with it comes the need of a necromancer unit which will be the focus of much of the campaign.

My first question is: Can anyone think of necromancer-esque units that are already in Myth or the various tagsets and plugs that have been released by third-parties in the past? That would be a great skeleton (excuse the pun) for me to have a look at. It is either the Hexotagset or the Our Farewell Tagset that has the Spider queen that lays other little spider babies. She is the closest thing I can imagine to what I want, but if anyone can think of another, that'd be great.

My second question is more technical: How will I get the Necromancy spell to work? My idea is this, let me know if you guys think it holds water. The necromancer's one and only ability is "Raise Dead." It is cast on the ground, and every whole corpse (like warriors, bowman, etc., but not thrall, which have already gibbed) in a given radius rises as either a thrall, or a skeleton, or a skeleton bowman, or w/e. From a technical perspective, I think that means I have to program the spell to detect specific corpses, ex. the warrior corpse object, then replace that object with the monster I want it to be replaced by, such as, in this case, a thrall. It would be nice if different corpses yielded different undead, such as bowman = archer skellies and heron guard's = bonemen.

That's the idea. I'm not even sure if that is engine-possible, to detect corpses, let alone delete them, and then replace them with a unique monster. But if it is possible, I know you guys will be the ones to know, so thanks for your time and thanks in advance for any help.

Lastly, I usually only play my plugs with my friends but that means I only get limited feedback about my ideas. If anyone wants to put their two cents in about how they think my necromancer would play in multiplayer, that'd be great and much appreciated.

Happy mything.
~fildred

[Pyro]

Sounds like you will want/need to use scripting for your necromancer. I've done something like that in the past actually. One way to do it is to have the necro create a projectile at the target location. Then the script will find this projectile via a GEOM and look at the area around it. It will look for specific projectiles (the corpses). Then use a MOMA and CTRL to move undead to those spots and make them visible. You can also script it so the corpse is removed from the map as the undead unit appears.

Another method would be to yet again start with the necro create a projectile the script looks for and scans the area around it. Then have invisible looking uncontrollable units from your team that the player can't see to go to the corpses in the area. They drop a projectile that promotes to an undead and they are made to pick up the corpse.

[fildred13]

I like the first idea. So you're suggesting that the map itself has to be programmed to support the necromancer, not the unit itself? And also, when I move the invisible undead and make them visible on that spot, does that mean that I have to have every possible undead unit that COULD be raised on the map, invisible, upon the map creation? Or is there a way to "spawn" a unit in-game? That is the one I'm not so sure of.

[Pyro]

The first method I mentioned would require either all possible units that could be spawned or you will need to limit the number of units that can be used at any one time. Meaning if you have a max of 100 units that you can reanimate once dead but only have 20 units already made and invisible on the map, then you can only raise and keep up to 20. Once some die, you can spawn more since the 20 can be set as respawnable so you never run out. You are just limited to that many at any one time.

You can use part of the second method where a unit creates a projectile that will promote to a unit, if you prefer having an unlimited number of spawnable units. However, it might be a good idea to have some sort of limit so the player doesn't go crazy with it and tries to keep too many units. Keep in mind you can only have about 400 visible units on the map at any one time.

[fildred13]

Hrm. From a gameplay perspective, capping it seems smart, and it fits into the "necromancers can only maintain cominion over so many undead" lore.

It seems like it would be easier to not have to predict which units will be raised and create them all off in the wings ready to be called at all times, so I like the idea of the projectile method. I have never done that sort of scripting before though. Do you have any idea where I might find some how-to's, or at least some examples of this method being used before so I can study from it?

[killerking]

I thought you're able to create undead units in 'throne of the lich king' by picking up the skulls of dead thrall/soulles or something like that. You can download that plugin here at projectmagma.net (maybe under prior work, but definitely at this site)

[Graydon]

Aye, the Pyromancer in Throne of the Lich King is a perfect example of a necromancer.

[fildred13]

Yes, I actually just happened to install throne of the lich king to try it out, since I had my suspicions from the title about necromancy.

The problem is, that reguires that you pick up a skull of a dead undead. I want to raise corpses of once-light units, AS undead. No doubt the scripting used there will help me, but I still need to figure out a way to

a.) detect nearby corpses

b.) delete those corpses

c.) spawn a unique undead creature there based on the type of corpse that was once on the ground.

I'm taking a look at the throne of the lich king right now. If anyone else has any ideas, that'd be great, but for now I'll keep poking around in TTofLK and see what i find.

Thanks again.

[Pyro]

Some of the script in this old plugin might help. Try the Watcher's special attack as well as The Summoner's special attack. While they don't do what you want, parts of them do things you are interested in.

[Jon God]

Didn't Senex Silvae have something like this?

[Fury IX]

"My first question is: Can anyone think of necromancer-esque units that are already in Myth or the various tagsets and plugs that have been released by third-parties in the past?"

there are some cool wizards, and a cool undead archer here:

http://www.freewebs.com/soulblaster/3rd ... rlocks.htm
http://www.freewebs.com/soulblaster/3rdpartyundead.htm

to make it all look the same, you might stick with the summoner and regular ghost units (or just make the dead units flicker)

[steelaxe]

well what you could do is have several projectiles that the necromancer will use and will destoy the corps and maybe the proj spawns your new unit or the corpse, once destroyed, hase the unit spawn. thats all in fear and it doesnt look to bad when used. but im not sure if you could use the monster entrance that way.

[fildred13]

I have been playing around in fear and loathing, and I am stuck on something that I feel is probably simple.

I have a necromancer unit that throws a little projectile onto the ground. Then, I have a GEOM which looks for that projectile, and stores it as an obje which I can later delete so the dead aren't continuously rising from that spot.

What I need to do is also store the world location of that projectile, so I can use a subsequent GEOM to look around that center point for bodies. The problem is, I don't know how to store both the location and the object at the same time. I could create a second GEOM that stores it as a waypoint, but I have set them to choose one randomly, in case multiple necromancers are summoning at the same time. I assume the two GEOM's MIGHT not store the same original projectile, so then it would be broken.

Is there an easy way to convert the object type of a simple storage map action from obje to wayp? OR can anyone think of a better way to do this? Is there a way to tell a GEOM to search only for the projectile stored in my projectile storage map action?

Thanks,
~fildred13

[Pyro]

Is there an easy way to convert the object type of a simple storage map action from obje to wayp? OR can anyone think of a better way to do this? Is there a way to tell a GEOM to search only for the projectile stored in my projectile storage map action?

As long as the GEOM does not have the "Choose Random Items" parameter, you can use that same GEOM to give the multiple results of the same items it found. You could also just dump all the results to the same single result. To do this you do the following:

Tested Items Inside Field Name
obje
Tested Items Inside Location Field Name
wayp

Depending on your script it won't matter than your obje and wayp are in the same place. If it does (I don't know how you scripted it.) let me know.

[TarousZars]

Check out your.name.here. It has some basic necromancer scripting that I did forever ago.