The Great Ghoul Challenge is on.

We're playing ghouls and racing to the end of the game (though we're not taking the competition part seriously). Really what we're doing is having fun and testing out a few changes!

http://te4.org/games/addons/tome/great-ghoul-challenge-b37/great-ghoul-challenge-b37

Add-On changes

Includes the bug-fix add-on. Don't run them together.

Bulwarks, Berserkers, and Marauders now have access to the conditioning tree
Bloodbath now gives stacking life and stamina regen rather then multiplying existing values
Warrior escorts can now teach the conditioning tree and a few talents from that tree instead of combat accuracy or weapon mastery (they still teach exotic weapon mastery)
Insatiable ego removed
Saving throws now reduce duration based on a percentage (5% per difference)
Saving throws with a minimum duration can now be 'shrugged off'
Accuracy now has it's own cross tier effect, Off-Guard, that increases critical strike chance and critical power by 10%
Off-Balance now reduces global speed by 15%
Slime slow effect reduced to 15%
Hit rolls now cap out at a 20 point difference rather then 10 increasing or decreasing hit chance in 2.5% increments

Some of these changes are in the SVN, some we still need to convince Darkgod that they're more fun. So play some ghouls, test some changes, have fun!! And let everyone know what you think and how your ghoul is doing!!

And thanks to tiger_eye for converting my diffs into an add-on!!

Well it's been a long long time coming and I've learned a lot getting here so I'm very happy to say that the Paradox Mage talent trees are completed.

Now that's not to say that the class is done. Because of the number of new talents and the nature of the resource I need to get some playtime in with them to test the numbers, make sure that the class is balanced, and most of all to ensure that they're fun to play.

So... mostly finished? That's pretty safe to say. I still need to run through all the talent descriptions, particles, and sound effects. Give it all a once over to make sure I didn't leave anything out. Plus we still need an unlock. But the class is playable and I hope will add a lot to the game once it's all polished up and released.

I'd like to share some of my favorite talents with you though as a teaser of sorts.

Paradox Clone - You summon your future self to fight alongside you for a few turns. (Note that this is a full player clone complete with tactical AI. Probably one of the toughest summons in the game. It also has a really cool side effect but I don't want to get to spoiley.)

See the Threads - Darkgod did all the coding on this one and came up with the idea. Sweet spell that lets you exist in three different timelines for the next few turns and then pick the outcome you like the best.

Precognition - My idea, DGs code. This spell is the reason I've decided to remove the vision and detect type effects from the chronomancy tree. This is your vision, this is your detect. You cast this and get to act for a few turns, see what's in a vault, fight a monster you've never encountered to gauge it's abilities, or whatever you want to do in that time (even learn a talent to test it out before really having to learn it). When the buff wears off the game reloads you back to where you cast it as though nothing happened. But you, the player, gets to keep all the knowledge you've acquired.

Lots of other neat stuff too but those are my favorite three.

This was Sirracco's idea but I figuring out to actually do the effect ended up taking a lot longer then anticipated. The idea was to pull power from other time lines. As much as I love Sirracco's initial idea of casting a spell, cloning the player and the bolt to reload the level, then doing it all over again, it sounded like a lot to implement. So I ended up going with a next spell cast inflicts X more damage route (I know, a bit boring but hey).

So at first I tried to use something like Martyr except having the spell hit the target again rather then hitting yourself. I ran into an infinite loop here and after a failed attempt to fix it decided to scrap that idea.

Second idea was to have this be a stacking buff that broke on cast. So the first turn you get a big bonus to damage and if you don't use it right away you can stack more damage on top of it, though in much smaller percentages. After five turns of this you'd lose the gathered damage if you hadn't used it. Casting a spell at any time would also end the effect.

So I created a time out effect and the activate/deactivate for my new timed effect and I started testing. The power on the tooltip updated as I wanted it to but the power on the character sheet never went up. At which point I realized that activate happens once (on activate) and whatever number it pulls at that time is the number it will have.

Next I tried putting the damage buff in the time out effect itself (time out effects happen everytime the timer ticks down) which led to the character ending up with +1000% damage. It was putting the value on everytime as I wanted but wasn't clearing the old values out.

After wracking my brain for awhile I remembered that on merge effects work for damage so they could probably work for this (I'd used them for stuff like damage over time effects but never anything else). I looked over a few on merge effects, specifically bloodlust and the berserker strength one (bloodrage?) then went to work modifying bloodrage for my stacking damage effect.

Here's how everything came together and the guts of what a self stacking timed effect needs.

Activate - This is your base value you want to happen the first turn.
Deactivate - To remove the effect completely at the end.
Time Out - This is your trigger for reapplying the timed effect (we're applying the exact same timed effect so our merge code can merge them.) Put whatever value you want to add or remove as the power.
On Merge - Here you need to remove the old timed effect and make sure your new timed effect gets the correct duration and updated power before it gets applied.

The rest of the talent was pretty easy once I got that out of the way so I won't go into it. I'm sure anyone that needs to deactivate a talent when another talent is used can search for stealth or lightning speed and figure it out ;)

I'm pretty happy with the end result and may update my speed control tree now that I know how to do this. A slow that starts off big but loses power every turn could be fun as would a speed effect that gave you a big boost but lost power each turn.

So I'd been sending Darkgod some difs that where from b18 and it was a headache. Finally learned to compile on windows though so now I can actually use my SVN for something other then just checking out incoming changes.

I ran into a few pitfalls while learning to compile though, namely once the exe is produced you need to copy the dll files over from a release copy. Another issue I had was that I downloaded the wrong SDL library (it was for windows but not for mingw). Aside from that it was easier then I imagined and took less time then I thought it would. None of the libraries require installation, just unpacking. The only thing that needed to be installed was mingw.

Anyway, I think keeping things up to date will help keep me motivated to finish up the chronomancer and make things a lot easier for Darkgod and myself.

- Add particles to everything (coded just not added)
- Sound check
- Clean up the Matter and Gravity trees (add more physical damage to matter, ditch crushing weight and add a cone nuke, add a graviton shield spell that deals knockback when hit, nerf gravity spikes aoe a bit, make quantuum spike the top of the matter tree and make it an instakill, do calcify)
- Lower the cooldown on Echoes from the Past (it's to high now to work as designed which is to give Paradox Mages an interesting nuke)
- Figure out how I want to do Gather the Threads (maybe a stacking buff that breaks on cast like lightning speed or stealth)
- Finish up the Energy tree (Recharge, Energy Redirection, and Entropy)
- Finish up the Paradox tree (possibly add a barrage spell to this tree, figure out how I want to clone the player, possibly combine paradox mastery and paradox shield to make room for barrage, add Redux)
- Add some damage to Entropic Shield and rename it Entropic Field

And I think that's it. Not as much to do as I thought. Energy is half done and Paradox has a few easier effects so it shouldn't be to bad.

Guess I forgot..
- Give them a test run or two ;)

First of all, I want to thank Shockbolt for painting up a couple of temporal instability tiles. They look great and I can't wait to see them in game when something gets Time Skipped.

Second of all, I didn't get much done today but did just finish the summon time elemental anomaly.

This anomaly will summon paradox/200 Telugoroths or Time Terrors (Temporal Elementals). The anomaly randomly picks targets and sets the faction of the elementals to the faction of the target. Which will often result in bad news for the player if they manage to pop this anomaly but hey, they're not meant to be something encouraged.

I made Time Elementals fast (as they should be)and gave them a few of the heavily time themed chronomancy powers. Should make for fun enemies.

For those that haven't been following the development thread I've decided to ditch the Infinite Traveler for now and roll the dual-wielding into an archer/dual-wield rangerish class.

The old Temporal Warden idea (more of a traditional Arcane Blade) is still on the back burner too but the name Temporal Warden will belong to this ranged/dual-wield hybrid.

To facilitate this I coded a new tree, Temporal Archery that has some neat archery effects and a +movement speed talent called celerity that lets you swap weapons without spending a turn. Also revamped the Temporal Combat tree a bit to supply some Strength and Magic through talent points so that they won't be so stat hungry(two separate talents that give a percent of Will to these two stats while sustained).

Been playing around with this class to test balance and what not and most of all... to make sure it's fun and interesting to play.

I also got some anomalies coded though they're not yet implemented (going to need DGs help with that part). Maybe the Temporal Warden will be ready for b19, we'll have to see :)

Worked on cleaning some stuff up today so that the chronomancy talents will use the talent format that all the spells are moving too. Also moved Damage Smearing into the Temporal Combat tree and replaced it with Swap in the Weaving tree (swap will let you switch places with another actor).

Wrote the Infinite Traveler description up and have it's talent trees pretty much set.

Coded Borrowed Time, originally I wanted this to give you two actions then stun you after those two actions are finished but handing out energy or lots of global speed broke the timed effects. So instead Borrowed Time will greatly increase your global speed (1000%) for a few turns then stun you for a few turns.

I still need to do Temporal Double (a beefier shadow simulacrum) and Temporal Wake (a beam that inflicts random status effects) for the Threading tree and Time Skip (removes an actor from the game for a few turns) for the Time Travel tree. I'm not sure yet on how I'll do Time Skip (the turns need to be counted somehow so the timed effect will have to be on an entity other then the target).

That'll leave Premonition, See the Threads, and Revision. Then the class will be finished enough to playtest (anomalies aside).

The boys slept at the same time today so I had a chance to finish up another talent tree.

Speed Control
Entropic Shield - Slows Projectiles and provides some physical resist.
Slow - Small radius ball that reduces targets global speed.
Haste - Increases the casters global speed for a short time.
Stop - Stuns targets near the caster in a radius of three (four at higher talent levels).

I've also been thinking more about Premonition and Deja Vu. Premonition I think would be cool if it created a savefile, let you goof around for a few turns, and then reloaded the savefile (regardless of what happens) or just reloads the savefile when you die. In other words, you get to see what's in the vault or gauge the abilities of a boss you've never seen before. Deja Vu I think should daze for a turn so you have to really pay attention to sense creatures :)

Not sure what I'll work on next. For anyone that's curious here's the development thread on the forums...

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=22592&start=15

Chronomancy development has picked back up. Still busy with the family life though so I can't promise when it'll be done but I have managed to get a couple of talent trees done over the last two days.

Also have a working outline of what I want to do that's up to date so the direction is all there.

Maybe beta 20? No promises but we can hope :)