diablerie mod... hungry?

[acornco]

edit: its out.




finally figured out how to get vclan to run through python... and that was a big deal.



so heres how it works.

its pretty simple. you will be able to drain many of the named vampires in the game at some point in your dealings with them.

you'l get some stat boost related to their personality/position

depending on your clan and their clan, you will get an item that will give you one of their clans disciplines... ohhh yeah(so you can drop the item and adjust your hotkeys........)

however, youl take a pretty big hit to your masquerade standing and or humanity depending on whom your draining.

so yeah. simple. trade humanity and masquerade for stats and discs.



the scripts/formats/ect are done and i just have to go through and get my copy pasta on. so in the mean time...

heres what is going in, for now. there will be some deviation on what discs youl get depending on what clan you are, so for example, a nos wont get a disc from draining bertram.



therese -2 m -1h haggle no disc

janette -1 m -1h seduction no disc

the vorman sisters -3 m -2h both malk dialogue

bertram -1 m -1h wits obfuscate

straus -4 m -1h intelligence thaum...

vv -3 m +3h seduction presence

isaac -2 m +2h stamina celerity

nines -1 m -3h strength fortitude

beckett -3 m -4h whatever protean



i havnt decided on the numbers really. and if your thinking... can you make them boss fights... no. some one might. but not me. simple dialogue initiated drains is what this is. at least for the initial release.

and im thinking release will be in 2-3 days from now.

so while its still in the works, any thoughts? desires?


edit....

it is done... may heaven have mercy on me for what i have unleashed... rofl.

https://www.nexusmods.com/vampirebloodlines/mods/127/

[Cubie]

Hey, cool idea.

Just a question: How is the game going to handle a situation where one of the important story characters disappear? For example, if I diablerize Beckett early on, who is going to direct me to The Society of Leopold in the endgame?

(I realize that this might not be a problem at all, depending on WHEN one can initiate diablerie, but it's the first thing that I thought of, so...).

[Wesp5]

Also why should these NPC allow themselves to be killed? Most of them are stronger than the player! Wouldn't it make more sense to have this only work on enemy vampires?

[acornco]

Originally posted by Cubie:

Hey, cool idea.

Just a question: How is the game going to handle a situation where one of the important story characters disappear? For example, if I diablerize Beckett early on, who is going to direct me to The Society of Leopold in the endgame?

(I realize that this might not be a problem at all, depending on WHEN one can initiate diablerie, but it's the first thing that I thought of, so...).

i gotcha. good point.

yeah so they are listed in the order in which you can diablerize em. so for instance, the only chance i would think you could diablerize nines is at the end of the dialogue at the park. same for beckett, only after he warns you about you know what in the down town streets.

in other instances, like bert and vv, i plan on allowing them to be diablerized as soon as it wont interfere with the main story. so you can easily miss out on side quests if your too crazy.

at any rate, concerning hilarious re appearances... i would like to hem up loose threads, but for now, im still smoothing out the math and the scripts. but i will keep that in mind as im going over the maps and stuff. maybe start testing stuff out on the fly.

but for the initial release... youl probably have to put your suspension of disbelief in a full nelson. but if you diablerize strauss and choose the cam ending... cmon man... thats just silly.

Originally posted by wesp5:

Also why should these NPC allow themselves to be killed? Most of them are stronger than the player! Wouldn't it make more sense to have this only work on enemy vampires?

rofl... so how is 10.6 coming along... ; P

yeah i know what you mean... so im gonna be messing around to see if i can get them to put up a fight... but i dont really want to mod map files, theyre so big and clunky... but im gonna have to mod some any ways... so yeah... i duno...

but on the flip side(in defense of being lazy), by the time these guys are asking for your help, your doing quests that they wouldnt touch with a 10 foot pole... so its not a far cry that you should be able to grab em and drain em. remember, becket chickens out over helping you raid the hunters lair.

plus i already wrote some really funny dialogue lines... but i am considering implementing a brawl check into the dialogue...

i plan on messing around with bruno/adrian and see how it feels to diablerize a serious customer.

but you know what the problem is with fight feeding.... bad animation meets bad combat system... if you think the auto shotgun ruins the adrian fight... wait till you just hit the feed button... so i would at least need a way to... i duno; hit him with a debuff to lower his feed resist? so you have to fight him a little before you can drain him...

rofl... gotta diablerize em all... sigh...

on the edge of the coin... theres no real point in diablerizing soldiers... ya know, they wouldnt raise your gen....... and yeah. thats a factor now... its coming.



here it is. the idea is that the player starts out as a thin blood with a cap 8 blood pool... and guess how you raise it... pay some lip service... to your elders. yeah.

all the bumps are done through a python check that, in return, changes your history to the appropriate "generation"... if you were curious...

wow i hope that dosnt reset the players xp too... but even if it does... i have a python for that too.... really slow morning.

[Cubie]

Originally posted by acornco:

yeah so they are listed in the order in which you can diablerize em. so for instance, the only chance i would think you could diablerize nines is at the end of the dialogue at the park. same for beckett, only after he warns you about you know what in the down town streets.

in other instances, like bert and vv, i plan on allowing them to be diablerized as soon as it wont interfere with the main story. so you can easily miss out on side quests if your too crazy.

Ah, thanks for the answer.

[acornco]

^ thanks for the input. gave me some more things to consider while im plugging stuff in and testing stuff out.

im hoping the "unforseen consequences" of killing off characters who arent normally meant to be killed dosnt cause ctd's or other comedy.

added generation dependent bloodpool caps and instituted an unarmed combat check to access the dialogue, btw.

[BanDHMO]

I don't recall exactly this part, but I don't think Beckett chickens out. He doesn't want to do it, though he could. In general, the whole game takes place over a pretty short period of time, so the notion that a fledgeling could diablerize a higher gen vampire whose blood is more powerful AND who had possibly hundreds of years to hone their skills, seems unlikely. To the point of breaking suspension of disbelief.

Finally, there's the social aspect of it. I find it hard to believe that somebody like Tung disappearing wouldn't have grave reprecautions on a fledgeling who somehow manages to pull off a diablerie on him.

All that said, I really like the idea of the mechanic you are suggesting. But I'd flip it to only work on enemies. When you kill major enemy vampires through the game, give the player a new item corresponding to the enemy, like "Andrei's black heart". The player can then discard it or consume it. When the player consumes it, the black heart is removed, and the discipline object you were talking about is added instead, simulating the player diablerizing the heart.

[acornco]

^good points.

my rational for the dialogue diablerie(again... in defense of my lazyness...) is that LA is falling apart. no one is really watching anyone except maybe ol gary... and nothing really ever explained the neonates rapid rise in power... your a practical walking wood chipper by games end.

even in vanilla, the average neonate end game build possesses power far in advance of your average owod elder. i mean really... you just teach yourself level 5 discs? really? that broke my suspension of disbelief into many small pieces...

like it had been fed into a wood chipper......

but again. mostly, im lazy.


as for combat diablerie, which would be awesome...

andrei and pisha are the only two vampires i can think of off hand that would be worth diablerizing.

your average shovel head is probably gen 13-11... thats pretty aweful. and im taking the generation aspect pretty seriously. its eating up most of my time.

more over, the brotherhood of the ninth are all corrupted... so...


im nearly done with the ground work for the dialogue diablerie. so i am thinking about looking into combat drains. or more precisely, how i could incorporate brotherhood coruption into the players modus operandi... tee hee.

but that, for now, is crazy talk. the games wildly rigid and just getting the dialogue diablerie to work with some finesse... yeesh.

rofl... go play the library quests... bow to wesp... thats a hard mod... this mod is simple.


but ill just say it. half the reason im making this mod is because i hate certain npc's and i think its bull i can't take them down after my dude does all their dirty work...

i just took that zeitgheist and built a more or less honest gameplay concept around it. ; )

but i figured that was obvious. any way.... got the template built... i got alot of find&replace ta do.......


edit: character relevance... "bertram\s important"...

that was echoing in my head still... made me laugh.

to me, la is noplace. its one of the youngest vampire domains. overpopulated and... ill leave it at that.

strauss, gary and jack are probably the most powerful vamps in the area but even thats hard to say.

the rest are just kids fighting over the molted scraps of a growing neo urban sprawl.

and beckett? lets just say i have a fondness for killing volo...

[BanDHMO]

You are right, of course, that the game takes a lot of liberties that strain the lore in order to have a more fun gaming experience. Still, I feel like it more or less fits into a reasonably coherent picture. Sure, you can teach yourself level 5 disciplines in 0 hours, which is stupid, but you are still a fledgeling. Nines can rip a werewolf's head off, and you can only kill it by clever trickery (and let's face it, nearly nobody killed it the first time they played the encounter, you died and died until you figured it out). The conversation with the cabbie near the end of the game explains you can't even leave town when you want to, for fear that vampires here would reach out and find you wherever you go. There's being a wood chipper in a fight, and then there's the social aspect of it, where if you have multiple older vampires decide to work together to kill you, it doesn't really matter how good you are in a fight.

So, I don't know about you, but I very much still feel like a fledgeling throughout the game. So it wouldn't feel right being able to run around and openly go "I'll eat you all, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!". Still, I think it might be more of an opportunity than an impediment. If you know how to control dialogs, you could build dialog repercussions in later dialogs with other vampires.

For example, if you diablerize one vampire, then another may find out about it and prepare. And when you have a dialog with him, he will threaten you with a pre-arranged deadhand trigger that would release all the information about your transgressions. Meaning you can't then diablerize him. In addition, maybe he'd ask you for blood packs or money to keep it all under wraps. Your idea could definitely grow in interesting ways.

Whatever you decide to do with it, best of luck.

EDIT: Here's another thing a vampire who has information you diablerized someone may demand - tutoring. You'd have to show up several times and have a dialog with them. It'd cost you nothing, but bring him some of that juicy discipline you have stolen. I know it's not that simple, but for game purposes, you could hand-wave the whole blood bond thing away.

[acornco]

Originally posted by BanDHMO:

you could build dialog repercussions in later dialogs with other vampires.

i very nearly added some damage for when you fail the unarmed melee check XP

but i was getting tired. at any rate... the cats out.

id like to take better advantage of the generation aspect and mess with combat some. part of the problem with dialogue is that its tricky to add with out adding new audio. i think i was pretty clever about it...

i used a tricky bit of kungfu so that no matter who you diablerized and in what order, your generation will still grow consistently. im not sure how i would work out an even more complicated and realistic emergent feedback feature... maybe in the future.

but for now... i rest.

[BanDHMO]

Wait, what do you mean exactly by generation? Are you saying you've figured out a way to actually change player's generation? Meaning, with all the effects it has on the blood pool size? And maximum stats? Surely that would require a huge amount of work.

[acornco]

Originally posted by BanDHMO:

Wait, what do you mean exactly by generation? Are you saying you've figured out a way to actually change player's generation? Meaning, with all the effects it has on the blood pool size? And maximum stats? Surely that would require a huge amount of work.

^rofl yes... no one reads anymore...

i implemented generations fifteen through eight. so at gen 15 youl have a cap of 8 points and at gen 14 a cap of 9 and so on.

didnt do gen 7 because im not sure the game can exceed a 15 point blood pool cap. gen 7 is a 20 point pool.

its one of the ways a rationalized this whole endeavor.

i had developed the concept of limiting and switching blood pool cap sizes for my survival mod. so i just took that concept and applied it to a sweeping, regimented system based around vhistory manipulation. my kung fu is strong.