Unlimited Spells on Any Hero with the Spellbook Ability

Hello there,

Well I finally got around to revising this old ROC idea to work with TFT. And to be honest, it actually works a lot better, so here it is.

Q: Why is a new system needed?
We simply ran out of slots, nuff said. Our trick of hiding the command buttons by staking them on top of each other has been exposed and invalidated by our friends at blizzard (Ok Ok, so they just fixed the bug we were exploting hehe).

The new system uses just one slot, and that slot is a spellbook ability.

Q: How are unlimited spells possible?
The spellbook ability can be removed, and then re-added with other spellbooks that contain other levels of spells. Since each spellbook can contain spell codes used in other spellbooks and etc, for our purposes as mere mortals, the spells are limitless.

Q: Cool, so how do you switch between spell levels?
For the purposes of this demo, spells are toggled between 4 levels by using buttons within the spellbook itself. However in FMVH the navigation buttons will be on the bottom left next to the cancel button. One for forward, one for backwards, and one that brings up another menu with the quicklinks.

Q: Ok im playing the demo, and even though theres a big message that says read the tooltips, i havent read the tooltips, so why can't I learn any spells past level 1?
Read the tooltips ;)

Q: How about cooldowns?
Spells used in a spellbook like this shouldnt have cooldowns, instead they should have extended casting times. This spellbook was modeled after a defacto DND mage, and as youll notice mages are nerfed by the fact that it takes them time to get off a spell. You should do the same thing here, and i would go as far as to add a casting SFX, or even a chanting sound (i know we will ;).

Q: How about autocast spells?
The autocast spells i used in here had no negative effect thus far, ive heard of symptoms of crashing and such whenever autocast was enabled. Well, i havent seen that yet. however when an autocast ability is used you should instruct your players to hit stop or issue a move order to keep it from tying up your spellbook icon with its cooldown.

Q: How can this be modified?
I left it fairly open to modification, it uses alot of globals that are initalized within the "initspellbook" trigger. Just take in mind that if you want more abilities on each page you should be careful of your array allocations. Right now they are set up to the minimum necessary allocation for the demonstration. Everything else, should be easily changeable in its current form by a novice, and the interface can be changed by serious mappers.

Q: How are some spells not visible even though you are using the same spellbook.?
This is what makes the whole system work for us. On a hunch, i tried disabling entangling roots that was in the standard spellbook, (using player enable/disable ability) and it actually dissapeared. So take advantage of it now before that bug gets "fixed" like the others, hehe, jk.

Q: So can i use this idea in map X?
Sure, thats why its here. Just give Force Majeure a minor amount of credit somewhere in your map for the idea please.

Enjoy,
Eye

Just so you know, the overlapping problem with the buttons wasn't because they were out to get you :). The reason behind it was because they reprogrammed the way all buttons are displayed to prevent abilities overlapping each other and people from being able to use them (aka just about every AoS tri-wars on B.net).

In any case, this new method with the spellbook you've created I find is much more preferable (although I'd still like to have the option to get rid of some of the buttons). Although I am anxiously awaiting the next patch which resolves the WE bugs..I managed to crash the game 3 times within 10 minutes of using the spellbook - not yours, simply my own experiments with it. It' a rather fragile ability :P.

~kharma

Haha, kharma, yeah I was just making a joke because my post on the matter wasn't exactly happily recieved by the BNET forums.

I havent crashed spellbook yet, except for when i placed too many abilities to match the included parameters. It should be known however that spellbook is like darkportal. It has a RANDOM amount of spells from the minimum to the maximum numbers you include. And if there is any difference or empty spaces, the spells are somewhat distributed across the space at random.

So for greatest reliability simply set the min and max amount of spells to be 12 and it will obey your button positions.

Yeah I noticed that fun little oratory battle you engaged with RazorclawX, I'd just wished I'd noticed it sooner :P. Also that Brett didn't give you an answer and I wasn't sure if you had picked up on the reasons behind it yet.

The first time I crashed it was because I gave the spellbook multiple spellbook abilities -just to see how it would react :P. The second time was, as you said, simply overstepping the allowable parameters.

~kharma

Well the problem is that Razor did that to my last post, one which i considered pretty important. And it pretty much started out in the same manner. I was asking for a spell is cast event, which we now have thanks to both the people who responded positively and blizzard for implementing our little idea.

But thanks for replying, and I'm also sure that now, at least razor and i will be able to avoid each other for a while.

Eye

That's a pretty sweet system you got there Eye. I guess I didn't read the tooltips because the game crashed when I tryed to use a level 2 spell, though. Too bad it's too complicated to be edited by idiots like me. :( But anyway, great job, and I hope it's put to good use in FMVH.


P.S. Since the game crashed when I tryed to use it the first time (and I screwed up so these errors in system might just be my fault), I was wondering if:
1.) Are the level one spells supposed to show up at the top of the spellbook menu?
and
2.) When you click on the nice little "1" icon, is the Archmage supposed to do his spell animation?

Really? What happened? Were you picking up and using one of the tomes? What happened to cause the crash? Regardless of tooltips, its not supposed to crash hehe. Which spell was it?



1. Yes, they should show up as so:

S S S S
1 2 3 4
X X X O

Where S's are spells, the 1-4 are the actual buttons that take you from level to level. (however the 1-4 are added when you learn arcane knowledge).

2. Yes, this one is my fault, thank you. The 1-4 numbers are actually spells, (ones that i dont think mages should use, like thunderclap and stomp and such, but you can change them as you see fit).

The way it knows that one is pressed is by detecting the order, well when you swap out spellbooks, it no longer tries to cast one from the spell you swapped out. But when you swap to the same spell, its gonna keep trying to cast tranquility.

So all it needs is a stop order. (i was going to just take away the 1 button, but people would probably think it was broken).

Thanks a lot for the reply.
Eye

Can some1 please explain what FMVH means? :hm:

Well it also happened to me: it crashes, no level 2 spells at all, only a crash.

Like I said before Eye, it's a good system to use. And Dark Crescent is evolving to this. However the use of tome's sucks, if you press all the buttons at the same time, you will only get 1 dialog. Which is acceptable, because it happens all the time.

The spell/ability whatever thing that adds how many abilities you can have per spellbook is a good idea!

FMVH - Force Majurae(SP) Vampire Hunters

FMVH is Force Majeure Vampire Hunters. Force Majeure is like a gaming group type thing I believe.

EDIT: whoops a little late here...

Ah, with this it would be very easy to have copies of the same spell. IE, multiple blizzard spells. Or multiple summons based off of the same code. That's great, I never thought about that until just now.

Is there a limit to how many abilities you can put in a spellbook? I was thinking of using a system where you can actually add points into the skills inside the book, by disabling the spell and then enabling a more powerful version of the spell to take its place. But if I can't fit a lot of spells in the book with most of them always being disabled, it wouldnt really work :/

I don't know what happens to you but when you have a spellbook with the Hog Feral spirit and your hero has Feral Spirit, try using your hero ability, you will summon 4 creatures, 2 wolves and 2 hogs.

darnit you beat me to it...

i've also been researching the uses of the spell book for my rpg

:( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(