VRPG Source Code?

[SuperSpaceZone]

Hey! First of all, thanks for all the effort you've put in here.

However, either I'm doing this wrong or there's an issue. On Win 7 64bit, I run this executable in the directory with the data pak from Duam's last released installer, and after I enter my name, I get an "Error in 'CreateFromFile' Function" followed by a "Run-time Error '430', Class does not support automation or does not support expected interface."

Seen this before?

[empatheticapathy]

My two-cents on the digesting villagers issue: They should have a low chance to evade eating or escape digestion, so it's a poor idea at the start, but by the midgame, you can steamroll entire towns. If they get away at either time: It summons guards. Of course, specific NPCs should have higher or lower chances to resist, but a blanket value for the bulk of them would be fine.

[Throku]

Eating poor villager : I like the idea of being mean against innocent NPC... what do you think about adding a dice roll when you try to eat one, so you have a so/so chance to fail ?

I still think it's a horrible idea.
The guards are there to protect the villagers. if you want them eaten, then take on the guards as well. (Meaning aouto fail and call gards and turn to hostile.)
Or do it in conversation, most characters can be eaten that way with the avaliable mods anyhow, if not it's an easily addable aspect, that could be done in character. It's an RPG, is it not?

Scope : it is possible to enlarge many things, including the 2.5D world rendering. Question is : want it "static" or "resizable" ? the easiest is the "static" (i fix it in the code once for all), the complicated is "resizable" (you can freely change it whily playing).

Sure switching on and off fullscreen has it's uses, but I'd be happy for a fixed 1280x1024 version, I doubt anyone playing at a computer has lower resolution than that nowadays. If that's achieved by stretching the avaliable visuals though, then it's not really an improvement, ok, it is, but you know it's still the same graphics, just stretched. Just resizing the current graphics would do the same thing, with the difference of the effort of actually resizing everything and the possibility of using higher resolution sprites in the future.
Though I think most would be fine with the stretching, it's the conversations window that's most important, there I'd prefer if stretching wasn't involved and that one could actually use larger higher resolution images instead.

The MONTYP4 : possible, but will require some critical code changes, by critical I mean "may generate unexpected result". This is why when working on that, i'll have to do that fix only and have a long bug tracking before starting other fix...

Yeah, I figured it was quite the massive task, that's why I asked if it could even be done. It is however the reason why adding new monsters seem so redundant, because they are currently all the same. (and when I added a tough one, it just ended up being a massive XP-treassure, because the only way of making it tough ws to give it a very high level.)

Did i miss something ?

I dunno, but I felt stupid talking here without actually playing so I downloaded the shabang and I get:

The Language DLL 'VB6FR.DLL' could not be found.

Do I need Visual basics to run the new game or what?

[empatheticapathy]

Eating poor villager : I like the idea of being mean against innocent NPC... what do you think about adding a dice roll when you try to eat one, so you have a so/so chance to fail ?

I still think it's a horrible idea.
The guards are there to protect the villagers. if you want them eaten, then take on the guards as well. (Meaning aouto fail and call gards and turn to hostile.)
Or do it in conversation, most characters can be eaten that way with the avaliable mods anyhow, if not it's an easily addable aspect, that could be done in character. It's an RPG, is it not?

That happens. If another NPC is on-screen when you eat a villager, they sic the guards on you.
In fact, every town's guards count as a different monster and gives you a free skill point for digesting them.

[massive27]

hehehe...

Ok, first issue of statideas, win7 miss one critical DLL from "legacy" directx7.
file is called "d3drm.dll", is 342kB size, and must be copied in windows\system32 . It fixes the error number 430.
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=23302&start=30

Eating villagers, erm, if I understand right, random eating shouldnt be possible unless you've eaten some key people (like town guard) OR through conversation tweak.
Conversation tweaks are out-of-range for me, they dont belongs to VB code fixing, they are modding. I seek a more, VB-coded, workaround :s

VB6FR.dll, seek on google and copy it in the game directory. It is a very light dll required for visual basic. Microsoft's great idea is to add a localisation dll depending on your visual basic compilator... i'm using french visual basic compilator... so if I create EXE it will require this additional dll. I have to find an international visual basic compilator to avoid needing this dll.


ps : Throku, thanks for the "pak" mod. I wanted to do a proper mod support for vrpg, meaning you dont have to change the original data.pak for the game to use external resource. I'll use yours to test the game "mod manager engine" i have in mind.

[Revx_Z]

I like the idea of only eating NPCs if you either do it by conversation or by making them hostile and calling guards. Looks like the conversation writers will be busy as well. (I can volunteer to help with that if you want!)

Now, back to your regular schedule of customers with a massive sense of entitlement.

massive27: Ignore me at leisure! I don't want to stress you. I'm brainstorming here, not demanding, and I have no grounds to criticise the people who are doing the heavy lifting here. I don't know what's easy or hard to implement in the spaghetti code that is the Glorious Vore RPG, so I'm throwing out suggestions and seeing what sticks.

Feature request: stretch character stomach graphic before drawing weapons over it. Spears getting fat bendy handles when you've eaten look very silly.

Feature request: Enable the "5" key on the numpad to stand still for a turn so I can get digestion done without having to dance back and forth like a maniac.

Feature request: Put sanity checks in the magic item generation to avoid "Staff of Bow Mastery" and such weapons that boost other weapons. Here's one I got today in the Lakelands:

Rugged Blue Adamant Apprentice Staff of Bow Mastery, 24-96 damage, Weight 11, +11 to Bow Mastery

Feature request: A list or "gallery" of some sort of all the monster types you've eaten, shown in game. Both for bragging rights and skill point checking. It could either list only eaten monsters, or list all monsters and grey out the ones you haven't eaten yet.

Feature request: That the game asks if I want to continue playing after eating Thirsha, setting a quest flag which writers can use to modify conversation.

Not sure if bug or feature request: Some spells like Power of Water have no description text displayed when I click them. They cost permanent MP to cast, making it a bit dubious to learn by testing. I would like text. (similar to how Acid Burp displays "Acid Burp, Attack Spell, R14Die6".)

The MONTYP4 : possible, but will require some critical code changes, by critical I mean "may generate unexpected result". This is why when working on that, i'll have to do that fix only and have a long bug tracking before starting other fix...

Idea: To enable modding in extra monsters, possibly add in "dummy graphics" of monsters created from town guards with numbers 1-10 written on top in large font, and "dummy slots" for these monsters that modders can replace.

Idea: Post to some other subforum requesting graphics expansions for new monsters that we can palette-swap. I've also seen some unused monsters like a sort of slug-with-legs cave beast.

I've looked into the "i teleport back and revive who i digested" stuff. An easy way is to prevent people to teleport in the city they are already in. A complicated way is to look deep in the map loading code and see why digested fellows aren't recorded in a "graveyard" kind of list. I'll do the easy way if you dont mind.

I found a way to trigger it by eating someone in City of Angels, using gem to teleport to Home City, then using gem to teleport to City of Angels, then having NPC respawned for eating. I think you may have to do it the hard way, but let me poke around a bit more and see how much I can pin the bug down.

[Throku]

hehehe...

Eating villagers, erm, if I understand right, random eating shouldnt be possible unless you've eaten some key people (like town guard) OR through conversation tweak.
Conversation tweaks are out-of-range for me, they dont belongs to VB code fixing, they are modding. I seek a more, VB-coded, workaround :s

It's an RPG, you can interact with NPCs and items and stuff, you can't interact with monsters/enemies.
So yes I'd very much like the prospect of character eating done in conversations. There are quite a few instances of that in game. If one still wants to be a jerk and eat them wiouout going though the roleplaying bit, then attack and make them hostile.

If you do want to mix with the converastions and VBcode at the same time. One thing that I know have been called for a few times is the ability to make a check against skill. A lot of my conversations contain things as "IFSTR:XX" and NOTINT:YY, but at times check against a specific skill would have been prefered, but that's not possible. However this is very low on my priority list. Possibly the best implement of it is in cases where characters give you lessons in skills, such as Jeritia. Meaning if you're already skilled enough yuo don't get the benefit. (I think I recalled seeing something about that in Revx_Z's discussion with Duam, that people earn more from it later in the game than early, since it's a skill level, regardless of what your level was and higher levels costs more skillpoints.)

VB6FR.dll, seek on google and copy it in the game directory. It is a very light dll required for visual basic. Microsoft's great idea is to add a localisation dll depending on your visual basic compilator... i'm using french visual basic compilator... so if I create EXE it will require this additional dll. I have to find an international visual basic compilator to avoid needing this dll.

:/ Didn't work, I still get the same message. 117kB is the size of mine. If yours differ, could you please post that one? Or send it by PM?

ps : Throku, thanks for the "pak" mod. I wanted to do a proper mod support for vrpg, meaning you dont have to change the original data.pak for the game to use external resource. I'll use yours to test the game "mod manager engine" i have in mind.

No problem, go right ahead and go Frankenstein on it.
Not having to alter the Data.pak everytime, does perhaps mean that one could use several mods at once? So far I've only seen Erecant's and mine and he built his on top of mine, so there was no problem with simultanious work being done and thus conflicts. Though frankly I'm not sure how this would be accomplished, but then again, I'm not a programmer

Revx_Z, I like the requests!

The dummy monsters doesn't work though, for several reasons, for one one still wouldn't be able to balance them as their stats would still be fixed in the main code like the rest. And then there's the attacks and sounds aspect. It's quite a difference between Throwing fireballs and a slime melee attack.

[Revx_Z]

All the extra mod bits sound interesting, particularly skill checks in conversations.

Multiple mods at once will be highly impractical, I expect, since all three mod attempts I've seen have depended on a modified Conversations file. Maybe if each town gets its own such file?

Potential bug: On entering the Groundmaw, my character spawned in a 7x3 area with no exits. Am I expected to have teleport scrolls?

AI sucktitude: Attached is a picture of Thirsha in a position where she stood *5* tiles away from the character and didn't do anything while being shot at, as you can perhaps see from all the red numbers that are the result of archery.

[Heady9]

I guess that I should put my 2 cents in on the NPC vore thing. I actually really liked the way it was originally set up. Yeah, you could eat a character that could be important, but that's just what you have to watch out for. Your making a conscious decision to devour. In a way, that's role playing, the role of a very hungry pred. Why else would there be Succubus and Naga classes?

I also like the fact that it is very different from fighting monsters. rather than having to do a roll for success, you have to be very covert or the situation in town could go downhill rapidly, and I think that's where the difficulty should lie.

I don't know, I may be in the minority on this (seeing as there are only a few people posting about this), but I figure that the alternative point should be made.

[empatheticapathy]

I guess that I should put my 2 cents in on the NPC vore thing. I actually really liked the way it was originally set up. Yeah, you could eat a character that could be important, but that's just what you have to watch out for. Your making a conscious decision to devour. In a way, that's role playing, the role of a very hungry pred. Why else would there be Succubus and Naga classes?

I also like the fact that it is very different from fighting monsters. rather than having to do a roll for success, you have to be very covert or the situation in town could go downhill rapidly, and I think that's where the difficulty should lie.

I don't know, I may be in the minority on this (seeing as there are only a few people posting about this), but I figure that the alternative point should be made.

Yes. This. This entire post.
Good show, Heady.

[NekoYuki]

Speaking of villagers and eating. I have bug question an a general question.

Bug first: one gains a skill point per named NPC they devours. Howeverif one has saved before they beging thier feast then eat everyone and teleport back using the respective gen it reloads the map before you ate everyone allowing one ti do it again. Now I will admit this is a useful big but for the sake if balance it should probably be fixed. Is it possible to fix it...?

general question: alot of the girls in some cities make passes at you and a few suggestions about eating you. Memorably the gurgle user girl that stutters and the fire bellies and dark swallows. Would it be possible to code in either a yes or now option? Selecting yes there's a nice bitif text about you feeding yourself to then. The. The normal part where the girl has a big belly and digests you inside.

[Heady9]

I recall in throku's mod there was many examples of such things, and that was all through the conversation file. I recommend checking it out.

[NekoYuki]

Hmm. Do you by chance have a link to it then?

[Revx_Z]

It's in Throku's Modifications thread right next to this one.
Such options usually skip right to the character being digested without any belly bulges though.

I mentioned the repeat-eating earlier, how does it happen that civilians can count more than once but monsters only give a skill point first time?

[NekoYuki]

Because monsters are numerous and the point kf the civilians were once eaten they were gone. But as it so appears using the tele-glitch you can reswapn civvies.

[Revx_Z]

No, I mean e.g. after you've eaten Red Naga once, eating Red Naga again won't give you another skill point. But after eating Tanna once, eating Tanna again will give another skill point. Why doesn't Tanna get "listed" on monsters eaten? It should be possible for her to respawn without triggering the rest of the glitch.

[NekoYuki]

the point is NPCs aren't meant ot respawn. with civilians its not a "eat once thing" its a "each is worth on skill point" thing

[Throku]

the point is NPCs aren't meant ot respawn. with civilians its not a "eat once thing" its a "each is worth on skill point" thing

Which would make a whole lot more sense if it was actually somewhat hard to eat most of them and not just a quick cheat to get a whole load of skillpoints.

[NekoYuki]

Then Respawn them and get more skill points

That serves as a side note. Thier probably should be a respawn/reset cheat for the game incase you do something you wish you hadn't.

[massive27]

Update. All update only available in the "modded" edition, not the "Legacy". EXE below is the "modded" edition

- Fixed crash related to non-player vore feature.
- Fixed boss "party wipe" ability, eating all your pets whenever it has some in his belly already. further tweak may be discussed.
- Added command-line Mod support : create a shortcut with "-mod mymod.pak" or "-mod myfolder\" and the game will give priority to your files when loading resources. The subfolder must contain all the files, not a .pak ; the "\" is recognized by the game as "load directly the files from here, do not use the PAK extractor code".
- Mod priority depends on command line : "-mod mymod1.pak -mod mymod2.pak" will give priority to files in mymod1.pak, then search in mymod2.pak, then search in original Data.pak
- Removed TitleScreen.jpg from the game EXE file. It loads the TitleScreen.jpg from the Data.pak. So you can change it within a Mod.
- fixed Checkbox for sound enable/disable not properly moving when resizing the main game window

Bugs :
- the Mod support is experimental, it leads to some "file not found" message sometimes. Help for bugtrack would be appreciated (going to each and every places for the game and looking for weirdness or missing graphics)


Various requests from the thread :
- adding a "revoke" spell to dismiss summoned creatures
- better pathfinding, especially when monster is attacked
- inedible stuff : Zettia in Home City, loot in Abandoned Temple
- inconsistency on map edge texture (it looks like a feature in the code, i dont plan to fix that one)
- village teleportation bringing back to life eaten people, also allowing to get infinite skill point.
- Squirm skill learning from Jeritia may unbalance the game.
- Likayasha's conversation loophole allowing to get enchanted potion twice, after killing the Giantess
- naga class inflated belly glitch
- Healing fountain not restoring combat point (may be a feature, will have to look how behave the code before fixing)
- Eating villagers' too "easy" (guys i'm quite lost in your conversation, on how to fix that)
- Eating villagers' too quick (should add the same digestion routine for npc, with dice roll on escape attempt, etc... also when PC is eaten by a villager)
- Enlarging the overall game size (actually, you can already put high resolution graphics for convo and play fullscreen, no special fix needed)
- Adding a MONTYP4 parameter for more in-depth tuning and modding of the game (full specification must be validated first)
- Monster may spawn in wall
- Adding a "error 430" handling to lead the user on how to fix it (missing d3drm.dll)
- Belly streching rendered without the weapon to avoid a glitch
- Activating the keypad "5" for "stand still" (may be a gameplay exploit, dunno if i'll do it)
- Adding sanity checks in the magic item generation to avoid nonsense
- Adding a list of "eaten monsters" for fun facts and skill point checking (doing the list of non-vored one will be hard)
- Possibilty of continue game after the win even / Trisha kill, including checkpoint for Mod support.
- Check on description of some permacast spell, adding missing one (may be out of code, so out of my range!)
- Adding check-against-skill for Conversation (i think Duam didnt do it because it is difficult, due to how the game handle skills)
- Adding dummy graphics for extra monster (not required. The code for MONTYP4 will include many changes)
- Multi-Mod compatibility : Conversations.txt monolithic file being an issue (fixing this may lead to impossible backward compatibility)


Wow. And those doesn't include the ones i want to do

ps : put VB6FR.DLL in your windows\system directory (or windows\syswow64 if 64bits)