Carrier Arachnid

Hey all,
I poked around with protos and browsed through all the excellent work everyone has done on modding Arcanum. With it, I was able to create something I always wanted in the game - an arachnid that can carry items!
To balance it, not only does the schematic require 100 in mechanical and 70 in electrical; the resulting arachnid isn't near as good for combat.
There are more details and a download at my website: http://absolutemaximumratings.com/arcanum/arcanum.php.

It's currently designed to work with A:WIP 6.0. I don't know if it will work with other version of Arcanum. Please try it out and let me know if you have any problems, or any other ideas for modding!

Also, I have a couple specific questions that I could really use help on:

1) I tried adding the schematic's proto to InvenSource.mes, but it never seems to work. Even through the schematic works fine in the game, WorldEd complains that the proto number is invalid. If I add it anyway, then the Inventory's inventory just shows up blank Any ideas as to what could be causing this?

2) I have a bunch of things I'd like to make that require adding new spells to SpellList.mes, like a 'Precision Bearing' - a heal item that only works on mechanical creatures. But I've tried adding new spells a million different ways, and it never seems to work. Has anyone ever had any success with this?

Thanks! I hope some of you find the Carrier Arachnid useful. I like making Idiot Savants who build an army of mechanical minions, and my problem always ends up being that no one wants to follow me, so I can never carry much around. Now I finally have a solution to that

 

Let me get this straight. You want to add a spell, which no only doesn't destroy the mechanical structure of mechanical creatures, but helps them rebuild it?
:dramatic pause:
OK, we need to talk.

As a Arcanum player you surely know your ABC's about the in-game nature of magic and technology. The first one distorts the laws of nature while the second exploits them. When magic is cast upon anything tech (and what can be more tech then a fully mechanical creature) it either is dispersed or it "disperses" the object, introducing entropy to the mechanical structure and therefore damaging it. A spell which would rebuild the mechanical structure in the world of Arcanum is as far from the canon and as far-fetched as possible.
Another thing is some technical issues. What magic college would it be? What self respecting technologist would learn anything about magic, especially when any knowledge in that field would visably decrease his own scientific abilities?

Allow me to suggest a better solution. You have an army of arachnids and, while not having a high repair skill, want to be able to "heal" the yourself, but the "mechanical healing staves" are far too impractical? Understandable. So what to do? Refer to magic? Of course not, build a arachnid-repairing machine! Why not create a schematic of an item which would work like bandages, yet usable only on mechanical creatures? It could have charges as well, but when used it would refer not to your Heal ability but to, say, Tech Aptitude.
Don't like the idea? OK then, how about a schematic for a Repair Arachnid, which is both horrible at battle and have no packmuling abilities, but acts like a Medical Arachnid for other mechanical creatures in your party. This of course would mean you would either need to at least two, a second one to repair the first when it's damaged, or just one if you give the Repair Arachnid a "Engage self-repair procedure" dialogue file. Will the wonders of technology ever end?

On a side note, I'm curious about one technical issue concerning the Carrier Arachnid. Will it's inventory be remembered when you command him to collapse and then recollapse him?

Another side note - this is propably obvious but just to be sure, you do know that if you will actually want to add any spells, you won't precisely add them, rather edit the already existing ones (since there can not be more than 16 colleges of 5 spells which he player can learn, with the exception of custom spell scrolls)?

 

The Carrier Arachnid is a nice concept. Since I'm not able to check this out just yet - have you tried replacing the useless Automaton Gunner with your Arachnid?
By reworking the Gunner schematic to create the Carrier, you should be able to bypass the "invalid listing" problem. (I think...)
As for getting new schematics to work - I know the Russians seek out items that are listed but unused in the game and replace them with new schematics. I seem to remember Large Ladies Servants Clothes being one of the unused items.

2) I've only tweaked spells using guidelines mentioned or created by other people, so I'm no help to you there. Sorry.

 

InvenSource won't read new protos, because they're out of the hardcoded range. You have two choices: you can just replace an unused schematic (e.g. Automaton Gunner) with your new one, OR you can edit Arcanum.exe and extend the proto range in question. I can provide the offsets if you're interested.

Again, the maximum number of spells is hardcoded. But I haven't looked into it, since there's so many unused spells. Just replace any of them with your own.

I'm pretty sure he's talking about a tech item. You see, the spell system in the game is used not only for actual magick, but for potions, items, weapons, etc as well. E.g. Healing Salve has a special 'tech' spell attached to it that is cast when you use the item.

 

Quite possible that I was indeed confused by the word "spell". I visitid Moo's site and when reading

I understood that while he found a way to add a mech-repairing tech item, he's having problems with a magic spell giving the same effect. Thanks for clearing that out.

 

Don't know if I'll ever need it, but I'd like to have this.

 

OK, I'll write a small doc and post it as a new thread.

EDIT: Done.

 

Yep, Drog got it right - the internal system uses spells for tech things (Healing Salve is referred to as Tech Heal Light). Ideally, I want the spell to be built into an item, just as it is for a healing salve. I can get this 'Precision Bearing' to work by modifying a healing salve, but that hard-coded limit is messing it up.

Thanks so much for the info, Drog! I am absolutely definitely interested in knowing those offsets.
By the way, for the Invensource stuff, I'm pretty sure I used a proto # in the NPC range for the carrier arachnid item. If I changed the number to something in the generic items range (15000s I belive), then do you think I would be able to add it to shop inventories? I guess what I'm asking is, is there a hard coded limit for each item type range, or only one limit that covers all the proto numbers?

Also, I'd absolutely love to be able to add spells, but I get the feeling that adding those might get more complex than changing one offset. A lot of the spells in that list use internal code, and I think it might handle the magic and tech ranges differently. For example, a modified heal salve works as expected, but the exact same lines under an unimplemented magic spell gives weird eye candy and no effect.. anyway, I _hope_ it's a simple change.

Oh and THANK YOU for all your work on the UAP Drog!

 

I posted a link above to the thread that covers all of this.

There are unused spells in the tech range as well. Try 12400, for instance. Also, don't forget to set proper eye candy in SpellEyeCandy.mes.