Fallen By The Way Adds and Textures

[Holy_Diver]

I am assuming the magic animations are in a similar model format as the enemies/npcs unfortunately, which at this point are not cracked.

Cracking it could likely do exactly what holy suggests in having a constant stream of snow etc radiating from an invisible group of enemies.

Question is...can anyone crack the mdl file :(

I'm going to turn my focus to the model files in general within the next couple months. But I reckon most of what makes spells different is not in the models themselves. It's worth noting though that spells are not individual prf files like everything else. They're stored in a single file as I recall, which means adding/removing spells coherently and automatically would probably require a special homebrew application that imports/exports etc spells from the unified file.

I have a thread around here that has all you need to know to work with individual spells specifically, but I didn't go as far as to try to modify spells.

I think an interesting place to start hacking spells would be to try to make the wizard monster fire off more interesting spells like the ones done by the elemental salamander things... then you could make fire/ice wizards etc, like the boss in DD. That would just require copying over the right bytes in the file, and replacing them with whatever the salamanders have there. Making monsters with a wider array of magic-like attacks in general would also be cool (I think they can have more than most do)

I apologize, but I just don't go in for this kind of piecemeal hacking. I leave that for others so I can concentrate on matters more straightforwardly.


PS: Another interesting thing to look for I think would be if monsters share the NPC flag that disables their being attack-able. Something tells me they don't (I kinda remember the converted to NPC monster in DD not be attack-able) but that would be interesting... if not for particle emitter's then for wraith like monsters etc. Also a late thought I had on particle emitting monsters.... I don't have enough experience to say whether or not you could wire the monster to spew something continuously or if they'd only do it if they thought they were attacking the player (that could complicate matters)

PPS: Can I just add how much I think I enjoy Som. I seriously doubt most software in the same league as Som could've been coaxed into Unicode translation via gettext. That totally ups its viability as a real universal / enduring platform.