Cheating

[Holy_Diver]

I just realized it's possible to change to a light weapon, swing it, then change back to a heavy weapon in order to quickly feel up your swing gauge.

I think as soon as I start hacking SoM this is one of the first things I'll put a stop to

Do we know any other ways of cheating?

[dmpdesign]

I would love to see a falling damage calcultor get added...in my opinion the player being able to jump off cliffs and land on a non existant floor at -20 is cheating  :P

Another instance where one can cheat is in SoM's absence of blocking the looting of chests and containers when they are not visible.  This irritates me to no end in a couple examples.. If you place a chest inside a house near the wall, it can be looted from outside.  Another example is if you use any set that has multiple tiers to its floor design you can still access a chest though it may be 10 meters below on a different floor.  If there is a way to modify the inspection angle and distance for containers that would be a great fix.

[Holy_Diver]

If you change to an event based opening system you can set the opening angle of the chest. I don't think I've ever noticed examine events firing from below or above, but I can't say for certain.

[Holy_Diver]

Another exploit of sorts, is the "random" strength/magic raise, seems to be based simply on how many times you've hit that button. For magic this is reasonable (the bar must also be full) more or less, but for your strength, I've found just quickly hitting an monster after several swings raises your strength (what appears to be in as many swings as waiting for full gauges would require)

It's possible you don't even have to be hitting a monster to make this work. What would've been nicer is damage versus your strength or something.

I think possibly the level up table has a cap on str growth per level. But I'm not positive because the "max str" column for example seems to track exactly with what you would have by just adding the level up bonuses together... yet in Diadem of Maunstraut (assuming Tom did not monkey with the level table) you still get "random" str bonuses. I will have to look into hexediting the level table file again to see if I can change the max str column independently and see if it actually enforces a maximum.

Otherwise I will probably have to program another global event to keep players from wanting to cheat. I'm also considering a game over screen if the player takes too long to finish. On one hand it would prevent players from completely exhausting the game in one save file, but on the other hand it would make players think more about time / make the game more interesting. Might compromise and say the time limit is removed after killing the final boss, so they can keep exploring before going to the game over area (however that might work)

[dmpdesign]

If it is like KF, then the swings must cause damage to count toward your strength up, and I think its either 50 or 100 connecting weapon swings to level up your strength.

[Hguols]

Heh, anyone with the SoM program can cheat with a SoM made game.  Actually, it would be like the next evolution of cheating - you could edit the game to your favor.

The possibilities are are wide as the games being made.

Just change your PROJECT.DAT into PROJECT.som - load it up with SoM, change this that, save your game, back to DAT.

VOILA!  UBER SAVE UBER CHEAT!

[Holy_Diver]

^I can program ways to prevent that. Well to a large degree... or at least ways to determine if the game has been monkeyed with (ie. your high-score is disqualified because you cheated)

Heh, anyone with the SoM program can cheat with a SoM made game.  Actually, it would be like the next evolution of cheating - you could edit the game to your favor.

The possibilities are are wide as the games being made.

Just change your PROJECT.DAT into PROJECT.som - load it up with SoM, change this that, save your game, back to DAT.

VOILA!  UBER SAVE UBER CHEAT!

Also recall I had to do exactly this when DoM failed my game!

[HwitVlf]

I would love to see a falling damage calcultor get added...in my opinion the player being able to jump off cliffs and land on a non existant floor at -20 is cheating  :P

Another instance where one can cheat is in SoM's absence of blocking the looting of chests and containers when they are not visible.  This irritates me to no end in a couple examples.. If you place a chest inside a house near the wall, it can be looted from outside.  Another example is if you use any set that has multiple tiers to its floor design you can still access a chest though it may be 10 meters below on a different floor.  If there is a way to modify the inspection angle and distance for containers that would be a great fix.

It can be a bit of a pain to set up, but you can make 'falling damage' by turning on a 'scream + teleport player to ground + inflict damage' event that covers the low ground which is activated when the player walks in a high place. Turn the event off if the player takes the 'correct' path down. My game has that setup in a couple places.

To workaround the 'open through walls' effect, you can make two identical chests placed in the same spot. The first one is shown but is permanently locked dud. The second 'real chest' is not displayed until it is turned on by an event triggered when player approaches from the correct direction. There aren't too many places where this effect is a problem so it's not too hard to set up the fixes.

You can also workaround the 'multi-level event trigger' problem by turning the Object that the event is attached to off or on depending on which floor the player is on.

It would surely be easier if all that was automatic, but maybe better than nothing.

[Holy_Diver]

John has a game after all... now I'm intrigued