I've done this a few times now, but it's possible to get a Tortodrone to kill itself with it's own spike attack.
You guys might want to fix that and up his health by about... Double.
It only takes me 3 charged attacks of my thwack hammer to bring the poor, depressed guy down.
And it takes two of them to get him mad enough to attack.
Also, since status effects go through shields, once you get shocked it's pretty hard to avoid the shard rain. And you can end up having quite some stacks of shock.
No idea if this is intended.
You can kill him with the shards though. All you have to do is watch and see if the cylinders pop out, then just run towards him and he'll shock and stun himself to death.
I seriously doubt that's an intended part of the attack.
Nice changes to the Tortodrone, I fought one again last night with Rose and he is much tougher now.
It also appears you got him to take his anti-depressants. Because he's not trying to kill himself anymore.
The rush attack seem's to be a bit bugged though, I get dmged when he didn't even hit me....
Seem's like there's a invisible dmg area around it when it does the rush attack.
This means that he already moved to the place and attacked you, but you moved to late, because, for you, he was still beggining the charge...a major issue that need to be fixed. Most teleported monsters problems and gun puppy bullet problems are due major lag (i can pass directlly through the bullets, but, if i'm about 1 character away from the bullet, i get hit).
Also, about tortodrone: Why make him not attack himself? T.T you could remove the part where he gots shocked, and just put a small stun, with some damage, to be used as a "boss" tatic to fight him. I was killed by one twice, because he cornered me in a place, where he couldn't reach, and them began to spam shards.
@Cien_Tao
It's not the lags, that I'm sure.
I need to preddict the shoots of gun puppies to avoid them >_<. When the shot is midway to hit me, it simply disapears, and i get hit. This surelly is lag. About the wolves, they do have a quite overpwered dash attack, that let them charge theur attack while closing up to your butt. But, again, lag don't help to see when they are attacking, because it's too fast. The same happens with torto dash: it is too fast, and you actually need to predict it sooner than you should. Also, there could be a major programing error, where the attack begins before the charge animation finishes, so, actually, when he is finishing ot charge, he is close up enough to attack you, in terms of contact effect...Just maybe, though.
I suspect it's lag; many aspects of dodging and shield timing are wildly unpredictable, and it generally gets worse for me with large parties. If it was a programming error, I'd expect the deviation to be more systematic.
(this is supported by the idea that my problems are greatly aggravated on levels with a lot of fire enemies. 6 flamethrower puppies = grab a cup of coffee while waiting for your screen to update)
I lost 20 health in one of those >_<, and it was only 3 alchemers..and some mages....and some normal goblins......o yeah, and 8 gun puppys...
Well, i just know that it is lag, mostly because of shield timing (i tried it many times, and i'm beggining to shield about 5 secods before an attack, and it's a just shield (more one second, and the shiel would enter after the hit).
@Cien_Tao and @Pauling what sort of bandwidth do you guys have, and is that shared by others?
Also what are your specs? Such as CPU and video card (run dxdiag on Windows to see the model name) and have you updated the video drivers to the latest version?
Here, eletronics are so high priced...with the money i spent to make this computer i'm using, someone out here could have done one at least twice as better. My computer is fine to play some games, and most games i can play good enough in low quality. My connection is 500kbps (yes, pretty lame, if you compare, but here, it is considered eletronics, and thus, is overpriced too). The main problem here is that the graphics of this game don't load as fast as the data sent, at least for me. So, enemies do their action before i've loaded their action motion. The longer i paly, the lesser this issue ocur, because of the stored data. But also, my ping sucks...and will always suck if i continue using this kind of conection and this computer...Also, video CPU is amd athlon 64, and don't remember my video card..i think it's nvidia. Also, i don't think my video drivers are so up to date, but aren't so down to date even.
Bandwidth: I've tried it on Wifi at home (1.5 MBPS), and at work (wired connection with enough bandwidth to drown an elephant).
Machine specs: 2 yr old MacBook pro laptop running OS 10.6; 2.4 GHz dual core cpu, 2 GB RAM, only other program open = firefox. Graphics card is the GeForce8600M with all OS/driver updates; there appear to be no hardware settings accessible to the user. Game graphics quality is already set to low- and may I just say, it's still visually gorgeous.
To clarify though: my lag issues have nothing to do with the tortodrone problem. My CPU simply gets wildly overwhelmed by the heavy animations during certain levels- especially anything at all involving fire. I tried a core run yesterday on the bridge levels running up to lord Vanaduke, with only one other person in my party, and mostly ran around in very sporadic motion with my shield up until she took out the fire puppies... with one other party member, and taking care to only trigger attention from 1-2 fire puppies at once (instead of all 8 on on that one evil , I was able to cut the lag window to no more than 5 seconds at a time. The overlapping walls of flame still lagged me out, but by trusting to a ballistic trajectory during lagspikes and hiding at the edges of the screen, I was able to get a few shots off and not get wiped out.
(This was much improved from the night before, where 15-30 seconds would go by before I regained sufficient control to get off a single shot and shield myself)
Even on other levels, there are definite times when my shield doesn't respond for several seconds after being triggered. Thus, my screen will show shots a few seconds away, with plenty of time for my shield's normal response (~1 second?) to kick in... but I'll take damage long after my shield should have come up.
It would be great if extra graphics options could be added, allowing me disable incidental animations for better performance. (shards of broken boxes that vanish after a second, fast-vanishing char under torched areas, dandruff from the icebreaker helm, etc). Likewise, although the flickering lamps are cool ambience, I usually blast them ASAP in order to reduce CPU load- unfortunately, they're often present (and most unreachable) just when the enemies are the most lag-inducing. (think arena level 3, lord vanaduke, etc)
Although I recognize that laptops will never be as powerful as desktop machines, I do think that it's worth optimizing performance- laptops are a large market segment, and I've seen some statistics that indicate that they're especially growing among college students and the young. Anything that makes the game accessible for more of your target audience would be a good thing. :)
these should be the options of low graphics mode. Less animations, less details...but the only thing that i noticed, going from high to low, was the moving grass...and some poligonal features. I'm not saying that low config would see a torch without fire, but it could use a lot less of particles.
Also, i have 2gb ram, only other program open is firefox too. dual core...actually...i could improve my comp to this one..later...
i think the main problem isn't my computer, or connection, but rather a sum of comp, connection, and ping. The main part that causes lag, for me, is the loading of an attack animation, and its effects. Actually, i think i'm playing the game at a slower framerate that i should/could..if there where some way to actually load both animation and effects as one single file, making so both get active only when both are loaded...it would actually let me only with my computer problem...at least, i think it is it. I think it is it because, most times that i slash, and my sword pass through the beast, it takes about 3 second to the damage get in effect. Also, if, in these 3 seconds the monster moves, actually, my sword hit will not conect (and probably i will be bitten in the butt), even if i see the animation of the monster being hit...just my thought, though.
Thanks for bringing the torch effects to our attention. On Friday I made it so that, when on lower graphic settings, the flame effects will use more stripped-down particle effects (previously, every level-of-detail was using the same effects). Hopefully that change will go through at some point this week. It won't be a complete fix, but every little bit helps.
Any other particularly vicious effects you guys have noticed? Right now I've got a list of:
Any monster with a particle effect.
Like Skeletons.
Thanks, Cory- this is great news! Out of curiosity, have you considered also reducing other "incidental" particles that are drawn during a fight? Examples include:
- Confetti from treasure boxes
- Dirt from tunneling wolvers
- Charred paths from where a flamethrower passed by
- Fragments of broken pots
- The zappy-happy idle animation on my beloved Voltech Alchemer
- The dirt stirred up behind running knights
- The damage cloud of a detonating bomb
- The swirling effects on embers of heat- if you're playing a level that requires killing lots of enemies from a distance, then eventually all the unclaimed heat starts inducing lag and reducing your ability to fight. (This actually happened to me on the pre-lord-van level with zombies crossing a bridge of spikes)
- The bullet spam when fighting Lord Van also lags me out, but the bullets seem pretty simple, so it might just be the sheer weight of numbers involved. (The fiery falling roof, on the other hand....!!!)
...All require a lot of animation, and disappear after a few seconds. In a busy level with a lot of enemies, that can add up. (So far, fire has gotten the blame simply because fire enemies are among the most common)
These are all I can think of offhand, but it's worth just playing a few levels and watching closely to see what small incidental animations are done. (They really are gorgeous, with wonderful attention to detail... I almost feel guilty in suggesting that they be cut down. But alas.)
> My (fairly high-end Mac system) CPU simply gets wildly overwhelmed by the heavy animations during certain levels- especially anything at all involving fire.
Agreed. I've got (access to) a Windows system (that I can't use very often) that doesn't have a true GeForce 4, and it plays nicely; my Mac has a better card (9550 mobility) and it plays worse.
> Any other particularly vicious effects you guys have noticed?
* Monster Spawn *.
Alright, it's not all. In general, monsters moving around have a problem -- it seems like my computer is two displayed frames behind on every activity, and when the monsters move a good deal between displayed frames, that means I miss more than anything.
What does seem to be really bad? Some monsters seem to have a "pre-attack" / "charge" animation that really taxes the system. Wolves and Jellies in particular (oddly, the walking tree construct doesn't seem to be a really nasty graphic load.)
Actually since he is found at an early stage where newbies like myself would usually hang around, it makes sense for his health to be that low. Lol for me, it takes a long time to kill me... But for experienced players, dead in a snap...