I’ll start by saying that I have a very novice understanding on how coding works and even less experience and figured fiddling with CDDA will help me learn a bit more.,with that said…
I am a big fan of a web toon called Solo Leveling so I began to wonder is a zombie resurrection mechanic was possible in CDDA. I first thought was the zombie necromancers. So I looked into the JSON and noticed that they had a ‘special attack’ called “resurrect” however I could not find the code with that id anywhere to tell me how it works. I has hoping that If I can figure out how it works and then look into the magiclysm stuff to figure how how to make a spell, i may be able to create something cool. So where would I find this “resurrect” special attack?
ahh I see! even though the code looks a bit different than the code in the json files I have a general idea of how it works. The hard codded stuff is in “C” and the json’s are java correct? sry if i get the terms wrong. Is the a way to create a json that can have the player ‘call’ the resurrect special attack and get it to work for them? if the necro can do it can the player initiate it as well?
Ahh So the hard coded stuff uses the data from the json’s to execute certain functions in cdda? (I’ve got a lot to learn lol). Any novice resources I can read up on to help me grasp c++ and json data a but easier?
the json’s are basically reference material for the actual code, they’re super simple to read the way the game’s currently organized, but C++ is a programming language, you can google up a tutorial but you’ll still have to learn it. could always start here or find your own google link, (or if your in college, check out any materials/courses they may have for coding!)
of note for the future, for when you want to start fiddling with creating a mod or something:
the coded resurrect command only works on zombies, but you can use most of that code for a new attack (or even make a mod/contribution for magiclysm, which will make your resurrection a necromancy-type spell), and the zombie that gets resurrected will still be hostile, so your goal is to make it so that the skill you’re envisioning takes the corpse you’ve targeted, deletes it, then makes a new monster of the same type as the corpse and allied to you.
now… if you wanted to take that one step further (like in solo leveling) and have them be ‘shadow monsters’ instead, you could do that as well, but that would involve adding a new ‘shadow’ version of every monster in the game, as well as a de-summon command that would somehow track what monsters you do or dont have in your collection, which is a bit bloaty code wise.
anyway, if you do eventually get it done i’d love to play around with it!
So if I understand correctly, I would need to create the resurrection skill in c++ that would say, in noob terms, "hey, see that dead monster? Copy its information and summon a friendly copy with blah blah parameters/stats’ if I want to do a diablo style necro or create a spell that ‘summons’ a copy of it with blah blah parameters/stats’ for more of a solo leveling/magiclysm style of summoning? Then I can create json data that say use that summon spell for this awesome mod?
basically: copy the code for resurrect, modify it to work on everything and change its alignment to player, that’d work in the simple sense… actually reviving the EXACT SAME monster that was killed is likely too difficult, but reviving the exact same TYPE shouldnt be hard considering the dead bodies are all labeled with what monster it was (unless it was pulped, in which case it shouldnt be revivable at all)
if you want them to be stronger/have different stats, you would need to create a whole separate monster type (that’s ‘different’, but still the same, in the code that could be labeled ‘zombie_2’ but be exactly the same stats-wise as a regular zombie, or you could get creative and not confuse people and label it ‘shadow_zombie’ to differentiate it, and have your skill called ‘shadow resurrection’ so its easily corelatable)
all the enemies data is stored in the json files, so creating a separate json specifically for your resurrectable monsters would work as well, cut and paste whatever monster you want to change as a summon, up/lower the stats as you see fit, change the weapons they use, that sorta thing.
Also might be worth looking more at what is already present in magiclysm, because there are several minion summon spells including a summon zombie, summon skeleton and summon shade/shadow like spell. It might be easier to adapt those spells to what you are looking for instead of using the resurrect code.