Infinite Summons

When you say you broke the code I assume you mean there's no limits to how many summons you could have, when in actuality you would want to limit it to a certain number.

In any regards it's something many players would love to have as it was very popular in DS1.

Maybe check out KillerGremal's Aranna Legacy Mod, it allows you to summon up to 5 monsters.

Incidentally I had an alternative type of summons in DS2BW Adepts. Called Evocations they aren't autocasted until the player spots a monster and then the summoned monster is casted right at the mob. They only last about 20 seconds and are meant as offensive spell type attacks rather than a defensive option like regular DS2 summons are, since they don't guard the player at all. They are meant to be another tactical option for the player in the vein like some of the summons in the Final Fantasy series.

This was very nice as many monsters could be used that otherwise would never be considered to be summons. For example the treach, unguis, mine worm and googore, though none of those were used in DS2BW Adepts (as they aren't publically available as artpacks) but monsters like the Rock Beast and Drakes were as well as Valdis, Knotted Shambler and Ganth. The Giant Trilisk would have been spectacular but I couldn't figured how to summon a multipart boss or even if it was possible.

Dulac - nice idea, I always had a dream of being a Necromancer, and having an army of the undead skeletons, kind of like the Skeleton King in Diablo. But then with an army of summons, wouldn't that make the game to easy?

seems you want to do what Xaa did in ds1, hehe I know how you just love Xaa

perhaps also can clone more than 1 in skrit. do the code like in broken world.

on another note when I converted the Herena Forge pets to ds2, I gave them a summon, talk about weird, but that entirely different subject.

iryan - I doubt the Giant Trilisk would work as summon, it don't have any walk anims, however, I could see it morphing off some mini me's and oh never mind, that's to much work....

No not as a normal summons but Adepts' evocations appear in the middle of mobs so they don't need to move. They also last no longer than 20 seconds and aren't set to guard their summoner so there's no inconsistencies. They also won't be summoned unless there's an enemy in range.

You would need to see the Adepts' evocations in action to see what I mean. They are far more tactical than regular summons.

A lot depends on how you define 'summon'.

If it's just an actor to follow and protect your party - there actually can be an infinite number of such actors.
They can be casted/summoned or generated else way, even many existing NPCs can be ordered to do so.

However as soon as the expectations raise, it becomes more tricky.
Should the summon be healable? Relay gained exp? Accepts buffs and pet auras? Interact with powers?

Actually, there is only 1 hard-coded 'summon slot' in DS2. Assumed now a summon power is selected, and if this slot is not filled with a valid summon, you can not even press the power button. :o
Concerning the time needed, I guess I would not add something like multiple summons again in a mod. To achieve (almost) fully-featured summons a large number of files had to be revised finally.

Yeah, I've always wanted to increase the amount of summons. If I do that for the monsters too, then it won't be unbalanced. There are quite a few things I want to do that will make monsters more difficult. I also want to buff reagents, basic items (in the past, for DS1, I put modifiers on white items in an unreleased multi-class mod) modifiers, sets, and uniques. However, mapping is my primary project with this stuff being slowly implemented (it's tons of work!). I really would love an army of undead like in Diablo 2. If I have permission and understand how Gremal got 5 summons to work, then I should be able to do it. It's possible I could write a skrit for it. As a test I removed the check if a player has the state of controlling a summon to try to understand how to write a skrit for x amount of summons (I just need to write a check for x summons to restrict it). I considered that breaking the code even though I meant to. What I originally intended to do was to investigate how to summon multiple summons with one cast, but after reading the summon skrit I decided to remove the check to investigate another route.

I really hate cheats and never make them, but I will release this as a cheat. I was thinking about lowering the mana cost to 1 and increasing the duration to 30 or whatever minutes. What do you think about the mana cost being virtually nothing? Keep in mind I'm trying to go for fun cheating with this. I think people will have fun with it. I also want create an evil actors summon via scroll, which not having a check on summon control would be nice if the player wanted to use more than one scroll to fight a pack of monsters.

I don't dislike XAA anymore. I only had philosophical disagreements with him on property rights. I was probably just being passionate about my view. He's a respectable person, and I actually wish he was modding DS2. I didn't play XAA's mods/siegelets, so I don't know what I'm doing similar to what he did. I really didn't do a lot of DS1 playing, lol. For the most part I worked on a failed TC as a node modeler and Siegelet co-designing with Sam (Brkcops? Can't recall his nick).

The monsters with multiple meshes need to be rigged via mapping, so it would be near impossible to be able to summon them.

Edit: Oh is there a corpse transmute in DS2? It might be a good idea to summon from corpses like in Diablo 2 to put a mild restriction on summoning an army of undead. It feels more authentic that way too, but it's not a big deal if I don't have time to figure it out. I just thought, maybe there is a target command, so the player can only target dead foes (probably inadvertently fallen heroes too). I'd like the corpse to disappear like in Diablo 2 though.

I think a summon must be cast by a spell, scroll, or shrine. I'd consider an evil actor summoned by a player a summon. I think of it as more of an action. What are you considering fully featured summons? The summons I want in this context are extremely simple. Just what we see in the pic above (defend player and cast by a spell).

When I wasn't modding DS2 and playing Diablo 3, I got a very similar idea for DS2. I played a Witch Doctor whom cast little spiders at mobs. They are very ephemeral, only lasting a few seconds. I thought it was a great idea. I could use this infinite summon skrit (which is just a check removed no actual skriting) to implement this idea. Thanks for reminding me! I think I can replicate this Diablo 3 spell in DS2. I also like your idea of casting summons that last a little longer. I might want to borrow that idea in the future.

@Dulac: I rather meant it functionally, not actually the way it's created or the way it looks like (some may expect the 'glow' or some transparency).
As partially pointed, a functionally-fully-featured summon would be one that you can heal, one that would accept buffs and adopt pet auras, one that is included in passive+active power handling (e.g. damage absorbtion), one with full GUI support possibly (show the correct stats, or allowing it to disband/kill the summon by clicking on the spell icon).

However for simply guarding summons for example, it's immaginable having a generator, slightly expanded to give the summon(s) a guard command right after the creation.

there was a mod many years ago called Summoner's Will, perhaps can take a look at it and get some ideas.

http://www.siegetheday.org/?q=node/439

http://www.siegetheday.org/files/SummonMod-v1.1a.zip

Thanks Darkelf. I didn't know Snit released this mod. He also says, "Permission is given to re-use this mod's content without restrictions" in his readme. I'll see what he did and credit him if I use anything.

That's an advanced summon! You have implemented this in your mod?