Multiplayer for MMMerge [beta 14.01.2024/4]

[Rodril]

Seems last update caused a lot of troubles. I've updated archive to 11.06.2023/4 version, please try this one and tell me state of reported bugs.

1) When fighting spiders in the caves, we decided that I will take fighter's cutlass, cast fire aura and return it back. After we did it, went fighting spiders and returned to surface, we found out that the spare cutlass was lying in the ground just where goblin fighter took it from me. After I took duped cutlass from the ground and we went fighting spiders again, on our return - another cutlass appeared where I was standing when taking up previous cutlass. So in the end, we were able to dupe 2 additional cutlass...

Could not reproduce this one yet. Tell me if something alike will happen again.

2) OCT02.png
When knight tried to share gold with me, he was standing on the "ramp" and he was able to see his gold on the ground, while i'm - not. We decided to try this again on the "plain" ground and this time I was able to see the gold pile.

I think, gold object could get different velocity on client and host sides, causing gold to fly away too far. I have not encountered complete disappearence of an item yet. I've added extra position check in this fix pack, it might cause little rubber band effect on objects, but will ensure they share same position on client and host sides. If you'll get object disappearance again, tell me, please.

When we was inside Temple of the Moon, spiders were stuck in the columns around the room - which I don't remember was ever an issue in the original. How did they get there?

It is long term bug of the merge, that have not been fixed yet. Long story short, it is hard to figure out what exactly causes it, and it does not affect gameplay in that destructive way to be on alert. Thus it constantly stays in backlog, unfortunately.

4) When we've left the Emerald Island, suddenly we came to Harmondale separately. First we both saw a video of the Harmondale introduction, than it was knight who get there, than I needed to click on "Cast off" in the ship interface again.

Seems network exchange stops on video playback. I'll check it out.

UPD: we played on the last patch btw (which broke yesterday saves)

In what way saves were broken? Did you have console pop up upon loading? Or game crashed on loading screen? Update was not supposed to break saves. If you still have broken savegame file, send it to me, please.

UPD UPD: By the way, I don't know if it's a feature of Merge or it's a bug - when we started, I went to magic item shop and there wasn't anything presented for common items. Shelves were empty from the begining and there was a message "Come again after 3.5 days". After we skipped more than 3 days, the message was still the same and no items on shelves...

No it should not be like that. I know about this issue, but could not find way to reproduce it yet. I'm in progress, tho. While trying to find solution, even fixed old merge bug, that occasionally made Blackshire alchemy shop to sell nothing else but tier 1 spellbooks.

1) Error when entering that dungeon in Free Haven with a lot of Veterans, forgot the name. Did not cause a crash, but had to dismiss debug window like 5++ times.

Strange, game even worked with these errors... All points are related to step sounds feature, try out new update, and tell me, if anything still happens. Swords are service sprites for various effects around player puppet, they are supposed to be invisible. If this hotfix, won't hide them forever, note me, please.

Thanks for great and fast reports. Hope, i won't mess up like that again.

[Octavia]

Seems network exchange stops on video playback. I'll check it out.

Actually, we were able to get to Harmondale together in the end. So even video playback didn't prevented us to do it second time.
But today we discussed it and he said, that prior to moving to Harmondayle, he got debug console window 2 times after leaving Temple of the Moon. Maybe the problem started back than.

In what way saves were broken? Did you have console pop up upon loading? Or game crashed on loading screen? Update was not supposed to break saves. If you still have broken savegame file, send it to me, please.

We tried to proceed with the savegame saved prior to patching. The problem was on the connection screen. I put a player code to the client line, started to "listen" for connections and there wasn't "..." string in the client line. So the "V" symbol never appeared. From the client side it was just an attempt to connect and than nothing.
Than we recreated characters from scratch, I loaded on Emerald Island and the "..." appeared from the beginning.
Maybe it was problems with STUN servers, idk. I will check logs on my side later.

And thanks for quick feedback on our reports) We will try new patch today if we will be able to.

[Rodril]

Hello. Updating archive to 13.06.2023 version, it contains two important fixes:
1. I managed to reproduce crash in Abandonned temple of Baa near spider queen, should not happen anymore. Same bug could affect other dungeons, so i expect less crashes now. Report, if any happens again.
2. Sprites won't load with delay anymore, and you should not encounter "swords" spites now. These swords could crash the game too in some cases.
Double checked everything, no disasters this time.

upd. Actually, not. Updated to 13.06.2023/2.

[Mercs]

One thing I forgot to report last time (so version from 11.06) was a crash in Silver Helm Stronghold (or whatever it called) at Silver Cove, where there is a spirit who is a wall texture basically. The moment wall texture changed into a spirit texture/sprite/whatever that is - one player always crashed. It may be similar to the Spider Queen, so yeah.

However, I am happy to say with the new reconnection feature crashes are even less of an issue now. We also didn't have any respawning locations lately.

UPD. Another piece of general feedback - we realized the "issue" with difficulty. It wasn't actually the difficulty all along! It was how we play it. See, in single player, you would always kinda face tank with your sorcerers and other weak characters instead of just your "tank". Issue was keeping THEM alive. But in MP, your tank is forward, solely taking all the damage. And avoiding most of it due to AC. Our tank rn actually decided to specialize in Shield instead of having an off-hand sword, so he's AC is huge AND he is also using Harden Item potions I provide him with. And since we were trying to ramp up Bolstering to feel "the difficulty", it only resulted in a weird situation where our tank doesn't get hit often, but when he does, it's like sometimes half or even more of his HP, and taking a hit in a Weakness state (or, I suspect, after being Dispelled) kinda destroys him in a single moment.

So, given this logic, just increasing monster numbers won't do much in terms of "perceived" difficulty. The approaches to difficulty in multiplayer are two-fold:
1) Either give lower level monsters additional non-lethal-but-problematic Status effects like Weakness, Sleep, Armor Break, etc
2) Or introduce a completely foreign system of aggro and have enemies actually switch target from a tank to other party members, creating chaos.

Or both? Well at least I can say for certain that Sleep and Weakness are under-utilised, and Armor Break gets hard countered by Harden Item potions. Sure, introducing more of those effects are already a stretch in a game known for it's wild status effects, and it will require even more micro-management from the party, but I feel it may still be a nice idea to play with.

UPD2. Yeah and Mass Fear / Turn Undead trivialize pretty much every fight even further.
UPD3. Or maybe rebalance monster bolstering hit rating to damage dealt, so that monsters deal slightly less damage but hit more often. That may work as well, I think.

PS. Completely unrelated, but I already want to play Multiplayer with Revamp branch and self-made custom classes. I have a ton of ideas for classes, back when playing solo tempering with class tables was basically the way I always played the game. Revamp has Scrolls and I believe Wands scale off your Magic skills and I believe there is also an option to forbid certain spells to certain classes (cthscr correct me if Im wrong lmao), so my idea is to create a "magic neutral" Dwarf with 0 SP factor, but who could do Repair, Alchemy and GM any magics, but never actually cast anything So basically an "Item Mage", a magical-craftsman dwarf. If only scrolls/potions/ingredients/wands would take less inventory space, that playstyle would actually be something unique and enjoyable in a Multiplayer setting... or, idk... just carry a dead guy around with me for extra inventory space haha.

[rampage77t]

Hello. Updating archive to 13.06.2023 version, it contains two important fixes:
1. I managed to reproduce crash in Abandonned temple of Baa near spider queen, should not happen anymore. Same bug could affect other dungeons, so i expect less crashes now. Report, if any happens again.
2. Sprites won't load with delay anymore, and you should not encounter "swords" spites now. These swords could crash the game too in some cases.
Double checked everything, no disasters this time.

upd. Actually, not. Updated to 13.06.2023/2.

Undoubtedly one of the best updates to the mod, from the first version of the merge that whenever I entered Watchtower 6 and reached the button that activates the bridges the game crashed, I published that error in the MM Merge post but it was never fixed , and this time with my brother we entered and were able to complete the dungeon without any errors during the process.
We've had a couple of console messages when traveling to different maps but nothing that has crashed the game on either side. We reached Land of Giants and we are not far from completing Antagarich. An error that we have is that in the list of missions we have the one that is done to promote Archdruid, which does not make sense because we chose the path of evil and the mission would have to be that of the Warlock, according to what my brother told me, he interacted with Anthony Green before choosing a judge and granted him the mission without having chosen a side.
Another error occurred in Thunderfirst Mountain, one of the floating eyes scared one of my partner's characters, I used the remove fear spell on it and it didn't work, and my character was a Grandmaster of Mind Magic so the time limit didn't applied, we had to resort to a potion to cure the condition.
Outside of those things, the game is much more enjoyable as more players do it, I really appreciate the effort and dedication they put in, both here and the rest of the community that creates mods for these games.

[Rodril]

UPD. Another piece of general feedback - we realized the "issue" with difficulty. It wasn't actually the difficulty all along! It was how we play it. See, in single player, you would always kinda face tank with your sorcerers and other weak characters instead of just your "tank". Issue was keeping THEM alive. But in MP, your tank is forward, solely taking all the damage. And avoiding most of it due to AC. Our tank rn actually decided to specialize in Shield instead of having an off-hand sword, so he's AC is huge AND he is also using Harden Item potions I provide him with. And since we were trying to ramp up Bolstering to feel "the difficulty", it only resulted in a weird situation where our tank doesn't get hit often, but when he does, it's like sometimes half or even more of his HP, and taking a hit in a Weakness state (or, I suspect, after being Dispelled) kinda destroys him in a single moment.

So, given this logic, just increasing monster numbers won't do much in terms of "perceived" difficulty. The approaches to difficulty in multiplayer are two-fold:
1) Either give lower level monsters additional non-lethal-but-problematic Status effects like Weakness, Sleep, Armor Break, etc
2) Or introduce a completely foreign system of aggro and have enemies actually switch target from a tank to other party members, creating chaos.

Or both? Well at least I can say for certain that Sleep and Weakness are under-utilised, and Armor Break gets hard countered by Harden Item potions. Sure, introducing more of those effects are already a stretch in a game known for it's wild status effects, and it will require even more micro-management from the party, but I feel it may still be a nice idea to play with.

UPD2. Yeah and Mass Fear / Turn Undead trivialize pretty much every fight even further.
UPD3. Or maybe rebalance monster bolstering hit rating to damage dealt, so that monsters deal slightly less damage but hit more often. That may work as well, I think.

I saw the issue, but i don't have any solid solution idea yet. Bolster does not affect status effect application at the moment, so it is free field for difficulty raise. I am not sure, if it is possible to raise attack speed past attack animation length without modifying engine further, tho.

Improved aggro system for multiplayer, is most tempting idea at the moment, but hardest in implementation. MM8 monsters already have target preference setup for choosing target among chracters in party, and making monster switch target and follow it should not be hard. Where difficulty lays, is lack of "tank" gameplay at the moment. Originally monster gets pinned to closest enemy target (player or other monster), this system is simple and solid. With introduction of aggro system for monsters, we'll also need mechanics for player to raise / drop his aggro, aside of just changes by dealing damage / healing / applying buffs, i.e. taunts or something.

An error that we have is that in the list of missions we have the one that is done to promote Archdruid, which does not make sense because we chose the path of evil and the mission would have to be that of the Warlock, according to what my brother told me, he interacted with Anthony Green before choosing a judge and granted him the mission without having chosen a side.

This particular behaivor is intended. It was made like this after extending functionality of dragon hatchling achieved in warlock promotion quest (dragon can grow up to real party member now, having unique dragon skin: black for dark side party / gold for light side). We've came to conclusion that druid/warlock is twilight path, so it won't be too lore-breaking to allow to complete both quests, thus not gating light parties form getting their unique dragon.

[rampage77t]

Another bug that I forgot to mention is that the host's reputation is reset when loading the game, causing the server to have 0 reputation on any map and the client keeps the reputation it had, I guess it would have to be shared.

[Octavia]

Hi! We continued the adventure in Harmondayle with 13.06.2023/2 patch.
Bugs that we managed to find:
1) STEP SOUNDS DISSAPEARED! OH NO! It's very hard to find each other again.
2) If someone is down (negative HP) and lies near the tavern, if the second player sleep in tavern, it's killing and respawning the one who lies next to the tavern (including showing the death video).
3) We slept in tavern, went to kill goblins around Harmondayle, than we failed and decided to reload. After we reloaded on the moment we were fresh after the rest, the second player had "weak" status by some reason.
4) We hired Scholar, which says "unlimited identification of items" but he doesn't provide it. I wasn't able to identify anything until I learned ID Item skill. Next, it seems either he provides plain bonus and the hero with ID Item skill level 1 can not identify just any item, or he doesn't provide any bonus at all.
5) The most funny bug was when we tried to venture from Harmondayle to Erathia. We both came to J.V.C Corral and was able to go to Ertahia for 1 payment (from me). Than we learned sword expert for fighter and tried to return to Harmondayle the same way. But, when I paid for a ride, the fighter didn't have enough money and stayed in Steadwick instead. When I came to Harmondayle, I went to tavern to skip days so I can return to fighter and provide him with some budget for tickets. But after I slept in tavern, for me the current day of the month was 22. For him it was still 20, the same when we split up. When I managed to get to Erathia again, my calendar returned to day 20. I guess it's timezones! Harmondayle is too far from Erathia

(P.S.: Please, recover precious stepsounds!!!)

[Mercs]

taunts or something.

Yeah, I would've said just calculate aggro of a monster against characters based on incoming damage modified by attacker AC, but then you'd hit a wall of melee attackers (especially the pure ones like Knights and Monks) being able to only attack one foe at a time, thus losing aggro of everyone else since all the mages and explosive-arrow archers happily do AoE. If melee attacks could randomly produce special effects like "cleave" attacks tho, that would've actually worked. Also weapons that do explosive melee attacks (I think there is only one?) would've suddenly gained new meaning haha.

UPD. Also stuff like healing should generate some aggro as well, and at least some forms of aggro should apply in an area as well, gotta look at how it is implemented in MMOs as well.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Threat
https://www.wowhead.com/classic/guide/t ... lassic-wow
https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic/eu ... rk-in-wow/

As for special effects, I understand there are monsters gaining new abilities with bolstering (like summons), so they could gain abilities having a chance of status effect too? Or is a status effect just something that is hard-wired to the monster melee/projectile attack? In any case, I guess having a lot of statuses is a quite annoying dynamics, and annoying dynamics are only good to an extent.

[Rodril]

Hello, updating archive to 13.06.2023/3 version, it contains only minor fixes, most notable:
-- Host won't have screen freeze, when trying to save game / move to other map right after save loading.
-- Monsters were not able to use Ice Bolt and Ice Blast spells due to removal old fix without updating MONSTERS.txt table. I've returned old fix for now.

1) STEP SOUNDS DISSAPEARED! OH NO! It's very hard to find each other again.

Try with today's update, please. If step sounds won't recover, for experiment try to raise your volume and check, maybe steps are too quiet, tell me if so. I did not make any important changes in step sounds logic nor in this update nor in previous, but sounds still confusing me and i could make hard-to-spot mistake somewhere.

2) If someone is down (negative HP) and lies near the tavern, if the second player sleep in tavern, it's killing and respawning the one who lies next to the tavern (including showing the death video).
3) We slept in tavern, went to kill goblins around Harmondayle, than we failed and decided to reload. After we reloaded on the moment we were fresh after the rest, the second player had "weak" status by some reason.

Should be fixed in today's update.

4) We hired Scholar, which says "unlimited identification of items" but he doesn't provide it. I wasn't able to identify anything until I learned ID Item skill. Next, it seems either he provides plain bonus and the hero with ID Item skill level 1 can not identify just any item, or he doesn't provide any bonus at all.

This is intended. He can identify any apparel items without limits (rings, gloves, amulets, wands). Actual bug is Scholar being able to identify everything in base megre, that makes ID item skill useless. Follower functionality description is misleading at the moment, but correcting it will cause localization hell, thus i'm delaying it...

When I managed to get to Erathia again, my calendar returned to day 20. I guess it's timezones!

Yeah, this is convention i had to come to. Timeflow is different for players on different maps. I could not find perfect solution and have chosen lesser evil. Whenever player travels to map, where other players exist, he accepts local time, even if it is far in the past. This allows players on the map to freely use tavern rest and camping without synchronizing with players in entire world.
Also, you can use bank to transfer gold to player at other map (if he has bank there, of course), bank account is shared.

[Mercs]

MM6, 13.06.23/3

1) walk sound for remote chars not playing for 2/3 players (clients), but playing for host. might have to do with either the fact he's host or maybe some audio options idk? tried changing Sounds volume level, no effect
2) walk sounds for host provide wrong sounds on sand - sounds like walking on swamp instead

UPD.

Mercs
Hey btw. I've been watching the vids and I recalled one thing that is I think a bug of Merge and not MP specifically
Human gore sprites in MM6 seem to be messed up
like we'd see a hanged woman at open field in Bootleg Bay, and a woman on spikes in Corlagon's Estate where she doesn't even fit into the niche
those two at the very least may have their filenames wrong or smth

Malekith
Also rocks are wrong btw

cthscr
That's wrong usage of SFTGroup as Name in DecList.txt by Rodril. Corpse names should be increased by one (and 6d17.blv should be reimported). For rocks map sprites decnames should be changed (now mm8 ones are used) with following map recompile.

[Rodril]

Updated version name to 13.06.2023/4. It contains another tweak for step sounds. Doing it often, because i still could not reproduce issues with it on my side. Report new status,once you'll happen to play, please.

Back to aggro topic, what i have in mind at the moment is to make additional tab in spellbook, that will contain special moves available to character, based on current weapon equipped. These "spells" will be dedicated to aggro management and imaginable combat postioning while playing solo. "Spells" won't consume mana, but will have trade-offs for the short duration, aside of recovery delay. I don't want to go beyond what is implementable in sane term, so basically every character will have up to three extra "spells" available, picked from list below:

Aoe option for melee combat to maintain aggro:

-- Wide slash - do lowered damage to multiple enemies in sight, in melee range, additional increase of aggro for enemies affected.
Present, if character have any weapon in hands, besides blaster.

Aggro dropping:

-- Defensive stance - deal lower physical damage for the duration, prevent bow usage, have AC greatly increased against enemies in sight (does not affect enemies behind), lower aggro.
Present, if character have staff equipped, or if character is unarmed and either dodge or unarmed is at expert level or above.

-- Hunker down - gain halved missile damage from enemies in sight, lower aggro of enemies, who are not engaged in melee combat with this character, increase recovery delay of basic attacks. If shield equipped, aggro of enemies in melee combat decreased aswell.
Present if Defensive stance is not available.

Aggro raising:

-- Offensive stance - gain haste and weakness immunity for the duration, prevent bow usage, raise aggro for enemies in sight.
Present, if character is unarmed and either dodge or unarmed combat is at least at expert level. Also present for characters with GM unarmed and staff in hands.

-- Bash on the shield - gain increased AC, halve incoming missile and physical damage, halve outgoing physical damage, raise aggro, - all only against enemies in sight.
Present if character has offhand shield, and blaster does not occupy main hand slot.

-- Brawl - deal increased physical damage, prevent bow usage, raise aggro for enemies in sight.
Present if character has any weapon equipped, excluding staff and blaster.

This will also require a bit of artwork for spellbook, tho, but i think i'll be able to scrap something from mm6-mm7 assets. (Also i'm wondering if author of original mm8 icons still doing freelance, i've seen him advertising about year ago, but did not save any contact information).

[Mercs]

This is big Maybe too big. I'd argue it's a bit too complicated and too much of a stray into custom mechanics territory for a mod that is centered around a feature (multiplayer) instead of gameplay changes.

I'd like to reiterate on my previous suggestions if you don't mind, to show how they can form a bare minimum that may still work (though you definitely have deeper understanding of MM mechanics than I do - AND I never play turn-based - keep that in mind):

1) add cleave as auto-cast that can happen automatically on melee attack with a certain chance. can come in different flavors and depend on various skills. Cleave should be defined as "act of sharing the melee attack damage between several monsters in melee range while possibly modifying the total value based on skills".
2) add threat (as in "value of monster aggressiveness towards character") and aggro (as in "act of changing monster target") mechanics and include AC into threat calculation so that higher AC characters generally generate more of it and have to balance dps with tankiness. Note that in MMOs, monsters don't change target immediatelly. In WoW, player in melee range gets aggro when his threat is 10% bigger than current target thret. And players at longer range get aggro when their threat is 30% higher. This prevents monsters from changing targets too often.
3) maybe look into rebalancing how often characters get hit vs. the damage they receive, so that they maybe receive less damage on higher bolstering levels, but get hit more often, so more active aproach to healing and more AC is required
4) look into adding more abilities to monsters inducing status effects that do not completely disable the character but make character weaker, or do disable, but easy to get rid of (Sleep) - the point is to reduce the character "tankiness" while motivating the casters to help the tank get rid of ailment
5) change DEFAULT Bolstering value from 100% to ~120%, because people will most of the time go with the default option

PS. If you are adamant about adding spellbook abilities, I suggest looking into "Drink Heal Potion" and "Drink Mana Potion" ones, as well as being able to cast Scrolls from spellbook. Also, reduce inventory slots needed to carry a bottle from 2 to 1 (sprite change may not even be required, but if it is - Gog Blood sprite can be used as base) to make Alchemy more accessible. Right now I feel Alchemy basically is not useful outside of Blue Potions, no-magic playthroughs and Harden Item (which is REQUIRED for tanking in MM6, but afaik you only need Alchemy 4 for it). It starts strong, but the closer to high levels you are, the more useless it is, even with items giving huge Alchemy skill bonuses.

[Rodril]

I've updated version name to 16.06.2023.
It contains partially reworked monsters synchronization routine, aimed to fix cases when groups of monsters aimlessly stand without performing any actions, untill player comes into melee range. I hope it won't break anything, but in case it does, i'm temporary keeping 13.06.2023/4 archive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Pb6IS ... sp=sharing

All minor fixes have come in 13.03.2023/X versions.
Regarding bolstering, i've changed damage scaling formula, and moved Player's AC penalty formula to "Bolster - formulas.txt" in "Data/Tables" folder, so it can be edited without modifying scripts now. Player's AC penalty is the way, bolster uses, to increase amount of hits player receives. If you wan't to tweak this table yourself, use Grayface's TxtEdit.

[Mercs]

MM6, 13.06.23/4

1. aoe damage to self seems to be modified by friendly fire factor? in general the default setting of 0,1 is too low.
2. poison spray damages other players. can also shoot arrows at other players, they play hurt animation, but don't actually lose health unless it's Poison Spray (and maybe some other spells too?)
3. still no step sound for 2/3 players. the host can hear them steps, but both clients can't. maybe it's audio device issues?
4. barrels showing different colors in Snergle's Iron Mines - to one player barrel is Blue, to other Yellow, to another Orange
5. bolstered and un-bolstered dwarves in dwarf mines in Ironfist - the ones that just exist there are all unbolstered, but the ones spawning are bolstered. generally found out that probably the vast majority of monsters we ever had to deal with was unbolstered even though we are 65+ level by now. note we did not ever enter the mines before. same with Temple of Baa - lots of unbolstered Druids and Baa Clerics, complete cannon fodder at this stage of the game.
6. some monsters still occasionally fast
7. only one char has reputation in the entirety of our group. he hands in all the quests and his rep is 100+, while others have 5-11 rep.

[Rodril]

Version changed to 16.06.2023/2.
I've accidentaly disabled HP bolstering and sprites state synchronization in previous updates... Reverted it back to normal.

1. aoe damage to self seems to be modified by friendly fire factor?

No it is not. You sure? 0.1 factor completely negates most damage to barely visible changes.

2. poison spray damages other players. can also shoot arrows at other players, they play hurt animation, but don't actually lose health unless it's Poison Spray (and maybe some other spells too?)

All projectiles do damage to other players at the moment (fire bolt, ice bolt, blades). Do you think friendly fire should be restricted to aoe spells?

Points 4,5,6 should be fixed after this hotfix. I will experiment further with step sounds and will add reputation synchronization. Thanks for report.

[Mercs]

No it is not. You sure? 0.1 factor completely negates most damage to barely visible changes.

Never "sure", but I am able to fire Fireballs at point blank and deal almost no damage to self, I don't remember it being so in single player or before friendly fire factor update. I mean I do apply fire resist ofc for a total of 128 Fire Resist, but was it that strong before? The problem with all this reports is always that I compare it to my "memories" of the game, which are not always right -_- Like here I was talking a lot about bolstering only to find out it didn't even apply most of the game, lmao.

Talking about that 0.1 modifier... Keep in mind the default value is what everyone will go with, people are like this. Most of the friends and people I asked on internet out of curiousity mentioned never even changing default controls in games, that's just how people are. That default value is also one of the points you should probably consider as part of "tanking" narrative.

[Mercs]

MM6, 16.06.23/2 ver

1) several times crashing fighting druids in Superior Temple of Baa

Spoiler

C:\MM8_new\Scripts/Core/events.lua array index (267) out of bounds [0, 266]

stack traceback:
in function 'error'
C:\MM8_new\Scripts/Core/RSMem.lua in function '__index'
C:\MM8_new\Scripts/Core/events.lua in function 'Who'
C:\MM8_new\Scripts/Core/events.lua in function 'f'
C:\MM8_new\Scripts/Core/RSMem.lua in function <C:\MM8_new\Scripts/Core/RSMem.lua:2206>
in function 'pcall'
C:\MM8_new\Scripts/Core/Common.lua:203: in function 'pcall2'
C:\MM8_new\Scripts/Core/RSMem.lua in function <C:\MM8_new\Scripts/Core/RSMem.lua:1769>

arguments of 'Who':
i = 267
action = 1

local variables of 'Who':
t = (table: 0x2f55a680)
kind = 3
(*temporary) = 267
(*temporary) = (table: 0x056d7b38)
(*temporary) = 8.8739280079706e-292

2) now that Bolstering finally works properly, we finally feel the heat! HP factor is even a bit too much for just 3 players, so fights take forever (unoptimal skill point allocation and lack of dark magic is probably the case), but our tank rarely received any damage anyway. we even reduced bolstering from 125% to 115% for the fights to take a bit less. it's sad we once again did most of the game on easy mode due to bugs

[Rodril]

Hello. Updated to 18.06.2023.
-- Chest traps will properly do damage to all players standing nearby.
-- Adjusted bolster monster HP and AC penalty formulas.
-- Another step sounds tweaking.

I've added Soloud audio library to play step sounds. It is realtively small and works as layer between winmm and the game. Mss32 does the same, but i've failed at finding documentation for it (even for modern version, not to speak about the old one, used by MM). My knowledge in audio systems is little, and i have no mood at the moment to dig the disassembly to reresearch mss32 functionality. Intention behind it is higher level MM sound playback function have glitches, that i could neither fix nor work around.
What MM engine suggests is to use PlaySound function with object, which coordinates should be used for audio positioning, otherwise coordinates can be passed as parameters. But either way has drawbacks: object can be source of only one sound at a time, thus if i'm using monster, step sounds will interrupt all other sounds caused by him (yell, damage taken etc). Passing coordinates directly just does not work: only split second of the sound is played with correct positioning, while rest duration played back with maximum volume, or at worst, half of the sound just cut off and does not play at all. And most odd, sound panning seem to be reversed in Indoor maps compared to Outdoors. I've tried to use service sprites as position object, and while it worked for me, reports still say otherwise. That forces me to use lower level methods, i.e. mss32.dll, but as i stated before, i've given up on it.
Second reason of using external library is necessity to distinguish, what excatly causes step sounds to be silent: playback failing, or network issues. If sound won't play anyway, at least i'll be sure to check network further.
Just in case being said, Soloud can be disabled by removing "soloud_x86.dll" from "Game/ExeMods" folder.

[Mercs]

Not sure what version is this from, but I just noticed that when I cast Fireballs, they show as MM8 ugly spherical animation on my screen, yet what other players (or at least host) sees on their end is beautiful MM7 sprite explosion. I wanna have beautiful explosion too (: Monster fireballs also show as MM7 animation.