Really appreciate the response here as improving the ability to create remote effects is huge for those of us who want to mod combat. This post is going to be a bit lengthy. Let me dig into your list now:
Have you tried creating a skill with Self on the AoEConditions, and passing the character you want to hit as the source in the call? This should work in theory. If it doesn't work let me know and I'll take a look into it. As for why the ExplodeAt trick doesn't work anymore: it's using a cylinder instead of a sphere now when checking for collisions.
By AoEConditions I am assuming you mean TargetConditions. If there is a field called AoEConditions, it is not exposed in the editor for the Projectile skill type.
The issue with the approach of using self is exactly as you said, the source needs to be self. This means the ability scales based on the target, not the caster, which is wrong most of the time I would imagine. Scaling the ability correctly with the caster is actually the core issue in almost everything I listed.
Will look into adding a source parameter to the ApplyStatus, ApplyDamage, and CharacterDie (as a nice bonus) calls. I'll also see if I can add the source, skill, and damage to the ReceivedDamage story call.
ApplyDamage especially, if it scales with attributes and abilities (including Huntsman) would be such a huge deal to the community. Unfortunately... (putting this out of order for emphasis)
There's a CharacterVitalityChanged event in story.
The issue isn't so much picking up that it changed as much as it is why and by whom. As stated earlier, the issue spawning this discussing is almost always attributing the proper target for scaling. Being able to tell if Health, Armor, and Magic Armor changed, the amount changed, and who caused the change would be fantastic as I was unable to find a "heal" call for armor and there isn't a way, to my knowledge, to replicate the way damage/healing text looks and floats away from the character. (This could be split into damage/healing, or you could just use a Float with +/-).
Additionally, it is very difficult to determine if damage was done to armor or not. If we could tell this, the scope of what modders could do with the armor stats is expanded quite a bit.
Unfortunately using a skill without actually casting it isn't possible, except for Projectile and Projectile Strike skill types. It's very unlikely that this will ever happen due to their complexity.
Honestly I was just throwing ideas out there to see what stuck and what was feasible for you guys. The stuff you are doing with source is more than enough for me. Others can chime in if they have concerns.
I want to thank you again for responding. This is going to enable a lot of creativity in both combat and storytelling by achieving the perfectly scaled effect for what we want to do.
If I may be so bold, I wanted to bring up a couple other things when you get time.
First, if there is anything I or anyone else can do to help you guys make some of these changes happen, let us know. I know you guys are a corporate entity, but I love this genre and some of these changes are especially crucial to the vision I have for my projects that I will do what I can to help.
Statuses are unable to crit. I know you guys might have your reasons for this, but would it be difficult to add a "CanCrit" type field to the table so we have control over this behavior? (Talking about DamageStats entries like Burning as well as Healing).
If you havn't already, please check out this thread dealing with Compatability concerns. Simply put, it would be nice if there were a section we can add #IMPORTS:
http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=626850#Post626850I know Talents/Abilities get brought up a lot and I understand there are hardcoded concerns with them. I am assuming you guys iterate over a list when rendering the Talent/Ability menu, so I am going to ask for a very specific workflow. Is it feasible if we would be able to define rows in a stats table of [Talent/Ability Name], [Description], [Requirement (for talents only)], [EventName]. These would be rendered into the Talent window and fire a "TalentEvent" or "AbilityEvent" in Osiris when learnt and unlearnt. If we could just get this, it would go such a long way and allow us to do a lot more with progression and items and if my assumptions are correct, would be little work for you guys to accomodate. I'm sorry to be yet another voice asking for this but I wanted to try a very generic approach that hopefully ends up being a low effort/high yield for you guys to do.
Regardless, thank you for reaching out and for explaining the Cylinder thing. That was driving me nuts.
