In case this has confused anyone, moddb have helpfully changed my account name; it was formerly AWatkins.
As lead programmer on Modular Combat (currently the only programmer), I'm often asked how exactly a particular feature works. Unfortunately, my answers tend to bore people to tears, and actually explain very little. So while I hope to use this blog to explain what up-and-coming features, I'll try and only do so when they're actually interesting.
Can I first congratulate the players who worked out that the server crashes we've been experiencing were related to plague - I finally got the chance to poke through the crash dumps last night, and you guys were absolutely right. It seems to happen when a player infects an NPC with plague, then disconnects - the game was trying to attribute the plague's damage to a non-existant player. Turns out I was referencing the player in a stupid way, so I've changed it so that it should correctly realise that the player doesn't exist anymore now. This fix will be part of our up-and-coming v1.75 release, which will be going out as soon as possible.
Secondly, I'd like to explain minion control. It probably sounds quite complicated, but once you try it all out, it should be quite intuitive. Version 1.75 will include lots of in-game hints and tips for this kind of thing, but to keep you guys informed until then:
All minions have a 'target' - by default this is you. They will follow you around, and attack enemies that they see. If you press E, you will set their 'target' to wherever you are looking, and they will stand near that point, and attack enemies that they see. If you press E while looking directly at an enemy, their target will be set to that enemy, and even if it moves away, your minions will follow it around, attacking it and any other enemies that they see. If you double-press E, this will "recall" your minions to you; their 'target' will be set to you once again. You should also see 'Recalling minions' on your screen.
Minions have one of 3 stances: Defensive, Balanced, and Roaming. The stance affects how close enemies have to get to the minion's 'target' before they notice it. Set to defensive, they will ignore all enemies except ones that get very close to their target. This is useful when you want your minions to follow you out of a battle, or to focus on a particular enemy. Set to balanced, they will attack enemies within a medium-sized radius around their target, but will disengage if they get outside this range. Balanced is the default stance. Set to roaming, minions have no range limit, and will pursue any enemies they see indefinately.
Thats it! You can bind a key to cycle minion stance, or bind seperate keys for each stance. All your minions will have the same stance and the same target. Also, remember that while stopping your minions from attacking distant targets helps you to see and control what they're doing, forcing far away minions to ignore enemies and return to you can be giving away free minion kills.
