Author Topic: Can't find Ride the Lightning  (Read 2739 times)

Offline Penumbra

  • Sr. Member Mark III
  • ****
  • Posts: 464
Can't find Ride the Lightning
« on: February 24, 2012, 10:55:57 pm »
I finally finished my original very large continent and advanced to my first "modern" style continent.  I had quite a lot of spells grandfathered in before, and was looking forward to starting fresh.

The first thing I did was try and double jump, which didn't work. I got the "Ride the Lightning is not available on this continent" message. I figured, great, let me figure out how to unlock that guy first.

So I go to planning and click on "Crafting Grimoire." I select "Catagory" and then "Movement." I don't see RtL though, only Lesser Teleport, Miniature and Storm Dash 2.

I have no idea how to craft this spell. No where in the interface could I figure out what it was I needed to be looking for. I then clicked on "All Unlocked Spells" and it wasn't even there.

Finally, I went back to my first continent and was able to look it up, and I needed Comet Shards to make it.

This was rather long winded, but I think all spells should be in the Grimoire, no matter what.

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2012, 11:04:24 pm »
All spells are in the Grimoire no matter what... once their materials have been unlocked the first time.  Which, since you started in an odd fashion, perhaps that wasn't.  But more likely than not, perhaps it just wasn't in the Movement category, but instead was under logistical.  I'm not sure.  There may simply be a bug there.

The way it is supposed to work, whatever it is doing right now, is as follows:
1. Any spell that has all its materials unlocked via the unlockables is visible in the grmiore.
2. Any spell that has at least one material not yet unlocked in that way is hidden -- you don't even know it exists in the game yet, if it's your first time through.  Joy of discovery, etc.
3. Any spell that you can equip in some fashion shows up in the equip side on a given continent.  It may have been that you were looking there and not seeing it, not sure.  Or just a garden variety bug in the grimoire which is for some reason excluding those erroneously.
4. Any spell that you have not learned the highest tier of on a continent yet, shows up under the spells to learn.


Anyway, that's the intent.  If you can provide a reproducible way to make it not do the above, I'd definitely be happy to fix it for you. :)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline BobTheJanitor

  • Master Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,689
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2012, 11:07:49 pm »
I didn't even know there was anything called Comet Shard. RtL is a pretty basic spell, or at least I thought it was. How long does it take to get to a Comet Shard?

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2012, 11:12:11 pm »
RtL is pretty basic, and the tier 1 doesn't require that to craft.  Just YellowCitrine, CopperIngot, and IronIngot.  Comet shards are required only for tier 2-5 of that spell, which are less basic (and which have a tech tree branch leading to Lightning Rocket, which is way less basic).
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline c4sc4

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 253
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2012, 11:59:43 pm »
EDIT: Never mind, this continent was created before I updated to .580 so I missed the new world gen logic.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2012, 12:03:51 am by c4sc4 »

Offline Penumbra

  • Sr. Member Mark III
  • ****
  • Posts: 464
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #5 on: February 25, 2012, 01:32:52 am »
That's probably it. On my first, original continent I had it up to Tier 2. So I was looking at the Tier 3 upgrade.

I have Citrine, Copper Ore, Iron Ore unlocked, but no Ride the Lightning anywhere. I am just going to chock it up to the fact that I have an old save. This continent was made maybe a week and a half ago. I'll see what happens on continent 3.

Offline KDR_11k

  • Hero Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 904
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #6 on: February 25, 2012, 05:27:44 am »
Ingot, not ore.

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #7 on: February 27, 2012, 09:42:56 pm »
In for next one:

* Previously, the Crafting Grimoire was only showing spells for which all of the ingredients had been unlocked -- you didn't have to _have_ the ingredients, but the ingredients had to be unlocked.
** This was confusing for a lot of reasons, and made it hard to figure out what ingredients to go try to unlock if you wanted a certain spell.
** The motivation for this was to make it so that all of the later-game spells aren't just laid out for anyone to see as soon as they start the game, but in the end we've decided to just go ahead and show them all -- with a catch.
*** In the Crafting Grimoire, any spell that doesn't yet have all its ingredients unlocked still appears in all the listings, but when you click for its details it just shows you its name, graphic, and needed ingredients.  You can't see any stats or descriptions of the spell until you unlock it.
*** We figure that this serves the double purpose of giving new players something interesting to work toward unlocking, while at the same time keeping the details hidden so that there is some mystery as to what is coming up.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline BobTheJanitor

  • Master Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,689
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #8 on: February 28, 2012, 12:05:02 am »
I like that, a lot. That preserves the interesting mystery for a new player, or a newly added spell, but allows people who already know what they want to find things quickly.

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #9 on: February 28, 2012, 12:09:26 am »
Thanks!  That was the goal -- so people aren't clairvoyant, but so that they aren't blind either.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline zebramatt

  • Master Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,574
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #10 on: February 28, 2012, 04:58:48 am »
I actually think this is a bridge too far.

I'd be in favour of somewhere in between the previous position and this one, whereby some trigger - unlocking one or two of the ingredients required for something but not all of them - caused the spell to show up in its stripped-information form as now. So at the beginning there's very little there but quickly it blooms to include more which you can pursue if you so choose.

In fact, I'm still of a mind that the previous position was far better than even that suggestion - since I actually agreed with the assessment that new players wouldn't even know about a given spell until they'd unlocked its ingredients so would never ask, "How do I unlock x?" without extra-game information such as a wiki - which would itself be able to answer the very question it posed.

The reason I feel quite strongly about this is that the similar Monster Hunter mechanic is one of the strongest elements of that game for me; and that's one of my all-time favourite games. The first time you fight a new monster and collect some new resource from it - a horn, tail, hide or whatever - there's a thrill of visiting the smithy to see what new weapons an armour you've unlocked. Immediately you can see all the details of those items so you know whether you want to hunt however countless more of those monsters to build the sets. Or conversely, so that when you come up against another new monster against which you're not currently powerful enough, you can check over all the stuff the smithy will presently make for you and go off to hunt the appropriate  monsters to acquire the right element-damage or -protection, etc.

Of course the gating in that game is about which monsters you are currently able to fight (and have fought successfully at least once) which is what triggers new stuff in the smithy. Simply having the common ingredients will not unlock the new equipment, obviously. The monster-specific ingredients are key.

So, after much rambling, TL;DR:


I advocate actually fully unlocking spells in the Grimoire (as previously) as soon as you have unlocked the one most relevant/gated arcane ingredient for that branch. You needn't have unlocked every single ingredient yet - thus it gives you something to aim for, if you want that spell - but there's still the excitement of seeing what you might unlock next without knowing about it beforehand. I'd also put things in the Grimoire with their full stat information from the get-go, since it's impossible to simply plan around "this looks shiny" anyway.

Finally, if something in the Grimoire was revealed on a previous continent, it should be shown thereafter for all continents (I'm not sure if it did that previously) because that's the one genuine in-game case where a user will know what they want from the continent at first but may not remember how to unlock.

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #11 on: February 28, 2012, 09:25:04 am »
For now, this is the way it is.  But, it's something I'd be open to revisiting later.  I understand your sentiment, zebramatt, and goodness knows I agree with most of it.  But as a game developer I've got a few challenges here that are not neatly solvable in the next 6 hours.

For reference: unlocking a material is done once per world, period.  And that's what was hiding spells.  Learning spells to actually make them usable is the thing that's per-continent, but that's not got anything to do with hiding them since they need to be unlocked and visible before you can even contemplate learning them.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline zebramatt

  • Master Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,574
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #12 on: February 28, 2012, 09:28:44 am »
I'll chuck it in Mantis for later.

Offline KDR_11k

  • Hero Member Mark II
  • *****
  • Posts: 904
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #13 on: February 28, 2012, 01:22:15 pm »
Should probably be tied to the unlockables you can reach. E.g. if a spell requires something that's on the next continent it's probably not relevant yet but if it only requires going into a cave or finding a stash then the player probably wants to know about it.

Offline Martyn van Buren

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 642
Re: Can't find Ride the Lightning
« Reply #14 on: February 28, 2012, 04:00:40 pm »
Agree with KDR, but don't see it as a priority.  Anyway, would probably be good not to have continent-two spells dangling in front of you from the moment you start.