Shades of Mort’ton: How it is fucked, why it is fucked, and how to unfuck it. /u/ishner Old School RuneScape!

The shades from Shades of Morton have a bunch of weird and extremely questionable behaviors:

1. They are actually Non-Aggressive but have a special mechanic where, at random times, every shade in the area will simultaneously aggro on the player one time only. What causes this mechanic to sometimes but not always activate is unknown.
2. Missed Shade attacks do not count as combat. This allows you to start additional fights while already under attack in single-way combat and prevents Auto-Retaliate from working properly. Also, if you are under attack by several shades you can suddenly
3. When the shade stands up from its pool of shadow the player character is forcibly de-aggroed from it! combined with autoretaliate not working right due to the previous behavior, this means players have to click every shade twice.
4. Shades undergo monster reset based on special code unique to them. Every other monster in the game will reset to full HP if completely ignored for over ten minutes, but shades get a full heal every time they turn back into a shadow, which they do at more or less random times including but not limited to: They will sometimes but not always reset when you attack them at range (regardless of whether or not you have safespotted them). They will sometimes but not always reset when another shade hits successfully. They will sometimes but not always reset if you take too long to kill them in melee. They will reset if you leave the area, except for sometimes at the temple.

You may wonder: Why in Zamorak’s Name did anyone ever think any of that was a good idea???
There are two reasons, and both of them are simple:
First, Shades of Mort’ton was made in 2004! Multicombat Areas were not invented until 2005! The weird combat detection and aggro systems are a mostly failed attempt to kludge together a pseudo-multicombat area while still in single combat.
Second, there was no code available at the time allowing monsters to have multiple forms. They kludged around this by having the active and idle forms of the shade be completely separate monsters. What actually happens when the shade stands up to attack you is that the Shadow monster vanishes from existence completely and is replaced with a shade. You stop attacking when this happens because you are still trying to attack the Shadow that doesn’t exist any more. When the shades turn back to shadows they full heal because the entire shade has been deleted and is replaced with a completely new, undamaged one when you next attack the shadow.

Understanding *WHY* it is the way it is, the solution is obvious:

1. Delete the entire unique shade AI and replace it with default monster behavior
2. Make Mort’ton a multicombat Area
3. Copy-paste the code that allows Wyrms to change between idle and attack modes.

That is literally all that needs done. Every single bug and strange, undesirable behavior of the shades is the result of a failed attempt to solve a problem that was solved successfully later. Just implement the already-existing working solutions. One dude could handle it in under an hour, and that is including the time to figure out where the files are for the old behavior.

The shades from Shades of Morton have a bunch of weird and extremely questionable behaviors:

1. They are actually Non-Aggressive but have a special mechanic where, at random times, every shade in the area will simultaneously aggro on the player one time only. What causes this mechanic to sometimes but not always activate is unknown.
2. Missed Shade attacks do not count as combat. This allows you to start additional fights while already under attack in single-way combat and prevents Auto-Retaliate from working properly. Also, if you are under attack by several shades you can suddenly
3. When the shade stands up from its pool of shadow the player character is forcibly de-aggroed from it! combined with autoretaliate not working right due to the previous behavior, this means players have to click every shade twice.
4. Shades undergo monster reset based on special code unique to them. Every other monster in the game will reset to full HP if completely ignored for over ten minutes, but shades get a full heal every time they turn back into a shadow, which they do at more or less random times including but not limited to: They will sometimes but not always reset when you attack them at range (regardless of whether or not you have safespotted them). They will sometimes but not always reset when another shade hits successfully. They will sometimes but not always reset if you take too long to kill them in melee. They will reset if you leave the area, except for sometimes at the temple.

You may wonder: Why in Zamorak’s Name did anyone ever think any of that was a good idea???
There are two reasons, and both of them are simple:
First, Shades of Mort’ton was made in 2004! Multicombat Areas were not invented until 2005! The weird combat detection and aggro systems are a mostly failed attempt to kludge together a pseudo-multicombat area while still in single combat.
Second, there was no code available at the time allowing monsters to have multiple forms. They kludged around this by having the active and idle forms of the shade be completely separate monsters. What actually happens when the shade stands up to attack you is that the Shadow monster vanishes from existence completely and is replaced with a shade. You stop attacking when this happens because you are still trying to attack the Shadow that doesn’t exist any more. When the shades turn back to shadows they full heal because the entire shade has been deleted and is replaced with a completely new, undamaged one when you next attack the shadow.

Understanding *WHY* it is the way it is, the solution is obvious:

1. Delete the entire unique shade AI and replace it with default monster behavior
2. Make Mort’ton a multicombat Area
3. Copy-paste the code that allows Wyrms to change between idle and attack modes.

That is literally all that needs done. Every single bug and strange, undesirable behavior of the shades is the result of a failed attempt to solve a problem that was solved successfully later. Just implement the already-existing working solutions. One dude could handle it in under an hour, and that is including the time to figure out where the files are for the old behavior.