And so it has begun.

Alright, so I've been thinking about creating an Arcanum module for years now, but in all this time, I've never been able to muster the courage to actually begin with it. Regardless, here I am now, frantically procrastinating essays due for next week and doing it. Consider this the grand opening of Project Tribute, the working name of my overly ambitious module that aims at branching storylines, intriguing plot development, character depth and dialogue trees of Troikaesque proportions. Probably out of all proportion with reality, but what's a man without his dreams?

I've gone through AMTUT before and now I'm doing it again, to freshen my memory before the daunting task ahead of me. Needless to say, I've already run into problems.

I've done the first part of AMTUT, that is, built a little shack and playtested it. Works like a charm. So now I fired up WorldEd 1070 for part 2 and opened my module... and the map with the shack is gone (indeed, when I try to load a map there are no maps available at all). Can't honestly think of anything that could have caused this, can't imagine that the map wasn't saved properly into the .dat file (and it's there in all its glory when I play the module). What the hell have I done wrong? I know, I could just redo part 1 of the tutorial and see if the problem repeats itself, but I'm an impatient son of a bitch.

Is this a known problem, or is this an indicator of how the rest of the module will play out for me?

 

Well, the crux is that I've done that, and there are no maps available. Which is strange, because it works like a charm when I playtest.

 

I've edited the Maplist.mes to get the starting coordinates right and such. And as I've said, when I start a new game in the module I start right outside the entrance of the wooden shack, like it should be.

Perhaps I need to undat the .dat file? Let's try doing that and see what happens...

 

Then it's something else. Oh well, I guess I should try running AMTUT part 1 again and see if the problem repeats itself.

I've been unable to get any of the Undat utilities to work with Vista though.

 

Thank you, hopefully I'll get one of the datprograms to work though.

Well, I guess I should get back to AMTUTing. Grand projects won't happen unless I have a wee bit more mastery in WorldEd than I've demonstrated thus far...

 

Alright, so this is a double post. Shoot me.

I can't seem to understand the problem. I make a 5 x 5 map, name it Village. I build a little shack right at the "Home" of the map. I modify Maplist.mes so that I start right outside the shack as described in AMTUT. I save everything, compress the module and delete the folder. I fire up Arcanum, go to options and select my module. I create a new game, have a look around in my newly built shack, and close the game down. Then I open WorldEd to continue working on the module, and the map I just made simply isn't there. Indeed, there are no maps available AT ALL when I go File -> Open, not even ShopMap which was there when I saved the Village map.

What. The. Fuck?

 

Ah, ok. DU fooled me!

 

Still plodding through AMTUT, trying things out as I go. My recent experiments with the Void teleportation platforms has revealed that they probably need some special modifications to work the way they should, as right clicking on them to attach the script means that the teleport script runs on the entire sector the platform is sitting at, resulting in a perpetual teleport loop when you enter the sector with your character.

Other than that, I've been getting a rather good grip on the general backstory lately, so in the event that the module is ever finished (I predict a 5% chance of that happening), it will have a pretty nice plot and lore.

 

A standalone mod. No world map or something fancy like that. One big city on an island, with dungeons and such underneath. Only way out of the city is by boat (and train, if I can make a believable non-accessible railroad bridge), and there will be reasons why the player is prohibited from leaving the island, though escaping will be one way of winning the game.

 

Thanks rroyo, I'll remember that. Yeah, facades probably count as scenery rather than objects like a trap door would.

The teleport loop is pretty nice to watch though. There's Merwin Tumblebrook flickering from Village to Desert, Desert to Village, Village to Desert, each teleport taking a fraction of a second resulting in a screen I wouldn't recommend to epileptics.

 

Fortunately, Escape + Quit works just fine.