Lord of the rings Module designs

damn, second time that... am i being too subtle or what?

 

Yup. Cars are subtle. Unsubtle would be being run over by an aircraft-carrier...80 miles inland. That would almost seem like...fate.

 

Im not even talking about cars!

 

It's in the TOS agreement you "sign" when you install the game. No profit off the game for you without written consent. The only exception is something like rpg maker, where the actual software is protected, but you own the rights to anything created off of it.

 

We could send him to prison then spam him for however long his prison term is.

 

to those who consider this gravedigging, sorry, but it doesn't seem so long ago as to be unmentionable... and it's near te top anyway....

everyone keeps referrig to that magic tool troika used to import maps onto one big map, right? i gather the problem itself is getting a program to index all the locations of the smaller towns onto a main map, and yet be able to load a game with the player in any given town (or outside any given town) without actually loading EVERY map, which would cause lag of gargantuate proportions. is this the gist of it? i'm relatively computer illiterate, but i learn quickly; if anyone would like to post a technical description of the problem, that would be GREAT

first of all, i'm sure that such a program COULD be written, by someone well-versed in C++, and such a thing might allow for a large-scale project of multiple persons (say, those on this forum who might be interested?) to develop a bigger module. No, i'm not trying to recruit anyone for such a thing, just pointing out one of the many benefits of someone writing that.

second of all... in the absence of such a program, whats the problem with simply setting up a system where you could do one 'small' mod, ten export the character to te next mod, do that one, export the caracter to the next one, et cetera. the modules themselves would be built with INTENT of the character doing that; say, modules 'Dusty Dunes A,' 'Dusty Dunes B,' 'Dusty Dunes C,' et cetera. yes, there would be those who would cheat the system, but Arcanum itself is quite cheatable, and besides, who cares? it would be very cool for those of us who would like such a thing.

comments always appreciated

 

The idea of someone uncovering how Troika assembled the main map is wishful thinking that has been floating about since the game was released. It's a nice idea but no one in the arcanum community has the skills and time to do it.

There is a big problem with splitting a mod into separate chapters. How do you transfer items, quest status, character points, NPC relationships, gold, etc between the chapters? With each new chapter you would be starting with a new character.

The way I dealt with the main map problem in my mod is to not build anything on the main map. Each town / area is a separate map. These maps are linked to the main map by jump tiles so when you walk 'off the edge' of the town map you are transported to a similar looking bit of terrain which is on the main map.

 

i guess the question is whether or not anyone has ever actually traversed Arcanum on FOOT. is it not quite possible that they simply did a fancy version of what everyone else is doing?

i wouldn't mind at least trying to do this, but i'd need an autoclicking program. anyone?

 

That would be a good idea KNJoe, except that it won't work in practice. In single player play there is no problem, right? That's because loading a character onto a different map or module isn't really the issue. The issue is doing that in multiplayer, where both players need to have certain attributes be contiguous. Like time, or which map they're on.

The reason you can't break up maps in mp is that when one player went to the next map, the other wouldn't be on it. The game reads them as being on separate worlds and something goes wrong. I think it just shunts off the nonhost player into the void or something.

 

i was referring to modules, not multiplayer modules.

i hold no fantasies pertaining to multiplayer modules.

 

Ah, well, in terms of transferring modules, I'm not sure. I think that would require reloading the game. If that's not an issue I'm fairly certain you could make a module up to a certain point, then have it save your character so that you can reload it on the new module. I have no idea how you'ld do that, as that's some hardcore scripting action that I never really got into.

In terms of map transfers, what do you think happens whenever you go through a door in 1-player Arcanum? How precisely the world map is laid out, I don't know, I think they just did a similar thing as a map transfer, but set up a perimeter for transferring people to the city map.

I know you're not really interested, but for anyone else reading this thread, multiplayer maps are set up similarly. The difference is that a single-player map can be more organized, with each dungeon on it's own map file. Multiplayer "maps" are really just one huge map with black space separating the areas. Where transfers points (cave entrance, seweer entrance, etc.) on a single-player map cue the script to change maps, multiplayer transfer points are really just teleporters. At least that's what I always did.