Arcanum:WIP 2.2 (Beta) Now Available

There's already a little dingy that goes to Cattan in 2.2..

Nothing much to see there though

 

More suggestions:

1. 2 new followers: both are students at Tarant University who want to get out into the world and adventure. One of them is technological (for the techs) and the other is a mage (for the magickal characters).

2. After you go down to P. Schyler, make it a dialogue option to tell the newspaper man about what was going on down there, so your crash story isn't the only one you can pick.

3. Remove the hexed item that casts a random spell. It's WAYYY too overpowered.

 

Wayne - Although I replaced the dinghy with a ship, the only way to get to Cattan at this time is to talk to the man at the burned-out hobbit-hole first. And there's banana plantation with! the oldest windmill in Arcanum on the island now. (And a mountain range)

Spiffy - Good ideas.

1) The tech student is very similar to what I was planning. He'll be added before too much longer. The mage however, is a (female) wanabe you'll find hanging around the Dark Magic shop. I going to stick with that one.

2) I've made a note about it, but it'll be some time before I get to that.
Just as a teaser: P. Schyler's will have an encore performace as part of the upcoming "Iron Clan Treasure Hunt". I'm moving the treasure out of the Iron Clan HQ. Having news of the villany that transpired there as public knowledge fills a big gap in my notes. Thanks!

3) Help me out here - which hexed item?
And - I just might adjust it after I become more skilled at doing so.

 

The hexed item is sold by the Pawn Shop guy in Tarant. It looks like a little statue.

 

Problem solved.

 

Ok, back to the Ashbury cemetery again. This time level 16 human thief. Just me and Virgil. Same thing, 4 zombies, no respawn. I even went to get gossip about the cemetery to see if it needs a trigger, nope. Was anything in Ashbury changed that may have inadvertantly caused this?

 

Not a thing, wasteland. At least nothing at the cemetary.
Other than adding, then removing, a book at the other end of town, I haven't made any changes to Ashbury.

I hate to say this but it sounds as if you have a glitch. What I don't know is if it's the A:WIP or the main game.

 

Oh well, I will leave it for now until your next release then do a fresh install and try it regular and modded to see what happens. Will post at that time. Thanks for input.

Edit: After playing some more of the game I went back to the cemetary after returning from the Isle of Despair. The spawning zombies are normal again, loads of them ripe for the picking. Woo-Hoo.

 

Huh.... A random bug....

 

I have some suggestions:

Hold a "make your own background" contest, so we chumps can design balanced yet cool backgrounds we'd like to play. Backgrounds that we all agree on as fair and creative can go into the game!

Also, is there an easy way to modify followers' leveling schemes? I know of some followers that I wish you could change just a wee bit.

Thanks.

 

Your background contest idea is not bad - but I have no plans to create any new backgrounds at this time. Maybe at the end of the build, but not now.

Yep - but again, that's a maybe for later.

If you want to alter the leveling schemes, unpack the Arcanum5.dat. In the rules folder is gamelevel.mes. That's the file you'll need.

 

Thank you very much, rroyo! Also, I admire your work on modding Arcanum. It's always fun to find new surprises in an old well-loved game.

 

I just realized something.... I hadn't added the gamelevel.mes to the 2.2 hack. It's in the upcoming one though.

Instead of the Arcanum5.dat, unpack the Arcanum4.dat. It'll be in that one's rules folder.

Sorry.

 

rroyo, I forgot to tell you, your Smithy Scientist backround adds 30 to the Mechanical Discipline instead of the Smithy one.

 

Ahh..Wayne? I hate to tell you this but.... I got no cross-over.
The listing I have is correct and a quick in-game test confirmed it.

Here's the way they read in the effect.mes:

{375}{expertisegun_smithy +30,maxfatigue -8} //Gun Smithy Effect background
{376}{expertisemechanical +30,maxfatigue -8} //Mechanics Effect background
{377}{expertisesmithy +30,maxfatigue -8} //Smithy Book background
{378}{expertisetherapeutics +30,maxfatigue -8} //Therapeutics Effect background

 

Hmmm.. must be my install again! Sorry about that!

 

My first post on A:WIP. First, I'd like to say to rroyo: good work! I'm surprised by the sheer amount of content and the ways you reinterpreted places I've visited hundreds of times. I'd been looking forward to playing your mod but I didn't start looking at the Module Discussion forum until a few weeks ago, so i missed the first release.

I do have a couple comments - hopefully they will be helpful. I'm not sure if in the past couple months you have fixed them - it might be helpful to release an update based on revisions you've made recently, although I'd understand why you'd wait if the changes would mostly be minor. I have mostly comments on the first few areas, but I'll get to the later ones eventually.

General Comments
1.

I definitely agree with this, but I know you've responded and are cutting down some of the loot later on. I think some of the best loot for a dungeon isn't a lot of items a player has already seen, but one or two custom items that a player can't get anywhere else and can't buy. Also, I think that items that in the stock game could only be made with schematics should for the most part stay that way - building rather than buying complex tech items is the real edge a tech character has over a mage. If you can buy anaesthizers or loot fine revolvers or repeater rifles early in the game, you might discourage some disciplines. After all, since you can buy tech books, a player could just assemble the (formerly inaccessible) parts and make the most complex weapon or item without using any character points. I heard that this is fixed later on, but revisiting some of your earlier areas and editing dialog and loot would be really helpful.
2. I liked the character names you used a lot. I thought Wolfe was a clever reinterpretation of an existing place - I'm hoping to see more of this as I keep going on the mod. However, the listing immunities thing on enemies was distracting - "Ghoul fatigue immune", etc. If you're planning to do this, it might work out better as "Ghoul (Fatigue Immune)"
3. I noticed a lot of dialog problems, mostly with females - I assume the third set of brackets was accidentally left blank. I'd help out with those but I don't know if you've rechecked all of them in the last few months.
4. I've noticed a few other issues with dialog for quests, but since there's no way to know if you've already fixed them, I won't post them. Anyway, that would take up way too much space.
-more variety in shopkeepers would be nice. I'd rather see a shopkeeper with only 6 items than with 30, 10 of which are the exact same item. I'm sure this is somewhere on your to-do list.
5. I'd rather see NPCs with more combat skills and less powerful armor. A weapon, chest armor and one or two miscellaneous items is usually enough, in my experience. This goes along with the money thing, and it's sometimes frustrating to have to loot 5 or 6 big items from every single enemy.
6. I noticed that a lot of building signs don't have the "marks townmap" flag set. This includes Brandybuck locations and Harry Baules' and the boil locations in Tarant, but i bet it applies to all of your new locations

Making changes clear to players of stock game
7. I started playing A:WIP not to just play Arcanum again, but to find out what you made and how. It would be helpful to point out the changes more while playing, whether through NPCs in conspicuous locations that tell the PC about this or that new location or event, or rumors from the nearest pre-existing city that mention nearby hot spots. These same NPCs could, of course, show the location of new places on the PC's map and/or point the PC to the Atlas in the Library.
8. As far as exploring your new locations, I'm going to be sure to add everything from the atlas to my map, but it would be nice if just reading the atlas would add locations. If you didn't have a lot of things on your to-do list, I'd suggest looping for and calling the dialog of an "off" npc standing on the book, with dialog something like this:
{1}{[Before you is an atlas of many locations in Arcanum, with coordinates.]}{[Before you is an atlas of many locations in Arcanum, with coordinates.]}{}{}{}{}
{2}{[Add locations of major cities to your map.]}{}{1}{}{0}{}
{3}{[Add all locations to your map.]}{}{1}{}{0}{}
{4}{[Read the Atlas.]}{}{1}{}{0}{}
{5}{[Step away.]}{}{1}{}{0}{}
Of course, that's without the scripting, call numbers, and effects, but if i have some spare time i'd be glad to set that up.


Brandybuck
9. I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone make a halfling village yet. it's something I wanted to see ever since I heard about Gorgoth raiding halfling villages and eating everyone. Call me sick.
10. I really liked the art, especially the signs and new furniture. I also liked your character names. Good work.
11. Making a fletcher was definitely a good call.
12. Attacking a halfling in the middle of the town square was one of the funniest things i've seen in Arcanum. Thank you so, so much for that opportunity.
13. Some comments on map design: I found navigating the town to be a real headache - it's quite labyrinthine. This would be a lot easier if there was even one gap in every straight rock wall so leaving the town would just involve going to the nearest edge of the townmap, like everywhere else. It might be a headache to do, but I would restructure the core of the town so the player is led to a central location (like the one with everyone walking around) that directs the player's attention to the pub (which will obviously be the town's most important location, considering its inhabitants) and the shopkeepers. This could just be a short road from the entry bridge, but as it is now I feel dumped on the edge of the town with no orienting points like SH's bank, or most cities' main drag with shopkeepers or castle. You might have a central location with houses facing a road, like a cul-de-sac, with the fields located outwards, so the PC doesn't have to traverse every field looking for questgivers.
14. Interior locations: besides the townmaps, which I know you said you'd fix, I found the lighting off - are they set to lighting:dungeon? Also noticed some lighting issues on lowest level of SH library.
15. On the houses with no blocking tiles: for a place to hide the nearby NPCs, you can always add a heartbeat script that checks the time of day, and if it's between 10pm and 8am, and if the NPC is standing on its night standpoint - right next to the door - turn that NPC off, but if it's daytime, turn the character on. That way, they go "inside" at night.
16. The town center had a lot of people just walking around - it could probably use some people with just the "wander" flag, or who are standing near a merchant and just offering floats about the merchandise, or floats about being drunk outside the pub.

All right, sorry about the length. I have more specific comments, but I'll just wait until you release a new version so I can e-mail you changes for gamedesc.mes or specific dialog line changes or stuff like that. If i posted those too, I'd really feel like an asshole. Anyway, thanks for the mod, and good luck.

 

Thanks! It's always nice to hear that your efforts are appreciated.

On the matter of the minor changes, some things I do immediately and they may or may not be mentioned on the next release depending upon the seriousness of the change. The rest just get a note for the next time I return to that area.
A good example is Acerarak's Tomb, which got the spells reset on Acerarak for the upcoming release but about 1/4 of the scene will get a small make-over to merge it into the "Free Bany" quest that's coming later.

On to the comments and questions:

1) Yep, I doing this. I routinely went overboard on the treasure but thanks to Tekkus' comment, I've been steadily making corrections and setting up the new scenes with those guidelines in mind. It does make for a much better game-play in the end. Thanks again, Tekkus!

2) The reworking of the descriptions is on my to-do list. Like you, I wasn't too thrilled about the way those were listed. Now, I have made a few changes here and there, and even added a description when needed, but only as the scene required it.
What I'm still unsure on is if I should leave the second part of the description or not. "Ghoul fatigue immune" - Is knowing that it's "fatigue immune" really nescessary?

3) (grimice) My biggest headache writing dialogs - and the reason I now use a female PC to initially test my scripts - I kept forgetting to add the female responses. I think I've corrected them all now.

4) I'll be waiting. FYI: A reworking of the inventories is planned for release after this upcoming one.

5) Are you talking about the Malochean Hand and Orcs? Since I haven't learned about hex-editing, giving them better weapons and such was the best I could do. Also - I've been fine-tuning the inventories as the build goes along. The sheer quantity of large items is almost at a minimum. Almost.

6) You're right, they don't but I haven't seen a need for that so far.
If you can see them - you're there!

7) I'm already doing it. At the Crash Site is a book that lists the changes included in that release and scattered here and there in other scenes is notes that give a quick description of another adventure and lists the map coordinates. And - not counting the new guy in Black Root - in Brandybuck you learn of four locations on Cattan - two of those get marked - and the way to get to the island from the mainland. This will be available in the upcoming release.

8 ) What? You want me to do everthing for you?
Seriously though, from time to time I have considered making the Atlas mark everything, but it can be gotten to so damned early in the game that having all the new locations out in the open will surely screw the hell out of the leveling scheme.
If you've ever played Car-Arcanum you know what I mean. By the time you get to Tarant, you're at level 12 or even 16 and there's poor ol' Magnus still at level 8.....
I'm currently leaning towards setting something up to mark everything after you return from the Void. Maybe even as part of the Void Return script.
Oh, and thanks for the offer.

9) Then we're both sick puppies! I never really understood why Troika passed up the chance to make hobbit structures. That would have been so cool. Oh well.
I haunt 3-D modeling sites a lot, and when I spotted that hobbit-hole at Mesh-Box I just had to try. Converting a picture into a facade is a lot of work, but I like the results - for the most part. The blacksmith's shop still looks like shit but....
A couple months ago I got my hands on a copy of Poser 6 and before the year is out I'm going to take some time away from the build and learn how to use it. With this program, I'll be able to make new facades that are perfectly angled for Arcanum. The first thing I'll replace is that blacksmith shop!

10) Thank you!

11) Thanks again. In a world like Arcanum, the rural communities should have had fletchers. They will now.

12) You're welcome.

13) Ever watch The Fellowship of the Ring? I took the building cues from that and it's worked out great for the secondary dialogs and run-around. Although - I may just have to create a shortcut to get to the Vlafa place after the Plainwicke adventure. It's the furthest place on the southwest of town. That is a long way to run.
And there is six ways out of town - The bridge, the exit at the town square, the For Sale place, Frigo's, the Valfa farm, and the woodcutter's.

14) I'm using Conveyance Dungeon Lighting which is the brightest interior lighting that comes with the game. From there I add "spotlights" to brighten up what I can.
And the sub-basement of the SH temple is supposed to be gloomy.

15) When I first tried that, I couldn't get it to work right and no one was able or willing to help, so I just made them hide behind the facades.
If you can't go through a problem....

16) I'm considering the floats idea as there are a couple female halflings with no dialog.
I did learn that having the NPCs wander had an unwanted effect. Even though the Wanders at Night flag was not checked, they kept moving around at night and popping out of the facades. That's why everyone is on set paths.
And somewhere along the way, you'll find a couple, three guys who've had a little too much and are singin' away. It won't be in this next release, but I'm not done with Brandybuck just yet.

You're welcome again - and I'll be here.

 

Night Standpoints
I was searching through the modding + scripting section and I noticed that you did make a post about toggling on and off rather than hiding behind facades. Maybe this should go under scripting support, but in the interest of not gravedigging:

0. IF Attachee is dead
THEN return and RUN default
1. IF Attachee is in combat
THEN return and RUN default
2. IF Attachee is at location X:999 Y:999
THEN do nothing
ELSE return and RUN default
3. hour: store current game hour in Local 0
4. IF Local 0 <= 7
THEN goto line 6
5. IF Local 0 <= 21
THEN goto line 8
6. IF Attachee is switched off
THEN do nothing
ELSE toggle Attachee state on/off
7. return and RUN default
8. IF Attachee is switched off
THEN toggle Attachee state on/off
9. return and RUN default

Note that on line 2, you have to put in the night standpoint, presumably right in front of the door. I couldn't think of a way to make a script that worked for all critters, since there isn't a scripting command to check where the night standpoint is or store the night standpoint, so you might have to make a variant of the script for everyone who goes inside.

I thought about making a tile script, but then there's the trouble of attaching another script to the triggerer's HB to turn him back on, and it's probably quicker to do it this way.

Lighting
I'm not sure that conveyance lighting is brighter inside than dungeon lighting. I haven't extracted your .dat files yet, but here are the copies from my arcanum.dat - I assume they're the same because i didn't see anything in my arcanum.patch0.

Lighting Dungeon:
{0}{0, 0, 0, 74, 80, 98}

Lighting Conveyance Dungeon:
{0}{70, 70, 70, 74, 80, 98}

The only difference seems to be in the exterior lighting, the first three numbers in the second bracket. This exterior lighting for conveyance lets you see the outside walls of your interior maps, which makes them seem brighter because you have more bright pixels on your screen, but the bright things you're seeing are the walls that aren't really meant to be seen. As far as I can tell, the original arcanum.dat uses lighting dungeon for virtually every other interior location.

Lowest level of the SH town hall/basement: you probably fixed this in your current build, but i think what I saw was a sector of water tiles (lit) just northwest of the stairs that lead back up to the 2nd floor.

Hope this helps.

 

Hey, thanks for the script. I'm definately going to give it a try.
I think if I limited the number of NPCs to two or three at any given doorway, they could just walk up to the entrance - at different tiles - and turn off. That would give the illusion they went inside.

The Conveyance Dungeon lighting looked brighter to my eyes. That's why I went with it. Now I know.
BTW: WorldEd lists virtually every original interior lighting as map default.

The SH temple map: Would you believe that it was originally made as open water? Troika just left the lighting off when the interior was made. The original interior sits on a tiny island surrounded by water!

Check it out:
http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o314 ... Temple.jpg

When I made my additions, I did black out a couple sectors but I seem to have built a little too close to the edge on that level. I'll black out a few surrounding sectors and that'll solve that problem.
Thanks for letting me know.