Arcanum:WIP 6.0 now available

*squeal* Fellow Virgil fangirl! *glomp* Welcome, welcome! Fret not, finding Virgil attractive doesn't mean you're certifiable, it means you have good taste.

 

Well, as for taste, I prefer Jayna to Virgil. Less stringy, less fattening. I don't like when my foodz screams so much, though...

 

*cackles* I walked right into that one.

 

By the way... I installed WIP6 and one of the first things I noticed (among new backgrounds, great job!) is Virgil making silly sounds. Ungh, ugh, stuff like that. If he made that just because of looking at my debutante - ok, but he's moaning at some wolves! Wolves! Imagine how my poor little girl feels! So... here I am with some questions.

1) Are these sounds really coming from my beloved one?
2) Will it make him stop doing this, if I stick a fine steel dagger into his throat? My melee skill is zero.
3) Were these 'battle taunts' originally included in the game, beta version or something?
4) Was that 'ungh' thing influenced by Madeleine Ashton's epic groan in "Death Becomes Her" (in the final scene, to be specific)?
5) Where is Wally?

Thanks in advance.

 

Well... One question. Is WIP 6.0 compatible with High Resolution and High Quality Townmaps mods?

 

The high resolution patch is compatible with everything that is based on version 1.0.7.4. Just be sure to install it the last.

HQ townmaps should also be compatible unless rroyo renamed/altered some townmaps. But at worst a townmap or two will just remain in low quality.

 

Are there really 33 million + files in Arcanum.Patch1? To open that in dat builder (after renaming it to a dat file) do I just let it run a few hours, and then see how much space it takes when extracted?

I'm wondering if I have a corrupted Patch1 file or something, since that seems like way too much. (The Arcanum 1 through 5 and the Patch0 files were extremely quick to extract, but Patch1 always bogs everything down.)

 

Why do you want to extract them anyways? =o

(P.S. Corrupted is possible, because there are around 150k files "maximum" in a Windows XP installation + patches (updates, duh) + a few required software.)

 

I was going to try and take a look at the world map from the WIP module. I believe I need to extract patch1 in order to be able to open WIP in the world editor, although I could be wrong there. I have no problem opening the a copy of the map from the standard game (with the 1.0.7.4 + UAP).

As stated in a previous post, I'm playing around with some editing, and had been deciding whether to try to make it WIP compatible, or UAT compatible as my starting point. If WIP is unable to open, that will make my choice for me. The reason I've been considering WIP compatible is that by sending my material to Rroyo, I think more people would get benefit of any work I do, as opposed to doing a totally separate mod.

 

Makes sense. And try doing a fresh installation, I think. 33mill+ files aren't even found in a complete Windows installation.

(Not to mention the impossibility of Rroyo creating 33mill+ files on his own)

 

Use either dbmaker (the official tool) or undat, all other tools are known to have problems.

 

Home long enough to grab a few things and answer some messages.
Heh - Thanks to the generousity of one of the tenants, I now have a laptop I can work from when I'm away from home. Beats staring at the idiot box all night....

Wow, lots of activity lately.

Robert -
July 23:
The Car-Arcanum gold. I haven't got any plans to change it at the moment.

Vormantown. It stays.
After I added the module frosted ambassador mentioned it being "groundbreaking to have Vormantown in Arcanum". This got me wondering and so I casually checked a round a bit.
I seem to be the first one to merge a stand-alone module into its parent game. Least-wise, I failed to find any mention of this happening before.
So - If for no other reason than that, Vormantown will remain in my hack.
BTW: What's killing me on the size is the inclusion of the townmaps. Each one adds an awful lot of weight to the hack. ChrisBeddoes left them out of Car-Arcanum for this reason.

Acanum 2 vs Arcanum continued. I'm really not sure which way would be the better on this. Expanding the main game with the new quests is certainly the easiest way to go as you need only to modify the various scripts and such to accomodate your additions. For any new game besides a re-do of the Living One quest, you're talking about an awful lot of work to create everything needed for the new adventure.

July 27:
New content and areas: It's currently running about 60/40 for references. Places like Lynchbany and Vaselan are found by simply passing by but others like Brandybuck or Acerarak's Tomb do have dialogs or notes to tell you of them.

How far off track? Sometimes, quite a ways.

Books, start chest, Virgil. They're staying, although Virgil will probably getting a flag-set to mark locations only after key elements of the storyline have been met.
Also - Because I didn't make any major changes to the Crash Site, the chest and version log makes for a good way to let the player know that he should have a successful install of my hack.

How much am I working on this? I'm still doin' it to it! And - I now have a way to work on it while I'm away from home.

The longer delays. If you read through the change-log you'll see that I was scrambling to repair all the glitches that was popping up left and right, then getting this out the door before everyone became disenchanted with a buggy hack.
Thank to the stability the 6.0 release seems to have, I'm taking the time to finally tackle all the little things I kept putting off.

Deciding what to add. Whatever happens to sound good at the time and is within my skill level. Anything outside that level (and sounds good) is printed out for possible use later.

Content based on Shrouded Hills. Elaborate please.

July 31:
33 million + files. ?????? Something is definately screwy there!

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Zoya - Welcome to the forum!

Virgil romance mod - Hasn't been built yet.

Virgil's new sounds: These are the sound effects that were supposed to be assigned to males.

Battle taunts: Stock game.

I have no idea where the "ungh" sound effect came from. Sorry.

And who is Wally?

-------------------------------

Grusewittz:

There have been a few changes.
Shrouded Hills: Changed the temple entrance, new building south of the inn, and a graveyard.
Tarant: Cosmetic changes to the "Pump House" near the university and a road at the south edge of town.
Dernholm: Added a ship.
Roseborough: Added 2 ships and a trail at the north-east side of town.
Iron Clan HQ - Completely reworked.
Uncharted Cave - Completely reworked.
Black Root: Added a graveyard and extended the south road.

These are the main changes. For the 6.0 release the Hi-Rez maps will serve well enough to be worth adding. Enjoy.

 

Where. Where is the question, not who.

 

That's Waldo - and, thanks to you, he's been found.

 

It seems we are both winners.

So I have just spoiled twenty two years of fun, just like that? What a fine day this is!

 

Like Drog said, I should use another program to open the Dat files. Although it's a little more involved to use, the official Troika program worked great. (Man has it been a long time since I've used DOS commands for anything but trace routes or pings.)

I have been designing a fairly major rewrite of Shrouded Hills. Some of it is just in the concept phase, some area redesign is done, and some scripts and dialogues have been redone. I've been working in UAP, so some of the direction I took is very different than what WIP does (although now that I've played some WIP, I see that there are a few similar changes as well. Anyway, here is the full list of what I'd like to change. Whether or not all of it gets in or not is yet to be seen. Getting a pretty good jump on it though.

Objective/Summary:

I've always been a fan of the wild west feel of Shrouded Hills, and felt presented a huge amount of storytelling opportunity that had not been tapped. With all of the archtypes, history, and movies to draw from, I felt an expansion of the Shrouded Hills portion of Arcanum could present a more to the game. With this in mind, I've tried to expand on locations, characters, and plots based on this town.

Areas and Buildings:

Shrouded Hills Temple: Replace the cathedral (and separate area) with a much more simple and "rural" looking church. Remove the rats from the church, and make it more "church-like".

Doc Robert's Shop: Modify building so that it becomes one continuous building (removing the "empty" building behind the shop.) Shop will stay where it currently is, and a back room becomes the residence portion.

Shrouded Hills Inn: Expand to include a larger saloon/gambling area.

City Hall: New building to include a courtroom, mail station, and jail.

Bessie Toone's Mine: Rework of a number of items of the mine, including removing the "groth sprocket" and placing bandits using a portion of the mine as a hideout.

Cemetary: (I placed my cemetary west of town instead of east like WIP, but similar concept.)

The Mill: New location of the steam engine. Used for milling wheat, giving the small town an actual purpose for a steam engine instead of just it just conveniently being there to break and repair.

(Buildings Outside of Shrouded Hills, but related to the town)

Mail Post: Single Building along road to Tarant used by mail carriers and coaches travelling to Shrouded Hills.

Ruined Coach: Destroyed Coach along the road to Tarant

T-Bone Ranch: Ranch south of town that plays part in a quest.

Cattle Rustler Camp: Cattle rustlers who have been raiding the T-Bone ranch.

Landon Homestead: A farm north of Shrouded Hills beyond the river. (Have to cross the bridge to reach it.)


Characters:

Doc Roberts: I found Doc to be the most interesting character in town to expand on, making him even more central to Shrouded hills. His scripts and dialogues are expanded to create 4 "states" to him.
[*When in his shop, he's in "shopkeeper mode". In this mode he'll heal or talk training, much like he does now. This mode will be his normal state for most of the day.
*In early evenings, he'll go into "gambler mode" adding a new aspect to the character where he'll head to the new saloon area to gather with other local gamblers.
*Later at night, Doc will return home to go to sleep.
*During the bank robbery quest, Doc will still wait by the bank instead of staying in his shop. While waiting here, he won't heal or train.
Doc's dialogue, interactions, and quests will be different based on state.

Pheobe Ann "Annie" Roberts: Niece of Doc Roberts. Her state depends largely on Doc's state. When he goes to drink and gamble, she'll run the shop for a couple hours. When Doc is around, he'll keep males away from her (but females can still talk to her at the shop.) She'll serve as a shopkeeper, questgiver, and eventually a possible travelling companion (gun/healer advancement profile).

Duke Morrison: Bounty hunter in town from the Masterson Detective Agency out of Tarant, who is now in Shrouded Hills looking for Blackjack Curry, the leader of a band of train robbers who he believes are hiding in Shrouded Hills. He'll take an interest in the blimp crash and what potential profit that could bring back to the agency.

Ringo Holliday: Powerful Landowner (owner of T-Bone Ranch) who rivals Doc Roberts as "the law" of Shrouded Hills. He "owns" the constable and props him up as the proxy power in town, and is waging a secret war with Doc Roberts for control of the city.

Blackjack Curry: Leader of a gang of ruffians who robbed a train near Tarant, as well as a mail coach that was on it's way to Shrouded Hills. Although his gang had come to hide in Shrouded Hills, they got out of town when the blimp crashed, worried it would attract too much attention to the small town, so they left and took over the Landon Farm.

Kid Clanton: Member of T-Bone Ranch who leads a plot kidnapping Annie Roberts. To blackmailing him into leaving town.

Updated Quests

Jongle Dunn's "Destroy the Steam Engine" Quest: The steam engine has been moved from the church (wtf is the steam engine there for in the first place!?!?) to the mill.

Fix Steam Engine Quest: In addition to the move of the steam engine, the part needed is no longer in Bessie Toone's mine. Instead, a trip to Tarant will be needed to aquire parts (with a couple options on finding the part, and it no longer being from Vendigroth.)

New Quests/Plots

Lost Stagecoach: At city hall, it's reported that a mail shipment has disappeared. The stage carrying it to Shrouded Hills was hit by Blackjack Curry's gang, and the mail is among the gang's "loot" at the Landon Homestead.

Train Robbery: A bounty hunter in town is willing to subcontract out the bounty on Blackjack Curry and his gang.

Nightly Gambling: Nightly games at the Shrouded Hills Saloon will include "famous" gamblers local and visiting. In addition to money, there will be opportunities to win one of a kind rewards. It's also an opportunity to win and lose reaction from various people in town. It's the best place to get "in" with one of the two factions vying for control of the town.

Shootout at high noon: The bounty on Blackjack has attracted many would be bounty hunters, gunslingers, and vigilantes. With so many around, tensions are high, ending up with many gunfights in the streets. Some of which might end up with the PC in a duel.

Cattle Rustlers: The T-Bone Ranch has had a problem with cattle rustlers. In order to impress Ringo Holliday, the PC will have to catch the rustlers.

Jailbreak: One of Ringo's Henchmen, Kid Clanton is placed in jail, and Ringo wants him out.

Kidnapping of Annie Roberts: If working for Ringo, the PC can be hired to kidnap Annie Roberts to blackmail Doc Roberts to leave town. If the PC is working for Doc, then he will hire the PC to rescue his neice. On the rescue, the gang will have hidden her in Bessie Toon's mine since it is abandoned.

Annie Gets a Gun: If she gets rescued by the PC, she'll ask to have her uncle's gun cabinet raided to steal get her favorite rifle. After receiving it, she's willing to go with the PC in his/her travels.

Shootout at the T-Bone: After his niece is rescued, Doc Roberts sends the PC to remove Ringo Holliday and his gang.


Wrap Up

I figured this was already a pretty aggressive, so tackling this would be more than enough before listing other potential items. Even this would likely be divided up into several phases to ensure proper debugging gets done at each step.

 

Perhaps they should be moved into an "extension" separate from the rest of the hack? This would give the option of the extra size, in addition to making it so that someone only needs to reload a new copy of the map portion when new maps are in place?

 

It looks you're wanting to do a revision of the game. You've got some good ideas there and I'd say go for it - as a new version.
Use the upcoming UAP release as your foundation and start building. That way you'll have the most bug-free platform (and it would be considerably easier than adding the UAP to an existing hack).

I'm building my hack with an eye towards preserving the original game but adding more to do. Our ideas are different enough to where merging them wouldn't work out. However - If you want to rework A:WIP for your personal pleasure, feel free.

Having the maps as a secondary download: This thought has occured to me from time to time, but I keep coming back to the reality that the more layers you add to this game (patches & dats), the greater the chances for something to go wrong. Keep it simple is the best way to go.

 

First off, let me say thanks to rroyo for putting together this brilliant mod!

Second, I seem to be encountering a problem where my game will CTD whenever I try to read a schematic. I was able to read schematics just fine up until recently on this playthrough (I'm now level 10), and I can't think of anything I've done that would explain the change. Help?

 

Good to be home again!

Welcome to the forum, FelixP!

Your post doesn't say for certain, so I'm assuming this is your first play-through with my hack. Unfortunately, everyone who's encountered this problem has had to do a complete reinstall to fix it. Sorry.

Personal note: There's an uncomfortably large number of people having problems with the new schematics and it started after I reset the effects limits..... Most odd.