Addon in progress,A few questions

I've recentily joined your forum, I'm in a remote area in outback Australia, until now home internet access has not been availble,and is still a not good, forget downloading! A single mp3 file could take a hour, nor is it cheap, about Aus$5 per hour. My time online is limited, in fact I'm writing this offline and will cut and post it. So bear with me if my questions/ideas have been covered in other posts.

I've been playing about with an add-on for Arcanum, for the last six months, that will give sea travel to the game. The idea being early in the game the PC has a ship and is able to sail around the coast land at a point close to the destination, then travel overland to it, then return to ship. The addon will merge with the central quest of the game it may extend play beyond Kerghan. Another few months should see it finished, I'll burn it disc and send to a mate for uploading.

Some of the things I have done, others I would like to include are:

1/Freeport: a pirate state basicily a hangout for NPC's that are wanted/unwanted anywhere else but are too tough or useful too be killed off, anything is for sale in freeport for the right price, all the usual bars, brothels, fences, junkdealers, pickpockets, shopkeepers, plus the forger who can provide a copy of the schematic you need to finish a quest but want to keep, or mage/techie who can provide/make you that item/found schematic you want, the cartographer and gossip monger.

Problems: NO major problems new map, build town, add people, write scripts/dialogs, add inventories. Same old story just takes time. [In progress.80% finish]

2/ A cabin and storage hold on the ship and number for addisonal quests, that are sea related. (ie sumggleing, retrieving buried treasure, maybe hunting Stringy Pete [If I can get him to say his new lines. ])

Problems: Again No major problems, new map, add secenary/people/ect to Arcanum fixed map. edit quest, rumor, dialog files. Again same old story just takes more time.[In progress. 95% finish (Bloody Pete!)]

3/ Random encounters at sea. (ie sea battles between ships and/or shore positions).

I got around most of this by creating a large sea map, treating encounter as fixed scenes scattered about the map(as BMC map handles the various levels of the mine.) Here the problems start, facades of ships come in only two facing, I can use these for a limited number of ship to shore encounters.

I'm currentily takeing screenshots of ships and performing cut, mirror and rotate them, it is possible to break these into tiles, but painfullily slow. [In progress. 50% finish]

Problems:BMP2ART will only create single frame art files and does not like large bmp's, best bet looks like breaking each facade into 4/5 pieces, and playing jigsaw puzzles. Any ideas on the best way to solve this?

4/(a) Allowing sea travel over the world map of Arcanum. I can fake this by cut, fade, play sound and slide, then teleport to location,but would prefer not too.[In progress. fake 99% finish]

Problems:In going over the terrain files I noted it is possible to travel over water by flying/floating, How can I activate/deactivate this as apposed to walking which is the default mode?

(b)I don't want the ship sailing overland, my current method is to fake the landing by adding charts to the game, posession of various charts which show different of sections of the coastline" reveal hidden pairs locations, water and land cordinates only water location is revealed at the time, the shore is blocked.

How it works is these charts these take you to part of the map showing a ship offshore , you order crewman for a shore party, running this script does 3/4 things:- 1/unblocks the shore location, 2/cut,fade,teleport to shore, 3/blocks water location, 4/deactivates flying/floating (if I can find out how, otherwise skip this step). A crewman and longboat appear on shore,script attached to crewman reverse the procdure. This can handle ports like rosebrough and dernholm, it maybe possible to fake sailing up river's to inland locations. [In progress. 80% finish]

Problems:What would be the better way to handle the land/sea interface (ie the coast line), can anyone think of a better way?

(c)Normalily you can't get a ship before Story State 17, the shipbuilder, stringy pete and the ships helm don't want to play before then.

Simple you say,change the script! Well I've done that, but sometime it reverts to the original in arcanum3.dat which is a real pain, I could get around it by adding a helmsman or running on a different script number. [In progress.]

Problems:Any ideas why this reversion happen? [otherwise I will have to redo]

5/ It may be possible add ships cannon, the cannon is a fixed piece of scenary with eyecandy for smoke and flame, a container for the connonballs(script transform to some type of grenade), and slowmatch which can be added to the hot key bank, slowmatch script handles cannonball transform and transfer to inventory [well you don't keep cannonballs in your backpack ], trips the eyecandy on the cannon, since grenades are thrown,the script checks In, Pe, and firearms and calculates +/- bonuses.(gunner needs a least 4/4 in throwing)

I have not tried this, but cannot see why not. Any thoughts on this one? [compleate speculation]

Maybe someone could tell me, a few months ago at an internet cafe, I downloaded documents from the trokia website, that say not to use scr's below 1000, but I've found these are the only ones I can use releibliy, was this a misprint or what?

NOTE: "dbmaker reqires Dos expanded memory", Nforce2 chipsets don't support this something to do dual channel. I have to rebuild computer I just upgraded from, just so I can make liberay dats! Well at least Worlded only take 20 minutes not an hour like before to open the module dat file. Can you guess how hard it is secondhand parts localily, tip buying local for the upgrade would have added Aus$238 to the cost! aprox 50% over mailorder.

 

As you use the detonator to explode plastic, you use the slowmatch to fire the cannon.

I was thinking of sea encountes in 2 stages, first missle fire, then closing to board, or veering off if you are getting the short end of the stick. I'm using modifed ramp as a boarding bridge.

I'll stick with the rebuild it let me run a second screen for reference make it easier doing sripts and dialogs.

 

I can't animate the ships so to do this,scene1 missles: will have the vessels apart, both sides shoot at each other, PC can then order the helm to close or veer off, veer off is no problem just cut and fade. closeing is trickier I need a script count all parties living and dead then reposition on their respective ships, which are now together in boarding positions. Any ideas? Should the Enemy have the option to close as well?