Progress report and ... other stuff

Humangus

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Progress report and ... other stuff

« on: 24 August 2003, 07:09:00 »

Packages 11 and 12 have been integrated with all dialogues and quests. Still they need to be tested first before released. Some comments

1 ) Moving from room 309 west is also done by boat I presume. Right?

2 ) The locked door in the cellar is implemented in an easier way. If there is the key in the player's backpack the door is unlocked and the player gains access to the Wine storage. That's it. No further locking and unlocking is possible which is also unecessary as well. I also suggest that the key is removed from the inventory of the player.

3 ) Using the Baveras disk is an opportunity for some puzzle solving which goes wasted . This is what I thought. The player should say the sentences of the prayer in the same order dictated by the verbs on the outer rim
"Helping One, Caring One, Kindest One, Lovely One, Joyful One, Playful One."
This would make a nice "not so difficult" puzzle

4 ) The 50 moves thing cannot be realized of course. We can allow a certain number of prayers or simply just one. Anyway from what I see there won't be many dangers in the vicinity to require restoration too often

5 ) The Baveras shrine is a good opportunity that goes without being utilized properly I think. Apart from picking up flowers some more things could be realized. For example the player could meet some spirit of a Baveras priest/priestess there and get some quest (e.g. bring some starberries to the shrine or other flowers so there is even some reason for picking them up). The player could then be rewarded with some armor or a magical ring or a magical neclase.

6 ) Just explain to me what's the idea with Mimi and what must be realized because the quest seems quite simple. Is there anything I miss?

7 ) Where do I put the images with the currents?

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Artimidor Federkiel

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Re: Progress report and ... other stuff

« Reply #1 on: 24 August 2003, 08:24:00 »

Some answers:

1.) Yup, boat travel. This is somehow missing in the room description.

2.) Cellar Door: Well, wanted to give the player at least a bit to think. This is a good example why I don't like automatic things. If this works automatically, I don't even need to make a door. The player just goes through. Boring. Especially here where the player might panic for a bit as suddenly the door doesn't open (and he has searched everything already), only to find out that the same key works here and he gets at least a feeling of success. Also the Mannef window dialogue refers to the non-automatic solution and won't make any sense if it is automatic.

3.) Yeah, this sounds like a nice little puzzle. If you want you can integrate it this way already, unless you need me to have it prepared.

4.) I guess for now we can restrict it to one prayer only, no prob.

5.) Note that the whole area is basically layed out for now so that it is walkable, and the easier things concerning scripts/quest are in. Quests will still follow. For example the herb lady will require a bunch of herbs to brew something (e.g. to make a strength +1 potion etc.), so that walking through the meadows searching for stuff gets a meaning as well. So there will be more of course, including at least little monsters and nasty things in this area. I'm sure we can come up with something for the Baveras shrine as well.

6.) Mimi: Well, the idea is simply that you get only information from Mim if you give her a kao-kao bar. I made it a quest because kao-kao bars are rare in the game, and it is very likely that you don't have one (you can get one from Pinn, or in the shop). Therefore we need to have the possibility to select "About the kao-kao bar..." if the player returns (or in the current dialogue if he first denied to give it to her), and a note in the quest log that Mimi wants a kao-kao bar so that the player knows what to do. Additionally Mimi will require another specific piece of candy later, so the quest will continue.

Short question here: Talia made it the way that you simply need "candy", but I changed it to a specific item. Guess that's easier for you to realize, otherwise you'd need to define complete catgories and this would be unnecessarily complicated. Hope that's ok.

7.) The currents pic is meant for a room which is not yet done (Judy territory), so no need to integrate it yet.

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Edited by: Artimidor Federkiel at: 8/23/03 16:35


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Humangus

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Re: Progress report and ... other stuff

« Reply #2 on: 24 August 2003, 15:28:00 »

Cellar door: The player won't get access if he does not have the key. If he has it already, using the key in the single locked door will not make things more interesting. He will still see the locked door. And panic if he is not able to unlock it. What do you mean by saying "that the same key works here". Is it used again?

About Mimi. Well if I were the player I wouldn't get the trouble and the quest just to know what's beyond. I would go to find out myself. If that's the only thing the player gets from Mimi. And ... in what location is Mimi actually?

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Re: Progress report and ... other stuff

« Reply #3 on: 25 August 2003, 00:09:00 »

Cellar Door: The same key that opened the trapdoor opens this door as well. See it as a little riddle the player has to solve. Regular interaction with the player is everything in a good RPG game if you ask me - if the player doesn't have to use things from his inventory regularly with just a bit of thinking, then I don't see much difference to a game on the Diablo level: E, W, S, kill monster, take gold, N, N, W, next monster and so on. I also think that this little riddle won't give the player a rough time to solve it...

Mimi: Well, you'll miss something then if you don't talk with Mimi to the end, Humangus! If you continue with the dialogue (this part is not done yet), Mimi gains your trust and reveals a secret entrance to a hidden cave to you. But that's up to the player to decide if this brat is important enough for you or not. You might learn about this cave somewhere else as well of course, but you'll receive some more experience points here.

Mimi is in Room #54 (Fork on Path to Tomb) BTW.

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Re: Progress report and ... other stuff

« Reply #4 on: 25 August 2003, 09:57:00 »

I missed that part about the trap door. I don't know if it is mentioned somewhere. I don't see what kind of thinking requires using the Cellar Key in the Cellar Door. If the player had to search between a set of keys it would matter but in order to gain access to a location it is enough that he either has the key to the door or not . Anyway, since this is a special key which is used on two locks I will make it with the Use statement.

If Mimi is not completely done yet then I say that I don't add her to the game. I have added the rooms from package 14 though.

Some more thoughts:

- I just wanted to know what reason a player would have to decide NOT to attempt moving the trunk (room 315) especially after the hint that there is something hidden there. Anyway, it is also impossible that the player can have 17 Strength. Values from 0 to 6 are possible with 6 being unlikely. I set it to 3 or more.

- Identification of items and plants has been overused. I mean, there is the possibility to have not identified items, possibly for mystical or magical objects and now each and every plant added is added with a not identified state. This is overuse. And for each not identified plant must be a way of identifying it.

It has even been used for items and plants described as "very common". So if these plants are so common the player would know them (not the human player but the "in game" player who has grown up in Caelereth so that the non-identified state should not be added to these e.g. cerubells)

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Re: Progress report and ... other stuff

« Reply #5 on: 25 August 2003, 10:26:00 »

Trunk: Well, some things are more or less rhetorical questions of course. But the player should feel to make decisions. And a text: "You decide against it." isn't that complicated, or?

Strength: Just set it according to your LT range, but only a strong person should be able to move it (so above average is recommended).

I'm aware of the overuse of plants identifications as well. Due to my scarse time resources I haven't commented early enough on Talia's descriptions, and as usually she made it exceptionally detailed. Indeed, we'll have to reduce this drastically in the future and we'll have to make various plants standard plants (like medlarapple tree, redberries, moonmoss or waterstar for example - if you want you can make at least these plants already "identified"). The herblady can still explain more details to the player about certain plants, but otherwise this only needs to complications. I'll see what we have to adjust at already existing descriptions while playtesting the next version.

Mimi: Talia made the dialogue reaaaaally complicated (you maybe have 1/4 of the dialogue) and I need a lot of adjustment/cutting here, so this can last quite a while till you get a final version. I basically wanted to clarify on how to deal with this quest thing.

Oh, and if you have package 14 already integrated, Humangus, it seems that the next version will be soon available, eh?

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Re: Progress report and ... other stuff

« Reply #6 on: 26 August 2003, 01:58:00 »

Soon enough. No time to make many changes to the Engine though. Still I added the sound effects in the game since they will not be mixed with the background music which does not exist yet in those locations. I even added some of my own :smokin

A wood sawing sound when you meet Mannef, an unlocking sound and a funny water splashing sound when you fail to walk on the log.

I 'm walking through the rats quest at the moment. The two dialogues seem to work at the moment.

Just a question that I asked again in the past some time. When you "exit" from a dialogue what should happen so that the player can still talk to Terlano for example. I have forgotten to fix that when I should

Reset the dialogue or ...

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Re: Progress report and ... other stuff

« Reply #7 on: 26 August 2003, 02:14:00 »

As long as the "now known" flag isn't set, then the dialogue should start over again with keyword START, otherwise the dialogue starts with GREETING.

Oh, I've also ordered sawing and unlocking etc. from Ralrok, but unlocking sounds can always be needed

Hope Ralrok can provide some other sounds as well which I've begged him to search for in his library (creaking doors etc.), I'm sure the sounds add a lot to the atmosphere of the game

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Edited by: Artimidor Federkiel at: 8/25/03 11:33


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Re: Progress report and ... other stuff

« Reply #8 on: 26 August 2003, 12:03:00 »

There were some issues with quest 2 that I fixed. Everything works fine now at least to the extend that I tested them. I also added the Baveras prayer thing. You may expect the new version in 1 or 2 days. And I can tell you. The game starts to be interesting already and complex enough to keep you into it.

Just one more thing. When you examine the white flowers of the meddlar tree I set it to lose 80% of current endurance but if you are also attacked by monsters later this would be too difficult to overcome I think.

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Re: Progress report and ... other stuff

« Reply #9 on: 26 August 2003, 12:16:00 »

Ah yes, that's the idea :lol

- that the player has little chance to survive it (he has been warned in advance!). But with use of some healing potions etc. he could make it, and also gain a lot of experience this way by killing the monsters...

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