Kelandon

Digging into Chapter 3 now. It is definitely true that finishing and extensively testing Chapters 1 and 2 made designing Chapter 3 easier. Chapter 3 has a lot of combat, and I have a pretty good sense of how to make the elaborately scripted combat that I had only conceptually mapped out before. And I also have a much better idea of what dialogue to write at different points.

But Chapter 3 is very incomplete. I left a lot to be done when I skipped over most of Chapter 3 to get to some pieces of Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, and Chapter 3 is the longest chapter in the scenario. It's going to take a lot of work to get Chapter 3 anywhere near playable.

1 hour ago, The Almighty Doer of Stuff said:

Question: Does it come before or after The Za-Khazi Run? I may replay the included BoE scenarios first and then switch to BoA for your trilogy depending on your answer.

 

EDIT: I'll probably replay them first regardless, now that I think of it.

Strictly speaking, it comes after ZKR, but I don't think anything in the included scenarios matters for the series. Except I guess the occasional appearances of Machrone.

Homeland is intended for a level 1 party. I tested it with a fresh default party and a customized party, and it should work either way.

19 minutes ago, The Almighty Doer of Stuff said:

Is it an animated refresher with corny jokes representing serious plot points to save time?

It is animated, at least.

I actually kind of wonder if it might be better to start with Homeland, rather than Bahs/Exodus. For whatever reason, when I was a kid, I often started series in the middle, and I am absolutely convinced that the only reason I ever liked Dragonlance is that I started with Legends (the second trilogy) rather than Chronicles (the first trilogy). It created this Watchmen vibe, where there is this elaborate backstory that you piece together over the course of the series, instead of it being introduced in a bland, linear way. I sort of suspect that the same might be true here.

12 hours ago, BainIhrno said:

I have only just started replaying Bahssikava - as it's been a while since I've played it and Exodus, I'm not sure how good a job I can do if I don't have sufficient memory of the storyline established so far.

There's a refresher at the beginning of the scenario, so you don't necessarily have to replay Bahs/Exodus to understand Homeland.

As the title says, there is now a public beta version of Homeland Part 1! Download it here: https://kppp.webs.com/Homeland.zip

To be clear, Part 1 consists of the Prologue, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2. This is nearly 50 towns and 6 outdoor sections by itself. The scenario, when finished, will also include Chapters 3-5. Those are not part of this release.

Also, this is a beta version. There are still a few known bugs, and likely there are a lot of unknown bugs (which is the point). The known bugs are generally aesthetic and shouldn't prevent you from progressing.

As usual, if you want to be credited as a beta tester, play the scenario and email me any bugs/feedback you have. Bear in mind that it is intentional that some characters give you conflicting information, even about basic background.

The current plan is to finish Chapter 3 and then release a Prologue-through-Chapter 3 version. Then I'll finish Chapters 4 and 5 and release the whole scenario.

KNOWN BUGS:

EDIT: Note that if you downloaded before January 23, 2021, there was a typo in the email address in the initial pop-up dialog. Use the email address listed at KPPP or listed in the current download.

Finished my second run through Chapter 2. I'm now convinced that the difficulty problems were a combination of out-of-sequence quests and missing one of the key rewards in Chapter 1 that gives a broader range of tactical options. I think that was just my being sloppy, though I'll be interested to hear what beta testers think.

Does anyone know if there's some kind of known problem with quests numbered over 96? I thought the docs said I could go up to 99, but quests 97-99 are displaying weirdly in the quest list.

FWIW, I don't find Torment to be fun until at least the second or third time through the game. I usually play on Hard, too. The most recent time I played a SW game on Torment for the first run through (Geneforge 5), it was a heck of a slog.

I'm running through Chapter 2 again, and it strikes me that the combat in Chapter 2 is a lot harder than the combat in Chapter 1. I don't know how much of this is real and how much is doing the quests in the wrong order (again). I suspect it's a bit of both—and, to be fair, I'm not going where any of the dialogue suggests that I should go, so I'm definitely doing the quests in the wrong order.

I'll watch for this on my next run-through, though. I really don't want to rebalance everything again, but I also don't want the balance to be totally out of whack.

The good news, such as it is, is that everything works the way it's supposed to, so far.

Chapter 2 is complete and finishable. I'm making a few final tweaks to the ending, but Chapter 2 is basically done.

The relevance of all of this, presumably, is that Rosetta 2 support will eventually be dropped. The Classic environment was supported until OS 10.5. Rosetta 1 was supported until OS 10.7. Rosetta 2 will probably also not last forever.

3 minutes ago, Randomizer said:

No loading up the emulator like the original Rosetta needed for OS 9 software on OS 10 computers.

Not to be that guy, but you're talking about the Classic environment, not Rosetta. The first version of Rosetta was used to run old old PowerPC applications on Intel Macs, and it didn't require loading.

It took rewriting more or less everything, but the third core quest is done and tested. On to the fourth and final core quest in Chapter 2.

On 11/10/2020 at 11:08 PM, marnick said:

American politics are weird, almost unrelated to perceptible reality.

It is actually true that there are massive, related disinformation machines, mostly targeting the right, in American politics. So there is in fact a disconnect between what people believe and reality, particularly among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.

Insert obligatory comment about how "socialism" is so poorly defined that it is more confusing than helpful in literally any discussion of anything. When a term can refer to anything from the command economy of the former Soviet Union to the current economies of Northern Europe, it's no longer a useful term.

It looks like we'll know tomorrow. If you take what's been called by various outlets, Biden can pull out a win with Michigan, where he's leading and results are expected tonight, and Nevada, where he's also leading and results are expected tomorrow morning.

It will be interesting to see what Trump does at that point, though. Anyone else would just concede, but Trump has already declared victory and called everything fraudulent. So it's not as clear what will happen once media outlets call the race for Biden.

If the polls are like they were in 2018 (very accurate), we'll probably know late tonight/early tomorrow morning, like a normal election. Biden will be up in basically every swing state, and some will be pretty far along in their counting. If the polls are like they were in 2016 (medium-size miss in Trump's favor), it's going to be a nailbiter and we're not going to know for a long time, like 2000. If there's a medium-sized miss the other direction, Biden will win by double-digits and we'll know late tonight.

Political topics have a long history on the Spiderweb boards, though less so recently.

It looks like there are a few characters in GF4 who were on Sucia Island. They are described as very old. Delna in Southforge Citadel is over 100 years old. Amena Blade in Derenton Freehold is also very old. On a quick skim, I don't think either one clearly says that they were on Sucia at the time of GF1, but I think Sucia was wiped out not long after, so I think their age gives us at least a vague approximation of the time between GF1 and GF4. (And yes, before someone nitpicks, it also doesn't say how old they were when they left Sucia, so conceivably the time between GF1 and GF4 could be significantly less than 100 years.) In Penta in GF5, there's some discussion of the events of GF1, but I don't see anything to give a clear indication of time.

Either way, it's quite a long time between GF1 and GF5, enough that it would be pretty surprising for any reveal in GF1 to relate to the people in GF5, except perhaps by ancestry (e.g., you meet a grandfather of someone in GF5).

Yeah, doesn't seem like a high-probability outcome. Wasn't GF1 a couple hundred years before GF5? Or at least I thought that GF5 was sufficiently long after GF1 that people from GF1 were generally not still alive. So it'd be pretty hard to make this kind of reveal work.

Chapter 2 sidequests are done and tested. The third main quest is up next.

11 hours ago, Warrior Mage said:

But can't accept that Fort Goodling is south of Great Cave because you get a message just outside it that the lands to the west of Goodling are more civilised. But does that mean the run extends into west of Goodling?

It is true that, when you try to go west on the river from Fort Goodling, you get this message:

Quote

To the west, you see a calm, safe stretch of river, heading  into more settled areas of Avernum. Boats similar to the one you are on are used to haul goods to and from this region.

 

Unfortunately, you don't have time to explore this way. Your path lies in the dangerous, uncharted waters to the north.

But that doesn't mean anything in particular. The area to the west is "more settled" than the area to the north, but the area to the north is the Za-Khazi Run itself, which hasn't been settled at all because it's too hostile. I don't think that means that the area to the west is any part of the Avernum map. (If it did, we'd have even bigger problems, because there's no way I can imagine to place Fort Goodling east along any river on the Avernum map.)

Also, the area to the west is not part of the Run; the dialogue is very specific that the Run refers to the area to the north. It's just some other cave area.

3 hours ago, "Nothing Left" said:

I'm not really sure about the logic and extrapolation part.  This is pure invention, and it relies on a large number of technically possible but very unlikely conditions.  Not to rehash our previous argument, but this isn't simply one interpretation of many, this is a construction which is incredibly, incredibly unlikely based on the evidence we have.

FWIW, the part that I have the most doubts about is the idea that there is a teleportation code for Fort Goodling but not for Fort Cavalier. But if that were true, and if it were true that it's faster to travel from Fort Goodling to Fort Cavalier than from the Castle to Fort Cavalier (not sure if that's plausible), then Seletine could have teleported to Fort Goodling intending to give the wands to soldiers/adventurers, as happens, and we don't need the sliths blocking/collapsing tunnels, which also seems sort of unmoored to anything.

It's true that Seletine of the Triad of the Tower of Magi goes to Fort Goodling rather than Fort Cavalier, but honestly that seems more like a plot hole than anything else. It seems as though it's not particularly hard to get from Fort Cavalier to Dharmon once the siege is broken, and the siege is broken with the wands that Seletine has. So why doesn't Seletine go to Fort Cavalier directly and break the siege? I can't come up with any good reason. Commander Yale says that the "sliths have done an excellent job of blocking or trapping all safe routes to Fort Cavalier," but that seems like it's only true for someone without the wands, because the wands cut through the sliths like butter.

I think the reason that Fort Cavalier is under more stress, though, is that it's closer to the slith lines. It's apparently surrounded on three sides by sliths, according to the commander of Fort Goodling.

It's also potentially important that it seems like we can't map the outdoors sections in ZKR to the outdoor sections in Avernum. Fort Cavalier is 14 outdoor sections north of Fort Goodling. Even if Fort Goodling is a little off the map of Avernum to the south, that would still put Fort Cavalier far off the map of Avernum to the north. So I think we have to take those outdoor sections as not representing the same amount of distance as the outdoor sections in Avernum. Fort Cavalier is north of Fort Goodling. How much? A ways. We can't really be more specific than that.

There's also no particular reason that the river in the Run has to be a river that shows up in the Avernum caves. It could be, but it doesn't have to be.

Putting all this together, I think that it ultimately doesn't make a lot of sense. There isn't a clean way to account for every fact we have without some pretty serious messiness. The best I can say is that there's probably some secret passage that isn't on the main Avernum maps that goes from Fort Cavalier to Dharmon, and it's probably north or west of Dharmon (or else it would be closer to some other city), and the Run itself is probably on a different level of the caves or off the main Avernum map. Fort Goodling is somewhat south of Fort Cavalier, not as far as south as a distance of 14 outdoor sections would suggest. That would put it more or less south of Fort Remote, give or take, presumably through another secret passage and in a different set of caves.

That still doesn't account for Seletine, but like I said, I think that's a plot hole.

ZKR says:

Quote

You find a long secret passage, leading out of the fortress and back towards civilization. It will take you past the slith lines and, from there, to Dharmon, the nearest Avernite city.

If you leave, it says:

Quote

The passage stretches for about two thousand feet, and deposits you well away from slith lines. From there, you maneuver your way through neutral territory. A few close escapes and minor skirmishes later, you return to Avernite territory.

 

A commander in the city of Dharmon gives you 2500 gold for your services, and throws in a pretty medal as well. Even better, you get the satisfaction of knowing that you've made a difference for the better.

The more I think about it, the more inexplicably weird it seems to me that, after this plainly military mission, you go to Dharmon rather than one of the forts. Just about any possible exit from ZKR except a secret passage in the western part of the Great Cave would put you closer to a fort than to Dharmon, and it seems like a fort would be a more natural place to go to meet up with a "commander."

On 10/7/2020 at 10:20 AM, Enraged Slith said:

If called outside of combat, it will freeze every member of your party outside of the first, who follows input normally. The more it's called in short succession, the more pronounced the effect:

Maybe I'm being dense, but I don't understand what this means. What are you doing, and what is the problem?

I use relocate_character() all the time, mostly for cutscenes but not exclusively, and I've never noticed any problems.

On 10/7/2020 at 3:12 PM, Ess-Eschas said:

In any case, I have a theory about where the Run is, although it’s only really a guess. There’s one feature that we can use to locate the Run, assuming it really is close to the Great Cave: the river! The Run is traversed by a large river, which flows out of both ends of the gallery. So, if the gallery connects directly to the Great Cave, this river should too.

 

Conveniently, there’s only one large river on the southwestern corner of the Great Cave. It’s the river that flows past Patrick’s Tower (running through the Great Cave from the Sulphur Lake and Silverlock’s Tower). My guess is that, a little way past Patrick’s Tower, this river flows into the Za-Khazi Run.

 

So where’s the entrance? Well, why not the river itself? There’s no particular reason why the primary entrance to the Run from the Great Cave has to be by land, after all. Settlers could have reached the Run by boat – and the sliths could be intending to attack the Great Cave through the river. After all, Avernum 5 shows us some settlements beyond Avernum’s traditional borders that can only be reached by boat, so there could in principle be others, too.

I suppose that's possible, if we assume that "city" excludes all the forts and towers (which I think is consistent with how Avernites use the term, but I honestly can't remember). But isn't Patrick's Tower almost exactly halfway between Dharmon and the Castle? I don't remember whether anyone describes the Castle as a city, but it would be sort of odd not to.

Looking more closely at the map, my best guess is that the Run is off the Avernum map to the west of Erika's Tower. Assuming that Spire doesn't count as an Avernite city because it's in the Abyss, and the people in the Abyss sometimes distinguish between themselves and Avernum, and assuming the forts don't count, the nearest Avernite city would be either Dharmon or Blosk, and Dharmon is probably a little closer.

But there are a bunch of little rivers in the western part of the Great Cave, and any one of them could lead down into the Run.

On 10/7/2020 at 3:12 PM, Ess-Eschas said:

Party: “Are you an adventurer?”

 

Pea Eye: “I was. Once. Long ago. I helped out in the second slith war, not too many years ago.”

 

Party: “The second slith war?”

 

Pea Eye: “It was a small one, but nasty, not too long after Empress Prazac let the Avernites back onto the surface. I helped ferry supplies down the Za-Khazi Run, after some other adventurers cleared it out.”

You're right, the Run itself is canonical, which I suppose means the scenario more or less is also. I had forgotten that there was an explicit reference to the Run itself — or maybe it wasn't in the beta at the time that I got to that point. I never actually played the release version of Avernum 4.