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Posts posted by Kelandon
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The Pohsa sequence will be the death of me. I wasn't able to work on it for a few months, and then I came back to it. I'm now in the middle of third subpart of the Pohsa sequence. Ihrghthen is up next.
On the bright side, I wrote the end of the Ihrghthen sequence a long time ago. But there's quite a bit of other stuff in the Ihrghthen sequence that I still have to make. I have a pretty good idea about what I want the Ihrghthen sequence to be about, though, which I didn't before.
Tentatively, the plan is to create a finishable version of Chapter 3, and then start alpha testing as I fill in the rest of it. I guess, technically, there's one more dungeon after Ihrghthen in Chapter 3, but I suspect I will make that at the very end.
EDIT: I've still received only a few beta reports on Part 1. So anyone who has some time is encouraged to play and provide comments.
- Warrior Mage and Ess-Eschas
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2 hours ago, Ess-Eschas said:
(Also, just for my curiosity, did anyone actually get a copy of this scenario? I think the only person who is still around from the original topic might be @Kelandon?)
I'll have to look more thoroughly later, but I don't believe this person actually emailed the scenario as requested.
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On the graphics, I have not been able to find the disappeared graphics either. Some were incorporated into scenarios, which are now the best source of custom graphics of which I am aware, but if anyone knows about a backup graphic archive, I'd be interested to hear about it.
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It feels like I've been moving painfully slowly, but here's what I've actually gotten done in the past three months since I turned to Chapter 3 in earnest.
In Chapter 3, there are three parts, centering on Kathda, Pohsa, and Ihrghthen. The Kathda sequence has three subparts. Three months ago, the first was scripted, the second was not, and the third was partially scripted but needed to be completely rewritten. I've scripted the second—which is the longest—almost entirely, though the end needs a bit more work. I still need to rewrite the third subpart.
The Pohsa sequence was essentially not designed at all. What little there was needed to be completely redone. It also has three subparts. In the past three months, I've essentially designed the first subpart, though again the end needs a bit more work. I still need to write the second and third subparts.
The Ihrghthen sequence was not designed at all, except the ending. I still need to design essentially all of it.
I've also mostly drawn (though not completely scripted) about 10 of the sidequest towns and added a bunch to at least four of the core towns—one in Kathda and three in Pohsa. There are about 4 more sidequest towns, and about 4 more core towns (mostly in the Ihrghthen sequence), that haven't been designed at all. Realistically, I may add another 2 towns to the core Pohsa sequence and maybe 1-2 more sidequest towns, though I haven't decided exactly how that will work yet.
In the past three months, I also drew (but did not completely script) three outdoor sections, one in Chapter 3 and two in Chapter 4.
There's quite a long way to go, but it's coming along. I still hope to finish an alpha version of Chapter 3 before the end of the year, but a beta version this year may be a little out of reach unless things go faster than I expect. The through-Chapter-3 version will have roughly 85-90 towns.
EDIT: I hope to come back to this in 2-3 months and be able to note how much progress I've made! At least that's the goal.
- Warrior Mage and Ess-Eschas
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Sup SMOE. Welcome back.
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The current town count is 114. Still working on Chapter 3. And there is some crazy **** in Chapter 3.
SpoilerAt the end of Chapter 2, you see a part of barbarian lands in western Khitaloss Province. This is actually a huge stretch of territory, spanning three outdoor sections that appear in the scenario and a bunch of space in between that you can't see. You can actually go to one of these barbarian outdoor sections in Chapter 3—an area in the homeland that has never been part of the Empire of Khalthas. As you can imagine, the lands are pretty wild.
- Ess-Eschas and Warrior Mage
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As will surprise no one, I do love a good cutscene. It doesn't take much time to script them, usually, compared to a really good combat (at least for me in BoA—I suspect the same is true for Jeff in everything else). I'd guess, without any firsthand knowledge, that Jeff has just decided to move in a different direction.
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Geneforge is probably the farthest away from general fantasy. But yeah, the term "tedious" isn't specific enough for anyone to be able to help you here, most likely. You're going to have to explain what you did/didn't like and why.
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Today, I started to redesign the second major city in Chapter 3. The initial design (which I did ages ago) doesn't really work, and I basically have to throw it out and start from scratch. I'm going to have to do this with almost every major city in Chapter 4 (of which there are seven) and one major city in Chapter 5, too, but I'm trying not to think about that right now.
I was a bit worried that the end of the Trump presidency would reduce the relevance of an anti-far right story like Homeland, but there's no shortage of material to work with even now.
EDIT: The complete redesign was much easier than expected. This works much better, and I'm making good progress.
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As I keep going through Chapter 3, I'm thinking that Homeland is a scenario that rewards people who don't just want an interesting story and some challenging combat, but want to go all the way down the rabbit hole. I just did some preliminary work on an outdoor section that is basically a sidequest off a sidequest—you get to the access point by taking a sidequest in Chapter 4, but you have to complete a sidequest in Chapter 3, and accept another one in Chapter 3, to be able to pass through the access point. This bonus area connects to hints dropped in every other chapter in the scenario, which are never really a major part of any chapter or the main plot (at least until Chapter 5). It's not really for the casual player. But there is at least one friendly town and at least one dungeon—probably a lengthy one—in this area. It's a lot of stuff.
I'm tempted to make more of the sidequests mandatory, just so that people don't miss a huge volume of content. (For reference, of the 49 towns in Chapters 1-2, at least 11 of them are only in sidequests. The percentage is significantly higher in Chapter 3, I think.) On the other hand, many of the sidequests are pretty deep into secondary plots—should I really force the player to track down the details of Kanthen and Ithela?
At the moment, I'm inclined to keep things pretty open, but I'll be tracking this as more beta reports come in.
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A few comments after looking at the first two beta reports:
- There will be a readme with hints (and perhaps a full walkthrough) included in a future version, probably the Parts 1-2 version, which I hope to release toward the end of the year (but who knows). In the meantime, if there's something you're struggling to complete, you can email me or post here.
- There will be a bit more effort to keep you from getting trapped in a sidequest you aren't strong enough to complete in a future version, mainly in Chapter 2.
- I will probably level-gate the Escort the Ronathi quest, so that if you try to take the quest at too low a level, you're told to come back when you're stronger. I haven't decided what I'm going to do about the attack in the western farms, but probably something similar. I think I may leave the Lazhloss Mines quest as it is because it has natural difficulty gating.
- The quest list will be reorganized (and some quests combined) for a future version.
- When a quotation continues across several paragraphs, I follow the convention of opening quotes at the beginning of each paragraph and close quotes only at the end of the entire quote, both because this is correct English and because it gives me an extra character to work with in a number of dialogues. (This is different from what Jeff does.)
- Some of the dialogue presents more options when it should end, but I have not yet attempted to figure out why. This will be fixed in a future version.
- It seems like people are missing a lot of the sidequests, as I suspected might happen. I haven't decided exactly what to do about this. They're not really meant to be hard to find; you just have to go everywhere and talk to everyone.
As noted, I've only received two reports so far. (If you sent a report and I did not acknowledge it somehow, I did not receive it.) I'll be collecting reports for several months before doing an update, because I want to keep working on Chapter 3 for a while before I backtrack into Chapters 1-2.
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On 1/22/2021 at 11:35 AM, BainIhrno said:
I have sent in a beta report - not sure if you saw it.
Nope. Where did you send it?
EDIT: We've determined it was sent to the wrong email address. The email address in the scenario credits (or at KPPP) will work. It appears that the message at the beginning of the scenario has a typo in the address, which I'll fix shortly.
EDIT 2: This is now fixed.
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Now that I've gotten some ways into Part 2, I can say that there will be minor changes to Part 1 when Part 2 is ready. By way of example, the sorcerer graphic is going to change.
Because some flags and quests are going to get shifted around, it is very likely that, when each part is released, old saves will not work for the new version — i.e., when Part 1-2 is released, you will have to start over.
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As far as trying to find only A1 results, many topics (though not all) specify the game in the title. The search function doesn't appear to combine quotes and connectors (AND, OR) in a way that I would expect, so you may have to mess around a little to find the right way to do a search on "A1" and "tower of barriers," but it can be done.
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Another known bug:
I believe that the Chapter 2 quest count is not correctly counting one of the Leksandria quests. I still have to verify this.
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One thing I'm noticing is that I'm going to have to add a lot of towns in Chapters 3 and 4. Part 1 (Prologue + Chapter 1 + Chapter 2) was 49 towns. I had only about 22 towns for all of Chapter 3 (of which only 15 had any substantial designing), but that's clearly not right. I've already added 7 more, and there's a pretty good chance I'll be adding a few more on top of that. Chapter 3 will be about 30-35 towns. The upshot of this is that Chapter 3 was maybe 20-25% designed when I picked it back up about a week ago.
The same is true of Chapter 4, which had 17 towns as originally set up, but there's no way that's going to stick. I'd bet Chapter 4 will end up with more like 25 towns. Chapter 5 was 16 towns as originally written, and it may end up close to that number (though I've added a 1-town Epilogue).
I think we're looking at a 120-130 town scenario, at the end of the day. That feels about right. Part 1 felt like about 40% of the scenario. Part 2 (which is just Chapter 3) will be about 25-30% of the scenario. Part 3 (Chapter 4 + Chapter 5 + Epilogue) will be another 30-35% of the scenario.
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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.
SpoilerAs I've mentioned earlier in this thread, there are essentially three parts to Chapter 3. For those who've played Chapters 1 and 2, it's probably not a surprise that those parts center on, in this order, Kathda, Pohsa, and Ihrghthen. The Kathda sequence is the most complete, and even that still has a lot left to go (and desperately needs some rewriting at points). The Pohsa sequence is barely designed at all. The ending of the Ihrghthen sequence is designed — that's perhaps the most important scene in the whole scenario — but essentially no other part of it is.
So there is a long way to go.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
SpoilerIn the Thkhi Cave, sometimes the dialog to destroy the altars appears repeatedly.
Some outdoors caches have undesired side-effects. Opening the one south of Leksandria converts the outdoor section from cave to surface. Some opened caches create duplicates next to the real cache.
The Leksandria sidequests do not display correct in the quest list.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

Homeland progress report
in Blades of Avernum
Posted
I just wrote the ending of the Pohsa sequence. It did not write well the first time and will need significant revision. But at least there's a draft of it that I can come back to and fix later. Frankly, most of the main quest line in Chapter 3 is in the same condition, but I am not worrying about that right now.
On to Ihrghthen.