mikeprichard

Years back, I compiled the below extremely munchinky notes that worked in the original G1 to end as an Awakened (though I have made a few updates based on reading the new guidance - e.g. only Leadership 10 instead of 12 is now needed to join the Awakened without a quest; Learned Jaffee now teaches Create Fyora instead of Fire Shaping; I no longer plan to bother with joining the Takers as well, since their faction-locked benefits are trash, and they also happen to be psychopaths). If anyone with familiarity with GF1: Mutagen could please review the below and confirm whether it's still correct/possible, I'd appreciate it. One particular apparent change I don't understand is in Randomizer's atlas (https://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/26270-gf1-m-atlas-to-quests-and-items-massive-spoilers/), which notes "opinions or actions start at 100" and "Clakkit gives servile level of opinion and crimes (actions) as pro-servile, neutral, pro-Shaper". "Opinion" seems clear, as I assume it corresponds to original G1's simple "reputation" stat, with + and - opinion changes listed depending on dialogue and quest choices. However, I don't understand what "actions" exactly are, why they always show as positive and never negative in the atlas list, and whether/how these "actions" might affect my notes below. I also don't know whether joining the Obeyers still has a 90 or below reputation requirement, as I don't see any related notes in the atlas. Thanks! EDIT: corrected to align with Randomizer's/Mechalibur's posts below and additional confirmation from Randomizer at https://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/26304-possible-bug-pentil-merchant-prices-still-ridiculous-when-allied-with-obeyers/?tab=comments#comment-314973: The player starts the game with a "neutral" reputation of 100, with reputation of less than 100 considered "pro-Shaper" and more than 100 considered "pro-servile." Various conversation options during the game will increase or decrease your reputation accordingly; Learned Darian in Peaceful Vale can also be used to instantly set your reputation to either 90 (if greater than 90) or 110 (if less than 110), but only once. A reputation of 90 or below will allow you to join the Obeyer faction; a reputation of 110 or above will allow you to join the Awakened or Takers factions, although your reputation value for this purpose is checked only when each related faction quest is given. In addition, your current reputation value will affect merchant prices in the various faction strongholds, and Dig will only train you in Stealth if your reputation is at least 96. To get the most quests/conversation options/loot, first say "pro-Shaper" things in order to get the Obeyer quest from Leader Rydell in Pentil to feed Control Four; complete the quest and join the Obeyers by talking to Leader Rydell, then talk to Learned Jaffee in Pentil for a free point in Create Fyora (if you have at least 5 Leadership) and a Sholai language lesson (if you've learned about Trakjov and have met Masha). Then, say “pro-servile” things in order to get the Awakened quest from Ellhrah in Ellhrah's Keep to kill Control Four; complete the quest and join the Awakened by talking to Ellhrah, then talk to Swan in Ellhrah's Keep for combat skill training and talk to Sorkin in Pentil East for a Sholai language lesson. (The Takers can also be joined for their rewards either before or after joining the Awakened. However, joining then leaving the Takers for another faction will cause everyone in Kazg to become permanently hostile.)

Thank you both for being so patient with my questions and clarifications! Got it.

Thanks, I am checking that out. CTRL+F is a friend. A few more questions, if you don't mind: in your (Mechalibur's) post above, do you mean "Icy Tunnels" instead of "Icewalls" for the Quick Action boost you listed? Also, even though that's apparently from a sarcophagus, it seems from nlambert's index that unlike other sarcophagus boosts, it doesn't require your base skill to be at 0 to work, correct (he has it in the "Trainers" section)? If it does require base skill of 0 - though I don't think that's the case - your other topic listing skill boost totals excluding sarcophagi should probably have +2 for Quick Action (Pentil quest + Swan) instead of +3. Finally, nlambert says 3 Mechanics are needed for that boost, Randomizer's atlas has 4, and you have 5 - which is correct?

OK, got it, and your list (and of course the massive atlas) are already extremely useful and appreciated. I'm compiling a complete list of all skill boost locations for my own one-stop use, and may post here later for others interested.

Uh, sorry - edited my post!

EDIT: Sorry - thought Mechalibur missed something that h/she didn't - was looking only in one place in that list for Stealth and missed the other! Would be really helpful regardless if Randomizer could please continue expanding the original post to be a single convenient comprehensive list of skill boost locations, including the few Mechalibur listed but Randomizer currently hasn't.

OK, thank you both for the clarifications.

While a few sarcophagi are likely too late in the game to be practical to use, I'm adding the full list here so for completeness. Sarcophagi (can obtain bonus only if related skill without items is currently 0) Missile Weapons: +1 (Southbridge) Quick Action: +1 (The Tombs) Evasion: +1 (The Tombs) Battle Magic: +1 (Inner Crypt; very late game) Mental Magic: +1 (The Tombs) Blessing Magic: +1 (The Tombs) Spellcraft: +1 (Southbridge) Battle Shaping: +1 (The Tombs) Magic Shaping: +1 (The Tombs) Healing Craft: +1 (The Tombs) Leadership: +1 (Sealed Lab; fairly late game) Mechanics: +1 (Sealed Lab; fairly late game) Stealth: +1 (Sealed Lab; fairly late game) Bonus Skills (notes to Mechalibur's above list) Note the three training bonuses (Leadership +1 with Halm in Drayk's Vale for 2000c, only if Leadership at least 3, not allied with Takers, and don't have Trajkov Amulet; Mechanics +1 with Flig in Winding Road for 2000c; Stealth +1 with Dig in Patrol Bridge for 2000c, only if servile reputation not too low) are included in Mechalibur's "Bonus Skills" section above.

Yep, that's exactly what I meant - it doesn't need to be a full "mod" to be linked in Strateg-ery Central! Quick instructions on this to easily link there would be great - maybe the link could just go directly to your post above, assuming people should be sophisticated enough to find the file to edit in the game's "Scripts" folder.

Enjoy! Spiderweb games are the ONLY games that are guaranteed day-one purchases for me; always have been, and I've never been disappointed. I did solo Agent (and in later games, solo Servile) runs back with the original series, but I'm looking forward to trying out a Guardian or full-on Shaper this time with the cool new creation skills/features. Justice for serviles! ✊

alhoon, that's huge! I will never be able to take back those 15 hours of my life spent smashing my face against the screen to move those infernal little buggers around a grid pixel by pixel, but that sure isn't your fault. Really pleased to see there seems to be a simple and completely effective solution - thanks for sharing! Going to look into this later for my own game. I do suggest that just your detailed instructions on this would be great to have prominently linked somewhere in the good ol' Strategy Central when that goes up. UPDATE: Yep, I just tested your trick in game for a few minutes, and it works perfectly, both for fyoras and cryoas (and I'm sure other pairs of creatures including the base creation and color-swap version). Got to admit I really, really wish Jeff had thought to explain this easy trick to me and saved me a lot of time (I have to assume he was aware of the cr_scaling stat) when I emailed him a couple weeks ago to report some bugs that unfortunately didn't seem to be caught in beta as well as the suggestion for smaller fyoras. I think he said there and/or on one of his fun demo streams later when someone else also raised the issue that smaller fyoras would be tough on his eyes or something, lol. Eh, all's well that ends well. Thanks again for the assist!

Thanks, Slarty, and yes, the G1:M fyora graphics have only been around since G4. That said, as I'll indicate in my new topic after the game drops, anyone with the skill and inclination to try to adapt the files for other purposes (e.g. changing critter color, using with G1-G3 if even possible, etc.) will of course be free to take a look!

Thanks! But if the moderators do end up linking this in a mod list, could they please wait a couple days until I post the mod with installation instructions and brief notes in a new topic under the new dedicated Geneforge 1 Mutagen forum? (Again, I'm assuming from past experience such a forum will be created.)

Of course! The download isn't blocked for me in either Firefox or Edge - and the OP used the same site for their upload - but I did need to create a free account somewhere, so here it is on Mediafire. Please let me know if you're still having issues! EDIT: removed obsolete link to files made redundant by alhoon's much better modding solution below (i.e. editing the "cr_scaling" stat in the GFitemschars.txt file in the game "Scripts" folder).

I've now finished the job to reduce fyoras and cryoas to 60% of their original monstrous size; the temporary link to the .zip with the seven files is below. This took me 15 hours of painstaking manual edits in paint.net, so I won't be doing any more work on this, but I'm posting the files here for the next couple days in case anyone miraculously comes up with a very quick and simple method to correct the slight "wobbling" in the idle animations (per file G2500.png, as I detailed above) that I wasn't able to fully fix by my method. After the game releases on the 24th, I'll post a permanent link to the files in a new forum topic, under the new dedicated Geneforge 1 - Mutagen forum I assume the admins will create at that time. For now, enjoy trying this in the demo! EDIT: removed obsolete link to files made redundant by alhoon's much better modding solution below (i.e. editing the "cr_scaling" stat in the GFitemschars.txt file in the game "Scripts" folder).

I agree re: the cones not aligning perfectly not being a big deal, and I can even live with the fyoras not being perfectly still on their feet as long as they're close, assuming I can't figure out TADOS' layer trick to help me align them better and such better alignment is even possible. So... does this mean I need to subject myself to another 6 hours of pain adjusting the remaining three files (he asked, hoping the answer was "no")? (heh) If so, I'll try to get it done over the next week and upload all seven files to a new topic as the final version of the 60% fyora/cryoa mod as far as I can take it.

Thanks for the input, TADOS! Lining up the fyoras' feet is exactly what I've been trying to do, but doing it precisely through a manual process has proven impossible, at least for me. I'm curious to hear alhoon's thoughts on your other ideas on this if he/she has time to review my uploaded files showing my progress so far. As for the fireball positions, I don't think shifting the fyora would work, as that would cause the smaller fyoras to be placed too far up within the grid square they're supposed to be positioned in. I'd also prefer not to change the fyora body posture/limb length etc., but would rather keep them at vanilla proportions, just smaller. I also don't have any plans to change the color or make any changes beyond simply reducing the sprite size to 60% of the original (which I've tested in game and personally strongly prefer), but I hope to eventually post the smaller critters in a new forum topic, and open things up to other users to make other changes they might like to see themselves (i.e. setting sizes other than my preferred 60%, changing color, changing other sprites, etc.).

OK, I see what you mean about the cryoas, shadows, and image quality - bummer. Here are the four out of the seven files I've done so far. Maybe you could take a look and see if you have ideas to fix the two issues I'm seeing with my method ("wobbling" and fire/frost breath sourcing from the wrong height, though I assume the latter issue could only be fixed by editing separate breath image files, if that's even possible)? EDIT: removed obsolete link to files made redundant by alhoon's much better modding solution below (i.e. editing the "cr_scaling" stat in the GFitemschars.txt file in the game "Scripts" folder).

Sounds good and no problem; please take your time as you need to - the game doesn't launch for another couple weeks anyway!

Actually, I was thinking that centering them within each box might itself cause problems where the fyora idle animations might have them popping up/down/left/right slightly from one frame to the next, but you clearly know what you're doing better than I, so if you're not seeing any issues in game, go with it!

Just had a thought - when you say your method will "shrink the fyora per box", that might cause a more severe pixel misalignment/"wobbling" issue if the fyoras aren't bottom-justified - i.e. if the position of their feet within each box isn't perfectly aligned top to bottom across each grid row within each image file. Aligning them perfectly in all cases seems impossible through my manual method - moving various individual images by one pixel and switching back to the game repeatedly to test is what took so many of my 6 hours for the first 4 files, but I still couldn't get them exactly still on their feet while idling and finally gave up. Not sure if I'm making sense or you've already accounted for this, but FYI!

Yeah, I think something else might be going on with your setup. With my method (still with only 4 of the 7 files done - I'd frankly prefer to wait on your coded solution if you still plan to try that, since my method is excruciatingly tedious), cryoas are blue, and I have shadows. I did expect that the flame/frost attacks would still be sourced from a bit above the smaller critters' heads since the game still expects them to be spat out by Godzilla-sized creations, and that's also the case with my method, but I'm also nowhere near skilled enough to know how that side issue could be fixed, if it can. Hope you can manage though!

Really - please do!! Again, reducing the fyora sprites to 60% of their original size would be fantastic. I did get through 4 of the 7 files (G2500 through G2506), but as I mentioned earlier I'm very amateur at this, and ended up manually adjusting them the way I described, which so far has taken me 6 hours! Even then, since I'm manually copy-pasting each reduced critter into the original grid, the pixels don't always line up exactly, so especially for the G2500 idle animations which feature 6 idles for each of the 8 facing directions, the fyoras "wobble" a bit in game. I could actually live with the effect if I had to - having smaller fyoras is much more important to me - but if you can do this a) without this glitch and b) in a way that only takes you 5 minutes instead of me at least another 6 hours, that would be awesome! So... yes please! I'll keep an eye here, and maybe we can open a new topic with your mod files if you like once you finish. Thanks so much for this.

Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately, I've been reading the paint.net documentation, and can't find a way to remove the grid lines as the first step, since the image appears to be just a single baked-in layer including both the grid and the critters. Any ideas? OK, I think I have it! There's no need to remove the black grid lines. I just made a copy of the entire image reduced to 60%, then copy/pasted each 60%-sized lizard from within each grid box back to each original 100% grid box. I've gotten through 1 of 7 files so far and briefly tested in game, and while some of the animation changes may be a pixel off in alignment (I'm manually copy/pasting so far), this might actually work. I assume if there were encoding issues my new resized sprites wouldn't have appeared in game at all, so I guess that's not a problem. Will keep working away and see what the final first pass results look like. P.S. I don't want to hijack this mod thread, so if an admin wants to/wants me to move this into its own topic, please do or let me know! It may not go much further anyway if I can't figure this out, though.

Wow, I really like this - nice work! I'm assuming Jeff went with the green as a throwback to the original (which had a horrifying, nauseating shade of green that still haunts my dreams), but I prefer your blue scheme. I do have an art modding request for you or anyone who might see this who is capable and interested. As I and at least a few others in the Kickstarter comments and on Jeff's recent Steam demo streams have noted, the fyora sprites seem ridiculously large, especially compared to the player and other creations, and considering the fyora description calling them "small" lizards. The current Tyrannosaurus-sized fyoras are very jarring, IMO. Anyway, it seems Jeff isn't interested in addressing this (he mentioned during a stream that the huge sprites are easier on his "old eyes", ha), and although I think I've identified the relevant fyora graphics files (G2500.png through G2506.png, though it's possible I'm missing some relevant files and/or some files might be for the player's fyoras and others for enemy fyoras, the latter being a bit smaller), I have no idea where to even begin with shrinking these sprites given their format (with a large number of sprites arranged in a grid within each file). Long story short, if anyone here could reduce the size of all of the fyora sprites to about 60% of the original, or explain to me in great detail how exactly I could do this myself, I'd be hugely grateful. I don't look forward to playing through the remake with these monstrosities - I need my cute li'l lizard bros! Thanks for reading, and for any help that can be provided.