*NEW* Suggestion Thread... Curtiousy of ... Other Games

[The Man In Black]

Thought you meant someONE, and he was ficticious

 

[Thothie]

I'd recommend exploring Orochi's model pack.

mmmm... cheeeeze...

PS. I think you have SPARTA (the meanest, gayest, military state ever devised) mixed up with SPARDA - some fictional character of which I'm not familiar

 

[The Man In Black]

I'd recommend exploring Orochi's model pack.

mmmm... cheeeeze...

PS. I think you have SPARTA (the meanest, gayest, military state ever devised) mixed up with SPARDA - some fictional character of which I'm not familiar

Devil May Cry

 

[evilsquirrel]

the keys are like - right next to eachother

 

[BioRage]

o.o

 

[Frelt Thornback]

This game needs more depth...it feels so vague.

Spruce it up with some D&D, make it so that way more characters talk, and so that you can have a menu with various options of different thing you can say...I dunno, go play KOTR if you dont know what i'm talking about.

Really, a lack of almost any plot immersion is this games biggest short coming. Not too few weapons and enemies.

 

[Thothie]

Go hail Forsuth or Semblin, they are both very talkative, as are some of the other NPCs. (Use 'hail' in local chat )

 

[Lanethan]

Game needs an overhaul on conversation systems, definitely. It's VERY hard to converse with the talkative npcs (Sembelbin, for example), and you often miss a lot of what's said.
Believe me, there's a whole lot of plot that I wanted to put into these npcs, but as it is it's too hard to have a conversation with one.

 

[Thothie]

Any suggestions?

In *my* case, I can hardly read them due to the text display bug, plus my wide-screen mode seems to make more of the text run off the edge of the screen than it does on most clients.

But when I can read them, they don't talk so fast that I can't catch it (about 2-3 seconds per line, depending on the NPC).

Granted, Forsuth is a little blathery - I think that's why they kicked him out of Gatecity though.

One thing I was thinking, was setting up a list of diaoluge we need, and see if we can get the community to do voices (since I can clean up most crappy audio recordings). Main issue being, the wav file format we are required to use for that makes it very unweildy. I dunno if I can allow the scripts to play MP3's through the hard code recompile... But that hard code compile is looking more and more unobtainable every day.

 

[Frelt Thornback]

There should be a talk menue for all talking characters, not just shop ones and few others.

As for that guy in the temple, he says the same thing no matter which of your bracketed prompts you choose, and he only says a few sentences. Even with him, we still dont have any where near as much talk as most RPGs do.

Also, it might be nice to have more mission like events, in the same ilk as those which exist in Helena (I.E. Maybe "A small band of orcs has entered the Thornlands", and then 6-12 of them come out of Hera or MS:Cave).

 

[Thothie]

Hm... If he's saying the same thing regardless of which bracketed text you respond to the script must have gotten buggard somehow. I'll have to look into that...

There is an NPC interaction menu (F11 - yeah, I realize that key is out of the way - not my doing) - mostly it only deals with quest oriented stuff. I maybe able to expand on it, and have it set to a more accessible default key come 1.1

There are occasional orc raids in Thornlands - although you don't get a big text display warning you about it like in Helena. Suppose I could ripent that into the map updates. (Maybe raise the chance of it happening back to MS 1.35 standards while I'm at it - 5% just seems too rare.)

 

[Frelt Thornback]

I dont think i've ever seen more then one orc at a time in Thornlands in the same area. Occasionally a warrior one will pop in and start killing a boar somewhere, or that archer one will respawn, but certainly one orc doesnt constitute the kind of raiding I mentioned.

Also while were speaking of the Thornlands, they were cooler when they had bears. Though I realize that might scare low levels out of them, and one of the Thornlands main benefits as a map, is that it can house players of disparate levels. That being the case, it would never the less be nice to break the monotony of hog and cub slaughter with a full blown mother bear once every now and then.

The orcs would of course make the map harder to; most players can take a few orcs or a bear or so, if a player on the server is too new to, someone else on it probably wont be.

 

[The Man In Black]

I dont think i've ever seen more then one orc at a time in Thornlands in the same area. Occasionally a warrior one will pop in and start killing a boar somewhere, or that archer one will respawn, but certainly one orc doesnt constitute the kind of raiding I mentioned.

Also while were speaking of the Thornlands, they were cooler when they had bears. Though I realize that might scare low levels out of them, and one of the Thornlands main benefits as a map, is that it can house players of disparate levels. That being the case, it would never the less be nice to break the monotony of hog and cub slaughter with a full blown mother bear once every now and then.

The orcs would of course make the map harder to; most players can take a few orcs or a bear or so, if a player on the server is too new to, someone else on it probably wont be.

1. There's an EVENT of an orc raid where many come, it isn't an everymap thing You'll see a message when it happens

2. Also, there are bear cubs, but you have to kill a lot of boars/ferocious boars

 

[BioRage]

Hm... If he's saying the same thing regardless of which bracketed text you respond to the script must have gotten buggard somehow. I'll have to look into that...

There is an NPC interaction menu (F11 - yeah, I realize that key is out of the way - not my doing) - mostly it only deals with quest oriented stuff. I maybe able to expand on it, and have it set to a more accessible default key come 1.1

There are occasional orc raids in Thornlands - although you don't get a big text display warning you about it like in Helena. Suppose I could ripent that into the map updates. (Maybe raise the chance of it happening back to MS 1.35 standards while I'm at it - 5% just seems too rare.)

1) That third person red dude has got to go, i need more room for my screenie ^_^...

2) Possibly a new hud re-do? (SKin wise)

3)(Tell me where the rune shield lies!)

4) Whatever man =\ (Bank? Pet system?)

5) I'll think of some more, but im to tierd to think atm.

 

[The Man In Black]

There will be no getting rid of the red dude. An option to turn him off, maybe. But I lurvles him

 

[BioRage]

There will be no getting rid of the red dude. An option to turn him off, maybe. But I lurvles him

he no use theres a 3rd char button -.-

 

[The Man In Black]

I LURVLES HIM

 

[BioRage]

I LURVLES HIM

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[The Man In Black]

I TAPPED DAT

 

[Thothie]

I've still not found a var for the "little red dude", but I did find some useful vars under cvarlist ms_txthud that help make the text more readable.

But yeah, there is an orcraid in Thornlands, it involves I think about a dozen orcs, one of which is an Orc Flayer (or blackhand berserker, one or the other) - there's even a chance for a little treasure afterwards - but the chance of it happening per map is 5% - and only if you walk through a certain area.

The orcs would of course make the map harder to; most players can take a few orcs or a bear or so, if a player on the server is too new to, someone else on it probably wont be.

The orcs do tend to slaughter all the nubs when they show up, but Thornlands is intended to be a "n00b zone" so I don't think we'd want it happening all the time.

It happens so often, it's almost a problem in Helena, or it used to be. I noticed a few days ago, Helena got hit by a heavy orc raid (catapaults and all) - and the guards actually repelled it on their own! >< - This is very odd, as I didn't buff the guards at all - I just changed the way they are orginized (since they are now on the new AI). I guess concentrated fire did the trick.

There should be a talk menue for all talking characters, not just shop ones and few others.

If I get the chance, I'll see if I can add some default options to the NPC interact menu. Most NPC's respond to "job" and "rumor" - could add those to the menu by default maybe. I think I'd have to go through each NPC to ensure those without job/rumor responses don't get the menu though.

 

[Lanethan]

Unfortunately, to address the underlying issue a lot more would have to be done. The problem with the npcs is not that they're necessarily hard to ask for jobs or rumors, but that they simply don't interact through text nearly enough.
What I would like to see is something along the lines of Baldur's Gate (or more recently NWN and KotOR) conversations with npcs, though of course that would require hardcode changes like nobodies business. As my primary skill is character/world design, writing conversations with npcs has always been the job I wanted to do for MS, but since we've never had a robust conversation system, it was never meant to be.
Alas.

 

[Thothie]

that would require hardcode changes like nobodies business

You'd be amazed what I can do through the scripts...

I *could* do something like NWN's multi-selection menu, through the existing character menu. (You'd have to pull it up and click on it though, I dun think I could menu numbered shortcuts).

Couldn't do the KOTR thing where it zooms in on the character's face and gives you nice neat multiple selection options directly beneath it though.

Such a thing maybe possible through the hard code - but not by my hands. I could *almost* do it through a combination of map and script (could stick a func_camera in front of the PC that'd zoom on him when you clicked use on him) - but that'd be impossible to do for every NPC, needless to say.

Edit:
You know... I've checked it out... If we made audio speeches for all the NPC's and kept the total audio time used to 30 minutes between all of them - we'd only add 40MB to the game... (mind you game is about 220MB zipped, I think)

...I think I will setup a thread for getting some voices for this game after all. I think voice interaction alone would add quite a bit to it... Soon. I'd have to leave some speeches out do to spoilers though (maybe view by request only)

 

[BioRage]

that would require hardcode changes like nobodies business

You'd be amazed what I can do through the scripts...

I *could* do something like NWN's multi-selection menu, through the existing character menu. (You'd have to pull it up and click on it though, I dun think I could menu numbered shortcuts).

Couldn't do the KOTR thing where it zooms in on the character's face and gives you nice neat multiple selection options directly beneath it though.

Such a thing maybe possible through the hard code - but not by my hands. I could *almost* do it through a combination of map and script (could stick a func_camera in front of the PC that'd zoom on him when you clicked use on him) - but that'd be impossible to do for every NPC, needless to say.

Edit:
You know... I've checked it out... If we made audio speeches for all the NPC's and kept the total audio time used to 30 minutes between all of them - we'd only add 40MB to the game... (mind you game is about 220MB zipped, I think)

...I think I will setup a thread for getting some voices for this game after all. I think voice interaction alone would add quite a bit to it... Soon. I'd have to leave some speeches out do to spoilers though (maybe view by request only)

o

 

[BioRage]

BTW, for instance, you know how the monsters i think are spawned when you load the map, is it possible when you walk pass a way point, it flags down x orcs ini the location you are in, rather then them walking arouind = lag

 

[Thothie]

If that were possible, I woulda done it by now. Suffice to say there are a great number of issues involved that seem to make it impossible. Closest thing I can do, is keep them in 'as idle as possible' mode until they spot a player.

...Speaking of which, I did discover that the new AI was:
- 1 Going into hi active alert upon even Hearing an enemy of any sort (player or otherwise)
- 2 when said orc went into hi active alert - he'd also send all the orcs near him into high-active alert as per the 'alert-ally' function.
- 3 They would in turn agitate orcs near them, and so on, and so on...

So, I managed to get rid of that, and it seemed to help Daragoth and MSCave quite a bit... I Still intend to recompile the three offending maps, but I dunno if I'll finish that by the end of the month, between the other scripts and failed attempts to get the damn thing to compile. (Latter of which is at least on semi-hold until I manage to snag a VS 2003)

Also...

Sembelbin IS fubarbed to high hell - and I'm seriously confused as to why I've not noticed, nor heard of it until now.

So... I completely re-wrote his chat scripts, and added a sh*t load of new ones, and I added some default speech menus that most all NPC's now share... Sadly they only seem to work with a very few NPC's atm. I'll have to iron that out as I get the chance. Plus I need to run Sembelbin's new dialoge past Lanethan, since most of it centers around the background mythology. (Loreldians, Apostles, Lor Malgoriand, gods & goddesses, etc, etc.)