Welcome to the Temple of the Wayward Heart. Few of Nova's Cape citizens visit the temple as most of the population is content living in sin and iniquity. Priestess Emmalynn of the goddess LeLune needs your help. There is an outbreak of undead activity in the Badlands and if it goes unchecked it could threaten Nova's Cape.
Module Progress:
- I spent most of the week tying up some loose ends in Nova's Cape.
- Ugh, I also wasted two days trying to build a roulette script for the casino that ended up not working at all. Apparently there are system delays when you have a random 'Text Appears When' Script on 37 conversation entries. You would make a fortune if you kept betting Green 0 because it was coming up about 25% of the time! I ended up having to scrap my script but luckily I found a decent roulette script on the vault that I was able to tweak.
- I have two major areas left to do that are in connection with Nova's Cape - the Badlands and the Magular Mage School. When those are done then the Nova's Cape section of the module will be complete and ready to be beta tested. So it will probably be a couple more weeks before I finish those.
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Ohh more undead stuff =) apart from that does Lelune act like the anti cat killing quests where you can raise morality? If you need any more beta testers i'd like to help if possible
ReplyDeleteIt's possible but I don't want to give anything away :). I'd be glad to have you as a beta tester, jabajack. I'll be posting a request for testers in the next couple of weeks when I've finished the Nova's Cape section.
ReplyDeleteI'm in a bit of a silly mood today, so when I read through the update post I got the following images.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read 'Magular Mage School" I had a little mental image flash up of a group of nerdy apprentices sat around talking about how to pull girls, until on suggests summoning a succubus as it would be easier than actually going to the pub and talking to a girl.
The Undead I just pictured the PC coming across an old senial fellow that died a few months ago and has forgotten his a zombie and thinks the PC is his daughter, and keeps following her around talking to her, in a slow and slurred zombie fashion - complaining she's not dressed properly, and why don't she visit him any more.
Hey I just wanted to thank you for posting these updates here. There's a few projects I'm interested in and I never know if they've died or not. So this is a wonderful change of pace.
ReplyDeleteIf we say pretty pretty please, will you in one of the later parts of the game enable the PC to buy a flying ship of her own? One she can live in and travel about in? Maybe even upgrade by hiring servants and guards for it?
ReplyDeleteJust thought as I typed this - an airship race could be fun, one where you have a task to do at each checkpoint along the route, and you could, prior to the race, upgrade your airship to gain an advantage/disadvantage at the checkpoints - eg, making it faster would get you to checkpoint 1 with fewer competitors to face, but at checkpoint 2 the speed makes navigating obsticle more difficult, or adding armour would protect you from the catapults at checkpoint 4 but make you slower so have more competition at checkpoint 1. - what do you think?
I love the idea of an airship race! Unfortunately, those are stationary placeables in the game :(
DeleteI can promise that she will be taking some airship rides and there will be some rather interesting events that take place while traveling.
Well, one way you could do it, would be to run the race over a number of areas, so rather than the placeable moving around an area, the PC jumps from area to area to represent the moving of the airship along the race. For example.
DeletePC 'talks' to the controls of the airship, "up ahead you can see stormclouds blocking the way. Will you chance flying through them, or skirt the edge though that will take longer". If the PC goes through, they are than ported to a location that has a storm effect but otherwise looks the same. with lightening stricks hitting the deck - and the PC will need to run around dealing with the ropes as the storm damages things. The PC would make a few skill/reflex checks where failure would increase the stored variable up 1 or 5 points (100 pnts in the variable means a different airship crosses the line first) or take damage. If the PC went round than they would get a set increase to the variable.
You could set up a number of these 'obsticles' and 'choices'.
Aother for example, could be "as you leave checkpoint 1 you see you are entering a series of tall mountain valleys, you can either raise above them, take them carefully, or go as fast as possible through them." again each choice would have either more time to the variable or require skill/save rolls or have the PC need to do something (ie going too fast the ship gets caught on the side of the mountain, the PC needs to go down onto the mountain to free up the trapped parts of the ship, whilst doing so, she is attacked.
I think it could work rather well. And at the end the final score in the variable would determine if the ship wins, comes 2nd, or looses badly.
Admittedly it wouldn't be a quick or easy build for the race. But could be fun with attacks by rival ships, storms, repairs, taking chances on speed rates, shortcuts, etc etc.
Count Marcus,
Deleteyou could try building prototype for such race yourself and see the exponential scripting and mapping complexity growth; not to mention how long it would take for players to understand all the quirks. Embedding it in an interesting way in the gameworld is another story... See the card game in Adam Miller's Demon for an example.
I also wonder why anyone never implements (much easier to code) sources of income such as horse/dog racing or even circus show for those gifted with acrobatic skills, animal empathy or brave enough to wrestle ferocious animals.
Madam, it's nice you keep posting updates regarding the development cycle and new/cool locations, but I'd rather read some more technical details about your module, if you don't mind sharing them.
ReplyDelete-Do you have the whole story written already or you make/fix things up ad hoc?
-Are you planning to keep the ending open for part three? Will there be multiple endings? Will there be any need (story-wise) to play the first module before starting the second or will the player be allowed to override everything from start?
-Will the story be as linear as previous installment or more flexible? What hack&slash/role-playing ratio you want to achieve?
-How strong will role-playing elements be (factions, skill checks, C&C, mutually exclusive quests)?
-Will the "evil" storyline somehow fit with part one? Won't it feel out of character to suddenly become a cat killer (seriously?)
-Will the story revolve around single hub or be distributed all over the realm?
-How strong will the magic setting be? I liked the more down-to-earth feel in part one.
-How are you going to handle the adult content? It was done OK in part one, with only drawback of being mostly visual.
It seems that you are showing great improvement here in regard to both mapmaking (the city no longer looks devoid of life) and ideas (underwater setting). If you manage to keep the story unique (or in the very least interesting) and rewarding for the player, you will have a great opportunity to deliver a fine piece of art. Good luck and keep up the good work.
Thanks! I'll do my best to answer:
Delete-Do you have the whole story written already or you make/fix things up ad hoc?
I have an outline of the story written up. I do ad hoc building as I'm going along but the main story is set.
-Are you planning to keep the ending open for part three? Will there be multiple endings? Will there be any need (story-wise) to play the first module before starting the second or will the player be allowed to override everything from start?
The story could possibly have a part three, but I don't have any plans to at the moment. There will be multiple ending possibilities.
-Will the story be as linear as previous installment or more flexible? What hack&slash/role-playing ratio you want to achieve?
It is much less linear. I'd say 25%hack&slasg to 75% roleplay
-How strong will role-playing elements be (factions, skill checks, C&C, mutually exclusive quests)?
A little of all. There will particularly be emphasis on alignment shifts. You could end up completely evil or a saint.
-Will the "evil" storyline somehow fit with part one? Won't it feel out of character to suddenly become a cat killer (seriously?)
The evil storyline will fit (or at least doesn't contradict). The only reason she will kill the cat is to eventually lead up to a valuable reward. There's a reason, but the player will have to decide if it is worth it.
-Will the story revolve around single hub or be distributed all over the realm?
Different parts of the realm.
-How strong will the magic setting be? I liked the more down-to-earth feel in part one.
It exists but not overwhelming.
-How are you going to handle the adult content? It was done OK in part one, with only drawback of being mostly visual.
I had considered adding a choice in the module to opt out of the visuals. It's just too much to code. It's an adult module so it will have the visuals. The sex will only happen if the player makes obvious decisions that lead up to that.
Wow, covered all the questions I curious of. I'm excited to hear the role playing will be more extensive and especially interested in darker elements.
DeleteI'm also in agreement regarding the adult visuals, I think you could have gone with just dialog and it would have been fine, human imagination will always beat the out dated graphics, and in the long run would probably be better for multiple play through.
So what do you mean by different parts of the realm? From the look of it, It looks like its mostly City Adventurish
Anyways the screenshots look really good. Good luck!
Madam, thank you for your answers.
ReplyDeleteIt made me however come up with more role-playing issues/pointers:
Will those shifts successively push PC towards one of the endings or player will be able to change their alignment many times in different directions? What about keeping neutral (aka "it's not my problem") attitude? Will your companions/allies/opponents/commoners/etc take notice of this and react accordingly? Will some quests and dialogue options be also affected?
Regarding the adult content: I'm fine with the animations themselves; I just wanted to mention an observation that they were used in part one as core of the "full" intimate encounters instead of their destined function, which is to provide amusing background for dialogue (something DEFINITELY better than plain black-out). Now, I'm not calling for an ADWR clone, but utilizing diverse (and perhaps hidden or unexpected) scenes as rewards for role-playing and gameworld exploration is much more immersive (thus adding to replayability factor) than cutscene-style playback without any means of interaction.
Speaking of ADWR (since its influence clearly manifests in your module), I hope you won't commit the same horrible mistakes Valine did in ADWR2, and keeping the non-overwhelming magic setting is a good start. Just be careful with things like "redemption", underdark and missing/to-be-rescued characters as it is unfortunately pretty easy to end up with typical and cliche-filled (read: plain boring) storyline that plagues a lot of modules.
I agree here, a mixture of dialogue and animation will benefit both and make it easier for you. In regard to ADWR's missing to be rescued characters, this mechanic could be used in the finale quest/area to help determine the ending (including options that allow alignment shifts for player choice).
DeleteHello. You might make decisions that would be considered evil or good early in the module but that doesn't mean you will be stuck on that path. Just like real life, you can make later decisions that would be the reverse.
DeleteThe character will be going through an underdark, but I'm certain that the experience will be different and unlike any other module. My main emphasis is to keep the storyline interesting. There may also be a rescue mission or sorts but that won't be the main theme of the module.