Paladin's Cove beta release, and feedback

As I said above in a few places, in my attempt to avoid laying it on too thick in dialogs about "the curse on the land" and "the evil that brought down the Empire", I may have made it less obvious that I should have.

But...

Spoiler

There IS a forced dialog at the Crypt Cave where your meet the historian, Evian Riss, after you find all 5 glyphs. He greets you and tells you he's translated the glyphs and you have to perform a ritual to adventure beneath. In that dialog he says this, which you will always see:

"This complex extends far below this small entry room, undiscovered until a few days ago. Everyone here agrees that the source of power bringing the curse originates beneath us."​

He also recommends you talk with the other factions gathered there in the Crypt Cave. Among the others there could be the pilgrim Zolroth, someone from the Archaic Society, and others. You can ask them about what you should do about the source of power. They will have conflicting opinions. Some will say to destroy it, some will say to save it, some will be cautiously neutral.

But there should be no doubt what's going on when you talk with the first ghost (which is a forced dialog), before she escorts you to the other side. She spills all the beans about what's happening, in an overly long, overly obvious monologue. She speaks about the "evil leaking over to our world from the other side, which started the whole problem." This dialog will always be seen, but maybe you glossed over it. It ends with her saying this:

"If the temple can be destroyed, the suffering will end, and the land will be freed."​

Finally, when you return, the pilgrim Zolroth will be waiting there for you, He'll ask you how the journey went, and say this, if you destroyed the Temple:

"The evil is gone, sir, you've done it. Centuries of suffering and decay are now in past. Most people could not feel the change, but those of us sensitive to such things knew the moment it happened."

"As time passes, the land will flourish once again. Beauty and wonder will arise around us that has not been seen in countless generations."
​

FIX: I'll fix the ghost, so that she brings up a dialog when you arrive on the other side. She'll make herself known and say something like "I'll be here waiting for you, when you wish to return home."

But keep in mind for now, that after you return this part of the story is mostly unwritten/unfinished. There is a patch-work rushed ending to Chapter 3, and most of Chapter 4 is not done. This is where the ramifications of what you did or did not do on "the other side" will take effect, once it's written.

TBD

 

You are 100% correct with that analysis.

It was indeed intended to be a break from all the role-playing and walking around in the town. And a chance to flex your muscles for a few levels, with serious combat against some higher-level critters and NPC spellcasters.

It was also a chance to take a trip back to the original game, revisiting some of the NPC's and storylines, and tying it into the Paladin's Cove world, just for a fun twist.

When Chapter 4 is finished, much of it will be heavy role-playing.

 

Yeah, I like that.

I was able to leave the island and go to the Inn, and if I returned to the Island then they are still there waiting for me.

It was only when I traveled back to the Cove that the quest broke.

I am OK if the quest get's botched by returning to the Cove without them, so long as the warning is added. Can you fix it so the logbook changes this quest to Botched if you do that?

It should be noted that now there are three boats on the island:
1 = the boat you used to get from the mainland (Inn) over to the island.
2= the boat from cave to get the big boat
3= the big boat.

maybe the reference to #1 and #2 can stay as a "boat", but the important #3 boat should be referred to as a "ship" in all dialogs. There should be some bigger distinction for what boats are being referred to in the quest description and in the dialogs.

If you think about it, there should be no reason why we couldn't ferry people back using the little boat back to the Inn, and even escort them to the Cove from the Inn.

I can't remember from when i played this portion of the game (that was weeks/months ago) that I even knew that all the captives were going to big ship. As far as I knew, at that time, that the only way to get off the island was the little boat that took me back to the end.

When the captives asked if I had a boat to get them off of the island, and I said "yes", I was probably assuming we'd be using the boat to get back to the Inn. Did I gloss over anything that pointed to the fact that big ship will be usable for anything?

another thought: If we used the boat at the Inn to get to the Island, and then we used the big ship to get back to the Cove, then that should really mean that the boat at the Inn should no longer be there since we left it at the Island.

 

When I finished all this and left the Crypt Cave, I was quite surprised that everyone was gone.

I was really expecting a big battle there.

Not even a thank you (or "you'll be sorry") from anyone that was original out there.

Where did everyone go?

Spoiler

What happens if you kill the pilgrim?

When I first met him outside of the Crossroads, I really wanted to kill him.

He handed my ass to me, so I reloaded and figured that I shouldn't kill him.

But I really want to.

I don't trust him.

 

Thanks.

I am not into these big battles.

It did appear that there is a way to walk through there with minimal side-battles, but you'd have to go the correct path and I don't know if that was intentional. and I don't know if I'd remember that for future playthroughs unless I played it enough to remember all this.

 

I've been reading this thread recently and as I currently only have a laptop that will run older games (Dell, Windows 10, integrated graphics) I thought I'd install ToEE and then play this mod.

Fresh install of ToEE from GoG, then Co8 mod without the additional content, then this mod. I activated the mod and started the game and got the splash screen with Atari, Troika and WotC logos, then when the left-to-right scrolling screen starts the menu is not there; instead there's a small box of weird characters and strange lines running from one corner to another. If I mouse-over that square, sometimes things light up, but nothing else happens no matter where I click.

I figured it might be the resolution, so I edited the ToEE.cfg file to 1920 x 1080, which is my screen's native resolution and that didn't help.

I went back and deactivated the module and tried starting ToEE and somehow clicking somewhere led to a screen where there was a single character at the center, with weird geometry all over the place and no way to do anything.

I'm sorry if this is off-topic, because I suspect if I uninstall and reinstall ToEE and try to play it with just the Co8 patch I'll get the same thing but I couldn't find anything on the issue in about an hour of searching through troubleshooting threads here and I throw myself on your collective mercy.

The real solution may be to bite the bullet and send my more robust laptop (on which I've successfully installed ToEE and C08 with the added content) to get the power jack input fixed but I also realized it's possible I'm just missing something very obvious.

For reference, this quote from Marc in another thread from 2021 mirrors my experience, "Every other laptop I've run it on just jumps into full screen 800x600 when the game starts, and then jumps back to it's main resolution after I quit. Very nice. That also happens when I run old games fom that era on the new laptop. It jumps to 800x600 when running, then reverts back. " Though in my case I've only run a couple of games on this laptop, neither of which switch resolutions, I think: Knights of the Chalice 2, Drova: Foresaken Kin.

 

Is your laptop a 64 bit machine by any chance?

 

When I had trouble with Win10, then I went into the TFE-X screen and from the menu I select to run in Window Mode and all is well - thanks to another member here making this suggestion to me when I had trouble with the fresh installation not working for me.

 

It is 64 bit, yes. Win 10. Native resolution is 1920 x 1080. I just noticed TFE-X is 32. I assume that's the issue and I'll do some more digging. Windowed mode didn't solve the issue.

Some weirdness: after restarting my computer, in addition to ToEE and Paladin's Cove, Co8 shows up as a module. Activated it and tried to play and same deal. So I set my monitor's display to 1280/1020 and chose that resolution in TFE-X and no change when starting Paladin's Cove. The logo screens run as intended, then the weird graphical glitch happens, then the scrolling screen starts and it blinks a bit. Sometimes when trying to play ToEE the intro film starts and is fine but if I close that with the space bar or esc. key the graphical glitch returns.

 

Leave your Co8 set to Paladin's Cove and try running ToEE through Temple plus

 

Thank you, Pygmy, that did the trick. I have the module running. Now I just have to figure out how to select cantrips to finish character creation on a wizard, but I'll puzzle that out.

Edit to say I'm 20 minutes in and I am amazed. Thank you, Marc.

Edit the second: just to rant, after all of your help and beating my head against the wall of my own ignorance someone in my office managed to download ransomware and as a result all of our laptops have been replaced. Now I'm on Windows 11 and I am simply going to wait until I fix my personal gaming laptop to try again. In sum: me dumb, you guys: awesome.

 

@FDR4PREZ: Thatnks

I'll go over all the dialog from that quest, and make sure there's a clear distinction between the words "boat" and "ship", and when and where they are used. It can make things a bit awkward and confusing at times.

I'll make that dialog crystal clear that it's the smuggler's ship you're talking about.

Yes, you can sell the ship after returning it to Paladin's Cove. Or gift it to the captives. There are no repercussions yet to either decision, but eventually there will be, when the final chapter is written.

It's those pesky faeries!
Or maybe it was a few pirates that survived, and they snuck away with the boat when you weren't looking?

Since the boat is part of the map artwork, it would be a lot of work to make it moveable in that way.

 

So apparently this is required to be done for ending CH3.

I've done that now, and I was able to progress to the end of Chapter 3.

 

Oh, NOW you want a big battle! Yes, I did have one planned (depending on what your decision was on the other side), but I decided to keep your "return home" a bit low-key and mysterious.

It's implied you were gone for quite some time (at least a few weeks), and everyone assumed you were dead and they gave up on the whole thing. I'm still deciding if there is some sort of time variance between the two worlds; perhaps... many years passed. That would help explain where everyone went. I'm still deciding on all that.

This is where the story becomes quite thin, and is greatly unwritten. And the player is left "hanging" to some degree. The conversation with Zolroth the pilgrim is meant to fill in that gap and explain what effect your decision had on this world. He implies that he can sense the subtle change from what you did, but it make take many years to be noticed by most people. So, you did a great thing, but there's no welcome party.

So, with all that in mind, the full repercussions of your actions will require writing MANY MANY lines of dialogs, and implementing MANY MANY changes to each person in town who knew about (or was affected by) the change. The simple part is how they might respond to you as you suggested ("Thank you", "Where were you, we thought you were dead", "You'll pay for what you did", etc.). The real changes will take time to program, and it will eventually re-define the whole town, everyone in it, and the rest of the story. It's a lot of work, and it's where I decided to draw the line about a year ago, and gather up what I had and release the mod with a somewhat satisfying conclusion.

Until all that is done, the pilgrim's dialog all you'll really see after you return home.

Yes, if he has been killed, you'll miss his monologue which explains what happened. And your return home becomes even more confusing and unsatisfying. So I'll put in a backup NPC to relate the same information if Zolroth is dead (probably Evian Riss, the historian). That NPC can repeat the essence of the pilgrim's monologue. I'll make sure this is in my upcoming second beta release, coming soon.