The work has been going in a tremendous pace over here, and I must say it's pretty amazing. However, I think there's a certain line we need to draw between fixes and mods. The game has bugs, and as such fixes are created to deal with them. But we also create mods, which are basicly add ons, stuff that weren't really to be included in the original game. (Like the fogless towns). I think many people are expecting our fan made patch, and trust it will help them enjoy the game more. My point is, we need to draw a line between stuff that are made in order to fix bugs and problems, and stuff that are made but were not the original intention of the devs. Personally, I feel our fan made patch should have ONLY fixes, and no mods. Mods will have seperate download links, so people who wants them can download them. What do you guys think?
You need to be more specific.. There is little new "content" going into this patch.. We so far are planning on re-enabling the brothel(that shipped with the game), and have added in some new items.. (the craft Rod feat only had 3 items to craft!?!?) But as for mods (serious game changing things), (you mention fogless) there isn't a plan on adding those to the player version of the patch.. Tehre is going to be a second verison of the patch for modders.. It will contain things like you mention, Fogless, helperguard, etc.. to make modding the game (and unit-testing fixes) easier,..
That's exactly what I was thinking. I just wanted to flesh it out a bit with the amount of modding going on here... Edit: Ioun stones going into the patch?
I have not explored the Ioun Stones, so I don't know that much. I do think that alot of people are looking into them.. and how they interact with thieves tools... (I wouldn't mind hearing about more details either.) Pooey. Have to take the fiance to the mall..
Granted, I'm not working on that one, but I kinda figured that was just fleshing out the item creation feats a bit. In their original states, they were rather pathetic, with many items that, while your character might have all the pre-reqs to make, weren't included. I might be in the minority here, but I am of the opinion that things of that nature actually ARE fixes, as those options should have been made available to you when you purchased that feat (as long as your crafter meets all the DMG-defined reqiorements for crafting that item).
So long as its an actual 3.5 (or, where the engine has limits, 3.0) D&D rule, I don't think there's much of an arguement for saying its a mod. Now, if someone tries to retool level progression so that ToEE characters can hit level 20, or worse yet epic levels beyond that, I'd say there's cause for complaint despite it being a part of 3.5 rules. Flushing out features that already exist? Troika would have liked more time on the game, we all know that. Who's to say they wouldn't have implemented saps and nets if they had the time? I'd actually like to see some of the non-lethal and tangling weapons included. I agree this crosses a line between bugsquashing and modding, but I don't think I've seen even one person complain about being able to craft more items. The rules for item creation are available for free over at the WotC coast website, any item that a lvl 10 character can create and that the game can support is not a mod to me. Also, I think most people want to see the removed content reactivated. The brothel was intact, just written out. If the evil quests and dialog can be restored, or even just the children reinstated, I still don't see this as a mod. But, for those who DO want to see a demarcation between bug fixes and just extra meat on the 3.5 bones used for the game, could we just make an installer that lets people select which parts they want to use? Bug Fixes Only Mature Content Extra Item Creation Extra Weapons Et Cetera. Just a thought.
Just so you guys know, as I'm in the know and such: Fogless towns were originally meant to be in the game. In fact, they were, until Atari's QA team decided to remove them for some RIDICULOUS reason. The game looks absolutely ridiculous in towns with the fog turned on - let me remind you all that ToEE is not a Real Time Strategy game and should therefore not be submitted to the old fog of war treatment, especially not in towns. Troika has mentioned that the fog was implemented not by them, but by Atari. If you'll look back in the archives of the Atari forum you will find Steve Moret's posts stating that fog of war was out. Sometime during the QA process, Atari decided to change it. While I feel that the fog is fine in dungeons (elements of suspense, adventure, and surprise) it's got no place in towns. It also lags the game in towns, which happen to be the biggest maps. And Aginor, I don't think you are in the minority here on this one. I totally agree with you. Many of the features which were supposed to make it in never made it in due to the transition from 3.0 to 3.5 which took up too much dev time. While it's likely that Ioun Stones were on the 'to do list', it is most definite that there should have been more items for us to create in the game. As you will see, most of the items in the feats don't even work correctly due to poor QA. It smells rushed, and it certainly is. i.e. SPELL_NONE and readme's "Insert Developer Comments Here". Also, if you'll check out the MES and PY files you will find MANY, and I do mean MANY comments which read: "HTN - WIP!!!" with further comments listed. HTN would have to be Huy Nguyen, the game's resident script programmer. If you want to go about fixing some of the spells which aren't working as they should, check out all of the PY files for those comments. I can't remember any of them right now but I do recall some of them with the comment also stating that the spell 'isn't working as it should be' and requires further work. So far, all the stuff we've done, in my opinion, can be classified as Fixes, rather than 'drastic changes'. Remember kids, this isn't Dark Side of the Sword Coast. We're just making the game the way it would have been, and perhaps the way we feel it should be. Could someone twink the Balor so he isn't such a wimpy little feller anymore? The stats, as someone previously mentioned, are all wrong.
Know what I'd like to see fixed? Reach weapons (aside from whips*not in* and spiked chains) shouldn't be able to hit at a 5 foot radius, only 10. I'm not sure about greatswords but I think those are working fine. I'm still waiting for that dialogue editor (get crankin!) so I can add class, alignment and race specific dialogues into the game. I'm really sick of my evil bastard guy having pathetic 'good aligned' sort of dialogues for the people in Hommlet who do nothing but tell him to do their bidding by finding their lost kitten or some nonsense my character couldn't care less about.
What Rex said. Drastic changes should be seperated... Changing the Balor, for example... Troika made a Balor, they might have made him stronger if they had some QA, but they didn't have enough of it. So changing it might be a good idea. The only thing we need to remember is, a lot of people are afraid of changes like these, they feel they are "unpure".
I don't think changing the Balor would be 'unpure' as you so aptly put it - BECAUSE at present, it IS 'unpure'. Or maybe they're just using the 3.0 stats for it even though the rest of the game got beefed up to 3.5. Must have been one of those changes that they did change but were too late to put in the game, kind of like the Mona dialogue bug - which Huy mentioned they did fix, only the game got released a week earlier than anticipated (thanks, publishers) and they had no chance to put it in. Just so you know,the Balor is very, very weak. Pathetically so. A real dissapointment, I must say. Fix this feller up.
