damnit you guys! I leave for two weeks and when I come back...

so much as happened in this community, i don't even know where to BEGIN catching up! Keep it up!

ok, so who is doing what now? (big question, i know lol)
How far have you all come? How far do you intend to go? How far WILL you go?

and (forgive me if i ask a stupid question here) did Livonya release V2.0?
And not to sound cynical, but does she intend to? Is she capable of doing so? If she's unable, does she intend to release what she's done so far, or or is there even any point in us waiting for it?
I'd reeeeeally like to know exactly which files and entries she's modifying and have modified, so none of us will accidentally mess up anything she's done (and vice versa).



I'm working on two main mods that can either be installed seperately or together, but are supposed to work in tandem. the idea is to stretch the game and difficulty level so that the party would be at around lvl 14-16 towards the end, rather than level 10.

i've started sketching out new areas, including

first mod: "areas of interest" (working title)

- a rocky hillside (mainly for BG-style low-level exploration/combat, minor side quests)

- a beach or river bank (also BG-style exploration and minor side quests but containing one main plot relevant hotspot)

- an expanded deklo grove (extra quests, jellies as per meleny's description, more BG-style exploration)

- a small, abandoned temple with an underground cavern, close to emridy meadows (major plot point, one side quest)

- an abandoned farm close to a rocky hillside with a cavern (sub plot that ties in with the main plot)

- A few new NPCs and more NPC related quests (again, slightly BG style) and a little bit of planar travel (bg/planescape style) as a sub plot which also ties in with the main plot

some new items, but not many. most of them will be geared towards lower level parties, though some of them will be highly unique and add more variation as they will each have their traits. I'm designing them with balance and variation being the key words, so you get to equip your characters with more personalised, untraditional weapons that will have their benefits and drawbacks.

Second mod: "Evil Gets An Upgrade" (again, working title)

- an EVIL temple of elemental evil: live sacrifices, soul devouring, torture, bloody murder, cannibalism, gore, the works! Even good parties will have to commit some acts of vileness in order to get further into the temple, although there will be ways to "cheat" at a few of them. But some acts of evil are simply unavoidable. Paladins are in for a rough time But don't worry, they won't be forced to fall - the player will still have a choice.

- expanded end game: Fungi, fungi and more fungi!!! spores! molds! jellies! MILDEW!!!
The end game will be expanded to three different levels, each one getting progressively grosser. hehe.

- expanded nodes: OK this one may get the more hardcore fans of the original module slightly turned off. But i think both the original module and troika focused a bit too much on the "elemental" part rather than the "evil" part of the game's title.
each node will now climax in different lawful and/or neutral evil planes (i'm thinking Baator, Carceri, The Gray Waste, Gahenna) rather than "just" pocket elemental planes.
Each node-behind-the-node will have its own theme, a sort of "evil" element rather than a natural element.
What I've come up with so far is "Suffering" for Carceri, "Despair" for Gahenna, "Decay" for the Gray Waste and "Terror" for Baator.

I will elaborate later if you want me to

The second mod will feature different fiends and unique enemies, as well as some particularily vile quests if you play an evil party. I doubt I will add any more joinable NPCs to this one though, except for a couple. None of them will be uber-NPCs (at least, not to any higher degree than the already existing NPCs), though they will be very different from the norm. Odd, even. But they will fit well.

I won't be adding very many new magical items, as i think the game already has more than enough. I will add a few that I feel aren't represented enough though, as well as a number of items that just need to be there for the sake of continuity and also quest purposes, but aren't inherently better than most of the other items in the game. Again, I'm designing the items with balance in mind, and well... if you want to make an item more powerful, you're free to do so anyhow.

It will also feature new music. Creepy music. Some of it will be my own, some of it will be by established bands and artists. I'll have to check with them first though.

And lastly, yes, I know this is an extremely huge task I've created for myself. Therefore
I
WILL
NEED
HELP

I won't be able to do this alone. At all. The act of balancing everything out alone is tremendous, and I'm not sure that it'll even be possible to make sure the game will be as balanced as it should. hopefully it will.
On top of that, there's all the new area graphics and creation, the actual object/NPC creation and placement, the dialogue writing, the script writing etc. It is no easy task, and it will most likely take a couple of months to complete, if not more. :twitch:

But I need to work a bit more on fleshing it out more before I can begin saying exactly which areas I'll need help in and how, and what everyone can do to add their own ideas to this too - all suggestions and requests are welcome, as long as they keep in with the spirit of the mods and the original game itself as well (or, well, at least what I percieve as the spirit of the original game).

I'll keep you posted on both mods. I think focusing on one mod at a time will be the smartest way to do it though.

 

WOW :yikes: my little mod pales next to yours
you da man. Khalamar

 

I agree. It's time to stop waiting for 2.0 and move on. Perhaps we should clean up Liv's work a little as well, since it is going to be the basis for future mods. The methods she used to add new NPCs, though the best that existed at the time, were crude compared to what we have now. Perhaps the delay in 2.0 has been that she was amazed by the versitility of ToEEWB and is redoing all her work with it.

 

It is! Hehe! Man I hope I'll be able to do it all, but with the new WB, this is all very possible to do - so the only thing that would be keeping me back is the all-consuming issue of having enough time. I'll be doing one area at a time though, so with each update of the mod, I plan to release a new area.
I think the graphics is what will take the longest. It has blend seamlessly into the rest of the game.

Oh? Interesting! How does that one go? (and why didn't i notice that one before??)

 

Maybe some of us should even sit down and try to make it so we can have autosave enabled once again.

 

The no autosave thing is a symptom of the "spawner" Liv used to add NPC's to maps on first_heartbeat. Now that we have ToEEWB we don't need to use spawners anymore. Someone just has to sit down and put mob files in the maps for the NPC's the spawners create.

EDIT: I really should start previewing my posts so I don't have to edit them for stupid spelling and grammer mistakes.

 

At the moment I'm still trying to figure out everything she did. I need to do that before I can start. And the time to work on it. I know you were kidding, but yes, I am seriously considering this project.

I think the Co8 members have fixed all the serious bugs from her mod, except the demon stench thing. I'm more concerned with stability, compatability and ease of use as we move forward and use her mod as a platform for future mods. For instance, she used ToEE Mod Studio for her spawners, and that tool was flawed. This might cause issues in the future. Since we will be using ToEEWB, it could only help if her stuff was redone using it. She also mainly added to existing scripts rather than create new ones, and some of the scripting that she didn't use is still there. Check out Black Jay's script to see what I mean. Remember, this is a beta release. It would be nice if all this got cleaned up.

Yes, they will still need to be spawned in, but with a spawner made with ToEEWB, not ToEE Mod Studio.

 

Liv posted that she had used Mod Studio for her spawners. I can't find the scripts that creates the control box at the moment (she hid it in an existing script), but iirc the spawner creates another spawner then destroys itself, and then the second spawner creates the control boxes. The second spawner could not destroy itself because it uses a san_heartbeat script to create the electrical effect for the trapped area. This effect may be able to be scripted to the control boxes themselves (which can be MOBed in), thus eliminating the need for the spawner.

Maybe we should start a new thread just for disecting Liv's mod.