Co8 New Content: War of the Golden Skull

OK guuys i finally got the WOTGS to get moving. I finish the first battle outside of the house pretty easy....My next choice has been to try to save the inn. I couldn't walk over, massive jerkstop/laggin/something buggy. I tried to use the map to go straight there, which teleoprts me directly into the middle of the attacking hextorites...I guess this is okay accept,
The hextorites are jerkstopping /freezing.....

I'm trying to get get to them. If I revert a save to where my part yhas no jerkshop/freezing, whatevery you call it...it doesn't matter. The hextorites jerkstop/freeze as soon as they appear. Fighting them causes the game, and my entire PC to crash. WTF .

This is horrible. I have hardbooted my PC like 5 times now. This game/expansion/software is no putting me in a position where my hardisk could get scratches/make some things get really unstable (a program failing so bad and running code of a nature that windows can not shut it down without itself terminating....)

IS it possible to make changing this game to NOT crash your PC a priority before any more updates/changes?

I still ahve the issue that I would like to figure out how to make it work without crashing now...but I was thinking practically adn my PCs health should take priority....Anyway I hope that there may be considered a new approach/guidelines/problem solving to figure out how to make TOEE run in a way that if it fails it closes by itself and does not cause your entire PC to crash.

 

WotGS is a bit buggy atm but i haven't had any pc crashes.
The game freeze from time to time and i need to kill the game manually.
There is a lot of jerkstop, especially after fighting at the guard tower, so last time I did that last and it worked much better, could be coincidence.
As a matter of fact, last playthrough it worked just fine.

 

I gave it a couple more tries. The mobs are still coming in frozen. Do people know waht I mean by frozen? I am having trouble explaining it. Sometimes it happens to your players (PCs) when you enter hommlet, and you ahve to leave via the map again and try again and/or revert a save to try and get it to stop happening. Very annoying bug to say teh least.

Here is the trouble...these monsters are now freezing. As I come out and try to approach, they are frozen. This makes my PCs jerkstop. Or like when I tell them to walk, they just walk like to steps and stop, not following the command, all froze up/jerky. Really buggy.

With luck the mobs unfreeze- as they unfreez...so does my characters. teh more of the mobs that unfreeze, the more I can move. and so forth.

Now here is a big issue.- IF I engage combat once it gets to my 5th party member, a level 18 halfling wizard, she can not complete any actions. if she fires a spell or her crossbow, it freezes above her head. If I go for like chain lightning or somethign it crashes the game/freezes on a blackscreen of death i have to hard boot to get rid of. Once the round or spell freezes above her head, the music keeps playing and it shows her actions as done. I can click on teh skip turn (red button) sometimes but it just goes grety and sticks there. totally retarded.

Is there something about this character buggin git? Some permaspell effect I am not realizing/seeing??? Or maybe an item she has. She has the skull and the fungus icon. This is really screwy....

To the Devs-
Suggestion for 7.1 or later releases- FORGET Hommlet!!!! This place is bug central. Have the party automatically transported (by talking to the guy or something) to a NEW map...which is hommlets base graphic map, but not actually homlet. So no doors, but who cares. make it a brand new map and PREPLACE the mobs (kinda like how hickory branch was built, or any kinda new map with new mobs alreayd on it). Then we start in the map zoned in maybe at the house, but don't get there through the door. have a regular hommlett never changed or anything that we would go to once we 've killed everything, maybe the q giver zones in like in teh arena and/or we have some doors on edge of map we can use to retreat to teh house interior to recoop between zones if that was intended. As currently designed This zoning in the mobs seems massively bugged and seems it woudl be soooo much easier to just make a new map using the same graphic and preplace the mobs, not spawn them.

Or well I don't know coding but it just seems that homlett is bugcity and ADDING content to it/zoning in mobs is insanity....remember how the goblin was just eventually removed because it was impossible not to bug out??? SAME PROBLEM all over again!!

 

Sorry I realize this is all free content and that.... Just got stuck and frustrated.
Anyway yea, I suspect since its 7, and NC, that well, bugs come with the terf... I didn't mean to be an arse about it.

Feedback, meant constructively - #1 a way/process to kill TOEE when it bugs/failsafe etc. so we don't ahve to hardboot #2 Removing these combats from homlet

I doN7t mean this as demand, I realize i poorly worded. Its just suggestions/ideas. I don't program so I don't know all the natureo f the problems.

Any suggestions for process/method inthe interim with my current save game to get through these combats? Right now I can't complete the battle (leave the inn after initiating the quest) without eventually my PC crashing. In some cases I am able to cntrl-alt-delete to get my program manager and kill TOEE from there.

any advice/help getting through this battle would be greatly appreciated.
I know you might suggest using a the console to kill some mobs etc manually to just bypass this event...unfortunatley I can't access the console because my PC and keyboard are japanese and has no tilde key. That key position is taken over by the language toggle key and pushing it doesn't get recognnized as a tilde.

Thank you again for the content, I really just mean to give some advice/ideas as I play through it. I don7t mean to bag on yo uguys, you do awesome awesome work. The quest/content is spot on, its just buggy right now. Hopeing to find a way through/around the bugs and it is frustrating, but it comes with the terf of community built content.

thank you again and sorry again if I came off wrong!!!

 

OH BTW
I just noticed/ realized there is the shaking and bombs and fire added to buildings...when it bugs this happens in different order and it may or may not have to do with my issues. Maybe there is some aniimations that are trying to complete or osmething before/during combat that are getting mucked up? Anyway i know I don't knwo the coding, just trying to explain whats bugging and figure out why.

 

Shiffd,, when the game freeze for me i press the Windows key to get out of the game and then just kill toee.exe from task manager.
When the game has been loaded once in a windows session, it usually load quickly the second time.

 

There's really nothing so serious going on with ToEE that it would affect anything in your system aside from ToEE, so if you're experiencing other system troubles, it's probably something independant of ToEE.

I'm sorry but I never said I was having any other troubles with my PC. I'm not sure where that is relevant. What I said is that TOEE locks up/goes to a black screen. When trying to play the game/while playing the game.
You are much more aware than me of how instable this game has always been, there is no issue with my PC if I run TOEE and it crashes it. TOEE is capable of doing this.
Thank you for all your work on NC, mods and trying to make the game more stable. For now though I will take a break. This is far too frustrating.

 

Allow me to clarify.
I can run a lot of other video games on this PC, mostly from GOG.com, some off disks.
BG, IWD, NWN, HOMM (many versions), M&M, Wizardry, Arcanum...the list goes on, I think you get the point . Oh and some Doss based games like castles and stuff that need extra programs to get them to work at all on a modern PC.

Some other games do cause issues at times. Mostly when I am done playing a game I take them off the PC and often even do a backup of an earlier state incase something got messed up. I'm sure you know waht I am talking about wtih this stuff, since obviously yo uare a video game lover too.

What I am saying aobut TOEE, is when I get jerkstop/freezes etc. OFTEN, very veyr OFten Cntrl+Alt+Delete, simply does nothing. I'm dead serious, no reaction. Only with this game. Yes I know how to kill programs, what I am saying is when this program gets really jacked up, it wont die. This leaves me no option but to hardboot. This is what I mean by crashing my PC, by locking up the screen/PC to the point that I can not get my task manager up with cntrlaltdelete and its not possible to kill the game . Sometimes alt-tab works for some reason.

I guess if I ahve patience I can wait like 10 minutes and maybe finally the game will kill itself or rsomething. I just ahve to wait for it to think or get some ram free or whatever..who knows. BTW I have 2 gigs of ram. Not a lot, but should be nough right?

Not tryingto diss the game or your work on it. You are doing great. What I am saying is, at no fault of my PC, this game locks up to the pint where there is no option but hardbooting.
I have played this game through since version 5 with your NC stuff (great stuff BTW) I never really had this issue before. IT all started with the initiation of the WOTG in hommlett.

So yes hundreds/thousands ahve played Co8 stuff and maybe never had any/many that the game locks up so bad they can'T even cntrlaltdelete out of it....perahps this level of staggerstep and locking up/whatever is new to the WOTGS stuff.

 

I have had to wait for a few minutes in the nodes but it always start responding.
I have played through 7.0NC 4 times and have not had the same experience in WotGS as you seem to have.
It does lock in combat, but i am able to easily kill the game by pressing the Windows key that open the start menu and thus get me do the desktop from where i can open taskmanager and kill the game.
Ctrl - Alt - Delete usually doesn't work when the game freeze.

The jerkstop always happens near the Welcome Wench for me in WotGS so i always do the other fights first and take the patrol and WW last

 

Finally started WotGS for the first time. This is awesome, walking out of the town defense building and seeing all of them was amazing. I quite like the concept of being able to fight battle after battle and have your characters slowly wear down. Would it be possible to reduce some XP gain? My level 16 PC's gained a level up after every group I battled, and it went extremely fast. If you will be able to improve the battles in the future, I have some things I noticed;

- Bearded Devils truly suck. They miss my units every turn, and only sit there and take slightly longer to kill. They don't really do anything to make the fights better.

- Enemy spellcasters could use some higher spells. Flame strike and lightning bolt is pretty sad against my party level.

- I quite like how the enemy units have very few items to loot, I think it is perfect like that. With dozens of enemies, it would be annoying to have to pick everything up.

- Hextor fighters were semi strong vs my party when they were able to attack, but they usually ended up confetti by my paladins halbard. They could use some increase in stats overall I think. This isn't a cakewalk battle, but my party is all level 20 now, and if you don't count my wizards ability to blast AoE evocation spells, my hand to hand units still murder with enchanted weapons.

- Hextor archers are weaksauce. I've noticed this in the game many times before, ranged units are just not very good in most cases, only ones with good hcaracter levels can be any good, like the slaver in emridy meadows. The archers could use some ranged attacking feats or something, they are very weak.

Again, WotGS is awesome. I think it could use more units like the character leveled leader of the Hextorites in the group outside the town defense building. Before my paladin critted him for 125 damage, he was going to be a difficult enemy. And the elementalist was good before prismatic spray took him out. More good leveled units like those would help the challenge.

Well, I'll see how the fight against Iuz Avatars goes when I get there. It sounds like I'll get my butt kicked.