KOTS Challenge!

Disappointed to hear this news. I assume that Kots author was not receptive?

On the other hand, iirc you were doing quite a bit of AI tweaking, which is never a waste of effort for ToEE game play improvement. "Smarter" opponents are a good thing, imho.

 

While that's pretty sad, I guess it's better to get the C&D earlier rather than later...

On the flipside, IIRC KotC1 is basically an adaptation of the Against the Giants / Slavers adventures (not that I've played them, but so they say). So perhaps you could adapt the original modules themselves, with a helping of KotC as inspiration

 

First of all, thank you guys!

You know, accidentally I came about Gamers at Work book, where Troika's history is layed out by Tim Caine. It's available in parts in Google books preview.

They started as three guys : storyteller, artist and programmer. Tim also mentioned that they lacked business guy, which was one of the reasons why they eventually dissolved.

These three components are extremely important in games creation. And I'm not an artist for sure. I'm programmer, and hopefully some storyteller in the future.

Absence of an artist and at least some isometric map design tool is critical in ToEE modules creation.

Pierre's situation is quite similar.

Moreover, let's face it - Temple's auditory is abysmal at this moment. More popularity would attract more modders and more motivation of modules creation.

Iwd2 port would attract a lot of players from Infinity gamers world, who would like to play that incredible game again in turn based mode.

Iwd2 has ready to use art and story. We just need to port it as good as it's possible.

 

https://books.google.com.ua/books?id=lESCCXkdy3YC&lpg=PA80&pg=PA97#v=onepage&q=troika&f=false

This is due to my belief, that Tempel's port of KoTC 1 is domed, as it will most likely to be C&D. My conclusion is based on several factors:

1. Pierre introduced nice option in KoTC 2 of modules developmen, with 50/50 profit share. And published editors for that.
2. Several posts mentioned wish for KoTC 1 to be ported to KoTC 2 engine. I think someone would most likely will do so as a module. Perhaps even Pierre himself.
3. Pierre, in his answer to Endarire request about ToEE port (link) mentioned that he'd like to know about backgrounds and music. To me this means that most likely he would use this port isometric backgrounds if we'd have ones. And we don't btw. It's his work I was using.

KoTC 2 has rough start. I love KoTC 1, but cannot say same about KoTC 2. Some reviews are not good on Steam.

In any case I do believe it's not best time to do that.

 

This is a good suggestion IMHO. I played these Tabletop a very long time ago, and they were really enjoyable. Giants everywhere!

Personally, although I've heard various good things about KOTS1, I've never played it. I always thought the price was a bit steep for the vintage game, compared to what vintage games cost on steam/gog. For example, the entire Witcher series can be had for the same price. Other similar age games are ~1/4 priced with much more community support.

I've always seen ToEE as a really good combat engine first and thus the minimal sound never bothered me. It is not really designed to give auditory warnings of impending encounters or such.

When you say to improve this side, what do you mean - NPCs and encounter dialog?

 

Sorry @hammyh, I meant audience. In Ukrainian audience is spelled "auditory")). "Auditory" in Ukrainian means auditorium (large room for lectures), and also the people who are inside of auditorium = audience.

Sound and music in ToEE is very good. The one in Hommlet is just stunning.

Is there better one? Yes - in Icewind Dale 2. Particularly the speech is insanely good.

As for Kots 1 - I do recommend that you try out. Combat and tactics there is top notch!

I wanted to bring that level into the Temple (toee), that's why I started and completed 6 large maps out there. It was level 6 when I had to stop due to the Russia's invasion at first.

But after Kots 2 came out I stated to see all these different reasons I described above.

 

Ahh.

The ToEE community would possibly grow a bit if a new module like IWD or your current work was completed. But I doubt that it would grow too much just because there is so much stuff out there to compete for recreation time.

ToEE is an older game and had a bit of a buggy reputation to start with -which many seem to remember. More so, it competes with other similar legacy games such as the BG/IWD series, the NWN series, and more recent games such as Pillars of Eternity, etc. These games also had an easier set of modding tools (Near Infinity Editor, NWN builder tools and override ease, PW support, etc.).

These mentioned games IMHO have also suffered a much reduced - but still active - modding community today.

I've got a mod to try from NWN2 that just came out this year and although the engine is poor compared to ToEE, the module is good. I'm also slowly beta testing the community IWD2 "EE" that has been in progress for a few years now => reverse engineered code and other code injection tricks ... because the original game code is lost...(and thus why Beamdog is not interested). Sound familiar?

And I look forward to seeing your work on stuff. I may not have the same opinions of balance, but I always enjoy your enthusiasm and ideas for improved ToEE gaming.

 

I was curious and had a look through the steam reviews. Many are either kickstarter backers or very low steam levels - which basically indicates few games bought from steam so hard to say if unbiased/sincere. And apparently it has some data corruption issues much like original ToEE. However, the main shock was the price tag! Ouch! (3/4 of price of Elden Ring, a full studio high-graphics game)

Re: against the Giants series:
I noticed that the maps are readily available on image search and there are conversion sites such as
3.5 : https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/3-5_Against_the_Giants_Campaign
5e: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/189455/Classic-Modules-Today-G123-Against-the-Giants-5e .

 

@hammyh, thanks!

As for the Giants - find the background mapping isometric tool, then we can talk))

 

The only tool I'm aware of that isn't an expensive 2d/3d commercial tool is open-source Tiled. It's maybe 10 years old , so....dunno. I'll play around with it to see if it has potential.

 

For what it's worth, the AI in KotC2 is remarkable. It's a story-light game, but I found it worth the price for the combat challenge alone - though I did buy it in early access at something of a discount. Good luck with all of your other projects, Anatoliy!