[TOT] TES The Stormcloak Rebellion -Alpha opened

[Dadais]

I'm not sure how far along you are in development - I've been clearing out a lot of dungeons just so that I don't (presumably) have to deal with monsters coming out from them, but I'm not sure if you had many more things planned for them as well. I can give basic feedback about gameplay/feel/balance but I'm not sure I want to go "too" far into the scenario if it still has much to do.

Well.
Final release will take some time, consumming it on exploration's texts, dialogues and exceptions.
Small corrections to apply shall be far less time-consuming and play the role of recreations.

Techs like trade, or allowing for the diplomacy menu to show

Diplomacy menu beeing off seems to be a counterpart to negociations beeing turned off.
Is there a way to have the civs "ambassady" infos while keeping negociations off ?

I don't really get what you're meaning about "Trade tech" ?

-I have no idea how to get any of the neutral cities over to my side.

Haha, many shall stay neutrals !
Some may join you by themselves under with special events, eg related to vampires or werewolves. One shall see more of them with exploration and the events added, thus have more interractions and more chances to trigger these rally.

-Playing as the imperials, I feel that their color and the barbarian color is too close and hard to differentiate.

I match your feeling !
Having a little thought, would such a color pattern reveal itself better ?

Thifhty ... err six shades of gray figuring the AI ennemies for all ?

You may want to make the pollution icon invisible within the city.

True those modern driving sign are rather hurting. Howether, pollution is not turned off, making use of pollution-reductor building with a (maybe half-)lore logic.
Maybe replace them with barrels, which we see in Skyrim cities taking the trash can role ?

-There does seem to be some terrain that has the lower purple section with a wrong color as it shows up in some cities.

Always having big difficulties with that, sometimes ending setting all in the light purple color !

-I think you'd do well to have a "munition fail message" for units that have less than 1 mp remaining. I've lost a few by not noticing this, and just pressing forward with the attack assuming it would be an arrow.

Haha ! You're right !

-I think that (at least for the human player / isHuman) you should have a pop up box for the animals that are killed and the reward that one gets. I didn't even notice that I was making money going after them. If you have an extra slot to give hunters special arrows you might consider only allowing them to collect this fee to give them more reason for being built. As it stands, any unit gets the money. Not sure if you could tell that an arrow was created by the hunter to get away without the extra slot - you're far more advanced at lua than me.

I do keep track of launcher in fact, to get back veterancy gains
.
I could move there this bonus indeed to limit it to hunters, dragonborn and heros. Didn't you find the hunter too powerfull in war by the way ?

Anyway, brilliant start and as you can see most "issues" I've found are truly minor/easy fixes.

Those are still extremely valuable for this scenario quality, and you have my deepest thanks for that !

 

[JPetroski]

I don't really get what you're meaning about "Trade tech" ?

Sorry - the trade technology allows one to click on a city and see who owns it. It would have been helpful the first turn or two given there is no diplomacy model.

Maybe replace them with barrels, which we see in Skyrim cities taking the trash can role ?

Yes - if you're using it for various reasons then of course keep it but I agree, make it something that matches the mood.

Didn't you find the hunter too powerfull in war by the way ?

I mean I haven't played that many turns. It's a crazy time at work - but I've found the green hunter unit (the one with the green cloak) to be very useful - I haven't really noticed the hunter itself but that doesn't mean your observations aren't correct.

I'm just of the opinion that if you're going to the trouble of having a hunter unit, maybe they get some sort of bonus for killing the animals. You'd figure they'd be better at preserving hides or whatever than random soldiers. I'd recommend either only giving them the money boost, or giving them an increased money boost compared to other units.

Thifhty ... err six shades of gray figuring the AI ennemies for all ?

I mean it's really up to you - I'd just suggest that the playable factions should be pretty distinct. The non-playable aren't quite as important, IMO.

 

[Dadais]

Here's what going on !
Every land tile may also (under the feral werewolf) see "encounters". All items with the "*" mark are not done at the moment.

I also took time to advance some of the TODO list,
-Animal killing bonus is now restricted to "hunter units", marked as such in civilopedia & have a message signaling the bonus amount & occurence (killer/killed).
-Failing to produce projectile having too low movepoint now gives a message
-Guard Att & Cost got changed

 

[Dadais]

Nearly finished "classic" explorations, having left Dwemer ruins and encounters (%everywhere on land) to build

Taking some "recreation time" to restructure civ.scen.onTurn function for better reading,
and Quests structure, state variables and functions for better later "quests" integration.

Adapting in the way the Jagged Crown quest for it (with little gameplay change associated with the exploration feature)

 

[Dadais]

Casual explorations are finished. Began the "encounter" part of it, yet fell immediatly on a small issue as I had no structure for quest lines.

So, took time to build that structure, created the quest menu to go along with it, altered the introduction texts and describe.txt to add these,
also altered introduction text to express in one's objectives, and enriched victories texts.

Thus, I rewrote the Jagged Crown related code to match with it,
and wrote the Aetherium questline too, allowing the aetherium forge feature to somehow be used.


I'm planning to add some "special" exploration occurence with specific location, including some quest line search and some easter eggs providing rewards.
At the moment, going back to encounters and their associated quest lines.

 

[Dadais]

One month in this Lua File already !

From the Alpha version, 25 "Todo" items are cleared, with 8 left (including Dragonborn specificities and reward, 6 more questlines and a try of Readme creation).

Soon The Beta, last playtests before final release !

Will you hear all of what M'aiq have to say ? Will you find the three most special locations ?

 

[Dadais]

Just one questline left to build,
along with a technology involving Silver-Blood and Black-Briard clans antagonism to make use of.

Began to launch the second play-test phase to apply first corrections,
AI used exploration and triggered it well, looks good.

I hope you won't mind that little easter egg @JPetroski ?

 

[JPetroski]

Hahaha I am honored

 

[Dadais]

Posponing the BlackBriard and Silverblood treasons for the upgraded version (with as main feature the inclusion of Day&Night, many text messages change into dialogue with pictures, maybe more sounds ... for when units.bmp and cities.bmp graphics can be changed with lua too, so not before at least few month if ever)

Serena questline is done, few additions were applied too,

next are gameplay test, correction, READme file and delivery.
Last message in this thread, presentation of the 1.0 release will have his subject on the SL subforum.

Much thanks for your cheers, the time and the advices you gave !

 

[CurtSibling]

@Dadais
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I'd ask if you'd consider having a fluent English speaker to proof read your text pop ups, to make sure they flow properly, and to fix typos.
I'd offer to do a proof/fix scan of your events text this month, while you are making fixes for your patch. Basically, if the text reads oddly, it ruins the immersion for some...

 

[Dadais]

I'd offer to do a proof/fix scan of your events text this month, while you are making fixes for your patch. Basically, if the text reads oddly, it ruins the immersion for some...

That would be incredible if you were willing to do so.

Would you whish me to extract all texts for a check ?

 

[CurtSibling]

I can take a look through your trigger events and pop up texts. Post them here, and I will fix any glaring grammar errors.

 

[Dadais]

I can take a look through your trigger events and pop up texts. Post them here, and I will fix any glaring grammar errors.

A thousand thanks Curt !

Here's the file. I did put it in a .lua so you may
-reduce/developp blocks using buttons
-have visual help with colors codes applied
while using notepadd++ or a similar programm to read it.

Reading them back while extracting them, I realise how I had my head full of the Lua construction at the time.
Other than corrections to apply, there's also a rationalisation (to reduce copies in code) and a flavour job to be done to make some texts less raw.

I'm glad you made me extract those Curt, as I didn't fully realised it while playtesting like I did this way.

 

[CurtSibling]

Got it - I will get back to you.