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Messages - SquareKnot
1
« on: May 26, 2007, 05:30:15 pm »
If you can make it to one of the Orienteering New Player Events, like [thread=116498]this one[/thread], they are a great way to see what is where without dying. You may not do much fighting, but at least someone there will hold you back when you go to charge the lethal skunks. It's some good roleplay and a lot is packed into the two hours or so you'll invest. Plus, I've taught many, many people how to fish on these trips 
2
« on: May 22, 2007, 12:37:10 pm »
A quick culling of the LORE deity references gives: - Jan 1st -- Rebirth of Good -- Vorax
- Jan 3rd -- Hosting of the Weave -- Lucinda
- Mar 1st -- Rites of Affirmation -- Lucinda
- Mar 15th -- Planting Day -- Prunilla
- Mar 20th -- 1st day of spring -- Folian S'pae
- Mar 20th -- Birth of Giants -- Grannoch
- Mar 20th -- Spring -- Katia
- Apr 24th -- Great Fixing -- Goran
- Jun 1-7 -- The Returning -- Shindaleria
- Jun 1st -- Rites of Affirmation -- Lucinda
- Jun 3rd -- Hosting of the Weave -- Lucinda
- Jun 20th -- Summer -- Katia
- Sep 1st -- Rites of Affirmation -- Lucinda
- Sep 15th -- Harvest Day -- Prunilla
- Sep 20th -- Fall -- Katia
- Oct 13th -- Day of Amazing Innovations -- Goran
- Dec 1st -- Rites of Affirmation -- Lucinda
- Dec 21st -- Winter -- Katia
Others, with no clear calendar date are: - Ascension -- Az'atta (Goran and Aragen)
- Full Moon (either Ausir or Orn) -- Aeridin
- Full Moon -- Ilsare
- Festival of Lucinda's Flare -- Lucinda
- Initiation Day -- Rofirein
I suggest that we celebrate them on or near the real life day on which they fall. Yes, that may put the first day of Spring in the middle of the Layo winter (or something like that) but without epic time stop, there's not much we can do. Does anyone have a better idea? Your character may or may not know about the holiday ICly (or may not care), but at least now you, the player, do OOCly.
3
« on: May 20, 2007, 12:31:19 pm »
I in fact made the wiki page I mentioned. I still have it on my disk. It has weapons, armors, instruments, rings, etc. It is missing some of the newer flavor items from drops. I had it on my personal LORE page for awhile.
The LORE team said I could leave it there, but they'd prefer that I not, and said that they would not be posting that information either. The final decision was that that was information to be found in game. To me, level requirements seem OOC, but it's not my call.
If someone official wants to post the information, I'd be happy to provide the wiki page as a start.
4
« on: May 15, 2007, 01:56:43 am »
Should Ifion's body be recovered, the following will be found --
A waterproof case containing a well worn leather-bound volume. Those versed in such matters will recognize the case as a Courier's Keeper. On the inside cover of the book, written in Common and Elvish, are these words:
“If you posses this tome, then I am dead, for alive I would never surrender it. Please return this work to the temple of Aragen in the Western Gate of Corsain. Instruct the priests there that this, the Aragenite compendium of Ishimaru Kaito, should be placed on the shelf next to the final treatises of Lolindar Taralom, my deceased father. Your faithfulness in this act will be rewarded with several thousand gold Trues.”
The rest of the book is filled with charts, maps, poems, and stories in Elvish, Common, and another tongue unknown to any not of the Aragenite priesthood.
As the book is closed, a loose envelope may fall to the ground from its resting place just inside the cover. The envelope seems to be far newer than the book itself. Scrawled on the outside are these instructions, “To be posted on the gemcutting tables in the Craft Hall of Hempstead upon my death.” Should the envelope be opened, a simple parchment, bearing the cryptic words “My truest love, I am sorry I failed to keep my promise. With affection and sorrow, Ifion Witseeker,” will be found as the envelope’s sole contents.
No recipient is named.
5
« on: February 05, 2007, 03:52:40 pm »
Thanks for the quests and the background work on some of the deities. The "Lost and Found" quest was so absorbing that even my wife was thinking about it, and she doesn't play.
6
« on: December 08, 2006, 06:45:34 am »
The best solution so far to the whole "walkmesh streaming to clients" issue is this program called Audolo. It basically uses something like rsync to compare the checksums between the client's version of files (.trx files) and the server's version. If the client is out of date, it downloads the changes. If it were built into something like a "Layonara Loader" then right before you went in game it would load up the changes and then you'd be good to go while logged in. It's pretty slick and is gaining traction. But it's only one piece of the puzzle that is making NWN2 PW's possible. There are plenty of others. A 64 bit version of the standalone server would help as well. Some info
7
« on: December 05, 2006, 03:21:14 pm »
Kirk had the source code. Without it, it would have been an unwinnable scenario even for him.
8
« on: December 05, 2006, 01:31:55 pm »
This would be really cool. But extremely hard to code in NWN1. In NWN2, the engine was improved to handle a totally new type of effect -- "Share Damage" effects. Obsidian then used this effect for several new things, like the Neverwinter Nine "Guarding The Lord" ability and the "Shield Other" spell you mention.
This, like Natural Spell and Spontaneous Casting for druids, is one of the changes made to the core engine (not the scripts).
Maybe one of the gurus here can figure out how to do it in NWN1?
What would be easier to code and perhaps work out as an acceptable alternative would be a low level heal spell that did considerable more healing than the "Cure xxx Wounds" spell for that level, but that transfered some (all?) of the damage to the caster.
9
« on: December 01, 2006, 03:23:57 pm »
And to put things in perspective...
I remembered this discussion vaguely, but couldn't remember the specifics. In this perspective, Comprehend Languages really wouldn't fit into Layonara. It does make me wonder what that item is, though...
10
« on: November 30, 2006, 02:00:35 pm »
With the changes in the V3 alignment demographics, how about the Detect Good/Evil/Chaos/Law family of spells? And Undetectable Alignment to balance things.
And maybe a refinement to Divine Relation to make it work as an area of effect, perhaps giving more information (like the actual deity) depending on the caster level or something? Or maybe just change the 2da entry so the range is longer and the vfx more subtle. It's one of my favorites but I don't use it as much as I'd like because it tends to make characters and players mad as it is.
Comprehend Languages also seems possible (but difficult due to the way languages are handled), but I think it was nixed in the past.
There are so few divination/information spells possible with the NWN engine it'd be nice to support the things that are possible.
11
« on: November 28, 2006, 09:14:48 am »
Actually, having looked at the code, the form is dynamically selected. All the subradials call the same script, nw_so_shapechg. In that script, it finds out what spell number it was called as (based on the subradial selection) and picks the shape at that time. So if the subradial icons were changed to something generic for each type of shape (offensive, defensive, tiny, big, whatever the different forms would have in common across alignments), then the main script could know that the player wanted the 4th (let's say big) form. From there, the specific creature for "big" could be selected based on alignment and then passed to EffectPolymorph(). EffectPolymorph() gets the shape data from polymorph.2da. So if the other new shapes were added to polymorph.2da, then their 2da line could be passed to EffectPolymorph and give the new forms, all based on alignment determined at casting time.
That said, the hard part isn't a few 2da edits and 2 extra if-then-else clauses in nw_s0_shapechg. It's picking the shapes and balancing them. I have no idea how to go about doing that.
12
« on: November 28, 2006, 07:27:35 am »
Changing this spell isn't hard technically. The problem is choosing and balancing the new forms. And no matter what you choose, there will be the people who complain that their favorite form is not available to them any more, that the spell's been nerfed, that other alignments get cool forms but their alignment has weak ones, that one form eliminates the need for an entire class, etc. And initially, some of that may be true, as it's really hard to balance these things. That's where the time consuming work comes into play.
It's the deity based summons all over again. How many threads are there about Xeenite water elementals or "My summon III is stronger than my summon IV"...
13
« on: November 27, 2006, 06:22:44 am »
Ifion reads the note and peers off into the distance, looking at nothing in particular. "I always thought I'd enter my final grave before her. But she lived as I did in my youth -- not wisely but too well. Perhaps she can finally be with the one she always wanted." He shakes his head slowly, muttering quizzically, "She is almost a reflection of me."
His mind snaps back to the here and now. "I suppose I should tend to the living. Nepp can deal with this in his own way. But the children... and Ash's friends will need comfort."
The old Aragenite sits for a moment, recording the news in his journal. With that task complete, he stands, throws up his hood, and heads out into the frigid night.
14
« on: November 23, 2006, 06:13:22 am »
In the default 1.68 script for Terrifying Rage it does a Fear saving throw. If it's failed and the creature's hit dice are below those of the Barbarian, then a paralyze effect is applied. The comment in the script implies that it used to be a fear effect, but is now paralyze. If the creature has hit dice equal to the barbarian, up to twice (but not including twice) what the barbarian has, then instead of paralyze it lowers all saving throws by 2 and decreases the creatures attack rolls by 2.
So, increasing the barbarian's intimidate skill raises the DC to save. To make it easier to save against the rage, increase your will save or get immunity to fear. It's not a fear effect, but a fear save or immunity will stop it. At least that's what I make of it.
Of course, this is all the default Bioware stuff. I've no idea if Layo modified it.
15
« on: November 21, 2006, 10:33:51 am »
I added the class breakdown to the page. Scroll down to find it on the bottom. All the base classes are more common than any prestige class. The most common prestige class accounts for less than 2% of all characters. There are only a handful of characters (meaning you can count on one hand) in the "rare" classes. About 29% of all characters have levels in Fighter. It seems to fit my view of the world pretty well. I can't comment on whether or not it's right.
16
« on: November 20, 2006, 01:54:12 pm »
Here is a race breakdown from 4 Sept 2006. When 8% of all charcters are Planestouched, there's a problem. In the past 10 weeks things have shifted quite a bit for the better. I'll have to update the tables to reflect the current status. I have the same data for classes, but I'd have to format it in Wiki Markup. If there's enough interest I'll do that too.
17
« on: November 15, 2006, 11:01:25 am »
I just ask because I've been scripting up some spells recently (not for Layo, though) Yep, sorry, when I asked about what spells people were interested in it was purely out of curiousity with absolutely no implication that they would ever actually appear anywhere, certainly not in Layonara. I completely understand that I do not contribute to the dev team, do not speak for the dev team, and never will. But at least I could be less of a nuisance and keep my mouth shut I was thinking more in the spirit of the "What's your favorite spell" thread, what's your favorite spell not in NWN? Apparently, there are 2699 spells at least, including 130 from the Book of Vile Darkness. Some of those sound... disturbing ... like "death by thorns" and "heartclutch." A little more "evil" sounding than "negative energy ray." Maybe we should do "What's your favorite evil spell (you define evil for yourself)" so as not to totally hijack the thread?
18
« on: November 15, 2006, 06:31:52 am »
There's already a slate of inflict wounds, negative energy, create undead, curse, disease, despair, etc.
What did you have in mind?
I just ask because I've been scripting up some spells recently (not for Layo, though), focusing on things that work for a persistent world or DM environment but that don't work well in single player. I've gone through the Player's Handbook and pulled quite a few out. It'd be nice to hear what players would want.
19
« on: November 12, 2006, 02:43:30 pm »
This was a great series. I had to trade my wife three visits a week for her to the health club (with me watching the kids) in exchange for one quest session a week, but it was worth it. Once violence is removed as the obvious answer to everything, it really makes you think about what else the group can do. The party was consistent both in their characters' RP and in their attendance each week which allowed us to think about the party's capabilities, like I did back in my PnP days, instead of our individual character's abilities. It was a lot of "what should we do." I also think the tight spread of levels helped a lot in letting everyone contribute (we were all between 9-15ish, so there was no "follow the epic" mentality). In other words, it was pretty much everything I look for in a quest series. Great job to everyone, especially egoober.
20
« on: November 06, 2006, 09:12:53 pm »
Ifion's eyes settle on the note and he quickly reads it, his brows furrowing with growing apprehension.
"Tyrian wouldn't stay away if she could help it, not from her son. She must be in some kind of trouble. So who do I help, her or Chaynce? Seems the dwarf has his eye on the boy, and Sara is able enough to handle things quite well. So Tyrian, my ... friend. What have you gotten yourself into this time? And where?"
Ifion looks down at his holy symbol for a moment, then leaves the Inn, muttering something about diviners and tavern rats.
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