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1.3 patch issues and future suggestions...

thathmew

Zero Sum Software
Developer
Joined
Nov 19, 2002
Messages
194
Location
Austin, TX
So I'm curious to hear how 1.3 is working out, if it did improve stability or not. Chadeo's already mentioned he's still having some window closing lockups, but I haven't really gotten much feedback on the general stability since 1.1.

Also I'm hoping now to move onto more "enhancements" rather than fixes (I'm still going to work on the general stability) and wonder what your thought are on my priorities.
There's several areas I could work on:
1) 3-D Graphics enhancements (lighting, fx, translucent walls and objects)
2) UI (interface screens, selecting objects, more display of info)
3) Combat enhancements (more varied enemy attacks, better AI)
4) Random encounters (more varied)
5) Add a difficulty slider
6) Non-combat skill enhancements

1 and 2 are the priorities right now and I've gotten some good suggestions for them already.

If there's any one thing that's still really niggling you now's the time to let me know. And of course anything found that's broken, will get fixed.

cheers,
-m
 

Saint_Proverbius

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The only crash I've seen thusfar with 1.3 is it crashed once with a KERNAL32.DLL error when I exitted. That's not that big a deal, unless it fails to do all the lovely clean up on exiting. It's also only happened once in the 10-15 loadings I've had with 1.3.

I think the thing that Chadeo mentioned about assigning XP would be nice, where you don't get a requestor every time you add an XP point to an area.

On making transparent walls, could you do that for the awnings where the shopkeepers hang out? You have to pan the camera down just to see those people there. I actually missed them the first time because I typically run with my camera at a fairly high angle, which makes it a lot easier to play.

Another thing that would be fantastic is having auras or something in combat so you could see who the bad guys are and who is currently selected. Last night, I had my party of six engaged with a bandit party of 6-7 various bandit types. Once everyone got packed around one another, I couldn't tell who was who without moving the mouse pointer around. If the selection arrow on the screen would glow at night, or if it were rendered as fullbright all the time, that might help.

Charging up load stones could be simplified I think also. That's the main reason I'm training my potion maker to use daggers, rather than using them. Right now, and this is the only way I've seen to do it, I have to open up the character info, right click on the stone, cast the spell on it, then I can throw it. I have to do that every time I want to toss one. If it worked from the attack menu like a typical spell so long as you had stones, that'd be much, much better.
 

thathmew

Zero Sum Software
Developer
Joined
Nov 19, 2002
Messages
194
Location
Austin, TX
Well, I'm glad it seems to be a little more stable, I too have gotten the kernall exit error, but from all tests I've done it is doing at least 95% of cleanup when it occurs, so it's not devestating.

I can change the xp confirm option easily enough I think.

I'm thinking that I need to add circles or other tile highlights to all characters in combat around their feet and with the green/red indicators for friends and enmies to make selection easier, and I do need to switch it so the selection indicator is not affected by lighting.

On the load stones: You should be able to charge up a whole stack and then throw them at will until the spell wears off, and it should last through combat. I haven't confirmed this though, so I'll check it out.

-m
 

RUDEDOGG006

Novice
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Dec 6, 2002
Messages
10
Location
Long Beach CA
Version 1.3

I have only gotten to play v1.3 for around 5 hours, but I have noticed a more stable game even though I still get random crashes when flipping thru the journal. (I am running Win XP Home fyi)

It seems the enemy approach and attack is still active though, it doesnt bother me much but I have seen other people complaining about it.

Adding some kind of circle or highlight during combat would also be very useful especially when fighting at night.
 

thathmew

Zero Sum Software
Developer
Joined
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Messages
194
Location
Austin, TX
I haven't delved into journal for a while, but it needs some work regardless so I'll check it out.
And highlighting is getting moved up the list continually. :)
cheers,
-m
 

Chadeo

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 4, 2002
Messages
111
Location
OR, USA
Hey there, I played for like 12 hours yesterday and I wrote down a bunch of comments. Unfortunately I left them all at home so I will have to post them tonight. I am having a blast though.

I would say that over about 20 total hours of play time the game has crashed to the desktop twice, and locked up another 4 times. Twice when I exited the game I got a page fault error.

I will have to check my version of DirectX but I have a celeron 500, win 98, and a tnt2 of some kind. So its possible that I have out of date drivers that are just not playing well with my version of DirectX. I will look into that tonight.

Gameplay:

I agree that you need more info during combat.

I also think that you need more information on what affect your stats have. Right now I just sell all the stat boosting potions because I can not really tell any difference between a 19 str and a 25 str. I know its just physiological but if I saw that I did +2 damage I would then try to always boost my stat.

Speaking of stats, the spells that boost stats (like growth) do not make it very clear how much they boost it by. I have to check my character screen now and then to see what my new stat is. Perhaps if you added the stat boost amount to the info screen (the one that tells how much damage you do). Also perhaps change the color of the boosted stat in the character screen so you know it came from a spell.

While daggers go up in skill very fast, I notice very little difference in the amount of criticals I get with them. It is not uncommon for me to do 10 attacks against a well armored foe and get it all absorbed. Also I can not figure out why sometimes I get 6 attacks with a "rapid" attack and other times just 2 (this is with duel daggers).

Do you need a musical instrument to use your music skill? I have earned money both with and without one, but I am not sure what kind of affect it has on your skill.

Would it be possible for you to share your spell books with other party members? I got the wandering druid to join me and noticed that I had far more Goddess skill then her, but I was missing a lot of her "basic" spells. I would have loved to have her copy them over to everyone in the party.

It might be hard to add at this point, but an overview of how well protected you are and how well you dodge things would be great. Also something that lists all the current modifiers to your speed would be great. Right now I spend a lot of time in the inventory screen putting things on and swapping gear.

During combat it is far too easy to get at your inventory and swap gear. You already disable inventory when someone is unconscious, so it seems easy to make it cost AP as well. Also as far as I can tell you can swap gear with any party member no matter how far away they are or how much time they have. One battle I just passed around my group of healing potions each round and swapped one persons shield and sword for another’s bow and arrows.


I made a post in the Quest Thread as well (It contains SPOILERS so read at your own risk)


More feedback from me tonight.
 

HanoverF

Arcane
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Messages
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MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Divinity: Original Sin 2
The game is much more stable while playing, but whenever I quit my computer locksup. One bug I've seen a few times that crashes the game most of the time is that I'll get ambushed and all the enemies will be on the same tile.

Also theres still a scripting problem with the first quest where if Antius accompanies you to the murderers he'll take 80 points of damage and said to be mortally wounded, but he never dies.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Chadeo said:
I agree that you need more info during combat.

One thing I'd like to see is where the hits are taking place. All hits are locational, I believe, per what Mat said. So, I'd kind of like to see where my guys are hitting.

More information on Criticals or even types of criticals might be interesting, but this would most likely force them to wipe out savegames by adding new fields to the character data.

Speaking of stats, the spells that boost stats (like growth) do not make it very clear how much they boost it by. I have to check my character screen now and then to see what my new stat is. Perhaps if you added the stat boost amount to the info screen (the one that tells how much damage you do). Also perhaps change the color of the boosted stat in the character screen so you know it came from a spell.

Mat's going to get the information for the Gifts of Goddess soon, so you'll have an article to go by similar to the Flame Magic one here on RPG Codex.

However, something in the text console at the bottom would be nice as well. The text console font should probably be made smaller so you can fit more information in it, such as:


  • Bob casts Growth on Fred
    Fred gains +2 to Strength

Something like that would be fantastic.

While daggers go up in skill very fast, I notice very little difference in the amount of criticals I get with them. It is not uncommon for me to do 10 attacks against a well armored foe and get it all absorbed. Also I can not figure out why sometimes I get 6 attacks with a "rapid" attack and other times just 2 (this is with duel daggers).

This is kind of why I suggested determining the damage for both attacks, then running it through the armor of enemy effects. Daggers and unarmed could probably use some sort of leg up somewhere.

Do you need a musical instrument to use your music skill? I have earned money both with and without one, but I am not sure what kind of affect it has on your skill.

Instruments boost the effective skill rating. They give it a bonus, basically. You can examine them to see how much of a boost they give.

Would it be possible for you to share your spell books with other party members? I got the wandering druid to join me and noticed that I had far more Goddess skill then her, but I was missing a lot of her "basic" spells. I would have loved to have her copy them over to everyone in the party.

Oh, good idea. The only problem with this that I'd see is picking up NPCs for the sole purpose of snagging the spells they have and then ditching them.

It might be hard to add at this point, but an overview of how well protected you are and how well you dodge things would be great. Also something that lists all the current modifiers to your speed would be great. Right now I spend a lot of time in the inventory screen putting things on and swapping gear.

This would also be a good reason to use a font that's a tad smaller, so you could fit that stuff on the screen.

During combat it is far too easy to get at your inventory and swap gear. You already disable inventory when someone is unconscious, so it seems easy to make it cost AP as well. Also as far as I can tell you can swap gear with any party member no matter how far away they are or how much time they have. One battle I just passed around my group of healing potions each round and swapped one persons shield and sword for another?s bow and arrows.

As long as it doesn't require a lot of APs to toss around potions or swap weapons, this would be a good addition. Putting on armor during combat should take a long while, though.
 

Chadeo

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 4, 2002
Messages
111
Location
OR, USA
One thing I'd like to see is where the hits are taking place. All hits are locational, I believe, per what Mat said. So, I'd kind of like to see where my guys are hitting.

More information on criticals or even types of criticals might be interesting, but this would most likely force them to wipe out savegames by adding new fields to the character data.

I would like to second that! More feedback is always a good thing in my mind.

However, something in the text console at the bottom would be nice as well. The text console font should probably be made smaller so you can fit more information in it, such as:

I agree

This is kind of why I suggested determining the damage for both attacks, then running it through the armor of enemy effects. Daggers and unarmed could probably use some sort of leg up somewhere.

Perhaps the amount of damage for a crit should be changed. If I get a crit on a 1 hp attack its no big deal at all. Double damage does not help when you do so little. Perhaps the dagger/unarmed crits could be skill/10 times the base damage.

Oh, good idea. The only problem with this that I'd see is picking up NPCs for the sole purpose of snagging the spells they have and then ditching them.

Who me? She was begging me to let her come save the valley. I guess she did not know I killed some blind goddess worshiper twice for all her goods. If all I took was her spell book she should consider herself lucky.:twisted:

It would be kind of funny though if you dismissed someone too fast and they did not stay at an inn and wait for you. Not sure how long someone would have to be with you before they would stick around.

P.S. How do you get the "so and so wrote" and not just the "Quote"?
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Chadeo said:
I would like to second that! More feedback is always a good thing in my mind.

With armor displayed on the avatars, this would give a good indication on what's going on if the location was also displayed. If someone is wearing Platemail on their chest, and green pants on their legs, I want to know that's the reason for the damage amount I dished out.

That's basically my rationale for it.

Perhaps the amount of damage for a crit should be changed. If I get a crit on a 1 hp attack its no big deal at all. Double damage does not help when you do so little. Perhaps the dagger/unarmed crits could be skill/10 times the base damage.

Well, Damage_Attack1 + Damage_Attack2 - Absorb is still preferable to *chink*Absorbed*chink*Absorbed. At least you'd get a little in while waiting for that critical.

Who me? She was begging me to let her come save the valley. I guess she did not know I killed some blind goddess worshiper twice for all her goods. If all I took was her spell book she should consider herself lucky.:twisted:

Hahahahah.. EVIL!

Speaking of which, there's something about that druid lady I just don't trust.

It would be kind of funny though if you dismissed someone too fast and they did not stay at an inn and wait for you. Not sure how long someone would have to be with you before they would stick around.

I met her in an random encounter later, BTW. She was asking me if I was ready for her to join again. I thought that was neat.


Oh, one suggestion.. How about a Windowed mode option?
 

thathmew

Zero Sum Software
Developer
Joined
Nov 19, 2002
Messages
194
Location
Austin, TX
windowed mode

windowed mode -- how to get it the undocumented and unsupported way:
In the gui.ini file at the very beginning you'll find an option "windowed" change the 0 to 1 and it will run in windowed mode. It runs fine for me in windowed mode, but due to some occassional directx strangeness and support difficulty I don't want to hear about it if it causes problems :wink: that's what autosave is for. heh. Plus I highly recommend not screwing with many of the other options a lot of them don't really do what they say they do (changing the resolution has particularly nasty effects).

I'm working on better feedback and info in lot of areas now.

'sall,
-m
 

Chadeo

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 4, 2002
Messages
111
Location
OR, USA
I said:
More feedback from me tonight.
Bugs/oddities

1. In the help files, there is an entry for Hit Points, but the topic is missing.
2. When my druid used his Goddess magic enough times his thaumaturgy skill would raise, not his Goddess Skill.
3. Text in the help files will run over the window (like in the barrier or Citadel entry)
4. During the games load, the entire screen will turn gray sometimes when one of the parts is loading. Not a big deal, just something odd. When the next system loads the icons come back.
5. Sometimes two or more monsters will spawn in the same square. Most often happens with hoppers.
6. In the Citadel Sewers one member of my 5 person party got stuck in the water for a while. Not sure how it happened, only noticed it when I got into combat and found him stuck in the water back a few screens. After the combat I was able to move him around a bunch and finally got him unstuck.
7. I can not figure out how to switch journal pages

Suggestions

1. Could you save the current view settings along with the saved game?
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Re: windowed mode

thathmew said:
Plus I highly recommend not screwing with many of the other options a lot of them don't really do what they say they do (changing the resolution has particularly nasty effects).

Forbidden fruit, here I come!

Okay, after trying the unsupported windowed mode.. How about a supported one? ;)

Something draggable, and the mouse seems a little quirky with it as well.
 

Section8

Cipher
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Oct 23, 2002
Messages
4,321
Location
Wardenclyffe
A tiny one: I didn't see any feedback when I tried to sleep near monsters. The button just does nothing. As I said though, no biggie.

A combat enhancement: Monster agro seems to use distance as it's only determining factor, which works fairly well when it comes to keeping people alive, but "rat bastard" AI that wants to take down your party's biggest threat or get that last hit on an all but KOed character who is nocking another arrow would make for some interesting encounters.

I can't really comment on much more because I've only just downloaded it, but I am enjoying it immensely. It's got a degree of depth not often seen in this day and age, and I really dig a lot of the design philosophies you guys seem to be following. I'll definitely be registering my copy next paycheque. :D
 

Deathy

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Joined
Jun 15, 2002
Messages
793
I've had random encounters with bandits, with me outside of Kellen's walls, but the bandits inside. Doesn't really seem right that bandits would operate so close to town.
Perhaps you could exclude the area in the vicinity of the walls from random encounters.
Unless you're intending to show a real bandit problem in the area, which doesn't seem to fit in with the situation, ie: relatively calm and peaceful, a placid country town.

Yesterday I had a bit of an annoyance with the scroll speed. Although now I've pretty much gotten used to it, it probably wouldn't harm to make it variable.

The crash I get on exit really isn't annoying, since it seems to do a clean exit.
I've had one, seemingly random lockup that forced me to restart my computer, and one also seemingly random, crash to the desktop, both were a short distance north of the walls of Kellen, though in different places.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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thathmew said:
4) Random encounters (more varied)

Have you considered adding random vs. encounters like Fallout 2 had? For example, outside the barrier, you could have Bandits vs. Guards encounters? Or Dwellers vs. Pengers? Things like that?
 

thathmew

Zero Sum Software
Developer
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Messages
194
Location
Austin, TX
I've had random encounters with bandits, with me outside of Kellen's walls, but the bandits inside. Doesn't really seem right that bandits would operate so close to town.
That's a bug, randoms aren't supposed to occur in the vicinity of towns, but sounds like I need to extend the area a little bit.

Monster agro seems to use distance as it's only determining factor, which works fairly well when it comes to keeping people alive, but "rat bastard" AI that wants to take down your party's biggest threat or get that last hit on an all but KOed character who is nocking another arrow would make for some interesting encounters.
I'm implementing some better AI right now, I'm trying to key it off the actual monster type/intelligence, i.e. lupins will still be the same probably, but bandits are going to focus a little more one single characters in different ways.

have you considered adding random vs. encounters like Fallout 2 had? For example, outside the barrier, you could have Bandits vs. Guards encounters? Or Dwellers vs. Pengers? Things like that?
There are a few encounters like this, more in the later game actually, but I would like to add more, right now the way the AI is set up there's only two battle sides (player and enemy) so it's hard to do dweller vs. penniger for example, I know this is a stupid limitation, but it was a lot easier on the ai and code than otherwise. But guards vs bandits and such are fairly easy to do.

-m
 

RUDEDOGG006

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Messages
10
Location
Long Beach CA
Winnifreds dagger quest

I received Winnifreds dagger and had it partially imbued. When I talked to Morgan in the Barrier I did not have my lead character holding the dagger, so I received a new one. I now have a partially imbued dagger and a complete dagger.

In regards to one of the above posts; I have run into VS. encounters between caravans and theives, but I could only attack the theives.[/quote]
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Chadeo said:
2. When my druid used his Goddess magic enough times his thaumaturgy skill would raise, not his Goddess Skill.

I just got this bug myself. My Farmer eventually healed enough people to raise her THAUMATURGY skill for some reason.

Another quirk I noticed was when I was crossing the Land's End bridge. Half way across, it just disappeared. The model that is, I was still able to cross it.

On that note, can we have more bridges in the game? Or some other way to periodically cross that river? Having to walk from Land's End East up to Kellen, then back down to Land's End Cavern isn't a fun walk, and you can't do the fast map travel to that location.
 

Chadeo

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Messages
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OR, USA
Saint_Proverbius said:
Another quirk I noticed was when I was crossing the Land's End bridge. Half way across, it just disappeared. The model that is, I was still able to cross it.

Yes, this happens a lot to me as well. It will typicaly come back after a bit, or when I move my view back to my party and move them, but not always.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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I found another scripting bug. Gareth in The Barrier was killed by a nasty critter named.. Well, we'll call it "M". When you go back to the Barracks, though, Gareth is still there. However, the other guardians will say things like, "I can believe Gareth's dead."

I have a feeling this has to do with the fact I turned Derrak in and he didn't get relieved of comment until after he, Senzo, and Gareth helped out with "M".
 

CP

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 20, 2002
Messages
110
Saint_Proverbius said:
I found another scripting bug. Gareth in The Barrier was killed by a nasty critter named.. Well, we'll call it "M". When you go back to the Barracks, though, Gareth is still there. However, the other guardians will say things like, "I can believe Gareth's dead."

I have a feeling this has to do with the fact I turned Derrak in and he didn't get relieved of comment until after he, Senzo, and Gareth helped out with "M".

<sigh> oh boy. not sure if we mentioned this but the barrier was originally supposed to be the demo. since it was the first place we scripted we used some really poor scripting conventions. People like derrack, 'M', and others I won't name are tens of pages of script long laced with all kinds of ugly gotos and such. fixing this probably won't happen because chances are i'll screw something up worse. sorry
:oops:
 

CP

Liturgist
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Messages
110
Re: Winnifreds dagger quest

RUDEDOGG006 said:
I received Winnifreds dagger and had it partially imbued. When I talked to Morgan in the Barrier I did not have my lead character holding the dagger, so I received a new one. I now have a partially imbued dagger and a complete dagger.

In regards to one of the above posts; I have run into VS. encounters between caravans and theives, but I could only attack the theives.
[/quote]

Good catch, thanks. This will be fixed in the next version.


CP
 

RUDEDOGG006

Novice
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Messages
10
Location
Long Beach CA
Program Lock Up

Caution Spoilers
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In the monastery after completing the dagger text dungeon I get summoned to Sharag. When Khal argues with him and gets flamed, my system always locks up. The game freezes, and I cannot return to desktop. I have had to do hard boots to get back in.
 

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