Prelude to Darkness 1.45 suggestions

[Momotaca]

:idea: Now that Patch 1.40 is out, allow me to start off the 1.45 suggestions:

It involves both the Zoom and combats. I wish the game could zoom further out especially during the beginning of a combat. On more than several occasions when a combat in the wilderness was started, I was unable to find the monsters (enemy) on the first round. I've scanned the screen up and down and left and right making liberal use of the Alt key with no success. Several times while looking, I suddenly found myself back at the Windows menu with the game aborted but that was back in 1.35 (hasn't happened yet in 1.4).

What I'd like to happen is that on the start of combat, the view would zoom out far enough to include both the characters and the monsters on the same screen. The Alt key could then be used to find that monster covered by a tree or building or whatever.

Should this not be possible, I have an alternate solution. Allow the TAB key to center on each of the characters in a combat. Each press of the TAB key would center on a different character or monster until it cycled the whole group and restarted.

 

[thathmew]

Allow the TAB key to center on each of the characters in a combat. Each press of the TAB key would center on a different character or monster until it cycled the whole group and restarted.

I can do the Tab thing, that's a good idea, zoom I might be able to do, but its a little trickier. I'm also working on making so the party always faces enemies at the starts of the random combats, although that's a little tougher as well. I might also make it so the camera pans either from the party to the enemies, or vice-versa at the start.

On my end in 1.45 I'd like to finish improving the enemy AI, add some more varied encounters, some better spell and combat fx (better blood), add more info to mouseovers and combat actions, get objects/ walls to transluce when obscuring characters, or have a key which would transluce them when held similar to the ALT key, and add some code to provide some encounters scaled more to exactly to the parties level.

On a side note I'm moving next week and also starting a new "real" job soon, so the next patch may take a little longer.

cheers,
-mat

 

[crpgnut]

suggestions

My biggest wish would be for the journal to be better. I have a real hard time remembering which quests are still open and which have been completed. If there was a way to sort quests or color code between complete and incomplete that would be nice.

Next to that I would like for the vast empty areas in the game to be filled up. It'd be nice
if the Zero crew could add a random item generator similar to the random combat one.

If we could find ingredients to make into potions or ingest, that'd be cool.

Equipping a musical instrument would be nice also. I'm sure this was an art decision as
much as anything else.

 

[alebrown]

I vote for zoom further out *all* the time. Don't know if this would be a problem graphically for slower systems or not...all I know is that it's very frustrating walking around town having absolutely no clue where I am because I can't see more than one building in the screen at once.
And/or it would be nice if a click on the map while in town would cause the party to walk to that place in town automagically. Although pathfinding may become an issue.
Alex

 

[Maced]

...a simple cross on the map showing where the party is located when in a town would do it for me

 

[Maced]

Any marking new locations for the first time with a red circle or something like that would help me a lot aswell. Sometimes I have a hard time finding the location which has just been added to the map.

 

[thathmew]

Any marking new locations for the first time with a red circle or something like that would help me a lot aswell.

I may be able to do that, it's something I've wanted as well.

re: town maps and party location-- the problem is that the maps aren't to a consistent scale/angle so I can't really map the party's position onto the maps, I'd have to write a different mapping algorithm for each map and even then it might not work. I've played around with other options like assigning the building locations and calculating party position based on them, but they too are just too much of a headache...

-mat

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Re: suggestions

My biggest wish would be for the journal to be better. I have a real hard time remembering which quests are still open and which have been completed. If there was a way to sort quests or color code between complete and incomplete that would be nice.

Yes, I agree here. The journal could stand some hefty revamping to make it more useful. Right now, I have to thumb through many, many pages of stuff just to get at what I need to remember.

 

[Momotaca]

This may sound silly, but sometimes I'd just like to hit the space bar to pause the game. There are instances I'd like to stop time from passing while I figure something out or just take a short break. There are other moments when I'd like to stop a walking character long enough to CLICK on him to start a conversation.

 

[Azael]

This may sound silly, but sometimes I'd just like to hit the space bar to pause the game. There are instances I'd like to stop time from passing while I figure something out or just take a short break. There are other moments when I'd like to stop a walking character long enough to CLICK on him to start a conversation.

If you press the Alt-button, the game freezes and you can pick your conversations easier (as well as finding more phat l3wt).

I'd like a little more stability, I suppose. The game crashes on me too much for my liking, especially when shopping as well as when manipulating the "camera".

 

[Maced]

There is a bug when going to the isle of godess. WHen you go back from the island some of your party members are stuck and cant move anylonger. This just happens to me when I had a party with more than 4 ppl. I am still running on 1.35 maybe this has already been solved.

 

[HanoverF]

I would like to see some combat changes that add a little tactical flavor to combat (ie PC and NPCs cannot parry attacks that come from behind them).

One nasty bug I'd like to see squashed is that going to certain windows (particularly Barter, Map, and Inventory) has a chance of bugging the graphichs of the buttons on that window, and then the whole game is ruined, basically have to Ctrl-Alt-Del out.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I would like to see some combat changes that add a little tactical flavor to combat (ie PC and NPCs cannot parry attacks that come from behind them).

Speaking of which, I've noticed that enemies that get low on hit points back off a bit in combat now. I've had two that backed away and let another take it's place in the front line of combat.

 

[thathmew]

There is a bug when going to the isle of godess. WHen you go back from the island some of your party members are stuck and cant move anylonger. This just happens to me when I had a party with more than 4 ppl. I am still running on 1.35 maybe this has already been solved.

I'll fix the placement in the next version, but you should be able to use the gather party button to get out of it as well,
-m