NEW Project: Sacred 2 Purist Fixpack

[idbeholdME 390]

5 hours ago, Flix said:

You might try substituting in a different volume map for the fur.  The tiger fur is an especially dramatic and fluffy texture compared to most of the others.

I didn't really mean actually improving how it looks (the current fur on the boars looks fine IMO). I mostly meant whether something could be done about the "always perfect opacity" of the fur effect in general. So that it would get obscured by fog/water like everything else.

[Lindor 438]

17 hours ago, Flix said:

The fur vanishes completely.

Aah thx. One of my three and Dmitriy's possible solutions eliminated.

17 hours ago, Flix said:

You can already "vary" the fur length and intensity through transparency.

Vut? Fur length should be controlled by the volume map's number of layers ("depth") and intensity (if you mean amount/thiccness of the spikes) by the volume map's number and size of opaque zones compared to transparent zones. If I interpret the numbers I'm seeing in fur.shader correctly, the cutoff is at 10%, meaning that everything with 90% transparency or more is clipped.

17 hours ago, Flix said:

The more black the alpha channel, the more transparent the texture becomes, therefore lessening the intensity of the fur shader effect. I assume that's what you're suggesting here.  This effect is why it's sometimes helpful to "taper off" the fur effect by adding some semi-transparency at the edges of the furred areas.  I did not do a very thorough job of this with the boars and bears, meaning the fur has sharp defined borders, compared to the Sabertooth Tiger textures.

pls don't do that to the boars. Their fur is supposed to be thicc and spikey. I mean in Germany we call them "Borstentier" for a reason

12 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

I mostly meant whether something could be done about the "always perfect opacity" of the fur effect in general. So that it would get obscured by fog/water like everything else.

I'll work on it when the two velvet suggestions turn out to not work either.

[Hooyaah 2,820]

Modifying Incandescent Skin the third and final time, I noticed that Fiery Ardor did not change the damage output of the Combat Arts.

[Flix 5,116]

11 hours ago, Lindor said:

Vut?

Not sure how to state it any clearer. Let's say instead of erasing an animal's face completely (100% transparency) instead I left the edges slightly more opaque, so that the fur seemed to slightly taper off, extending down onto his face, but not with the same intensity. The fur simply would seem... "less" than it would on the body.

The vanilla Sabertooth is a decent example of this technique. You can see there is thick fur on the top of the head, and no fur on the nose and upper lip, but it's hard to identify the exact cutoff point of where the fur stops, because of the way transparency was utilized.

11 hours ago, Lindor said:

pls don't do that to the boars.

I don't have any plans to change the boars.  But you're imagining something different than I meant anyways if you think this would somehow thin out their body fur. It would be more additive than subtractive.

Rather it's a lesson learned for the panthers, lions, wolves, monkey, griffons, etc. that I've been working on for next release. 

11 hours ago, Lindor said:

One of my three and Dmitriy's possible solutions eliminated.

D's suggestion seems to be to apply some degree of transparency to the entire texture.  This would lessen the fur effect in total, and would undoubtedly improve the mist/underwater problem that idbeholdme is complaining about, but I doubt you would approve if you like the fur to be as thick and spiky as it currently is.

[idbeholdME 390]

Regarding the increase of the level of enemies that Kuan' Breath affects, it seems to be insufficient at high levels/survival bonus. It's been keeping up with the enemy level in the early stages of the game, but right now, I'm at level 158 with a 93.8% SB and Kuan's Breath is 5 levels below the enemies:

Edited April 26, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Flix 5,116]

I can crank it up some more.  Can be done by editing the following line of the "gott_krieg_kriegsrausch" spell entry:

{"et_summon_mylevel", 30, 3, 0, 4 },

Probably the second number needs to be increased to maybe 5 or so, so it scales better.

The argument could be made, of course, that every Divine Gift needs an incentive for taking the Divine Devotion skill, as it acts as a Focus skill by increasing the max spell level.  Through that lens, the vanilla values may be viewed as an intentional balancing decision.

[idbeholdME 390]

44 minutes ago, Flix said:

The argument could be made, of course, that every Divine Gift needs an incentive for taking the Divine Devotion skill, as it acts as a Focus skill by increasing the max spell level.  Through that lens, the vanilla values may be viewed as an intentional balancing decision.

Well, as far as the original balancing goes, I think that the level limitation was there mostly so that low level characters couldn't just enter high level games and still be able to make high impact with the god skill, seeing as it scales off the power of the enemies. Honestly doesn't make much sense for single player for the limit to be there, but I didn't realize DD acted as a focus for the god skills. That would surely bump it to the needed levels.

Really not sure whether to increase it or keep it :/ I'm probably 60 on increase and 40 on keep. It really does suck that Kuan's power is a yes/no while all the others are still usable, no matter the level or if DD was picked.

Edited April 27, 2022 by idbeholdME

[idbeholdME 390]

Question about Sweetie's Ring. I thought it was an exclusive reward for the quest with Alchemist Jacobas, like Hunting Amulet or Heart of the Hunter are, but I also got it as a drop recently. The one from the quest has HP regen and alchemy bonus and the one I got as a unique drop only had HP regen. Should it be present at all in the unique drop list?

From enemy drop:

From Alchemist Jacobas quest:

Edited April 27, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Hooyaah 2,820]

I was playing some of the speech files one by one because it seems as if there are many of them which are never accessed and "spoken" by the character. For instance, there are thirty two things that the High Elf will say if you walk away from the game for a couple of minutes. Sixteen of the OGG files play for the "good" High Elf and sixteen others for the "bad" High Elf, each of which admonish the thoughtless player for "abandoning" her. I recall only ever noticing just under than half that number. This is true for any edition of the game I have played, yet what more appropriate place to make mention of it than here?

[idbeholdME 390]

9 minutes ago, Hooyaah said:

I was playing some of the speech files one by one because it seems as if there are many of them which are never accessed and "spoken" by the character. For instance, there are thirty two things that the High Elf will say if you walk away from the game for a couple of minutes. Sixteen of the OGG files play for the "good" High Elf and sixteen others for the "bad" High Elf, each of which admonish the thoughtless player for "abandoning" her. I recall only ever noticing just under than half that number. This is true for any edition of the game I have played, yet what more appropriate place to make mention of it than here?

I think that's more of a case of just bad luck. I've heard all the 16 idle voice lines for my Shadow Warrior in game. Including the "babble" ones, which also play when AFK (10 in total). If you want to cycle through them quickly, be sure to set the voice line frequency to always. The timer for the AFK voice lines depends on that. They happen very often when set to always.

And as far as voice lines in general go, there are SO many of them that can never be heard in game that it's crazy. I made somewhat of a breakdown in this thread:

 

Edited April 27, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Flix 5,116]

9 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Question about Sweetie's Ring.

Ah, crap, that item is not supposed to be a quest reward in PFP.  Will be fixed in next release.

[Lindor 438]

On 4/26/2022 at 2:34 AM, Flix said:

Not sure how to state it any clearer.

I get what you're saying. But it doesn't make any sense to me why this is true if I look at fur.shader. So what I'm saying is there is stuff to be done. But first comes the attack animation thing video. Hopefully I find some time at the weekend to do some modding again.

[idbeholdME 390]

A quick question. How safe is it to use the character editor with the PFP, when only adjusting skills? I assume it should be safe, but asking just in case.

Because of my recent findings about the behavior of the Blacksmith skill (info here: http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/72308-detailed-breakdown-of-blacksmith-behavior/),

I'd like to refund any points I put in past 75  Due to the lack of information, I already put in 11 more points after Mastery.

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Hooyaah 2,820]

It's safe. Besides, the C.E. will always make a backup file of your character and shared chest in the form of a bak file. Just remove the .bak after deleting the original character file. It also never hurts to save your original character anyway. Simply make a file in the same (Sacred 2 folder) and name it something like saved "SW," and you are doubly protected.

[idbeholdME 390]

Though that was it, but one more item with a bonus for a class that can't use it popped up. A 2-handed energy weapon with a High Elf bonus:

A shame, very good bonuses on it otherwise.

Edited April 30, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Hooyaah 2,820]

In the swamp region there is a quest, "A Good Father;" like many quests, it is not listed in the wiki. It is the only quest initiating in Sethiaz and upon completing it the quest shows as failed. When the father of a young lizard-man decides to join a cult the father gives the player a basket to deliver to him. The authorities intervene and threaten violence if you don't hand over the basket. The choice is to Accept or Decline. (This decision has always seemed unclear as to exactly what "Accept" means you are accepting. Does accepting mean that you intend to surrender the basket or, is it that you accept to rebel and accept the fight?) "Accepting," the fight is averted and they allow you to take the basket to the son anyway, relenting on their threat of violence. Upon delivery of the basket to the appreciative son, the quest subsequently fails with a nasty big red X tarnishing the otherwise perfect record of the player in the quest log book.

[idbeholdME 390]

5 hours ago, Hooyaah said:

In the swamp region there is a quest, "A Good Father;" like many quests, it is not listed in the wiki. It is the only quest initiating in Sethiaz and upon completing it the quest shows as failed.

Did you play the Light version?

I did that quest in the Shadow version and it completed correctly. The son asks you to deliver a message to his father, cult guards stop you that contact with family is forbidden. But they get the idea to modify the message in order to cut ties completely. I can't remember now whether you have a choice as a Shadow character, but I agreed. They falsified the message, eventually leading to the father and son falling out. That path completed successfully, so it might be Light version specific.

Edited May 6, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Flix 5,116]

There's both a Light and Shadow version. Remember you're working closely with the Cultists in Shadow Path and with the other (sane) Lizards on Light path, so you're seeing two sides of the same situation here, like most of the quests with good Light/Shadow variants.

The red X is a consequence of how most decision quests are designed. Many times you must fail a quest to trigger a subsequent one. By avoiding the fight you "failed" the kill quest that would have been completed had you clicked Decline and fought the guy.

I found out to change the dialogue bubble text, so the choice could be set to "Die!" or "I Agree" or something similar.

[Hooyaah 2,820]

I play the "Light" campaign exclusively. The thing is, Ben, I did not get a green check mark for delivering the package to the son.

[Flix 5,116]

On 4/3/2022 at 7:01 PM, Hooyaah said:

I have always thought it "foolish" that the jester says, "after all, I'm the only fool in the village." Especially because, just next, to him is a duplicate of himself playing a stringed instrument."

Well, I was able to work on this and make him truly the only fool in the village.   I made sure he transitions in the role of bard after quest completion, then I removed the duplicate jester.

[Hooyaah 2,820]

On 5/6/2022 at 2:46 PM, Flix said:

There's both a Light and Shadow version. Remember you're working closely with the Cultists in Shadow Path and with the other (sane) Lizards on Light path, so you're seeing two sides of the same situation here, like most of the quests with good Light/Shadow variants.

The red X is a consequence of how most decision quests are designed. Many times you must fail a quest to trigger a subsequent one. By avoiding the fight you "failed" the kill quest that would have been completed had you clicked Decline and fought the guy.

I found out to change the dialogue bubble text, so the choice could be set to "Die!" or "I Agree" or something similar.

When I reloaded the game later, I noticed that the logbook was updated with a green check mark at the end. Still, the player should not be penalized with a red X for making the final "good" choice in the Light Campaign, but the red X persisted, as if I had made a mistake. The way I see it, an "X" means failure and when one earns one, then the logbook is tainted by a failure. Nothing truly "Sacred" is "tainted." Anyone striving for a perfect record in the game will feel as if there is no way to achieve that goal. I have completed this quest many times before and never noticed that there was any mark designating a failed quest.

[Flix 5,116]

On 1/28/2022 at 10:41 AM, NathyielNathyiel said:

Found a bug with an event in El-Darrag.
There's should be a fight starting when you first enter the village. But it don't start for me. I try to save/re-load, Teleport to another city and game back, restart the game, etc.

Edit: removed PFP, the event start as soon as teleport in.

 

OK I spent all day Saturday trying to make this work again, and I finally got it.  I don't know why it broke, since nothing was changed with this quest.  But after a lot of scripting I was able to make the quest function like it used to.  The battle will start as soon as you set foot into town. 

[Hooyaah 2,820]

14 hours ago, Flix said:

Well, I was able to work on this and make him truly the only fool in the village.   I made sure he transitions in the role of bard after quest completion, then I removed the duplicate jester.

All of these "fixes" and assorted changes are really amazing. I've noticed the little additions like monkeys in the jungle, snakes in the desert area and the swamps, and the frogs (and more). Now in the quest where one is collecting "swamp belly toads," it's actually toads, not turtles. Thanks for all of the hard work that you are putting into this!

[idbeholdME 390]

On 5/8/2022 at 1:04 PM, Hooyaah said:

When I reloaded the game later, I noticed that the logbook was updated with a green check mark at the end. Still, the player should not be penalized with a red X for making the final "good" choice in the Light Campaign, but the red X persisted, as if I had made a mistake. The way I see it, an "X" means failure and when one earns one, then the logbook is tainted by a failure. Nothing truly "Sacred" is "tainted." Anyone striving for a perfect record in the game will feel as if there is no way to achieve that goal. I have completed this quest many times before and never noticed that there was any mark designating a failed quest.

It could be worse. The Dragon Cult quest chain uses failed quests to simply mark results of choices. There are several choices available during the quest (in the Shadow Campaign) and only 1 of the 3 possible scenarios results in a "checkmark only" quest log. If you choose to kill someone, you get an X, but the quest chain goes on with new quests instead of the "failed" one and still finishes successfully. I went over it on page 10 if you want to see the details.

 

[Hooyaah 2,820]

Upon completion of the side quest, Dark Invocation, The Essence of Dark Matters still drops, but its "grey" junk. Perhaps, not a bug, that, it's merely an incidental observation.