Welcome to Schattenländer! (Start Here)

[Dryvus]

This mod kicks ass, it's a great deal of fun to do some in-town fighting by the wharves. I've only played one session last night, and it's been in my head at work all day. Can't wait to see the map with 92 towns on it. Will they be added in the existing map space or will the map be expanded at all to accomodate them?

[Hellequin]

Jeansberg, and others - yeah, I've been pretty quiet.  Mix of RL demands and of coding issues of a couple of kinds; I should be able to get a new release out soon, though.  I delayed the last interim-release because I was this close to having weapon and armour enhancements working.

Unfortunately, the solution I implemented turned out to suck, in actual play.  "Blessed" and "Enhanced" done as imods worked excellently... except for the fact that every time I wanted to detect the imod on one of the player's items, I could only do so by removing it from their inventory and returning it... thus unequipping it.  So if I wanted to check if this is the broadsword whose blessing is scheduled to expire, suddenly it was no longer at the ready.  Likewise if I wanted to suppress the item whilst you talked to a shopkeeper (so you can't sell blessed items for big money), it came back unequipped.  Basically the more I completed the code, the more those shortcomings became apparent.

So we're going to switch back to the simpler approach, already in place for other types of item enhancement (trueflight, etc), where the blessed item is a different item, and imods just do what imods did before.  Disappointing, because other than the above shortcomings the other system was really neat, but so be it.  I'm just having to work up to it.

As a plus, however, the code for 0.1d will include the following features:

• More random encounter variety (thanks, Blankshield!)
• Functionality on all saint's blessings except for local reputation and the various "exotic" ones possessed only by one or two saints.
• Functionality on all potions.
• Weapon & armour quality gradually degrades after use, especially if your best Artifice skill is poor.

I hope to be able to release that by about the end of the coming weekend.  It's mostly ready, but several of the above need debugging, and the rewriting of some enhancements will be slow, annoying work.  Once I'm past that, though, we should be off and running again.

I've also implemented .smd support for Blender, as some of you may have seen, which is simply huge; Blender's tools for (for example) rigging are kick-ass.  Here's my commitment for Schattenländer version 0.2:  We will have as many human-based encounters implemented as possible; we will have at least one nonhuman encounter (tatzelwurm, gargoyle, demon, and wolf are all likely candidates for which I have strategies already sketched out).  We may also have on-field orders to use potions/saints operational by that time.

There's also a massive surprise getting set up for all of you, once we hit the milestone of Schattenländer version 0.5.  The only hint I'll give you is that you'd better practice up your Schattenländer skills; you'll have good cause to want 'em.

Still looking for skilled modelers, and dedicated sequencers... if you want to chip in, PM me and ask how.

Cheers!
- Hellequin

[Winter]

Jeansberg, and others - yeah, I've been pretty quiet.  Mix of RL demands and of coding issues of a couple of kinds; I should be able to get a new release out soon, though.  I delayed the last interim-release because I was this close to having weapon and armour enhancements working.

Unfortunately, the solution I implemented turned out to suck, in actual play.  "Blessed" and "Enhanced" done as imods worked excellently... except for the fact that every time I wanted to detect the imod on one of the player's items, I could only do so by removing it from their inventory and returning it... thus unequipping it.  So if I wanted to check if this is the broadsword whose blessing is scheduled to expire, suddenly it was no longer at the ready.  Likewise if I wanted to suppress the item whilst you talked to a shopkeeper (so you can't sell blessed items for big money), it came back unequipped.  Basically the more I completed the code, the more those shortcomings became apparent.

So we're going to switch back to the simpler approach, already in place for other types of item enhancement (trueflight, etc), where the blessed item is a different item, and imods just do what imods did before.  Disappointing, because other than the above shortcomings the other system was really neat, but so be it.  I'm just having to work up to it.

I've been wishing for a command to equip an item for ages. Hopefully in the next version of M&B; it should certainly be possible for Armagan to code it now that we can get the contents of inventory slots. Preferably with a complimentary add_item command that supports item modifiers and outputs the new item's inventory slot to reg0.

Just remind him to do this in the Module System suggestions thread on Taleworlds.

Maverickly,
Winter

[Hellequin]

Hai, ja, oui.

Me too; I just haven't had it made quite as explicit as this, where I started out thinking it would be a minor issue only, and it turned out to pop its head up time after time as I worked through the interaction of this bit with the rest of the code.

However, the fix is coded now; certes, I'll poke Armagan about it, but one of my principles here has been that I'm not going to "shelve" something to wait for a feature (custom skeletons, equip_item, etc) unless it's absolutely necessary.  Partly this is because usually I enjoy working within strange constraints.  I'm actually looking forward to coding a flying demon under the constraint of "no nonhuman/nonhorse skeletons", for instance, even though it would be way easier to do it with real control over the skeleton and animations.

Cross your fingers, folks; with luck, version 0.1d will be ready to upload tonight.

[Cartread]

The potions are neat of course.  I also like the vastly changed character developement.

[Hellequin]

Glad you like it!  Personally I like the flexibility it gives me, all kinds of little touches.  For instance, each hero's Healing skill now has a chance to go up based on how wounded all of the other members of the party had been, during combat.  Another example, using blunt weapons counts as just a little more Virtuous than using killing weapons.

Speaking of which... announcement:  Version 0.1d has been released.

'Nuff said - go get it!

[KON_Air]

How about narrowing Blessed items to Blessable unique items? For example player gets "Saintly Long Sword", gets it blessed it becomes "Saint X's Blessed Sword" when blessing expires item is removed and replaced with "Saintly Long Sword"? Kinda kills the idea but...

[Merentha]

Hellequin, you really are a tease.   

That said, I'm excited to see rapid progress continually made on this oft-discussed, yet never seriously pursued, idea. 

[Hellequin]

Jeansberg - best way would be like this.  First do a normal install of 0.1d using the installer, into the same directory that your repository's working copy lives (PM me if you need help with this part).  Then update your local copy from the project repository; this should include a subdirectory labeled Module_system.  Inside that there's a file named Build Module.bat.  Run that; if it spawns errors you may need to run it again now that it's built its ID lists on your machine (they're not versioned as they're basically derived files, not source).  Then run Schattenlander.

And, Merentha... what better way to keep people wondering?   And thanks.  Out of curiosity, have you tried the mod (esp. the most recent release)?  What bits did you think worked, what bits don't yet feel right, what's jarring, what's unfinished, what's cool?   Inquiring developers want to know...

[blankshield]

Sweet.  So I can take it as read that my priorities for what encounter to sequence next have shifted?



Couple bugs I noted with it, that I'm sure you're aware of; give me a shout if you want to discuss.

James

[Hellequin]

Hah!

Now functional and will be in the next release: you can prepare orders (such as "quaff Sina's New Wind on my order" or "pray to St. Lazarus for Anya when she's badly wounded") ahead of time, and activate them (or have them activate as conditions warrant).

Tested to a limited extent thus far, and lookin' good.  I'm sure there are a few bugs in it yet, and much auxiliary code yet to be written (for instance getting a list of existing preset orders; deleting orders; dealing with the departure of a party member; etc), but by the next release it should be pretty solid. This is just the initial announcement that yes, it's in, and it works.

I also intend to include a more in-depth system by which you can gradually construct such an order, piece by piece (Anya... invoke... St. Benedict... for Franz), in a related mode to that which you use to trigger the presets.  It won't be nearly as swift to use, but it should be sufficiently comprehensive that it'll be usable anytime you really need it.  This is actually not going to be all that much more complex to write than what I've got now, it's just an extrapolation of the existing setup.

The "preptime" system is now officially ancient history.  Everything it could do, can now be done on the battlefield using this interface.

- Hellequin

[Merentha]

Congratulations on the subforum, Hellequin.

[Scion]

Congrats, well deserved.

[nihilocrat]

I'm not sure if you really need it, but I just wanted to offer my abilities in German (I'm practically fluent after studying abroad two semesters in Munich) and knowledge of Medieval German mythology (but I figure Darklands has that covered, right?) to the project. I'm just getting started with M&B and I'm amazed that such a relatively obscure game has such a huge and active modding community. When I get back home today I'm going to try out this mod as well as Onin no Ran.

I really love Darklands and just about any game that tries to have a quasi-realistic medieval setting. I generally think real history is a lot more fascinating than fantasy. Darklands really got medieval German folklore dead on: it was generally all about really horrible monsters doing really horrible things to people (who also might be horrible and be getting what's coming to them).

[Hellequin]

Nihilocrat - thanks!  The original game was spot on in many ways, but in others (for instance the structure of its quests) it was either brilliant (the Dragon quest, the villages-sabbath-monastery chain) or pathetic (the various random fetch-and-carry quests).  So the random quests are one area where I intend to recapitulate-but-improve, and this is definitely able to be informed by a good feel for the mythology of the period.

I'd suggest you pick up the mod and get a feel for it first.  Once you've played the mod for a while, if you're still interested in participating, c'mon back and we'll for sure find something you can contribute - whether that be within our focus area (recapitulate first) or outside it (work on a more classical set of random quests, perhaps), whether it's within your core expertise or within the category of "requires no special skills", I'm sure that no interested soul will go away unable to help out.  Hell, maybe you'll decide you'd like to actually do a German port of the mod; I'd happily support that, even if I hardly speak three words of the language myself.