Welcome to Schattenländer! (Start Here)

[Garth]

 


Is it just me or is that perfect?

[Hellequin]

It's just you.  It gets better than that.

[bryce]

Bringing us back on-topic a little...

Maw's trick works, and the old illustrations look excellent in this context.  Turns out a simple layer mix with the original background gives very clean blends; this should make it much, much easier for us to process the graphics into the mod, as well as lookin' damn sharp.



Also works independent of system resolution, something I was worried about for a bit there.

We have some awesome stuff on the way for v0.2, guys; that's just the tip of the iceberg.

That looks pefect to me, as well.

I have been playing around with the same feature for AoA and put in about 15 custom menus I whipped up in photoshop and it is astounding that it looks SO much better.  I don't think the full effect is something you can realize just by looking at a screenshot.  It has to be experienced.

Since you have all the in-game artwork to draw from, it should also be very easy to redo the styles of the buttons and popups and such, and maybe make new fonts as well.  The new .808 look and feel, simply put, is crap.  The darklands one, of course, was very good and in addition there is the nostalgia/faithfulness to the original factor.  I haven't seen any mods do this (except AoA will be doing it), but it's something easy to do and desperately needed so I hope you (and other mods) will do it.  Well, not necessarily you in specific.  Anyone with photoshop who is reasonably familiar with it who has the original art should be able to whip something together in an afternoon....

[Hellequin]

I don't want to entirely recreate the interface elements from the original game, but yes - we're working on the interface right now, in much more than simply adding pretty pictures.  I won't say anything more about that until it's closer to ready, though; safe to say, I think it'll be an improvement (for this look and feel) over both the original Darklands and over M&B.

[Olaviusan]

Well, the subject pretty much speaks for itself. Excellent mod, with unparallelled depth.

I would be happy to contribute in any way - if there is anything I could do that is. Not especially skilled in programming or anything similar though, but I'm willing to lend a hand if it's needed.

-- Olav

[Arcane]

This is an great mod especially this isn't even close to being finished its amazing to me (I'm not a programmer) that you were able to override many of M&B's original interface in favor of this stat raise by use system and the interesting char creation process i look forward to play this mod as more shops are added and more bugs are hammered out

[Nethoras]

holy crap, how'd you get area damage and watnot to work?

EDIT "very carefully" very smooth, i'm assuming this is all a well guarded secret, and/or it takes like 5 years to explain...

[Hellequin]

Very carefully.

[Ron Losey]

Very carefully.

That was a good response ... I may have to start using that one.

[Hellequin]

Nethoras - actually it's not all that bad, were I to decide to explain it publically.  Basically all I did initially was read through module_operations.py with an eye to what functions might be useful to such a thing, experiment with them until I understood how they worked, and then started chaining 'em together.

There are actually some style elements I'm quite proud of, hiding under the hood and not hugely apparent.  For instance, the area damage gets inflicted to the target nearest to the center of the blast first, and then works its way outward.  Since it's all basically instantaneous the only visible outcome of this is to set the order of the "burnt for X" messages.  There are also some hidden reasons why I needed this as well.  But this was actually a noticeable additional complexity - it would have been much easier to leave it affecting them in order of agentID, not in order of range, I have to do an additional layer of looping for this refinement.

[Merentha]

There are actually some style elements I'm quite proud of, hiding under the hood and not hugely apparent.  For instance, the area damage gets inflicted to the target nearest to the center of the blast first, and then works its way outward.  Since it's all basically instantaneous the only visible outcome of this is to set the order of the "burnt for X" messages.  There are also some hidden reasons why I needed this as well.  But this was actually a noticeable additional complexity - it would have been much easier to leave it affecting them in order of agentID, not in order of range, I have to do an additional layer of looping for this refinement.

And this is why it seems that practically everyone is willing to trade models and textures for your code.   

[Hellequin]

Except that everybody talks a good game, but nobody's put up yet.  We'll see if they really want it that badly...

[Kruniac]

I crapped myself when I saw this mod. Darklands is one of the most enjoyable RPGs - ever.

I STILL play the thing, actually

Thanks for the mod, guys.

[Blademaster]

I crapped myself when I saw this mod. Darklands is one of the most enjoyable RPGs - ever.

I STILL play the thing, actually

Thanks for the mod, guys.

same here. if youneed help with anything as far as info on the game and medieval history i would be happy to help!

also: the deteriation system is kind of odd. i put on some stuff after a battle and it degraded. and the stuff degrades WAY to fast for anyones good.

furthermore: you can see most of the castles and caves and small villiages on the map instead of a random encounter, although currently the formentioned is not implemented (please implement!)

other than that good luck and good job, i expect this mod to explode into something even to rival 1066!

[LionNinja]

I must say if M&B ever reaches multiplayer, this will most likely be the biggest mod for it, good job guys i'm going to enjoy this later on