Converting other 3rd Party DS1 maps to DS2

Everything looking good as far as quests, about ready to run up the mountain to get the key. Things working fine in Respador as far as doors and the like. Other than a few minor bugs with male hair styles. Burk, Farmer Black, Evan Oldburg and Fox Mulder (from the x files?) All have messed up heads. Appears that some of them may have Dwarf hair. Think it is the same issue we had on the Realm of Kings Map as you can see through some of their heads.
Other than that things are moving nicely.

@ iryan,
Using the latest version of the Search for the Past Map (using the allsaves broken world start) I played from start to finish without encountering any problems with quests, doors, monsters. the only tiny issue is with the heads of some of the characters that I noted in my last post. Think this map is for sure ready to move from alpha to beta.

The three quests in town all work, arrived at the trader at the foot of the mountains and was able to hire Karma and get the clear the pass quest.
I think Karma is has altitude sickness She has a pinkish body and green face. Now I have not looked at the template for Karma yet but it looks to me like the 0 texture is a (12) and the 1 texture is most likely (13). I say this because she is an elf and 11,12,13 skin colors are used by elves. I think her color should be green so matching the 0 and 1 textures should fix this.
So far all else is working as advertised

Okay my guess was correct. These are the textures currently in Karma's Template

[textures]
{
0 = b_c_gah_ef_skin_01_12_npc;
// 1 = b_c_gah_amr_suit_fa_a1_npc-ef-04;
1 = b_c_gah_amr_suit_fa_a1_012_13;

As you can see texture 0 is a 12 (green skin tone) and texture 1 is a 13 which is flesh color. So this would give her green skin on her face and a pinkish skin on her body.
The line 1 = b_c_gah_amr_suit_fa_a1_npc-ef-04; is commented out with the // so has no effect on what happens.

I changed the textures as follows:

[textures] { 0 = b_c_gah_ef_skin_01_12_npc; 1 = b_c_gah_amr_suit_fa_a1_012_12;

removing the unnecessary line and on texture 1 changing the 13 to a 12 Now Karma is an all green female elf. Note changing the texture after recruiting a character will not change the character in game, you must go back to a save prior to recruiting the character to see the change.

Thanks for that. I hope to get started on improving this map next so your discoveries and suggestions will be very helpful.

Hi Iryan,

It appears that Youstofrai another of the NPCs that can be hired in Training of the Hero has a texture mismatch also. If you change both texture colors to 03 everything will be okay. The other characters that can be hired as far as textures go appear to be fine. I will start over looking very closely at everything I can find since you plan on working on this map next.

Don't forget the bad hair on some of the male characters in Search for the Past :P

Training of the Hero

Possible Conversations I will update this post when I discover more

Farmer Brown
Do you have any chickens or potatoes? I purchased this farm so that I would always have breakfast outside my front door. However it seems I can only grow bacon and ham. I will starve!

Melisa Trabeh
Have you seen my cat? His name is Melvin and I think the giant rat ate him!

Verise Fernlilly

Melisa as I said before Melvin is over the bridge near the crypt, are you listening to me?

Roger Threnty

I am not dead yet. I know you are the undertaker but I just wanted to know if you would like to have dinner. The Inn has a two for one early bird special.

Nessa Earlman

Can you please spare a little gold I need a drink and I am a bit over drawn.

Youstofrai is missing the icon to let you know that you can hire him. The rescue quest that is given to you by Yolanda does not complete. I go into the ice cave Mounine and save the half giant Pedro (because he shows a star on the radar map. I hire him and the quest star on the radar goes out however the quest does not complete.
Everything Else in Mounine seems to be working great all the doors and the quest from the oracle are working.

It's kind of weird Having a certain Elf confirming my reports WITHOUT getting run over :goofy: :silly: :wavey:

So I downloaded Alpha3 and have spent the day playing it (on DS2 with Legendary Mod). Got to Mounine completing "Find the Oracle", received the first task activating the "Dragon Menace" quest (go to the fort and aid the soldiers). Collected Pedro (with the same result as the Elf had) and proceeded to the fort's drawbridge.

Big overlay announcing I was at the fort. No change to the task (OK, I'm there, but I still have to aid the soldiers.) The militia archer and the mage were standing up to some drakes but Major Kawalski was down unconscious. Killed those drakes, spoke to the militia man, then hunted down the other drakes round the perimeter. During or after that, the Major was back on his feet so I left-clicked him to talk but got the He Is Busy box. (He wasn't doing anything then - not even getting his breath back, because the info over his head showed him to be at full health.) Well I was wandering around when he spoke up (unsolicited - or if he was responding to my clicking on him it was lots of seconds delayed - 20? 30?) So then we were into the conversation about killing Zerk but got no new task out of it, presumably because task 1 never completed.

Just for fun I did kill Zerk and went back to Mounine to see what Oracle would say, but as expected got no response. (Zerk's treasure chest hadn't opened either.)

That's the big stopper. I'll call it A3#001. Lots else to report but for the moment:

A3#002. The second edition Oracle at Mounine, the one in the street who should be invisible until one gets back from killing Zerk, is visible (but unresponsive) the first time there. (So Mounine has two Oracles at once)

A3#003. The rat secondary quest is easily rendered impossible - just leave Frontenac after the barrier goes down but before finishing the rat. Go into the Crypts, return to Reguin's house, even get your character killed by the rat. (As a tester I do try, but don't always remember, to make deliberate mistakes.) Whether one walks back into Frontenac, tele-portals from the Crypts or respawns in front of the inn, the rat barrier is back and the rat unreachable behind it. Talking to the quest-giver again doesn't help.

A. I sent a new party after the giant rat. Picked up the Quest, Gate opened, left town for a short distance, it appears that the gate closes only after you get the on screen message that you are in a different area. Ran back to the rat pen and the gate was up again. Could not get the quest again, however I was able to kill the Giant Rat and complete the quest, by standing close the the fence and waiting for the rat to move in my direction and shoot him with a crossbow a few times. The weapon needs at least a 15 meter range as it appears the Rat is smart enough to know that most bows in DS2 have a range of 10 meters or less.

B. There is another issue with the quest to help the fort. If you kill Zerk first before going to the fort the Major does not even want to speak to you he just stays busy. I stopped poking him at about 10 minutes. It appears that since the step in the quest does not complete (getting to the fort) nothing after that will work. As you can not get the last quest from the Oracle. Much the same problem as with the infernal caverns quest in Realm of Kings -- expect there is something missing or out of order in the quest flick.

Most other things withing Mounine and from Mounine to the Fort appear to work. Now in the DS1 map if you killed Zerk before talking to the Major at the fort the quest would fail and you could go no farther with the map. Because the Oracle will not believe that you actually killed the dragon.

Note I was able to open the trunk near Zerk in the previous version and the item whatever it was might have been the key to getting the next part of the quest where you need to Kill the old hero to get his powers.

Thanks to both you and RSimkinuk for the reports. I'm actively working on this map so they will be invaluable.

Starting from the beginning, I would have thought that the barrier would have remained deleted but obviously not. I must look at the smaller details on how this is managed.

Even withstanding the issues with the broken quest for the dragon, you shouldn't even be able to access the dragon before getting that task as I tried to place a barrier there so obviously that failed too.

With the duplicate Oracle I must have forgotten to delete the invisible one in the street. She's visible only so I could see her in the Editor. I've used or tried to use flick to make the first Oracle do everything with stages as per the quest npcs in the DS2 map.

Is the barrier an extra boulder just outside the cave, filling the passage between a large boulder and the ledge edge? I noticed that. The reason it doesn't work is the gap on the other, cliff wall side of the large boulder that characters can just squeeze through.

I have just killed Zerk again in the DS1 original. I didn't go to the chest, didn't open it, didn't remove the Quillrabe stone. Back in Mounine, Oracle did gave me the quest to kill the old hero and the hatch to the cellar did open. So Zerk's chest has nothing to do with the subsequent quest workings; it is there to reward players with loot, and the Quillrabe Stone in it is a worthless and unwanted item the original author failed to remove.

*Well that is good to know Richard.
Now about the rock blocking the entrance to Zerk's Cave. The space between the cliff wall and the exploding rock (it will explode once the quest is given.) Is just to wide as one of the lesser dragons just flew around it and attacked my party. Then standing beyond the blocking rock I was able with ranged weapons kill any dragon the peaked out of the cave. So my suggestion just make the rock bigger or wider.

TotH, just a reminder from one of my posts that the door to the house that the Bandits infest the basement of does not open

Magic Tcherniat is having either a bad hair day or a bad head day. As with most air heads he has a big hole in his. I think there is a mismatch in the textures and custom head. Just like Simon's Problem in The realm of Kings. Both Simon of the Realm of Kings and Magic Tcherniat of Training of the Hero
are male elves and use exactly the same textures however they have different custom heads. I changed the textures and custom head that Magic Tcherniat had to match the textures and custom head that simon is now using. Hope I have a save far enough back (before when I hired magic tcherniat) so I can hire him again to see if his head is fixed. I am sure it will be fixed since Simon is working fine. But I must check even if it means starting a new game.

Not sure what is still wrong his head is somewhat better but still not right, fixed Simon but not Magic T.

This is better, but still not correct. Before he had either gray rectangles or spikes sticking out of his head.

A3#004. All four recruitable characters come out invalid. I presume Monster Level Adjustment also adjusts the recruits? My games are Single Player - Create New Character - Mercenary. I've been doing the rat and crypts quests but not going to the forest, so can get to Karma at level 4, Mounine at 5 and the fort at 6 or 7. Each recruit turns out to be about half a level lower (6 for Tcherniat), holding a weapon they don't meet the requirements for, which they consequently drop the moment the player does anything at all in their inventories.

Example: Karma with {Ranged 3, Combat 2} holding a bow requiring Ranged 5. She'd also had a skill point spent on Quick Draw (supposed to need Ranged 5). How she acquired the combat magic experience is a mystery, because her spell book is empty.

A3#005. Tcherniat is worse in that he is in two minds about his profession. In my case his skills were {Nature 4, Combat 5} but all his skill points had been spent in melee! and he was holding a long sword (Melee 15), His armor changed when recruited, to legitimate robes, but before he had been wearing - I don't know DS2 well enough yet to say, but it looked more like fighter's stuff than a mage's.

He does come with some spells in his book, which is more than the original author gave him (IIRC).

(Youstofrai and Pedro both come with secondary skill in Nature Magic, but no spells - in particular, no healing to autocast)

A3#006. Pedro is the only one so far to have been wearing armor (and gloves and boots) above his skill level (way above: Melee 13 or 12 when he only has 4).

A3#007. What the statue between the two waterfalls, below Frontenac, is supposed to do only when the party has two items from the ends of the map, it did without them, so I could work the HUB teleport to the secret beach.

A3#008. On arriving above the beach, the HUB platform immediately stopped up in the air. (I got my party of two off by summoning a portal.)

A3#---. Mod-DS1Content-Alpha10v has fixed the cows at Frontenac - confirmed.

The recruitable characters use a separate script to the Level Adjustment Mod. Usually it works well but I believe I may have messed these ones up by rushing too much. Definitely poor Magic is screwed up.

As for the other items mentioned here and previously, the Rat should work a lot better. It will only show up when you get the quest now so no more barriers needed.

The Dragon quest is also fixed. There was an issue with the flick getting hung on the trigger I was trying to use to remove the rocks which were meant to act as a barrier but as bare_elf reported they didn't. Now you definitely can't reach the dragon until you speak to the Major.

Currently the quest line breaks down when you're suppose to enter the cellar beneath the Oracle's home as it won't open. Should be easy enough to fix. I just wanted to get the rest of the quests working properly and intuitively.

With A3#007 I haven't done anything to it yet. I'm surprised you can activate the platform as I tried but nothing happened. As for A3#008 that was a common problem with the displacers in the Utraean Peninsula. One reason why they were disabled and replaced by session teleporters instead. If nobody else can fix them, I can do something like I did in Legends of Aranna where I replaced them with portals. I'll get the quests all fixed up first and then look at it.

Incidentally do you know the purpose of the Gemme Ecarlate found in the swamps? I did assume it had something to do with the secret level but you just mentioned that the two artifacts were found near the end of the map. And what's with Norick's diary?

Yes, the secret level does need two items - the tenstone-like Pierre du Tenebreux from one end, the desert pyramid, and the Gemme Ecarlate from the other end, the swamp. (Not the Quillrabe stone and not the Pierre de Skone.)In the new version, a new character can run from Reguin's house to the statue, turn it, and get the lever. I have just done this again. Try the same under DS1, no lever.

Before you spend too much time perfecting Youstofrai as a ranger/nature, why not the original author's concept of him as a combat mage?
Karma = Naidi (ranger)
Youstofrai = Lorun (combat mage)
Pedro = Kroduk (melee)
Magic Tcherniat = Andiemus (nature mage)

Playing through the original map just to see where the differences are between the DS1 and DS2 versions. One thing I noted right away is that the Giant Rat does not move from the side of the shed until you get within about a few yards. It is as if he has been frozen and then starts patrolling when he senses someone near. You can kill him in advance of getting the quest and although you get the quest from old man fossil the quest will never complete.
This is true of all the quests as I picked up the stone in the crypt and killed the bandits under the house before asking for the quests. That was a flaw in how the DS1 Quests operated. So Maybe in the DS2 version of the map as far as the rat quest goes maybe the rat should be invisible until you get the quest. Just a thought.

I've actually have done what you've suggested and it works well for the Rat. I've also made it impossible to kill Zerk before getting to that point in that quest.

You have highlighted a problem though with the Bandits and the Stone. I'll have to put my thinking cap on. My first thoughts would be to make them only appear if you get the quest but considering my difficulties with blocking access to Zerk, Flick sometimes has a problem with distance triggers that aren't in the frustrum. That's why you got the "Major Kawalski is currently busy" message when you tried to talk to him.

I'll try that first and then if it doesn't succeed I'll use the good old door and key approach as that seems very robust and works all (most) of the time.

This lack also extends to some of the Legendary Maps as for example the Orchard Cellar Quest in Elddim in the Utraean Peninsula. You can actually enter the cellar and kill the spiders and so prevent the quest from ever being able to be completed. Not that I've ever received any reports on that but it's obviously possible to do. Same for Edgaar's cellar in the Kingdom of Ehb.

Iryan, Can a quest/task's active status unlock doors etc without a Lore Item needed as key? Yes, surely, because the Arhok town gates worked that way in DS1-LoA. (Or is that the kind of trigger you were attempting with Kawalski and the dragon?)

To reach the Stone in the crypts there is a whole series of doors in the lower level one must open. To reach the bandits one must take the elevator down to the forest - could the lever be locked until the quest-giver (right beside it) is spoken to? In Edgaar's cellar and the Elddim orchard cellar, could the automatic elevator to the lower level be made not to work unless one has the quest?

For thoroughness, lock the Mounine exit gates to stop players perverse enough to have ignored Oracle and not got the task to go to the fort.

(Suggested conversations for the two Mounine gate militia without (you can tell which is for which gate!):

"Your arriving is the only thing to have happened here all winter."
"Move along quickly, please, and remember to shut the gates behind you.")

With Kawalski and Tcherniat, it will be quite an achievement to get the fight with the drakes right, so both survive but without killing the beasts so quickly the party's help isn't needed, for all levels of party that Monster Level Adjustment could be adjusting the drakes to.

I was saving this until you got the quests right, but it follows on from the above:

A3#009. Should the fort's portal point be inside its cave instead of out? Before entering the cave I tried a Summon Teleport from the fort interior and got a portal back to Mounine. From inside the cave I tried a Summon Teleport and got a portal back to the centre of the fort, above ground, arriving in the middle of a fresh battle against re-spawned drakes.

(Ideally, for the sake of the storyline, I'd prefer the fort to be one place monsters do not re-spawn.)

A3#900 (900 number series for my artistic opinions as opposed to gameplay issues). Pedro in the original was being attacked by, and knocked out by, an ice fly he was trying to fight off with only his fists. Meeting him as an armoured and weapon-bearing melee fighter makes most implausible the story of him being unable to fight his way out without the party's help. Suggested solution: he has no gear. This would be one way round the problem of getting his gear right for his (adjustable!) level. (Could he be made to drop some money as a quest reward so you can buy him gear? Is a quest reward one of the drops that Monster Level Adjustment can adjust the value of?)

A3#901. How does Pedro being a half-giant yet brother to the quest-giver woman Yolanda square with the canonical lore of half-giants as a race? (Simple solution - adjust the quest-giving conversation rather than his race.)

Time for a couple of short side trips

:twisted:

Finished the original "Training of the Hero" and noted that if you complete a step in a quest without first either getting the quest or completing the previous part of the quest the game will not allow you to complete the quest. So I decided to look at a few other DS1 maps by both Psychogun2003 and others. In most cases to prevent a person from completing a section of a quest prior to either receiving the quest or completing a previous section. The path to the out of order quest area was almost always blocked by a door that required you to have a key or some special item in your inventory. Very much like Dreu's treasure hunt quest in Dungeon Siege 2. You need both a key that you receive from the prior section of the quest and you must have her selected as the primary character. This is also true of the vision quest. You must have a particular person in your party before anything happens.
So I was thinking maybe using the same principle would work for quest elements in the converted DS1 maps. There could be a door blocking the entrance to
Zerk's Cave that would require having Magic Tcherniat in your party and/or the Major could give you a key to the door as when you are in winstone fortress and you need to fill the silly bowl from the fountain and the guard captain gives you the key for saving his men. Now I know your saying but if the door is locked how did the dragons get out to attack the fort? Simple answer, the door you are required to open is the door for the dragon keepers, who can not fly. Now I am sure there must be other exits from the cave which dragons could fly through. I mean it looks as if Zerk is in some type of chimney or maybe a volcano so up would be out if you could fly.

Again I've already implemented the exact same solution. Do Great minds think alike or is it the other way around.

I used a very small gate to block access with warning signs attached, so it's quite plausible for drakes to be able to fly over the fence and of course if they could really fly all they need to do is fly across the small canyon between Zerk's cave and the Fort.

The Major gives you a key to unlock the gate and explains the gate was to prevent travellers from unwittingly stumbling into the cave by accident, which would be unfortunate for them. A play on the previous ability of players to be able to break the questline if they went and killed Zerk out of order.

Currently I'm experimenting with a gizmo of KillerGremal's that makes objects invisible until a quest task is active. I also have to restart in order to see if the fix for the Oracle's cellar door works.

Training of the Hero has been updated to Alpha 4.
http://www.siegetheday.org/~iryan/files/Third_Party_Maps/DS1_Map_TrainingoftheHero_Alpha4.ds2res

You should be able to complete all quests now and also access the hidden level (but not return from it yet), though that's for testing as you don't require the artefacts at the moment.

Still needs a lot of polish but its getting there.

Yes the quests work much better. Tried to go the three quests in Frontenac prior to getting them and was not allowed to get the items or kill the things without getting the quest first. Great Job. Now two things that need correction. There is no yellow storage vault anywhere in Frontenac I am not sure if there was one before, but would be nice as I had stuff stored there from another map that I was hoping to use. No big deal. Now for the big deal, Poor Karma has the same skin mismatch as she had in the last version of the map. I think there is something wrong with texture 0 as she has a pink head and a green body. This texture might need changing 0 = b_c_gah_ef_npc-003; Not sure which one but her head needs to be green like her body.

Yes I forgot to place storage stashes in the map. Will be done of course.

I see what you mean about Karma but it looks more like gray to me than green. Actually the correct skin is b_c_gah_ef_npc-005 but there's no available portraits matching that shade other than Finala's. I've changed her armor texture ( that's the 1 = ) from 12 to 11 so her neck and hands are a better shade.

While you're testing the map could you try seeing how Pedro and Magic act in the party? Sigofmugmort has brought to my attention a possible lack in the way I set up the initial encounters with these characters that may make them misbehave when in the party. If you're using the auto-engage mod you'll need to disable it.

Rather quickly here's another update to Training of the Hero caused by issues to some recruitable ai bought to my attention by sigofmugmort.
http://www.siegetheday.org/~iryan/files/Third_Party_Maps/DS1_Map_TrainingoftheHero_Alpha5.ds2res

I used a slightly modified brain_hero.skrit for Pedro and Magic and removed movement_orders = mo_hold from the instances. This is what was causing the characters to stay put when rampage mode was activated. Mirror mode obviously overrides this setting. The only weird thing you notice about Pedro and Magic when in mirror mode is that they will defend themselves if attacked by a melee monster. They'll ignore magic or ranged attacks.

Please test them out and if they work I'll update all other instances of the same type, Ulora, Gloern, Mhankur, etc.

I also placed the stash container in several locations in the map and touched up Karma's textures (will need to rehire her again to see the difference).