Something I do not remember
| Submitted by bare_elf on Thu, 2016-06-09 00:45 | ||
I am currently playing Legends of Utrae with Adepts. Going through the Ancient Temple on the way to Meren I encountered Snow Tracker before reaching Dornek. If I remember correctly he was standing next to Dornek at the exit of the Ancient Temple and did not wonder about. He gave us the quest to clear Dornek's Quarry and followed us all the way to Dornek's Quarry and back to the ancient temple. It looks as if he intends to follow us all the way to Meren. Has this ever happened to anyone? Iryan have you ever seen or remember seeing this?
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I'm not sure about that but I believe not. Are you using any mods? LOA had code that allowed npcs to act that way and I think it was used in Return to Arhok with the hassat follower.
Thinking about this it would be good to have more of this type of interaction in both DS1 and DS2. NPCs that would tag along with the party for a short while. It would add a lot more ambience to the game.
The only things I am using in LoA are the two mods Legends of Utrae and Adepts. The same configuration I have been playing for years, and I do not recall ever seeing this. Snow Tracker just follows us. He does not fight monsters and he does not get attacked by them, as if it is only my party that sees him. I will let you know if he ever decides to go back to Dornek or he decides to visit Meren.
Well Snow Tracker is still with us in Meren. He does not seem to want to leave us and return to Dornek. Well based on the back story in the DS2 version of the map I can understand why.
It appears that I have found some things that Snow Tracker can not do. He can not use either the short range or long range teleporters, and he can not use elevators. However when your party uses one of the devices and then returns to where you left Snow Tracker he attaches himself to your party and follows until he is blocked by one of these devices. He is acting just like a summoned character, such as beach girl, school girl or one of the many characters available. I thought because of this I should try the spell "Return Summoned" but that did nothing. So I am leaving him by the elevator in Meren and will check from time to time just to see if he is still there.
This will have to go down as one of the great unsolved mysteries I'm afraid.
There's nothing special about Snow Tracker. He's an original template from DS1. I examined the map files carefully and all I did was alter his conversation and give him a talk skrit for the quest and reward he gives you. There's nothing I can see in the talk skrit to cause this behaviour.
It's not surprising he can't use teleporters or elevators. He can't attack or be attacked because it's defined as such in his instance.
I was only playing a few games in ds1 and loa just for a change of pace.
Yes I know as things are a little slow around here at the moment. Could it be because its summer in most of the world except for Oz?
Still your little adventure reminds us what's missing from this great game, something reinforced by your post in BW discussion titled "boring". A little more unpredictability in the game would go a long way in spicing things up.
Some examples could be legionnaires spontaneously appearing and helping your party out in some of the encounters near the towns. Talking about the Legendary Mod here, you can manufacture such encounters yourself in Elddim and Hiroth if you lure the monsters near some of the legionnaire guards. It would be nice if this would spontaneously happen randomly in such areas. I know Killergremal has code in his content pack for the Legendary Mod and some of his mods, called "Call_Friends_To_Arms" but I've never been able to get it to work (perhaps because such a block doesn't exist in the heroes' templates?).
Or finding lost citizens in the wilds and they follow you back to town (if you don't use a teleporter of course) and then go their own way. A bit like your experience in fact. Actually that occurs in DS2 in the lost patrol quest at Windstone Fortress where the soldiers follow you around (but don't participate in fighting which is a little unrealistic).
Some of Killergremal's code allows random templates to be produced for an instance. I haven't taken advantage of the potential of this yet but imagine if some of these instances (in specific places) had a random chance of spawning a legionnaire or similar? You would randomly come across them fighing monsters and could help them out.
Or find dead corpses of farmers, legionnaires, etc and were able to resurrect them? Again this is something Killergremals code seems to support but I've never been able to get it working. An example is poor Lagreth (the Utraean Priest from Fallraen) who foolishly runs off into a cavern full of dangerous beasts and predictable gets himself killed before your eyes. In DS1 you could resurrect him but not in the Legendary Mod.
These are just some examples off the top of my head.
Those are great ideas, they could really move the Legendary mod to a higher level. One thing I would like to point out is that npcs are awfully weak. Apart from fact that they are invicible, they are petty prey for even the weakest of monsters. Legionaires and battle npcs really do not make much sense unless they are able to actually kill a monster. It is not that difficult, I have made a small simple mod in which I assigned monster_level, some damage depending on their level and some skill points so that they can actually blaco attacks with a shield and so on to combatative NPCs from Ds2 and Bw maps.
It really made them capable of being actually helpfull.
Plus some modification of "mind" block, so that they attack enemies on sight.
And since you mentioned randomization - what about an inkeeper, who offers random mercenaries? Something like petshop selling heroes, but the sortiment would be randomízed.
Some times it feels as if you where in my mind iryan. I have had some of those ideas myself. However I decided not to make note of them because that would add more work for you and I was unsure if there was a way to get more randomness in the mod.
As SCID based as it is, it can't work for spawned NPC (assumed spawning is intended for random appearance).
Heroes - in sense of potential party members - do not have this component generally.
It's not accidental that the original guards on DS1=>DS2 maps have this Windstone Fortress look too.
Some other generators use other list-like approaches, but I can't say by heart which generators are affected, as many as there are.
Concerning the guards (those K.O.-able but not dying), there is no support to make them start consciouslessness I think.
But maybe a flick could do this - knocking them out when loaded, periodically counter-working their regeneration (I had to check if there is an easy way to disable their native regenation temporatily), and stopping as soon as as the health is not low again (because healed).
For Lagreth in DS2 however, why don't you use a redressed guard-based template (perhaps with lower regeneration from the beginning)? So never really though, but without player's help he most probably will never stand up again in this hostile environement (in particular if you set up a few monsters not to cancel their attacks if the opponent is k.o.).
Actually I believe GPG were thinking of something along these lines at some stage during DS2's development.
If you look in the info folder in DS2's map files (World.ds2map), you'll find a very interesting file called hire_shops.gas.
If you open up hire_shops.gas you'll see a block called hire_shop_specifications filled with sub blocks called [hire*], [hire_templates] and [hire_names].
It seems to be arranged to offer a pc_content type random selection of types of mercenaries to hire with a selection of names to assign them.
Delving into DS2's logic file, you can also see in the ui\interfaces\backend\hire_shop folder a file called hire_shop.gas. This seems to contain the ui information to display a hire_shop.
Also in test.gas found in the dev folder in the world\contentdb\templates folder, there's a template called andiemus_hire and reference to Test hire shop. In components.gas there's a hire component whose doc states "Allows the owner to generate and sell npcs".
So there's evidence that GPG were looking at perhaps the player hiring mercenaries instead of or supplementing the current party system.
Whether this bare bones system could be resurrected and implemented in DS2 is unknown.