forums | blogs | polls | tutorials | downloads | rules | help

Error message

Deprecated function: The each() function is deprecated. This message will be suppressed on further calls in remember_me_form_alter() (line 78 of /var/www/siegetheday.org/sites/all/modules/contrib/remember_me/remember_me.module).

Empire of Stars v0.4: Ice & Fire

AttachmentSize
Image icon Altair - Winternight Woods.jpg528.73 KB

EoS 0.4 out now!
https://github.com/foerstj/empire-of-stars/releases/tag/v0.4

This release takes you to Altair, where dwarves live on a planet that has a snowy surface but a fiery heart, and that has a moon which consists of nothing but crushing ice.
In addition, the jungle of Vega got extended with stronger enemies to the north-east of the landing area.

Enjoy playing! Laughing out loud

Some more pics that I already posted in the previous thread:

I recommend you start a new game, because 1) the wise old man on Betelgeuse now gives the Altair Starstone but you might still find the Aranna one in your inventory, and 2) because the Altair teleporter crashed when I tried that, trying to load a terrain node ID that was somehow still present in the savegame tho long since changed in the map. You can try, good luck, lemme know if it worked for you.

As I said the wise old man on Betelgeuse now gives you the Altair Starstone. On Altair you get two quests to search for starstones - in the Fireheart Caverns, and on the Ice Moon. In this release, in both places you'll find an Aranna Starstone, which of course will change again in the release after that.

On Altair and found my friend Sig of Mugmort. Looking around the town. Will start the quests later. Looks like the dwarves think the town is way to warm.
Elf

Yeah no shocker the town of Lagomsnö is of course copypasted original content, in this case Glacern. And all the legionnaires kept complaining how shitty cold it was, so I felt almost compelled to flip this on its head. As for you, spoiled traveller, be glad you arrived in summer! Lol.

Sig & the other hireable are a lot more expensive than what I treated you to on Betelgeuse, but don't worry, in my playthrough I just made a quick trip to the Aurora Shrine in the middle of the Winternight Woods and back, and had enough loot to sell to afford both of them.

Not sure if this is an oversight or a quest that should not be there (unnecessary). Apprentice Drifa asks you to find some books for him. He says he is giving you a book so you know what they look like. However he gives you no book. Therefore the quest is impossible to complete as you need to be carrying the book when you ask others if they have one of the set. If it was me I would just remove/change his conversation in the next update.

You where right about taking a walk to the Aurora Shrine. lots of money and goodies to pick up. Smile
Elf

The books quest was working for me, and the books tell the whole long story of Thawhorn and how he founded Lagomsnö... Are you sure you didn't miss the book lying at your feet? Was it maybe picked up into your backpack, but needs to be in your inventory directly?
Can someone else confirm whether it's working or not?

I want back to a save prior to meeting Drifa and this time the quest worked just fine. Sorry for the non-issue.
Elf

I do not remember the Fire Caverns in any mod being that long or that hard to navigate. They were super duper fun and warm. The emergency escape tunnel after finding the Aranna Starstone was quite useful. I was dreading the long trek back to the Big Elevator. The ice moon was boring. I looked about for a while could not find the second Aranna Stone and went back to the elevator since I only needed one stone. I know I will have to go there with the next version of the map because there will be two Star Stones one in the caverns and one on the moon each for a different place. It will have to wait for then.

I hope these images come thru

https://i.imgur.com/MEmdPTH.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/py9MvDt.jpg

The Spiders with one health should probably be between 15 and 22

The Star armor goes well with blue sunglasses

Bare Elf: No problem, the Ice Moon will remain optional. On Rigel there'll be another place where you can obtain that starstone. I didn't want to make this map too linear - it would feel really contrived if on every star you find exactly one more starstone and it just so happened that you didn't have it already. A minor problem with this is that I can't balance all regions perfectly - if you take the shortest possible path you'll quickly run into difficulty spikes, whereas if you do every single region in a playthrough your level will be well ahead, making things rather easy. But the good thing is that if you're having problems, you can just go to an easier area for some hunting, and if you're bored, you can fast-forward to the higher-level regions. Of course, in the end all paths will converge on the evil planet where the baddies live!!1
Glad you enjoyed the Fireheart Caverns!

Sig: Yeah these 1hp spiders are in the vanilla game resources, but they're cut content. LoA then used the assets with a new template, giving them proper stats. Maybe I should just swap out the template.
And lookin good with them sunglasses!

When I was on the Utraean's planet I discovered they drink bug juice. I also noticed lots and lots of Cats that makes me wonder...

I noticed a sign for the town of Javlakallt so I followed where the sign pointed but there was no town. There is also no back story as to what happened to the town.
Maybe one of the dwarves In the main town should talk about it. I also think the sign should say R.I.P Javlakallt if it was destroyed. There are a number of things that could be done that would make Javlakallt and interesting and short side quest.

You come to a blocked road, and there's a sign saying the passage will be cleared after the Guards Fair. I'm not planning to make this town. I should rather remove the signage altogether.
BTW "lagom snö" means "the right amount of snow" in Swedish and "jävla kallt" means "damn cold" Wink
Didn't get the thing about cats & bugs but maybe it was for Kathy.

foerstj wrote:

You come to a blocked road, and there's a sign saying the passage will be cleared after the Guards Fair. I'm not planning to make this town. I should rather remove the signage altogether.

BTW "lagom snö" means "the right amount of snow" in Swedish and "jävla kallt" means "damn cold" Wink

Didn't get the thing about cats & bugs but maybe it was for Kathy.


I was just wondering if cats were another food source, I do not think it is possible to survive on just bug juice.

You have a lively fantasy Big smile No they don't eat their cats! They might grill bugs tho.
Since now there's an open question as to what they eat - um, dunno, maybe they go hunting for Kikclaws and Gremals and Angler fishes? And probably lots of sweet healthy flower salad? I bet those flowers taste delicious. Spiders and Mucosa probably not. What's your take on this? Smile

foerstj wrote:

You have a lively fantasy Big smile No they don't eat their cats! They might grill bugs tho.

Since now there's an open question as to what they eat - um, dunno, maybe they go hunting for Kikclaws and Gremals and Angler fishes? And probably lots of sweet healthy flower salad? I bet those flowers taste delicious. Spiders and Mucosa probably not. What's your take on this? Smile


Angler Fish Taste Funny according to my Primary Character. I guess a flower and fruit salad might be tasty.

Wow that's just the level of bullshit I need for this project Laughing out loud
https://www.ashtar-sheran.org/english/default_en.htm
Now I just need to have an idea to integrate it on my Aldebaran Smile

Meanwhile, did you have a look at the new region of the jungle of Vega? Met some Mantraps? They can be quite nasty... Has anyone seen the Jungle Braak yet? They can be found in two corners in the very north.

Spent some time roaming around Vega. We met the Jungle Braak, they are good. We have not found any of the man traps. Maybe that is because my party has no men, just Girls and Dwarves? really do not think that is the reason. I think it is because we do not know where they live.

The mantraps are the green worms from my last screenshot. They're spread out quite a bit in the northern part of the jungle, weird you didn't meet any

foerstj wrote:

The mantraps are the green worms from my last screenshot. They're spread out quite a bit in the northern part of the jungle, weird you didn't meet any


Oh I found those I just never saw the name. You need to make them stronger against ranged.

What, stronger against ranged? My problem was always that they killed my members in the back before my melees could down them...
Also they're original creatures so won't edit Wink

I started working on Rigel A!
So Rigel will be the home system of the Droog. They have two planets: one is blessed with an abundance of water, the other is blessed with a lack thereof.
For the dry planet, I wanted to create "endless dunes" like the multiplayer map has. I wanted it to spread out in all directions, looping in on itself. I also wanted the landscape to have animals and a lot of shrubs - it shouldn't be a deadly desert, but an arid land that might be pleasant to live in.
Long story short I had the idea to adapt my map generator for that! I didn't expect it would actually be that useful! Smile So I generated 4 tiles, each 256x256 meters, and stitched them all in a loop. I played around with the distribution of plants and enemies until I was satisfied. (It uses a Perlin noise distribution to decide where to place plants and which spots to leave empty.)
Add to that a refreshing blue hue (Rigel is a blue star) and voilà!

(The tents & the pyramid were placed after map generation, replacing a few nodes.)
(I call the dry planet Rigel A because the player will see it first - they will land on it from the Hub. A smaller displacer platform brings them over to the second planet, working title Rigel B.)

I like Rigel A looks like a pretty planet. Rigel B looks like fun too.

The above pics were all Rigel A.
Of Rigel B I have only this concept screenie of a swamp droog in the wetland:

Attachment: 

Why not make the connection between Rigel A and B inside the temple on Rigel A? I know that is kind of a redo of another map, but it was fun hunting for the passage to another place.

That's an interesting idea - the dungeon under the pyramid would serve as a magic tunnel between the two planets! But I think I'll stick to the general map structure - travel thru space is done via teleporters... I already have the nodes in place for the interplanetary displacer.
Which other map are you referring to?

foerstj wrote:

That's an interesting idea - the dungeon under the pyramid would serve as a magic tunnel between the two planets! But I think I'll stick to the general map structure - travel thru space is done via teleporters... I already have the nodes in place for the interplanetary displacer.

Which other map are you referring to?

Wish I could remember so many years so many maps Sad

bare_elf wrote:

foerstj wrote:

That's an interesting idea - the dungeon under the pyramid would serve as a magic tunnel between the two planets! But I think I'll stick to the general map structure - travel thru space is done via teleporters... I already have the nodes in place for the interplanetary displacer.


Which other map are you referring to?

Wish I could remember so many years so many maps Sad

The Pyramid in the Endless Dune Sea in the Peninsula has the transporter tunnel

I've had some time yesterday because my work laptop broke lol. So I started working on the wetland planet.

The wetland planet is called Ixchel and has a Droog town called Orionis on it (and the wetlands of course, in which you'll find a starstone).

So yeah, I kinda flooded Illicor. Had to find a place to attach water nodes in the middle, and still had to double the frustum, but it works.
And then I want to turn a dark&gloomy swamp region into a bright&shiny wetland. Required some node work in GMax (ugh). And the forest-wall nodes you see in the back are kinda problematic, I'll have to rip them all out and then make a hack where I put two nodes into one place and add lots of blocking_object on top of it... But I really like how it looks, especially with the bright mood of Rigel's blue sunlight and the constant drizzle you'll have there.

I like it very much, totally better than the original, does not even look like the same place!! Anyone for a swim?

You probably guessed that I used the Pentecost weekend to work on my map. I'm almost done with Ixchel, the wetland Droog planet. Apart from some minor polishing, I need to make a moon for Vega to finally finish that star before I release EoS v0.5. But I love the way the wetlands turned out, so I can not stop myself from showing off some spoilers:

Pages