Realm of Kings review
| Submitted by foerstj on Sun, 2022-08-07 08:13 | ||
A little review & my two cents on the Realm of Kings map, made by Graham Shelton. Download it here: https://www.nexusmods.com/dungeonsiege1/mods/92 I played this map up to the first town, Dromnar, and also had a look at it in Siege Editor. I loved parts of it, and hated others. Here we go: 1. What I loved The map has an awesome, dream-like atmosphere. This is done very well, using black fog and colorful point lights, making the scene look surreal, combined with mysterious music.
The map is also filled with plants and other objects, it's almost cluttered sometimes. The author certainly wasn't lazy when it comes to filling his huge map with content.
2. What I hated The map terrain is very unpolished. You can often see open node borders, even in places that would have been easy to fix. The same goes for texture borders (for example on path nodes), and lighting borders at region stitches. Issues like these break immersion, and putting in a little effort to fix these places would have improved the map a lot.
Also, a little more effort in fading building roofs in and out would have been nice as well.
Furthermore, the map is annoyingly half-linear. It is linear overall, but has a lot of side areas that are too hard when initially encountered, but you need to come back to them later to gain enough levels to continue on the main path. This is the worst of both worlds of linear and non-linear maps. 3. Whatever A lot of the placed objects have no randomized orientation or scale multiplier, which looks unorganic in some places. Switching on object randomization, or writing a little script for it afterwards, would have looked better.
The map has a minimal background story. In the Realm of Kings, all the evil things were locked up in deep pits, which proves to be not a sustainable solution - you need to extinguish them once and for all. There are only five small quests. On the other hand, there are a lot of NPCs which all have something individual to say. And anyways this seems to be the kind of map where the story is really only an excuse to have one region of enemies after the next, which is not necessarily a bad thing. 4. Technicalities Interestingly, the map is a .dsmap file only - there is no accompanying .dsres. This means, among other things, that none of the actors have specific talk skrits that could react to quest states etc., and also only vanilla shopkeeps are used. There are also no companions available as those would need an instance-specific talk skrit. The map seems to be made for singleplayer only, even though there are no companions. The map can be selected in multiplayer, but there is only a single start position group without a name, right at the beginning of this huge map. This is a bit unfortunate because it might be fun to explore this world together, and maybe with existing high-level characters, and you don't want to walk for an hour just to get to a place that suits your levels. 5. Conclusion Applause for the amount of work that went into the map, and I love the dream-like atmosphere. However, a little bit more thought and polishing would have gone a long way. |
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The first areas of the map are when I had somewhat of an amateur status building in Siege Editor. By the time I had finished Dromnar , the first city in RoK, I new I had to do better because I was testing every single step in the map.. playing every monsters, putting down a shop when I felt players needed equipment to buy and such. I began to see the magic and potential in Siege Editor AFTER finishing Dromnar.. this is when i started mastering dictating what the player could and couldnt do and my stitches to regions and texture fading in buildings began to take shape. I did not get them all.. my computer at the time was Windows Millenium Edition and I had multiple crashes in Siege Editor when I tried to fix portions of the map... such as everytime I tried to add a quest to the map my program would crash to desktop, (Gathering Exception Data).. so i was unable to make quests in the map until much much later when I finally got Windows XP.
Here are the Official Areas.. (ALL AREAS) of The Realm of Kings...
1. Your Farmhouse - - - - some bushes..small krug.. a grizzly bear
2. Tyramul Forest - - - - Beautiful Forest, creatures, bugs, krugs, and mucosa
3. Aenoth Swamp - - - - Big Spider, green area, woody, rooty, blue lit rivers, cliffs, cliff grasses, mushrooms flourescent
4. Small Cliffway to Dromnar - - - - Scenic, ambient lighting, no creatures.
5. to the LEFT.. Crepid Pit - - - - you are high up on the cliffs looking down into the first PIT FULL of monsters
6. City of Dromnar - - - - sleepy town.. shake off the battles, upgrade your gear, drink with that crazy dwarf
7. Dromnar Woods which leads into the very exciting and beautiful Deep Tonvar Forest!!
8. Aenoth Ruins - - - - Most important region in the game. Lit pillars in bottom of pits, huge HUGE EPIC FIGHT on top of Aeonoth Ruins.. huge!
9. Deep Tonvar Forest
10. Deep Tonvar Forest City/Shop area right outside of the Tonvar Keep
11. Tonvar Keep - - - King Tonvar is there.. sitting on his throne unable to defeat the evil minions.
12. Thornvale Forest?? -- maybe thats the name.. this is the place where it really looks like there is water and weather, a crazy mood.
13 Thornvale Falls - - - Probably the BEST portion of the map in terms of effect... its a super dreamy waterfall with millions of mushrooms..kinda
14. City of Thornvale - - - A beautiful second city that allows you to equip your better gear that you earned and has increased storyline...
15. Tyramoss Wilderness - - - Wonderful woody area natural sounds, exceptional lighting (for the time early 2004) with tons of bandits and robotic flamethrowing tanks as well as some evil magic users.
16. PIT GreyDrak Horror - - - Huge Green swampy cavern with White Mezzolanthus (drake/dragon) defending the Black Mezzolanthus deep within.. tons of baddies in there.
17. Bastonian Plane - - - A dark orange weedy kinda desert area with moderate mobs..some enlarged swamp zombie type creatures leading up to Trechor Pit.
18. PIT Trechor PIT - - - An icy mountain full of robots, copter robots, Stulkatron (big loot) and an end Pit Boss...can't remember name of.
19. Lucidor Woods - - - - A quiet wooded area leading up to Lucidor Forest with small illuminated grasses. no mobs
20. Lucidor Forest - - - - Where The Realm of Kings begins to shine ... best looking area in the game with Cyclops swinging clubs.
21. Dehsta - - - - A small settlement where Lozule Armies have invaded or made camp to capture the innocent preceeding towns of the realm.
22. PIT Slothmorn PIT - - - A gruelish meaty area with bodies impaled upon bone spikes coming up through the ground with magus skeletons/sword skeletons.
23. Corlfire Mountains - - - A dark mountainous region with many tanky mobs and very hard rock hurling bad entities with many superpowered Skicks
24. PIT Darkmoore PIT - - - A golden lit candle lit floor with small pyramids for the player to run up for safe harbor from the masses of evil mobs :BOSS is Malich 4 of them.
25. City of Corlfire - - - - This is where the KINGS make their final declaration to unite and lead the charge into Caverns Infernal..they greet the hero here.
26. Pinecliff Forest - - - A nice scenic pseudo cliff area with beige mists and minmal mobs before the very evil Caverns Infernal
27. CAVERNS INFERNAL - - - Designed to be evil, especially the last area with the boss Lozule. Built from head to toe for conclusion, its the final area ( i still haven't beat it playing legitimately after 18 years in single player... i haven't been trying either haha!!!! but i just tested it and it STILL IS FUN)
28. The Shrine of Ryn - - - The Official End to the Realm of Kings.. i wanted more for this.. but i wasn't able to get it done.
Oh hi, how cool to meet you here! And congratulations on this map!
So, are you up for creating an improved version?
I think the map would become much more playable by adding start positions for multi-player, and companions for single-player...
I would have to dust off the siege editor.. it has been a long while since i have opened the Siege Editor. I think I could update the map with a little help and perhaps I could add some improved functionality to the overall feel of the map over time. Multiplayer locations/start positions would be a great addition, I am up for that.. I would need to learn how to add that into the project. Companions for single player would be a HUGE boost for the map, as the monster density in realm of kings is not fast paced enough with just one hero... so I also would enjoy the opportunity to add more single player companions.
I have a hectic work schedule coming up, so it may be a little while before I can get into the process of working on the map... no promises.
So hi there i am in the process of obtaining a new fresh dungeon siege 1 cd . then I will be able to download siege university and get busy
with siege editor.. getting my cd off of ebay so it may take a while to start.....
here is what i plan to try to do... with a new update to the map...
FADES.. all roofs/buildings in my old map WILL be environmentally friendly to the player with fading roof, door, any property that is clumsy in the map
will be replaced with something more functioning.
Additions.. I possibly will add alternative pathing to Dromnar through the region stitch editing process.
these new additions will be opportunities to further enhance the graphical viability of the map...
Monster Density... i will thin out much of the clutter monster aesthetic and make battles seem even more perilous and rewarding somehow.
Lighting.... no changes.. only new additions edited around the new pathing areas ... also..
I will with this update make sure that PATHS for players to walk are clear and defined by geographical placement of objects so the player never feels lost..
this update might be a good improvement.
questions.: the multiplayer element.. adding more character to map.. i will have to study and have to learn how to do it still
additional party members: I will try to learn to implement additional party members in the map.. I will test a few things so I can learn how to add rpg teamates to the map.
I will try to hunt down any previous bugs in the map and eliminate them...
looking for a fresh start to the Realm of Kings just for kicks!!!
should be fun!
Hi, that sounds like fun indeed! But also like a lot of work - I'd write down the ideas and order them by prio
Adding multi-player start positions is very simple, you define the start groups (e.g. one at the beginning and for each town), and each start group should have 8 start positions (for the up to 8 people that can join a multi-player game). Then also make sure each start position is inside a mood trigger.
Adding companions for single-player might not even be that much more work, so I'd do that second. You can simply re-use the existing KoE/LoA companions, or define copies like I did for my single-player Utraean Peninsula map: https://github.com/foerstj/up-remaster/tree/single-player - On this branch you can also find a generic companion talk skrit.
Will you work with a VCS? I put all my projects on Github, and it's great for several reasons. It not only works as a backup, people can also see and understand what I did and how I did it. And if you work with Github or similar I could even help you. Initial commit should be simply the Bits folder of the existing map. I could branch off, add start positions for example, and give it to you to merge.
The first Armor Vendor, down the side path after the gargoyles should also have ranged weapons and swords etc. The magic vendor is okay as she is. I would add an NPC to hire somewhere between the start point and the first armor vendor.
Some doors are very difficult to open, you get the out of bounds icon, same is true of vendors once you get the doors open to their shops. You are blocked when you try to speak to them. Have no idea why this is happening or how to fix it.
Seems we found a volunteer playtester here
Runiclair if you start working on this for real let's start a new forum thread. This one's just meant to be a review
I could not find any quests and I played the section twice. Is it just a place to kill things. If that is the point then I guess it is okay. I would for sure play it again if there was a reason to go there other than killing things. How about an NPC that needs saving then hire them.
The trip to Tonvar Keep was entertaining, However I think I would mix the monsters a bit more. After 100 wolves witout other monsters they become boring. Maybe someone to hire just outside Tonvar Keep, should be a female warrior or ranger since all the men are dead or too scared to fight. I will wait a bit before entering Tonvar Keep as without companions it is really a hard fight. I need to enable a mod or two so I can summon a person to help.
Using SNPC_LoA I added Lyssa and Phaedriel we cleared Tonvar Keep and we are entering Thornvale Falls.
We made it to Thornvale and met King Baneth. He wants to close the pits. Left Thornvale and entered the forest. Wandered around and now we find ourselves on the Bostonian Plane
Lets see, consider that done!! I will try to add an npc who sells ranged weaponry and swords. Also, I will try to add in a hireable npc along the journey to this shop. I can write a backstory for an NPC partner/party member he or she may have things to do as well in Dromnar perhaps concerning some politics or other Kingly duties serving the royals who are "securing" the realm.. haha
What is the point of the Aeonoth Ruins
Submitted by bare_elf on Thu, 2022-09-15 21:45
I could not find any quests and I played the section twice. Is it just a place to kill things. If that is the point then I guess it is okay. I would for sure play it again if there was a reason to go there other than killing things. How about an NPC that needs saving then hire them.
The Aenoth Ruins as I remember there were two minions doing Lozules bidding named Droorgoth and somebody else.. cant recall.. the Aenoth Ruins were significant to the map as it was the first time I imposed a dragon/mini dragon/drakes/mini drakes-- Mesolanthus as a particular "boss" in the map.. so I was trying to build the impression that the adventurerer was on a raid with his or her party and I tried to create the illusion that if not defeated, there would be more trouble ahead...
I tried to balance out the difficulty of the map by adding these regions to prepare the player for harder roads ahead.
King Baneth
Submitted by bare_elf on Sat, 2022-09-17 02:05
We made it to Thornvale and met King Baneth. He wants to close the pits. Left Thornvale and entered the forest. Wandered around and now we find ourselves on the Bostonian Plane
After Thornvale the player should proceed somehow to Greydrak Horror.. it is the so called 2nd pit in the map...
The Greydrak Horror can be found by taking a LEFT TURN once inside the new Forests (called Tyramoss Wilderness) beyond Thornvale..
the left turn is very important.. do not miss Greydrak Horror!!
Thank you so very much bare_elf for enjoying and playing the map..
Those wolves were added mostly a nature aesthetic.. like spiritual mystical wolves living in the mountainous forests.. the player is under no obligation to beat them down
I added them to make the cliffs feel alive.. but I will take a longer look at it and thin it out as needed...
Thats a great idea.. Aenoth Ruins could have a hireable distressed potential party member that can join the party after the minions in the area are defeated.
Perhaps I can have the npc in a cage and you could free him or her and have them become a hero in the party, very good addition!
Once I begin working on the original map..which will be here in a few short days as my CD rom is coming in the mail from EBAY..
I somehow do not have DISK 1 for dungeon siege lol.. so I bought another off ebay..
you cannot install the beautiful siege university without the data disk..
soon siege editor will be back on my pc.. one to five days from now.
As soon as some progress is made I will attempt to start a new thread i do plan to work fairly hard on this to make it right and learn new tricks along the way.
my version is barebones dungeonsiege.exe 0.02.35 or something .. and i need 1.11 at least or 1.114 to be able to install siege university..
i may just say forget about it ..
Dungeon siege has been extremely notorious for being nearly impossible to work with regarding bugs, crashes, and compatibility issues
and since I know most likely people are barely even playing it I may decide not to update anything at this point..
i tried for 2 hours to update this thing and its not working out.. the internet as we know it is damn near impossible to download what you want how you want it.. such a simple thing..
sEy Lah Vee or i mean say la vie
What version of windows are you using? Sometimes windows 10 has issues updating Dungeon Siege and Dungeon Siege LoA. You may wish to try using compatibility mode, set to windows 7 or 8.
yea its like i clicked the updater patch to version 1.1 and my dungeon siege executable file still stays the same at file version 0.2.3.8 ..the original dated version from march 03, 2002
so even though the patcher said it updated the game, its not happening.. i have updated it like 20 times.. still no change even though windows says it updated ...crazy zany super duper rainy!
well.... i just checked the version and it has been updated.. i have installed siege editor!.. let the games begin!
first thing im going to do is make that first region with the opposing rivers going in opposite ways properly FIXED!
new thread coming up! be the first to know if this map once again can conquer a small part of the world
https://siegetheday.org/?q=node/7354