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Looks great Dorateen! Looking forward to this. Those Dark Dryads look pretty nasty...

I just found the hook horrors on a fairly early map east of the castle - were they there in the last build? Wonder if I missed them. They made short work of my lvl3 party though ha, I'm not trying to get past them again until I have a few more levels under my belt...

Thanks Pongo! The hook horrors are part of maps that were added around the time I started on the guild quests, so it was a somewhat later build. Definitely an unpleasant surprise for a young party.

slowdive, hopefully it will be a risk reward type thing. There might be some early opportunities for characters to find interesting items, if they can survive.

March Update

I have been doing more work on bringing the Edinmoor adventure into the Hearkenwold campaign. I think I mentioned in the previous update, that the module was built around three dungeons, with outdoor locations between. Last month, I completed the first dungeon and now I am starting on some mountain wilderness maps. I don't think this will take much time, so I should be able to concentrate on the second dungeon later this month. However, it is the final culminating area of the game that will take the longest, so I still expect to finish by June.

I captured some new screenshots to share. The first is a battle with an enemy party, comprised of fighters and multiple spellcasters. To make this confrontation more tricky, the player characters begin up on a stage, and they will have to make their way down to get at the goons in the back.



When coming across a door with a potentially nasty surprise behind it, a party member with low constitution can express hesitation. This sort of thing is one of the ways individual character personalities can manifest themselves in a group, chiming in with little comments. And sometimes, the words of a nervous elf might just offer advance warning.



Finally, I've always enjoyed this exchange. It still makes me laugh. A dwarf merchant was attacked by treants, and he calls them "were-trees", like a shape shifting lycanthrope. Of course, our more learned wizard tries to correct him.

June sounds great! The encounter looks tricky with getting off the stage in single file. Also, making some good use of attributes and the party chat is great fun. silver should work just fine on those were-trees, I'll try it out just to verify

Dorateen wrote: ↑Sat Mar 05, 2022 3:43 pm
When coming across a door with a potentially nasty surprise behind it, a party member with low constitution can express hesitation. This sort of thing is one of the ways individual character personalities can manifest themselves in a group, chiming in with little comments. And sometimes, the words of a nervous elf might just offer advance warning.

Triggering convo options with low ability scores is a really nice touch! Having text that reacts to character weaknesses and not just their strengths definitely adds to the individual character personalities. Good stuff!

Thanks, Pongo. I think I have used Low Constitution the most as a way to simulate cowardly (or let's just say cautious) party members. In a few places, I have Low Intelligence options, because that's always fun. Oh, and lots of Low Charisma choices for characters who want to mouth off at NPCS or act generally unpleasant.

slowdive, Exactly! The party can still be targeted while they are up on the stage, so it might be risky to wait it out for the enemy to come to them.

Knights of the Chalice 2 releases officially on Steam and gog this Friday, March 25.

I have uploaded one more video to showcase the Hearkenwold adventure module. An encounter in the Dwarven Halls of Hamhock, when the party stumbles across a group of conspiring monsters.

https://youtu.be/MzrRohMFl1Y

April Update

I must have been motivated last month, because I was able to get a lot done in the recreation of Edinmoor as part of the Hearkenwold campaign. This includes two maps of mountain wilderness as well as the second dungeon featured in the adventure. I am starting on the concluding areas, but this will probably take some more time. I still aim to release the next version of the module by June, which gives me plenty of room for testing and tidying up loose ends.

This is a section of the tower known as the Soth Tarnel. It has been called a once mighty fortress that is now a tomb for the fallen defenders of a forgotten town. I also used the height mapping tool extensively, with some maps containing three layers. In the screenshot below, there is a sunken watery area, with stairs leading up and then another set of stairs approaching the door to the next level.



The party will have to contend with Frost Giants for the first time. Pretty beefy enemies, that can hit often for a lot of damage, in addition to having cold immunity. At least they are vulnerable to fire.



I thought this was pretty interesting. I created a trap that will cast Energy Drain if triggered, targeting the party for loss of spell points. Each character still gets a saving throw, but it could be a headache for clerics and wizards. Ideally, I would have liked to zap everyone's spell points like we have a gaPartyDamage script, but this works well enough.



And here is a view of the mountain area I mentioned above. Referred to as the Canyon of the Dead. Not exactly a tourist attraction.



As I have been doing with the previous module releases, once I finish Edinmoor and make it part of the Hearkenwold campaign in IceBlink, I will then resume copying everything over into the Knights of the Chalice 2 version. This will be like a stand-alone adventure, which a starting party could have the misfortune to stumble upon. Or the player could launch a saved game with mid-level characters and tackle the new content.

Sounds like some great progress there! Are you using height maps for shading purposes or does it block movement as well? I haven't dug into that part of the code as of yet. I may need to have some toggles to use a more basic system or the more complex system as I try to debug some of the issues that are deeply rooted in the work Karl did and that I have a difficult time understanding and don't want to make worse

Frost giants, yeah! That should be fun... or not

I could add a "gaPartyEnergyDrain" script easy enough if you wanted that. It would just be changing the modifier in the "gaPartyDamage" to be "sp" instead of "hp". So copy/paste/edit kind of thing.

Looking forward to finding and exploring Edinmoor!

Thanks, slowdive! I like the shadow effect of the raised tiles, because on a 2d map, it helps distinguish walls from floors. However, the height mapping does have collision, and when you make bridges or balconies, players have to access those higher (or lower) tiles via a ramp or stairs. The one small glitch is that the height variance does not respect collision with regard to triggers placed on adjacent tiles. So you could be standing on a square of a higher height, and "bump" into the trigger on an adjacent tile even if it is a lower height. But keeping this in mind, I just avoid placing triggers next to the height map.

A gaPartySpellPointDrain would be perfect. Exactly like the damage script, except it would take a set amount of spell points, or random depending on the parameters, from all characters. I figured that would be simple.