The Skin Poppet - Suggestions

Do not look here said:

I can't agree with you on the Mumiyo part. As you've said, Khergits have abundance of spices, so I actually believe that it has almost no downsides at all. From what N0ught said, once player tries it, he has to either hoard a small supply of it every now and then or move his lazy ass a bit more often. Really? For that price, with random chance of tearing to pieces a caravan that would carry me "free" mumiyo, I know I will be using it.

"Withdrawal syndrome" isn't even that impairing, it's not like you'll have to order your abominations to carry you to nearest bigger trading center, at most it will force you to hold up with leveling up (if you stumble on leveling up), cause of skill-capped abilities, until you'll have another portion of mumiyo ready. Reward isn't that great either (although, again, it will help with leveling up) and, frankly, I like the idea of mumiyo more for its RP-ing value than actual gameplay value.

About the manticore - fair enough. I just adore that winged design of them and would like to see some more mounts in that spirit.

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About Mumiyo, I couldn't have put it better. It appeals for rp, and really a net -1 to all attributes is not that much to deal with until you get more... yes more... more... *ahem*. And if you don't want to get more, it's still not too bad.

I wanted it to be similar to "the spice" from Frank Herbert's Dune saga... quote: "it wont even kill you, unless you stop taking it." I had actually considered making withdrawal lethal. I thought that would be too much of a gamekiller though.

About winged mounts: I have tried to avoid them for the most part. The moth "flutters" presumably; the undead mounts have vestigial wings only. For the sake of the argument "this mount should fly" I make compromises. 

N0ught said:

About Mumiyo, I couldn't have put it better. It appeals for rp, and really a net -1 to all attributes is not that much to deal with until you get more... yes more... more... *ahem*. And if you don't want to get more, it's still not too bad.

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Not too bad, except that it never wears off. Make it last 1 month at max, or some other predetermined amount of time please, thats all I'm asking. A month of ingame time lasts awhile. It makes no sense for the player to be waylaid by an addiction that lasts longer than the last time (s)he died.

N0ught said:

About winged mounts: I have tried to avoid them for the most part. The moth "flutters" presumably; the undead mounts have vestigial wings only. For the sake of the argument "this mount should fly" I make compromises. 

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Don't forget the automobile that gallops.

Make it so it wears off if you die. 

Rovole said:

N0ught said:

About Mumiyo, I couldn't have put it better. It appeals for rp, and really a net -1 to all attributes is not that much to deal with until you get more... yes more... more... *ahem*. And if you don't want to get more, it's still not too bad.

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Not too bad, except that it never wears off. Make it last 1 month at max, or some other predetermined amount of time please, thats all I'm asking. A month of ingame time lasts awhile. It makes no sense for the player to be waylaid by an addiction that lasts longer than the last time (s)he died.

N0ught said:

About winged mounts: I have tried to avoid them for the most part. The moth "flutters" presumably; the undead mounts have vestigial wings only. For the sake of the argument "this mount should fly" I make compromises. 

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Don't forget the automobile that gallops.

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I like the permanence. It stays. Consider it the same as losing stat points from imprisonment... many will save and reload, but many will just take it and go with it, for RP or hardcore purposes. If you don't want to risk the side-effects (or reap the rewards), simply eschew Mumiyo altogether. Just say no. Hahaha. "Hey Jimmy, I've got something you just gotta try!"

The Artificer's Mancatcher neighs like a horse too! It is merely possessed by a horse spirit, and the ground is rough (see:programmer's dogma). Yes, that's it.

Or it could be that mount sounds are hardcoded, and the mount is attached to the least moving bone in the horse skeleton animation mesh. Pretty much the best I can do for now. I kind of like it anyway.

dobber10 said:

Make it so it wears off if you die. 

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But the desire for Mumiyo goes much deeper... to the very soul of the being. Indeed it has been known to persist beyond death...

N0ught said:

I like the permanence. It stays. Consider it the same as losing stat points from imprisonment... many will save and reload, but many will just take it and go with it, for RP or hardcore purposes. If you don't want to risk the side-effects (or reap the rewards), simply eschew Mumiyo altogether. Just say no. Hahaha. "Hey Jimmy, I've got something you just gotta try!"

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If you insist, there isn't much I can do to dissuade you at this point. I'll have to see Mumiyo before I decide whether or not I'm going to use it, and I know that I'll be trying a variety of characters so eventually I will get around to trying what is essentially supernatural, man-bacon, consequences bdamned. Now that you bring it up, maybe when the player gets old enough and advanced far enough in the dark arts, he can take a look at permanently enhancing his attributes? It should be difficult and a late-game thing though, so as not to make leveling and scavenger hunting obsolete. Maybe something about manipulating the vital essences of human beings to revitalize oneself, because after all, in a setting like Calradia human lives cost around 10 denars a piece. About as much as a pair of linen socks. Piles of dried fish fetch a higher price than the average peasant.

N0ught said:

The Artificer's Mancatcher neighs like a horse too! It is merely possessed by a horse spirit, and the ground is rough (see:programmer's dogma). Yes, that's it.

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Yea I get it, program limitations and all that. I'm not saying I don't like it, but it was something I noticed and I still chuckle to myself every time I see an artificer lurching about on what must be an uncomfortable contraption that tears right through infantry formations. And then I stop laughing. Though it gets me to thinking about some kind of literal mechanical horse, what with metal skin and gearwork muscles, like what our less mechanically adept forefathers would imagine a transportation machine to look like. Anachronisms might be something look into, after all, Calradia as we know it is but a tiny part of a vast, unrevealed world. Three of five factions are of foreign origin(four of six if you count warband,) for glob's sake.

Rovole said:

If you insist, there isn't much I can do to dissuade you at this point. I'll have to see Mumiyo before I decide whether or not I'm going to use it, and I know that I'll be trying a variety of characters so eventually I will get around to trying what is essentially supernatural, man-bacon, consequences bdamned. Now that you bring it up, maybe when the player gets old enough and advanced far enough in the dark arts, he can take a look at permanently enhancing his attributes? It should be difficult and a late-game thing though, so as not to make leveling and scavenger hunting obsolete. Maybe something about manipulating the vital essences of human beings to revitalize oneself, because after all, in a setting like Calradia human lives cost around 10 denars a piece. About as much as a pair of linen socks. Piles of dried fish fetch a higher price than the average peasant.

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Actually there already is a way to permanently change all your attributes at once - it sets each randomly between 1 and 30, and in a hardcore game you have to take what you get, of course.

And about the relative value of a peasant: technically a peasant is a potential corpse - and a corpse is worth considerably more than normal, in this mod.  Possibly slightly more than a pile of dried fish? Yes, I am saying they are worth more dead. But they are still potentially dead if they are alive, if you follow me.

Rovole said:

Yea I get it, program limitations and all that. I'm not saying I don't like it, but it was something I noticed and I still chuckle to myself every time I see an artificer lurching about on what must be an uncomfortable contraption that tears right through infantry formations. And then I stop laughing. Though it gets me to thinking about some kind of literal mechanical horse, what with metal skin and gearwork muscles, like what our less mechanically adept forefathers would imagine a transportation machine to look like. Anachronisms might be something look into, after all, Calradia as we know it is but a tiny part of a vast, unrevealed world. Three of five factions are of foreign origin(four of six if you count warband,) for glob's sake.

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The Mancatcher was actually going to be a mechanical horse with the equivalent of flails for the head and legs. At the time though, I wanted the legs to be like springs, and I realized I couldn't make them look properly "springy" - and in the end, the wheeled battering-ram contraption just made more sense. That led to the wheel-like shield, and the concept was locked in.

That is not to say there will never be an appearance of a mechanical horse, of course, of course...

I would love to be able to rule my own kingdom and set what culture it is.  Perhaps an option for an all together new culture.

Kendoman said:

I would love to be able to rule my own kingdom and set what culture it is.  Perhaps an option for an all together new culture.

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Some form of kingdom management will be in the works. The first step, however, is making the faction I already have added function properly. Much playtesting must be done.

N0ught said:

Some form of kingdom management will be in the works. The first step, however, is making the faction I already have added function properly. Much playtesting must be done.

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D u need help? I'm bored.

No, I am afraid I suffer from megalomania and therefore am unable to work with a team. I tried once on another project. Didn't work.

Da Vinci didn't let anyone else paint for him either.

See? WAY too much ego to contain.

Really though, I appreciate the offer, and I thank you. But I have done all the coding, model making, texturing and half-assed rigging on Solid and Shade from the beginning, and so it is very special to me. Like a dark little work of art, painted with a twisted brush, dipped in paint of fantastic hue...

I even do the playtesting until release myself, so that when I release the new version it is nearly bug-free. There have been some bad ones though, so every other release is more like a fix version, with a few more bells and whistles (more cowbell).

In other words, N0ught needs no Igor to scream "It's alive... It's alive! IT'S ALIVE!" during storms.

N0ught said:

No, I am afraid I suffer from megalomania ......Da Vinci didn't let anyone else paint for him either.
(more cowbell).

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Do you Paint?  Poe was a bit of a intermittently depressed megalomaniac was he not.

"Seraphs' sob at vermin fangs in human gore imbued and want more cowbell"

The thing about Poe is most of what was previously believed about him - that he was pretty much a schizophrenic alcoholic opium fiend - has been since denounced as deliberate character assassination. Poe was rather outspoken about many things, but especially about his critique of other writer's works - he was a perfectionist, especially at his own art, and in spite of a certain glaring ignorance notable in his works. It is my opinion that he simply suffered from severe taste in a time when culture suffered from a severe lack of it. In any case, it seems he made some enemies who quite effectively smeared his name.

No, I don't paint. I don't like to make art in any kind of permanent medium - I too am a perfectionist, and must erase and recreate until I am pleased with something. Though occasionally I have been known to Bob Ross something.

"Oops, I made a mistake. That's alright. We all make mistakes. I'm going to turn this mistake into a bird. Yeah. It's a bird now..."

Most notably I would say are the shadow models in Solid and Shade - the homunculi. Whilst learning to make 3d models on Wings 3d way back when, I must have accidentally clicked the "invert" button on a model i was working on. It did not look right, and I had to stumble around, and I believe even ask questions on the forum here, before I could fix it.

Later, when I was coming up with the concept for homunculi, I realized I wanted them to look ethereal... somehow. I played around a bit, decided I didn't want to deal with alpha channels and true transparency at the moment. And then I found the invert function - it was the male head model I was working on. It looked good, but not quite right... until I realized I could make the eyes non-inverted, on a black, inverted background. It clicked just perfectly, and the rest is history. Since then I have added many models with the same effect used in different ways - the Great Artificer's head for instance. And some... new models that will be showing up in the next release.

Do not look here said:

In other words, N0ught needs no Igor to scream "It's alive... It's alive! IT'S ALIVE!" during storms.

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Actually, I have done this myself occasionally...

Is there any mechanic available for obtaining the Plague marginally easier? I'm thinking of the familiars, perhaps our incubus or succumb us buddy can graverob with us, cutting the time in half, for a price...

Also I think I saw on the progress reports that we may be able to give items to the familiar. Will these be things like crashkit, which everyone can obtain and use, or unique items like the strange shell, which my vampire character doesn't like anyway?

Insert my usual brown-nosing close here. 

Starting the game as a gravedigger will let you rob graves faster.

I think spending a night with a succubus would end up in you not robbing any graves at all that night.

Hahaha good point,  but the help would make becoming Death easier. Right now,for instance, I tend to get a character to the verge of completing all the requirements for the Great Artificer, EXCEPT becoming Death, within six weeks of game time (about 42 days). If it takes 84 nights to dig 666 graves, I'm still only halfway there. It may be in the next version that there's more to do, though...

It's not like I can stop playing, no matter how monotonous it is. 

EDIT: I thought of something else. Could necromancer parties, or at least scavengers, drop some necromantic items in their loot? Just the "easy" things maybe, like bread of the dead and bloodwine. Lemme try and pitch this: In theory, the necromancers would be trying to make these items at the same time the player is, so they'd probably items that match the rank they are. I can see the overpowering aspect of getting philosopher's stones every time we defeat an artificer, but what about the rank 1 and 2 items, like the Hand of Glory and Bezoar Amulet.
Having at least one type of necromancer drop bread of the dead and/or bloodwine would also parallel a caravan dropping food items, incidentally.

While I know this isn't really the point of this mod, I really only downloaded it to slay evil creatures and test my mettle against the tainted hoards.  Also, I did an in depth search in this particular thread for related questions and found nothing, so forgive me if this suggestion has already been dealt with.

May I humbly suggest: maybe a few quests or secrets on the other, "holy" side, based on cleansing Calradia?  Maybe even just simple, open "savanger hunt" type quests where clues are found as to the locations of holy artifacts and one has to at least find them, if not solve simple puzzles to get to them.  At this point it looks like the gameplay choices are 1)Complete evil with totally awesome stuff and fun things to do, or 2)Normal gameplay where you pick a faction to try and protect the people and sometimes end up fighting zombies or something.

If not, that's fine.  I've created my own holy artifacts for fighting the undead and it's still pretty fun, there's just no mystery or struggle this way.

Also, this is not at all a criticism of the mod; I think it is amazing and holds a level of depth that most mods lack (not to mention the fact that it's one of the few tentatively active mods for old M&B).  It's just my humble opinion that the story is a little... one-sided?  Perhaps I've simply missed the whole point of the mod and need a stern reprehending from the mod's champions.  Any and all responses welcome.

Good suggestions, and yes... the twilit side of Solid and Shade will be coming up in the next release. There will be specifically more rewards for Antihero characters:

~The new Evil faction's claimant to the throne will only be available for those on the Antihero path.
~Prophecy characters will have different outcomes for their fate, based partially on the Antihero path.
~There will be a means of fortifying the cities and castles of the world against the oncoming Evil faction, for those on the Antihero path. Finding where to start this storyline will take some serious thought...

That sounds excellent!  I hadn't considered the use of the antihero archetype but now that I think about it that would be much more appropriate considering the mod's... tone?  Anyway, thanks for the reply; I look forward to the next release and trying to find all the secrets.