The Skin Poppet - Suggestions

I'm sorry I may be (a bit) stupid, but I'm still not quite sure I have an accurate picture of the factions. Right now what I get is : the five Native factions, and a new "Evil" kingdom ruled by Typhon (and of which Kronus will also be a part). But Where does the Bloodfountain (and its humble servants like myself) lie in this talk of "Evil Kingdom" ? Is it separate ? Are they part of the same faction ?

@N0ught when i capture another kingdom general/king i can sacrifice em but they respawn after a short period
why is that?
can you add a permadeath to em too?
and add the damn Horned King he needs a revenge

Yeah, thats a problem i am trying to work out, and companion and lord permadeadth will be part of it.

And I will likely not add the Horned King. You could say Solid and Shade is an organic reference to much of my own life, and the Black Cauldron is a movie that strangely I never watched as a kid. I think it is because I grew up with two sisters, and my mother thought it was "too scary" for them. She has a funny concept of the mental tolerance of people my generation and forward.

There are references to at least two major animated movies in the upcoming release, however. But that is all I will say.

N0ught
1)i want one of your sisters,would kidnap and marry 1 of em 
2)add more steampunk elements :3 like armor parts beside the artificer/golem ones
3)scavengers are a bit underpowered,they re just acolytes with random armor/weapons(i get it,they scavenge stuff but they suck)
4)add a script like oath to blood fountain so it would prevent ppl to join other factions
5) evil horses have too much hp makes mounted necromantic units almost immortal,also the stupid abominations seem to be hard to kill ,they last like 30 seconds hitting each other
6)new faction would be awesome,but where would u place it?
7)make me a npc    or easter egg npc  .i always wanted to be one
more faction related items:Thor hammer for vikings,some kind of plate armor for Swadian,a spear for the Roddoks,a nice axe for Vaegirs maybe?
9)i can fight big battles (100vs100 at 20-25 fps,stupid Kergits and their horses are big in number and lag a bit) but game still crashes when i fight against Hades(100v500)
10) what would happend if i kill every single faction hero but without conquer their castles?i dont think that permadeath would be an option...maybe if they come back as wraiths or with some god blessing that make em immortal ,that would extend gameplay
11)i think that Zendar should be in a more central area of the map or in a corner,so Nords/Vaegir dont start with a huge disadvantage,or make evil units spawn all across the map not in a singe location,like the vampires/werewolves that start in different places

1) No. You don't.
2) There will be quite a bit of steampunk added this time around.
3) Scavengers are meant to be underpowered. In exchange they have a lot more, albeit weak, troops.
4) The Bloodfountain is not a part of the Evil faction. It is the embodiment of Evil itself, from the Abyss, the story's equivalent of hell. Demons and Homunculi also come from the Abyss  The Evil faction is from the Underworld.
5) You have to knock them off. Jump and attack. In the next release the armors will be revised.
6) The location of Evil is classified. Muahaha. It will be sure to make some rumblings throughout Calradia...
7) I try not to be preferential - if I make you an npc, a lot of people will want the same. There are a couple people I personally know who inspired certain parts of the mod, but I will also keep that exact info secret. More fun that way.
No, I like the factions at they are. I don't really want to expand on them. They are mostly what remains of the Native world.
9) I have no idea why this would happen. If you are using a battle size mod in conjunction, it might not be compatible.
10) Got me thinking a little bit. Not exactly the way you described, but I got an idea from this suggestion that may or may not happen. Thank you.
11) Nords need a slight disadvantage, and Vaegir are spread out a bit, so it doesn't affect them much. I did not change the position for Zendar, I just enabled it. And the Old Salt Mine is far in the south... in the middle? Who knows? Vampires and Werewolves spawn at the villages their forebears inhabit.

The nords being often at war with the veagirs, they are at a big disadvantage later in game. Because late in game, the number of undead parties and the troops they have explode, they create huge battles that easily annihilate any caravan and nord party that passes by alone or in group of 2 or 3. Theoretically, the veagirs would also be disadvantaged,  but I've rarely seen them pass by zendar, but on the opposite, the nords use it always to travel to the other side. There is an element in there that we mustn't forget also: in middle game, many lords have fought big battles against each other and thus, have weaken their army or have been eliminated and many times the concerned lords will not wait to replenish completely their army: they may travel in unusually low numbers of 30-40 soldiers which are generally low and middle tiers troops with almost no strong troops. Then, there are the caravans which travels in the area of Zendar, they have no real chance of survival and I consider it luck when they attain their travel destination when they use such a road. That being said, I don't really care about the nords and I don't think it matters enough for zendar to be placed elsewhere, but I really would like to see necromantic parties everywhere in the map, like in rhodok, swadian and khergit territories. 

About Zendar, I like the way it is. First thing, it's just the place where Zendar always was, second, the unbalanced distribution of undeads is good for background story. The realm still fights its own wars and while the threat is real in Sargoth, it's just rumours in Yalen. Gives the right feeling of something stirring up in the world, while it would feel weird for everyone to keep their bickering mod on while they swim neck-deep in living corpses.

And, frankly, it doesn't really matter to me that some kingdoms have it worse. All after all, this mod isn't about the old, Native five-way struggle.
Not to mention that Nords are big boys, not some Swadian sissies, so they can grit their teeth and keep punching through bunch of zombies and furries. Pshush, big deal.

kabogh said:

The nords being often at war with the veagirs, they are at a big disadvantage later in game. Because late in game, the number of undead parties and the troops they have explode, they create huge battles that easily annihilate any caravan and nord party that passes by alone or in group of 2 or 3. Theoretically, the veagirs would also be disadvantaged,  but I've rarely seen them pass by zendar, but on the opposite, the nords use it always to travel to the other side. There is an element in there that we mustn't forget also: in middle game, many lords have fought big battles against each other and thus, have weaken their army or have been eliminated and many times the concerned lords will not wait to replenish completely their army: they may travel in unusually low numbers of 30-40 soldiers which are generally low and middle tiers troops with almost no strong troops. Then, there are the caravans which travels in the area of Zendar, they have no real chance of survival and I consider it luck when they attain their travel destination when they use such a road. That being said, I don't really care about the nords and I don't think it matters enough for zendar to be placed elsewhere, but I really would like to see necromantic parties everywhere in the map, like in rhodok, swadian and khergit territories.

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i pointed this also to N0ught,Zendar and the incomming faction should be in a more central area or a corner of the map

edit: I changed the King Yaorleg name to King Yogurt light,cause i hate him
edit 2: @N0ught i used the editor ,so much fun! i moded the Sungeche castle (the one at the mountain between vaegir and Kergit ) and made it even creepier,plus i lowered the terrain and made a single entrance with a stone bridge,looks kinda like those creepy haunted castles from fairty tale .You sould try that or tell me how to save the map to send it to you,maybe you will like the idea

Hello Nough.

A little suggestion. I think that you should add cultists ingame. In a world at the edge of the Apocalypse, it should not be uncommon for people to start to venerate the evil force in order to gain some power or just to survive.

this is what i think about cultist troop line :

                                        --> inner circle horseman
aspiring cultist ---> cultist --> inner circle footman
                      ---> cultist bowman

cultists should be ill-equiped (random poor quality weapons, no armor but a ragged robe) and weaks.

concerning their recruitement, player should be able to preach in town and village. preaching should work the same as Exstispicy. Result should depend of : your persuasion skill, your relation with the town, the fact that evil faction has appeared or not, the fact that the town belong to the evil faction. If you succeed, you will recruit aspiring cultist, if you fail, people will try to kill you (alone against a mob of angry peasants). If you manage to repell them, you will loose relation, making further recruitement harder.

Acolytes essentially fulfill this role already. But I like the thought process.

Only now did it occur to me... have you considered adding Polished Landscapes to Solid and Shade? The gloomy late-autumnness would seem to be rather fitting.

I have. I have considered making rather exotic shaders too - for hallucinations and such. The thing is , I want to learn to do all that myself. It will take a while. The version after the fix version for the next release (the third release from now, that is) Should be an update to textures - not an overhaul, but an enhancement. I need to add more bump-mapping, specular and environment mapping, and in general, re-texture anything that looks out of place. I want to make it all more surreal, and slightly less cartoony. Larger texture maps will help a lot of that. It will be a HUGE process, though I do look forward to it.

Do bear in mind, M&B is not really optimized for performance with graphics that, um... don't look kinda like ****.

Meanwhile, having successfully implemented it in Civil War in Russia, I want to give Polished Landscapes with S&S a shot, but I need to ask - are the new town things (chests, secrets, you name it) defined in the map's Scene Objects? I don't know much about M&B code in particular, and as the mod wants to overwrite these by default I'd just skip them from the copypasta - worst case, some textureless crap pops up in some places, but if they aren't... well, I can overwrite away.

scrdest said:

Do bear in mind, M&B is not really optimized for performance with graphics that, um... don't look kinda like ****.

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I am aware. That being said, I frequently don't limit my polys anymore, especially on big models, though I don't use smooth functions or anything usually. I let the seamlessness of the textures blend away the rough spots. That is really what I need to do - make all the textures i have added 512x512 (or even 1024x1024) and put some extra work into revising the textures for realism.

I am only running 4gb RAM too, and I never have freeze-ups or CTD's due to graphics overload, even during castle sieges (which is where that tends to happen). I always design from a low-end machine. Starving artist status. 

And hey, you can experiment with the mod all you want for personal use. But I don't think polished landscapes is the direction I'm going to go. There may be some graphic overhauls in the future, but they will be implemented as my own way of learning how to do things like that. Honestly though, scenemaking is tedious enough as it is, and I like the way the graphics in the game are, overall. If anything, I will be learning more about alpha mapping, particles, shaders, and animation next.

I figured you don't.

I still want to know whether you modified the SceneObjs specifically *because* I want to try to use it on my own and you kinda missed the question there

The new chests are in scenes.py. Secret passages are handled via game_menus.py, and the "passage" objects in specific scenes. I hope that answers your question, cause I'm not sure I understand it. 

Later I just re watched Overlord by Maruyama (Try it) and I thought of an amazing suggestion. Why not make a death knight summon. Only obtainable at max necromancy rank, they have the same level of skill and deadliness as the werewolves and vampires. They were once humans that were border line super human now turned to an undead wearing black knight armor and equipped with the sharpest of claymores.

Okay time to elaborate on how they are obtained and how their equipped.
- They can be only obtained at the max necromancy rank.
- Their proficiency are on the same level as vampires and werewolves.
- They are equipped with black knight armor and masterwork clay-mores. (This is because Lord Nought has already reached the max items)
- The items needed to create them are the following:
  - Body of a superhuman (5% chance to get from parties that have at least 100 above units)
  - Philosopher stone (This can be used to revive their body to their maximum strength unlike the normal undead which are rigid in movemen. It will consume the philo stone) or Infinity stone
  -  5x Tools (For their equipment)

Also one of the other reasons is because the abomination doesn't look elite enough for some people that prefer elite demonic looking monsters than just monstrous beings.

Hello

I was thinking about a housing system for this amazing mod. Indeed, a evil servant deserve an evil estate 

The house should be located near the sea. In way to gain ownership of this domain, and to upgrade it, you should complete quests. Upgrades could imply visual change of the estate and his land 

House itself should be an old, big manor, belonging to an acient family (house Usher). It's  should be well furnished, but with a oppressing, sad atmosphere.Parts of the house should be unlocked through quests, because no one want someone to reveal their dark secrets (an basement with "something" burried behind a wall, an dark cave with a pit )

the domain should be vast, with a terrace, a pond, lonely trees and a palissage around the domain. Everything look like it's unused for a long time (but not decayed, just abandonned). Sky should be perpetually covered with dark clouds (limiting light). This landscape should be dotted by dark places, available through quests too. These places should be linked with the aspects of Necromancy of the mod (ie : type of necromancers)

fleshburner : a burning house with a lonely, richely dressed man (The Duc de L'Omelette) --> link with rapsutin, denizen of hell

palguedoctor, an old bar (the Jolly Tar ), with a cave hosting a weird assembly (a Pest nobility) --> link with Dupin (old case)

bloodPreserver : the house of Mr Valdemar, in wich strange experiments occur --> link with Crossbones, doctor loving experiments

hellraiser : a charnel slaughterhouse, with flayed hanging bodies and limbs everywhere, inhabited by a raving mademan (Montresor) wich become a bloody psychopath after the murder of a close friend --> link with fortunato for obvious reasons 

shadowlord : a big bloated boat, inhabited by losts souls, with a enormous whirlwind behind -->link with Oak, Ash and Thorn (living wood isn't common )

Artificer : a weird looking, steampunk like baloon, property of Mr Hans Pfaall --> link with the Raven (a bird knowing a flying ship ^^)

Every location can give you bonus (in form of a item, a merchant, a farming zone) or just be decorative, depending of our dark master will

I dunno, while everyone likes visual progress and see numbers go up, a custom 'upgrade-by-quest-house' feels a bit unoriginal in this otherwise innovative mod and generally fits better with the atmosphere of a regular RPG. Although maybe something could be done to improve the player's seat of power, whichever he chooses it to be.

Untitled. said:

I dunno, while everyone likes visual progress and see numbers go up, a custom 'upgrade-by-quest-house' feels a bit unoriginal in this otherwise innovative mod and generally fits better with the atmosphere of a regular RPG. Although maybe something could be done to improve the player's seat of power, whichever he chooses it to be.

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I think that it would be unoriginal only if the quests are just "go here and get this" quests. But I'm sure that Nough will made quest with potential side effect, without clear indication and with hard choice to make