Second Patch Help

[smoret]

I'm getting ready to submit the second patch to Atari; there will be a little bit of a delay for them to Secu-ROM the new executable and hopefully we can begin testing the second patch shortly.

In the mean time I'm looking for volunteers (preferably those who think they know the D&D ruleset like the back of their hand, and who get extremely angry when the rules aren't EXACTLY right) who would be willing to spend 2-3 hours a day beta testing the data portion of the new patch.

Once the executable is Secu-ROMed, these people will also probably be asked to help test the full release of the second patch. Their input will also probably go towards any future patches (of which I plan to make ad infinitum).

If you are interested in helping test/report bugs and develop future patches for ToEE please e-mail toee-bugs@genocide.net and include the following in your e-mail:
1) your full name
2) your date of birth
3) city and state you currently live in
4) the computer setup you will be testing on
5) a little blurb on why you want to test

Optionally you can also include an instant messenging handle (ICQ,AIM,MSN,Yahoo). Also, if you have an e-mail address you'd prefer to be mailed back at please include that as well.

Priority will probably be given to those who show a good level of communication and ability to handle responsibility. Most likely you will be required to sign an NDA and other legally binding agreements. This has yet to be 100% determined.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This in no way indicates that Atari will not continue to support the project. Infact, they have been extremely helpful in making sure that all of my needs to continue work on ToEE are being met.

p.s. Thanks for all your support!

[taks]

you should be commended for your efforts sir. i have spread the word elsewhere.

taks

[Maelis]

I would offer my services, but I shant be having the time for the next several weeks. Thank you for putting in this much effort. It really shows that the programmers truely care about this game that they are willing to put in this much effort on their own dime. Thanks again!

[Exitium]

I can only express my respect for you and your continued support for the product. You truly deserve the mantle of 'developer'.

That said, you have my application in the mail.

[Avin the duck]

Thanks Steve, it's always good to know that there's people "who cares" in the game industry.

There's chance for adding new portraits to the game?

[UMB]

Avin is that your biggest problem with the game?

[Pygon]

Drat, if I had the game I would definitely help test it, but I'm not aware of the little nuances that are currently bugged, so I don't know what to look for.

Please bangtest that thing to death and list EVERYTHING you find!

"Ad infinitum"? You, sir, are a saint and both Troika and Atari should be commended for their dedication to this game. As a customer, I can say that this type of commitment from a developer goes a very long way. You can bet your sore fingertips and strained eyeballs that I'll be buying Bloodlines.

[Womanslayer]

Steve, thank you for taking the time to patch this puppy up, and I would love to help but, unfortunately I am not a rules psycho.

To those of you who will be testing, make sure bonus spells work.

[magerette]

To Steve and all who help, sincere thanks.

It bodes well for any future releases that you are receiving the support from Atari you mention.

I am only a lowly user and as for knowing the dnd rules like the back of my hand--unfortunately it is more like another portion of my anatomy--or i would offer help as well.

thanks for a great game. even if flawed, i particularly applaud your original choice to make a single player, turn-based game.
if only there were more of them!

[Trydan]

This is excellent to see. Well done to Steve et al., not only for accomplishing what they have already, but for having the dedication to press on and enhance the game even further. Many thanks!

ToEE is actually quite a milestone in terms of faithfulness to the D&D ruleset. Something that makes other so-called D&D games only appear now as "D&D-style". I'd love to support that.

My application to help is also on its way.

[JS1]

Good to see emails like these from Troika. I hope this game and this engine have a future - like sequels! I may be a rules fanatic, but have little time to give. From one software developer to another, I wish you success.

I would help since I really want to play a fixed and hopefully near perfect version of the game and have a lot of time to spare, but I don't know much about the D&D 3.5 rules I've read the PM, but never played the game with anyone so I guess I don't qualify as a tester

I hope a lot of people apply and really put their time in it, even though that may seem as a selfish request I'm sure you'd be doing hundreds of people a BIG favor.

[bryce777]

I am glad to see that you take it so seriously...the basic engine and rule implementation is simply wodnerful, and I would very much love to see some sequels and expansions, especially with more writing etc.

[Phosphor]

I really admire and appreciate your dedication in this, Steve. Can you tell us what you've done so far?
It's good that Atari are open to this - makes me think a bit less worse of them
Good luck.

[smoret]

Originally posted by Phosphor
Can you tell us what you've done so far?

The quick rundown of what I've got in the second patch is:

* Lots of under the hood changes to facilitate future patches and community modifications.
* A bunch of weapon prototype changes (value changes, wrong weapon types, wrong sizes, etc)
* Many quest/dialog fixes curtosy of Tom Decker and Circle of Eight.
* A rewrite to the random number generator engine to include new types of random number generators for thsoe who don't think the ToEE one is good enough :P
* Fixes to critical hits not confirming in some instances
* Fixes to str bonuses and 2handed-ness
* Bracer equip slot bugs fixed
* A few bugs relating to ranged attacks and enhancement bonuses have been fixed

We are also considering reworking follower looting but there are so many different camps who want different things with this we are trying to come up with a solution that makes a few people unhappy as possible.

[J4000]

Thanks, Steve. Future patches and community mods, eh? Sweet!

Sounds like patch 2 will necessitate another run through the game just to see what's different.

(Oh, and my testing application is on its way!)

[Ausir]

As for looting, I like Shin's solution to the problem (followers looting only money, jewelry and gems).

[Jonath98]

When will the second patch be available to download?

[tpigeon1]

Originally posted by smoret
The quick rundown of what I've got in the second patch is:

What about spells, specifically divine power and the reach issues wrt enlarge, reduce, Righteous Might, etc..

Unless, you radically changed the under the hood stuff, I can't see this being a community fix.

[Shadowblade]

-----
We are also considering reworking follower looting but there are so many different camps who want different things with this we are trying to come up with a solution that makes a few people unhappy as possible.
-----

It's simple:

Abolish it completely.
Have no items stick in their inventory.
Don't have dropped items marked as NPC items so they stick in the PC inventory when picked up.

Then, when THE PARTY. I'll say that again, when THE PARTY sells stuff at stores, the NPC/hireling/henchman takes his share of the cash. A floating text comes up:

"NPC Bob deducts his full share/half share of cash".

That's the way it's usually done in real AD&D. NPCs are equipped with decent weapons, wands and so on. Thieves get the picks and tools. Fighter's get the best melee weapons. I've given Scather to Taki, for example, as he can make better use of it than my Bard or Ranger and my Fighter has a good enough weapon of his own. And I made him gloves of STR +6 as well. I'm making him magic armour next.

And if we try to kick them out of the party, have them refuse to go until they are paid or have them automatically deduct 1/6th of the entire cash fund that the party has, which would probably be more than their share.

If a Good party kills them, don't have this US Army Friendly Fire cobblers, force an alignment change and impose a massive XP penalty for the rest of the campaign adventure.

If an Evil/Neutral party kills them, have an evil mercenary group come and avenge their friends, with an Insta-Kill God character as leader. That'll teach them! (Power Word: Reload!)

Hirelings and so on don't ram raid the treasure horde and steal a load of old crap that's no good to them and then refuse to sell it! What sort of AD&D have you been playing? NPC looting in ToEE causes more trouble than it's worth, so we just kill them and take their stuff anyway and then pay to Raise them. So sort it out so that we can't.


The real thing is more sort of a team effort.


~

[GoldDragon]

It is cool that they are doing this, but they really should ship a game that works...

Anyway I am slightly disapointed about how little has been actually fixed yet, but hopefully we can now stomp on all the remaining bugs.

This could have been a great game with less bugs and more story. Hopefully we can get the engine fixed, and with some fan mods to add some story, and it WILL be a great game. Anyway I will try to sign up as a tester, but I am not sure if they are going to take anyone outside the US...

[Diamondfist]

I am unable to volunteer for your beta testing, Steve, but I wish to extend my sincere thanks for your work and dedication in getting this patch done. Thanks also to Zhuge and all others responsible for staying on top of everything involving the patch.

[kellinjar]

I sent in my application awhile ago..just never bothered to post saying so
As to the follower loot.. when I ran PnP D&D games.. you rolled for an item...
not all items of course..the item either had to be general application or specific to your class. I.e. a fighter couldn't roll for a wand just to annoy the wizard...
now it would require ALOT of work..but NPCs should be coded with certain flags for certain items. i.e. if a sword has been found that contains more enchantments then the sword they currently have and they're a melee class that uses a sword... a little box would appear and you could click 'roll' and all interested parties would roll a d20... whoever gets the highest would score the item.
I admit that might get cumbersome in the game..but thats the way we did it in PnP.... its alot less bulky then it sounds.. usually its pretty obvious who should get what item..but when the PC fighter has a longsword +2 and the NPC fighter has a longsword +2 and you jus tpicked up a longsword +2 of shocking.. who gets it?

[OldTimer824]

Steve,
As others have said, tremendous kudos for your professionalism and dedication (same goes out to the constructive members of the community).
My fervent wish is this gets solid enough to be used for sequels (my earlier posts have already suggested the Slaver series and the Giants - maybe a more obscure one would be Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth & Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun). I really think this is the kernel of a fantastic opportunity.
Now lame-o excuse: I won't be able to test - 2 business trips in next 3 weeks, 2 little kids (who LOVE to watch me play, by the way!), and most importantly - I'm a throwback! 18 years of 1st Ed DM'ing, but my 3rd Ed experience is purely as a computer game player (no luck yet assembling a party for PnP ). So, I'm sketchy on the 3rd Ed rules.
Keep it up! (Now if ATARI would only encourage this for Master of Orion 3 - that was such a letdown...)

[ywk]

First of all, kudos to smoret for his dedication to the game. I've had this game for 3 months when it was launched. I've installed it but refused to play it until the 2nd patch is out. I give myself a pat behind for the patience I have . As for the testing, I think it's quite obvious who are the 3.5 rules expert and resposible ppls in this forum :- Zhuge and ELB. Just look at the stickies posted by them. It would be great if they can participate if they have the freetime. I am the first to be very grateful if they can do so.

I will participate myself if I have that depth of rules knowledge as they do. But let's face it, if you are not familiar, Don't participate. It will cause more harm than good.

My 2 cents:- Could you re-instate the attribute cheat 'bug' back in the 2nd patch? You know, the all 18 attrib bug. As a gamer, we have the right to play the game the way we like it. I got to admit, I am spoilt by the previous gold box D&D games:- Dark Queen of Krynn, Baldur's gate etc where I can create all 18 chars.

[kellinjar]

i'm curious what feature you used in the BG series to give yourself all 18s? There were no similar glitches I know of...
I know in the goldbox games you could just modify the character and give em all 18's..but honestly in those games you sometimes really needed it...
Such character editing is more the work of an editor and if you cruise over to sorcerers.net I believe you'll find what you seak there.

[ywk]

Kellinjar, I used the memory finders tool to modify the attribute pool while creating character for BG series. But for TOEE. the memory slots used for the attribute pool keeps changing!!! Arggh!! I do not trust the hex editing guide in sorcerers.net as sometimes other skills/sub-attributes affected by the modified attributes in files are not reflected/calculated properly when you load up the modified savegame. It's better to me done in-play and during character creation.

Anyway, I recieve word that the character creation Advance tab bug is still there, even after the patch. Can someone confirm with me on this?

[Phosphor]

Originally posted by smoret

* Lots of under the hood changes to facilitate future patches and community modifications.

I like the sound of that! What are we talking here in "community modifications"? Fix packs or the ability to create entire mods for the game? Modding tools would be really nice - I'm no modder, but I'll certainly play them. Mods mean longer game life and sustained game interest.
As for NPC looting, a percentage of found cash (gold, gems) is all that's needed.

[kellinjar]

Ah yes.. I believe its still there..so no worries. I think if you scroll down this page..or on the previous page there is talk of it still being there.
I think there is a character editor program that allows you to edit the character's starting stats without a hex editor..
I tried one.. I'm not sure which ones work and which don't.. I know some of the programs do though..from what I've heard...
check this page for various automated ways to change your stats without having to hex edit yourself.
http://sorcerers.net/Games/ToEE/index_editors.htm