Review Req (Humor, Story) Bring out yer Dead

vuelhering

NW-DAI945C2G

What was I thinking, making an outdoor quest as my first foundry creation?
It's going to be part 1 of the Quest for the Holy Grail campaign.

Anyways, this is meant to entertain and tell a story, not just bash through a dungeon to get the AD at the end. Come for the Knights who say Ni, stay for the disarmed, and de-legged Black Knight.

Edit: Okay, Go ahead and leave reviews in-game please! I believe the biggest issues have been worked out.

Comments below may contain spoilers!

NW-DAI945C2G

vuelhering

Argh, already found a typo.... "not dead" on one interaction. I'll fix that.

found one other bug so far. wow, it's much easier to test on live, than in the foundry.

thehuntress

But I'm not dead.

vuelhering

I played this through several times in the editor, and still missed a bunch of typos. (well, not typos, but comments left in names for easy debugging)

Fixed four typos, one oversight, one unbalanced fight, and working on one small logic issue.

edit: a small logic issue that's turning into a larger, annoying issue which comes up in certain cases. For now, don't attack the Knights who say Ni.

vuelhering

Okay, I think I fixed it... that was a big pain. I think that puts it into beta stage as soon as this publish finishes.

oortexplorer

Added to my list, will play within the next day or two. Hopefully you can play mine as well. (Info in sig) It's also a comedy.

Love this style of quest, looking forward to playing it!

labmouse42

This is what I noticed while playing the mission
SPOILERS

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Start your quest giver closer to your quest entrance. Don't make me run across Protector's Enclave for no good reason.

Can you slow down the pat speed to .5 for your patrolling NPC mobs in merchants square. Some of their paths feel a bit odd.

If its ever possible, I try to avoid map changes. Looking at a loading screen is no fun.

I walked up to the dead body cart before clearing the bandits out. I don't see a way to resolve the cart. There is one on the cart that I am missing a dialogue encounter with.

I do like how you have Patsy tell you where to go. That's a nice touch.

Your quest says to pass through the magic archway, but I'm looking for this book of riddles. It seems off. Patsy is telling me to look for the book too, so its a bit offsetting.

Hehe...when is a cleric not a cleric.

Even after I got well past the Knights who say Ni, Patsy kept talking about the book of riddles.

What was up with the burning wreckage by the black knight?

Good use of fog when crossing the bridge.

I liked how Patsy said he would carry the table.

Is there a way you can change the distance patsy follows you? Its a bit off-putting to have him so close, and makes it hard to interact with other objects or NPCs

Oh, and I did not have to fight the dogs by the frenchmen at all, I just followed the quest and ran away. If you want to force a fight, you might need to spawn them elsewhere.

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vuelhering

Awesome feedback, thanks labmouse! I corrected literally 20 minor oversights and one big one last night, but you caught more.


The pat speed in merchant quarter is nothing like that in foundry test, and I'll try to change that. It felt odd to me too. And the wander times seem off.

There was no believable door near the NPC that could double as a city gate, and that seemed like the best NPC quest giver. Enclave is really sparse in good doors and npcs we can use, as you probably know. I'll go look around to see if I can find something else, but changing NPC quest giver would be really time-intensive at this point.

The map changes are to give an ability to do the cutscenes, as I can't do anything (e.g. have guards walk up based on dialog) in PE.

I don't know how to get Patsy to follow at more of a distance. Maybe I can slow him down.

Dead cart is off the storyboard. I tried to make it fairly open-ended in that respect, so visiting the dead cart shouldn't matter. After you talk to the mortician (and get through to his sub-quest), you can interact with the corpses in a different manner. In fact, there are multiple ways to get across the bridge, too, so the storyboard is only "get across the bridge".

The dialog on the cart is just the putrid corpse... I should remove the ability to transact so it's not confusing. I'm too close to the creation to catch things like that.

Patsy talking about the book of riddles past the arch was the last/only bug left on my list. And you found it

The last fight isn't forced, although it should've dropped several encounters on you if you stuck around. You're supposed to be able to run. The ground should've been littered with encounters and debris (and when solo, can be pretty deadly for some classes).

labmouse42

vuelhering wrote: »

There was no believable door near the NPC that could double as a city gate, and that seemed like the best NPC quest giver.

I'm glad I could help

I'm also writing humor storylines. Just like in theater, it's easier to do humor than drama.
Part of the reason is this -- if you don't have a believeable door by the city gate, make it part of the gag!
NPC - "And the passage to the village market is there!"
Hero - "That door leads to someone's home."
NPC - "Well....yes....don't mind them. Their eating supper. Just walk through and go out the secret door in their basement"
Hero - "That seems a bit rude"

You get the idea. If something seems outlandish, make it part of the gag. I do that quite often in the second adventure I'm making "Why the heck don't you move! Your village is under the mountain of doom!?!"

vuelhering

haha! Sounds good.

I haven't made any changes, but you should check out the dead cart again. Throwing corpses onto the cart is pretty funny.

lovepeas

I am a huge Python fan. Will definitely be playing this!

meysa

I will test this, as soon as the servers come back up. Please reciprocate, my link is in my signature.

meysa

Well, I'm trying to find your quest and nothing comes up, did you withdraw it?

vuelhering

No, lemme check what's up.

No idea... says it's published.

I'll try running it myself in a sec.

vuelhering

I can definitely find it when I search for @vuelherring or the short code.

edit: tried searching again, and it took a while to come up. Just tried again and it wouldn't come up. No idea... lag maybe?

vuelhering

Okay, please play and review this in-game now. I think most of the bugs are worked out!

meysa

OK, I'll try to find it again. Hopefully, I can this time!

meysa

I just completed this quest. Hopefully, you'll enjoy mine as much as I enjoyed yours.

I didn't find any real problems to report.

vuelhering

I'll check yours out, meysa! Will be late tonight, probably.

Actually... I think I even have the quest, but haven't yet started it.

dzogen

yes............

oortexplorer

Strangest thing happened. I was playing this quest, blowing my nose in the general direction of the French, and received the prompt to "Run Away". So I started to move away from the castle, and a couple of burning carts appeared, one basically right beside me. At that point I was essentially rooted (almost like I was tied to the cart) and I could not move. I fought the dogs, and tried everything possible to move, but I was basically locked in place, and had to teleport back to PE.

I don't know if this was caused by anything in the quest, or just a random computer glitch. Reading the thread it doesn't look like anybody else had a problem finishing it. I will try again tomorrow.

mllebean

OK, we have got to trade reviews, because my quest is a very similar theme to yours! (Also Python-inspired!) Great minds think alike, I guess.

NW-DUTKDLBYI

Info and comments at http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?326671-My-first-quest!-Kind-hearted-reviewers-wanted-)&p=4198891#post4198891

mllebean

Just ran your quest - your Black Knight is a lot scarier than mine! I'm impressed at how you figured out a way to get rid of his legs and arms.

One issue I ran into is that it's very, very hard to target Patsy when he's got the table on him. Almost every angle says "out of line of sight". People could get pretty frustrated by that.

Also, I died when all the skeletons came out, and it's a pretty long ride back. Maybe you could move the campfire into the middle somewhere?

But it was a fun quest, and the best news is our quests seem to be different enough that people will hopefully enjoy them both

vuelhering

oortexplorer, that pinning by the cart was a drag ... I haven't found any way to cause objects to actually fall, so there was no way to make the catapult launch stuff at you and fall down. So, using a timer hack I just have objects "appear" on the ground, although NPCs and monsters do actually fall (and take damage!). For the larger stuff like the ship (at the end), I put a river of lava under it, so if it falls on you, well... you die. Thanks for testing it, and I apologize for that happening. I'm not sure what I can do about it.

mllebean, awesome to hear and thanks for playtesting it and giving feedback. I'll totally test yours out later.

I ran into the issue of untargetable Patsy once, and I moved him a little. I think I might be able to just make the table fall on him upright, and that might fix it. I'll do some tests.

I'll look into moving the respawn point. You can complete the map with only a single fight, or you can have a LOT of fighting if you really want, with monsters potentially falling on you every 6-10 seconds

Chopping off the legs of the black knight was difficult... took me a LONG time to figure out. Basically, he's just below ground level, and I added a level a few feet above which you can walk on. That was the only way I could get rid of his stubby legs. Having him get stuck and not be able to move was a fortuitous side effect! If you're a CW and choke-grip him, he gets loose and waddles after you

The only way I could get rid of his arms was to make them really small, and increase the size of his shoulders which caused his armor to kind of overshadow it.

vuelhering

I could use a couple more (official) reviews to get off the New tab. Feel free to post your experiences here, too.

Thanks in advance!

vuelhering

I'm making some changes based on feedback. It should prevent certain issues of getting stuck, and also put the campfire in a better location.


edit: bah -- logically (at least according to De Morgan's), my solution to getting stuck is correct, but the game ignores my amazing solution. Sigh. Looks like if a catapulted item lands on you, you could get stuck.

oortexplorer

Just played it and it's an enjoyable quest. I feel like the potential is there to polish it up a bit and make it even better. Perhaps a couple of extra jokes, maybe something to do at the castle (before running). Luckily i did not get pinned this time and I appreciate the difficulty in finding a way to catapult the items due to Foundry limitations, but it just doesn't feel like a finished scene, as is.

The outdoor locale looks good and fits the mood, feels a little sparse though. Perhaps you could decorate it up a little more.

I also had issues with Patsy and the table, it probably took at least 90 seconds to finally be able to press F and talk to him. This is going to cause problems. Perhaps either move the table a bit lower (it has him pinned at the neck right now lol), looks funny but is affecting the functionality. Maybe the solution is simply to have the player move the table first, before you have the conversation with him, although that convo is really funny. You definitely need to find a way to make it easier to talk to him, though. I was starting to think I might not be able to complete the quest again.

I liked how you handled the "dead cart" and "flesh wound" knight, also Patsy is a well-done character. Overall, a good concept with potential to be really good. Looking forward to Part 2. If you do end up making significant changes I'll play through it again.

vuelhering

Thanks for the feedback. To preserve budget, I added a bunch of invisible walls and cut back on trees, but I'm still over 1400/1500 items on a single map. There are a few areas that probably nobody visits which has a bunch of spiders that I can trim back, to populate other areas, and I might do that. I made it as dense as I dared, while still allowing enough room for tweaks.

The changes I'm testing now are to make it a little more clear where to go, to prevent people not knowing.

I figured out how to handle the table, too, but it's dangerous... it will depend on the player not deleting quest items. I think this will be fine, though. In any case, it won't break the quest if the player deletes items, but the table that lands on patsy won't be there (and might be confusing as a result).

Maybe the solution is simply to have the player move the table first, before you have the conversation with him, although that convo is really funny.

Huh, that's not a bad idea! I could just have the table clickable, allowing you to move it if you can't talk to patsy and skip over that one element if it's been moved. I'll look into that!

The changes I'm testing now will allow the entire map to be done without fighting at all, and I'm going to try to figure out some sort of easter egg for completing it like that.

edit: okay, I can't have the table be moved off-script, but I can just have the player move it first, then talk to patsy with much of the same dialogue.

vuelhering

Okay, new publish!

Fixed issues of any random wagon, building, etc falling on you and rendering you stuck. This was done in a klugy way, but was the only method I could figure out to make objects lose collision (allowing one to walk through them).

Fixed issues with Patsy being stuck under the table. This was also kind of bizarre in that I had to do some silly stuff due to storyboard limitations, but it works.

kidneydiseases

Just played your quest. It's a lot of fun. I like it.

vuelhering

Awesome!

I have 20+ reviews, and I thank everyone for getting it qualified for daily foundry!

When the foundry editor comes back up, there are a few minor changes for the better I'll be making.