Return to the Clock Makers' Tomb Review Trade

melinden

It is time for me to get back into the review-trading saddle. I was busy making this new quest and with work.

Here's the blurb for the quest:

***This quest assumes that you have completed the Neverdeath zone. This quest includes spoilers for that zone. ***

The Sword Coast Academicals have yet again put out a call for adventurers. This time they are looking for an artifact that is rumored to be in the tomb of the Water Clock Makers in Neverdeath.

***************************************
Plain English: This is a story driven quest with standard combat. It uses the lore of Neverwinter online with some general Forgotten Realms background. Combat help is available from an NPC if you wish. You will also need to explore and solve puzzles.


That's it in a nutshell. I made two passes with it live and I've caught a bunch of things, but now I need your help to find the rest. My guess is that it should take 30ish minutes your first time.

As always, post your quests here for me to review in return. I'll also be working my way down the list on the forum, so I might get yours reviewed through your thread.

nimzowitch

This is really superior work. I'm afraid that I increased what should be average play time by quite a bit just from walking around to check out your details. Hope that does not scare anyone off. Only a few things to get critical over:

-In the "Find clues about 'the water thief'" part, I think it might be difficult for some to locate the invisible sphere that you use there.

-In the "Return to the Clock Makers' Tomb - Find a way into the Apprentices' garden" part, you have some flicker on your stone walls due to overlapping geometry. Also, I think that many excepting old school rpg players will give up here not being able to figure out the sluice gates. Brilliant platform puzzle.

If I could catapult this straight to the best list I would. This is the kind of work that makes me want to give the Foundry Editor another chance.

One of mine could use another play when you get a chance:

Siren's Cove Castaways - 30 min.

winterswitch

Oh, a DoctorBadger quest! I'll get this knocked out ASAP.

melinden

nimzowitch wrote: »

Siren's Cove Castaways - 30 min.

Thanks for the many kind words! I will check those elements you mentioned. Do you remember if the blinking/seam effect was more noticeable in the Shadowfell areas? Something about that sky effect seems to exaggerate clipping and seams.

I left you a PM with my play through notes for Siren's Cove. Wow, you did some great work with those environments! My only big suggestion for the environment would be to add sound effects and music. I know a lot of people play the game with the game sound off, so I think that is why it is hard to remember to add it.

reiwulf

I enjoyed it a lot, specially the final crypt withthe waterway and the moving platforms, how did you do the moving platforms? I had no idea we could have that.
The story was good too, although I felt bad that the doom guide was angry at me at the end.
If you want to trade feedback try my quest "The ravenhill mystery" in my signature.

feuygar

Hi,

A very classy adventure - so many things to like about it.

The story was smooth, no need for me to write an endless list of typos and you brought together different objects in a clever way to make an impressive environment.

Difficult to add improvements, but I saw a couple of things:

In the graveyard, one of the bodies was floating in the air (2 feet off the ground)
You used the same door to enter the main building from NW as to leave to Neverdeath, maybe could have a different exit?
Orran conversation - I thought the "Orran's face darkens" should be in blue typeface since setting the scene.
Hidden lever - maybe add a noise to move it.
Behind the lion statue there was an interactable that was out of sight (don't know if this was important)
In the garden, many of the cheque floor panels are clipping along the edges.
To exit the garden I clicked on a chair - just seemed an odd way of exiting the room.
I don't remember much music/sound (maybe it was in there and natural so I missed it?)

The moving stone floor (volume objects set at 90 degrees?) and the garden were both very special.


Please can also review my quest, from playing yours I think you'll like it and I've added many recent improvements.


422 - Yeenoghu's Bride

NW-DUMTEJ9KZ

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?411131-Proud-to-present-for-reviews-422-Yeenoghu-s-Bride

bazgc

Hi,

Enjoyed the quest. Here's stuff that I picked up along the way:

• Some of the damage textures for the first door in the apprentice's tomb are floating rather high above it.
• I also saw the overlapping geometry.
• I was able to run underneath the platform and stairs put in after the sluice gates
• Plaque beside chancellor should possibly read "specimen" rather than "speciem". Although speciem is technically the correct word it isn't used very frequently. Most people would understand "specimen" much more easily.

I'll give your other quest a try too if I could get reviews for both of mine. Details in my sig.

melinden

Just did a batch of edits, I think I got everything, thank you for your sharp eyes!

nimzowitch wrote: »

-In the "Find clues about 'the water thief'" part, I think it might be difficult for some to locate the invisible sphere that you use there.

-In the "Return to the Clock Makers' Tomb - Find a way into the Apprentices' garden" part, you have some flicker on your stone walls due to overlapping geometry. Also, I think that many excepting old school rpg players will give up here not being able to figure out the sluice gates. Brilliant platform puzzle.

-In the graveyard that is a teleporter. I have it pretty far from the rockslide but to be honest I'm pretty gunshy about messing with those things again. Both of them were complete pains to work with.

-I pulled the clicky further out from the door, hopefully that will help. I've found that invisible clicky elements are not nearly as sparkly as regular interaction sparkles, which is a shame.

feuygar wrote: »

Hi,
In the graveyard, one of the bodies was floating in the air (2 feet off the ground)
You used the same door to enter the main building from NW as to leave to Neverdeath, maybe could have a different exit?
Orran conversation - I thought the "Orran's face darkens" should be in blue typeface since setting the scene.
Hidden lever - maybe add a noise to move it.
Behind the lion statue there was an interactable that was out of sight (don't know if this was important)
In the garden, many of the cheque floor panels are clipping along the edges.
To exit the garden I clicked on a chair - just seemed an odd way of exiting the room.
I don't remember much music/sound (maybe it was in there and natural so I missed it?)

-I finally found that guy, he should be appropriately dead on some rubble now.
-I see your point, but that is just the main door to the building so I just go with exits and entrances from there (the other doors are classrooms that aren't used yet). I do my best to skip anything that is just a map pass through, so you don't need to reload Protector's Enclave just to walk the 10 yards to the Dragon Gate.
-We don't have blue that I've seen? In editing OOC info (which is italics) appears blue outline. I have his action in yellow at the moment.
-that sound should be "Door, mechanical 1". If the music is swelling when you pull the lever it can be hard to hear
-Behind the lion you were seeing a tidbit of the corner of the teleporter in the other room. I would move this over if it were anything OTHER than a teleporter. That thing took forever to place and I went through 3 teleporter types before that one actually stayed put. Hopefully the teleporter woes will improve.
-I disliked the border on the small floor pieces so I had pushed them together. Flickering is worse though, so those are now just next to each other
-I see the chair thing. This was my way of saying as the DM: "Yeah, you leave the dungeon the way you came in" but that wasn't clear. I added a false wall and a door that looks more appropriate.
-there -should- be lots of sound, but I've had trouble with it before. There should be music, ambient, and sound effects in various places throughout.

bazgc wrote: »

Hi,

• Some of the damage textures for the first door in the apprentice's tomb are floating rather high above it.
• I also saw the overlapping geometry.
• I was able to run underneath the platform and stairs put in after the sluice gates
• Plaque beside chancellor should possibly read "specimen" rather than "speciem". Although speciem is technically the correct word it isn't used very frequently. Most people would understand "specimen" much more easily.

-This should be improved
-also, should be improved
-I had a wall go missing, that is now replaced!
-thank you for the spelling catch, I have fixed that on that map in both of my foundries

Thanks so much again and I will be working my way through your quests during this week!

melinden

winterswitch wrote: »

Oh, a DoctorBadger quest! I'll get this knocked out ASAP.

I was actually thinking of you when I had the injured student in the back classroom promise to wear eye protection. Well, you and every lab instructor I have ever had...

reiwulf wrote: »

I enjoyed it a lot, specially the final crypt with the waterway and the moving platforms, how did you do the moving platforms? I had no idea we could have that.
The story was good too, although I felt bad that the doom guide was angry at me at the end.
If you want to trade feedback try my quest "The ravenhill mystery" in my signature.

Those are just standard volume gates. I think that one is even called "stone bridge" or something. I was completely stumped on how to make that puzzle work until the patch came out.

I did make Orran upset on purpose. I always thought it was so strange the Doomguides seemed to turn a blind eye to the fact that we were robbing all the tombs we entered in order to help them. I at least wanted to reference that. Plus the Academicals are not exactly using field standard collection methods.

Neverdeath is my favorite zone, so if I return to it I promise I'll make sure everyone can make up with Orran.

mrthebozer

Just played chapters 1 and 2. Had a blast both times. PMing some notes for Clock Maker now.

bazgc

Just played chapter 1 and really enjoyed it

rac45

Great fun

Points:
1) It is possible to go all the way though to the end without completing the 'follow Imril' bit - you can go down the ladder and complete the puzzles, you just can't do anything in the end room (which is beautiful, by the way). Might be an idea to prevent use of the ladder before you complete Imril?
2) In the room with the sluice gates - the pool has fishes. Some of them swim outside to pool, sort of in the floor, which is rather disconcerting.

melinden

Thank you for the review! Those fish are a pain to place but I can take those out without any problem.

I need a little bit of more information for the second point: Did you talk to Nielle and then Imril had walked to the secret passage and the "Follow Imril" failed to complete? Or did you not talk to anyone when you returned to the crypt and ran to the teleporter?

Foundry authors can't "hide" teleporters by making them invisible once we place them, so we can only put things on top of them or in front of them, unfortunately. I could put one of the new invisible circle walls in, which would help.

melinden

This one is pretty broken: the stone bridge volume gate no longer has collision. Being that it is a bridge....that's a problem. There is also a weird graphics glitch with one of the light effects used in the apprentices' burial chamber.

The problem is that since this was featured I can't fix the one most everyone will play. I've sent in a bug report about the collision and I'm going to sit tight on this one for a bit. I may go and fix the non-featured version for myself but that rarely gets played.

idiotamongus

Aren't quests waiting for reviews meant to be in the 'Foundry Quest Database' Forum? Just saying. :P

However, I will have a look at this and review it.

melinden

When I started this thread in September of 2013 there was no such subforum. I recommend you NOT try this quest as I mentioned in my most recent post that it is broken. The bridges you need to cross no longer have collision since Mod 5 was released.

hustin1

I decided to check it out, if nothing else to see what the devs broke. It's a shame; it was a nice quest up to that point. Please post if you decide to fix it!

idiotamongus

melinden wrote: »

When I started this thread in September of 2013 there was no such subforum. I recommend you NOT try this quest as I mentioned in my most recent post that it is broken. The bridges you need to cross no longer have collision since Mod 5 was released.

It's a bit late for that. I had noticed the missing section. However, inability of completion shouldn't effect the end result. Just because it's incompletable, doesn't make it any of a worse Foundry quest. I still would have rated it highly regardless. Those who know my reviewing strategy know that I give my rating's based on; gameplay, detail, story, Author's understanding of Foundry logic and mechanics etc, and so on and if needed, tell them what need's to be improved. Pretty much like anyone else, only I plan my reviews and how it is presented for the best understanding to author's what's good and bad about their Foundry's.

tipadaknife

Ah, Kasul and I managed to finish this last night. I don't think we could have done it solo.

melinden

Were you able to cross the bridges? I'll try again tonight to see if they were fixed.

I wasn't able to cross them, how did you two manage it?

tipadaknife

They were still broken. But they only make you fall through when they are moving. Since there were two of us, we could get one person to hold them while the other one did the same to the next. For the last one, my partner, a rogue, used a short range teleport to zap to me.

josephskyrim

Hi melinden! Played through this one tonight and found it really good! Great environments and cute details. Have to admit the Crypt Defenders scared the bejeezus out of me when they showed up - wasn't expecting that! :P

Um, just little things I noted, but might be irrelevant since I play on lower graphic settings...
-Upon leaving the room with the non hostile spirits to chase the bad guy there's a piece of floor you can examine and it mentions footprints and something about a pit there before? Not sure if I just missed the pit the first time or I read that wrong but I made note of it.

-I poked the sparkly that told me about the "worker skeletons" before I even noticed any worker skeletons! Maybe move it beside one of them?

-The bridge puzzle at the end. Not sure if characters with a poor jump can clear it since the moving pieces aren't solid when they move. I got around it by standing at the edge of piece 1 and waiting for it to finish moving, jump to it - do the same for piece 2 then since I'm a TR just did a jump and dodge to the opposite edge. Good thing I had lots of practice at Tiamat doing that. :P

-Lore point: I'm not sure if Thayans would ally with Shadar-kai, but it wouldn't be common knowledge one way or another. Also I might just be completely wrong on this point. ^_^

You already played Coeden so no need to trade for this one.

melinden

Thank you for taking the time to try and play this, I'm sorry I should have said I didn't have anything new so you weren't under any obligation to do any reviews for me.

Unfortunately since this quest was featured I'm sort of stuck with the changes the more recent modules have made. The Shadowfell torches used to actually give light, for example. Also, those bridges have lost collision and there the spiral red effect in the crypt chamber now glitches out the whole map


I appreciate you and Tipa for being so creative and persistent in solving a broken puzzle. You are more creative than I am since I haven't been able to do it!

melinden

Today’s comment with 1 star: “That puzzle at the end was terrible. You have to stand on the very edge of the platform just to make the jump, then you have to stand on the very edge of the next two to make them move. I read that the difficulty had been upped, but this is just cheap."

THIS WAS NOT MY FAULT! I am so angry and frustrated. I didn't work months just to troll some player. And that is how our reputations as Authors are ruined.

tipadaknife

Just noticed that one of my own maps, collision is back for a volume gate I am using. Your quest might have fixed itself last night.

melinden

It was strange last night since in a fit of frustration I went back and edited the live version (the 1 star was on the live version). At the time only some of the volume gates were collisionless. I replaced them all just to be safe.

Also, since I was in there anyway and being me I updated the look of the tomb a little and added a small lore item from the Neverwinter Campaign Guide.

hustin1

Yup, it's working now. I just finished the fourth quest in the campaign (to the Silver Marches). It gets better with each one! I wish I'd known that Return to the Clock Maker's Tomb wasn't the first one in the campaign, though. I'll have to do the first quest separately, but for now I'm queued on the fifth in the campaign.

There was one little nitpick in the Silver Marches one: the chancellor is in two places at the end: on the table and in the alchemy lab. I'm thinking that the one in the alchemy lab shouldn't be there. Otherwise, though, it was outstanding, especially Silver Marches. That map alone could be a jumping-off-point for a great many quests.

Overall, I really enjoy the dialogue in the campaign. A little humor goes a long way.

Edit: I just finished the fifth in the campaign. It was really incredible (and swimming was really cool!) The only major glitch was just before going out to sea. My frame rate crashed to 1fps just after talking to the chancellor and I had a real hard time getting onto the ship. I'm wondering if the problem was with the ship itself -- was the whole thing made interactable? if so, you might want to just put something on the deck and make that interactable instead (maybe a door leading belowdecks?)

I only have one quest published so far (see my sig), if you feel like checking it out.

melinden

I'm glad you are enjoying them! Thank you for catching the co-locating Chancellor in Rescue, he's back in one place now. I'll post a review for you in your thread. Thanks again!