Harper Chronicles - Blood Magic

warrians · March 2019

Hello again, I decided to open a separate thread for every review i make, because i find the in-game review system extremely limited - typing limit, one review per campaign as opposed to one review per campaign quest, and no reviewing when you get stuck or when unplayable. We know the reasons for the last one, but still. Warning, you might find spoilers.

I am in awe of the Harper Chronicles sequel - That redcap house on map 2 got me wondering about the resources you used. Is that elven style? How did you get the lighting like that in all rooms ? It does NOT look or feel like the basic elven style at all. I spent a long time examining the rooms. Also that round stairway in the first room - Is that done piece by piece? I cant find that resource. GREAT work , once again, with the detail level, it puts my stuff to shame. (Given i dont work much with decorating, especially now that i have a deadline )

Astral plane was great too! I wonder how you made the mini ppl THAT small ? Now if only i could reverse that and make the drakes "that big "!

Next map was very good, i was just a bit confused about the way to open the barrier , story wise - Why did reading the first and the last name in the book open the barrier? How is it there was a "Last" name, if the book is supposed to keep adding new pages ? (That reminds me of a book in the secret ending of my episode 3 )? Also how did we (Character) know we had to do all that stuff? (Reading first name, last name, and chiming the cog with the hammer)?

Next comes the awakening after that main battle - You totally have to tell me how you achieved that effect (First person view, watery view, and ppl around you on the bed etc, and being completely immovable ). To me that is the sort of thing that proves the Foundry toolset is a lot more than one gives it credit for, at first sight.

I spent some time exploring the last map looking for anything special, all i could find was one npc complaining at the top of a tall treehouse.

Anyway GREAT job with this foundry! This is the sort of DMing i like - Sparse combat, just taking breaks from the storytelling from time to time. IMHO pure fighting quests are like those standup comedies where all you get to laugh of is cursing - The guys cant make you laugh at all, so they curse, and suddenly everyone is laughing because "They said %#%$%$#@, LOL". To me excessive fighting is the same - The guys story cant get you enthralled at ALL, so they keep overloading your senses with war cries and split blood and grabbing loot from the floor. Your foundry made a good case of offering alternate options to that.

Great job and i hope we may get to see the sequel to blood magic (I saw one "In the works" in your published list)

5 stars for sure.

Warrians

warrians · March 2019

Side note - great job with your gnomes. Im wondering about the beard - Whenever i try to edit scars, tattoos, beards, etc, my foundry editor crashes. I would love to know the models you worked on (assuming you also have that bug i mentioned) in order to better my own leprechauns.

hustin1 · March 2019

The tree halls were months in the making. It's literally built one wall at a time (bar back wall), with the movable column and occasionally a redcap hut piece used to fill in gaps. The entire thing sits inside a gigantic cavern room so it can be an indoor map. The thatched roofs use an enormous amount of hay bales, and since the hay bale asset I'm using won't block the camera, each room with a thatched roof has an invisible wall serving as the "ceiling". Likewise, the spiral staircase was built one piece at a time. I'm using Netherese arches as the "carpeting", and Emerald Enclave banners very carefully placed for the wall decorations.

One thing I'm annoyed about is that the devs broke shrine texturing. One of the trophies in the room with the children is supposed to show a "cyclops eye" (carefully placed shrine of Ghaunadaur, I believe). Unfortunately, you can't see it with shrines broken.

I didn't do anything special to the people in the Astral plane to make them small; they're simply on a lower platform.

The "last" name in the book is simply the newest redcap to exist at that time. The book continually adds new names, but they don't happen that quickly. It was meant to symbolize the scale of victims. I didn't want to get into too much detail about what you were supposed to do; it's supposed to feel like some presence is almost guiding you.

One thing that's not apparent in Bloodshackle is the lighting. Making it an outdoor map forced a directional sunlight on it, but there isn't supposed to be a sun. Above everything are hundreds of flat Chultan dungeon wall assets to cast everything in shadow. It was literally the only asset I could find that was perfectly flat such that you couldn't ever see it from any angle.

The wake-up scene took a couple of days. There are a bunch of invisible walls hemming you in, and they took a huge amount of tweaking to (1) keep you in one place, (2) keep the camera from ever zooming out no matter which way you turned, and (3) still let you interact with the NPCs. I'm still a little surprised it eventually worked. There's also a bunch of "blankets" visible if you go into inspect mode to keep you from seeing the innards. I use clotheslines for those since they have no collision. The NPCs themselves are custom variants with their heights raised to maximum to increase the illusion of closeness.

As for the last map, that Thorn way up on the platform isn't supposed to be there. I missed removing him.

I couldn't mess with scars, tatoos, beards, etc. either without crashing. So what I did was to start with an existing NPC and alter it in advanced mode.

I'm glad you liked it!

warrians · March 2019

Very funny, i type a one-page-long reply to you, then later i edit it to fix one typo, and when i press "post comment" the whole reply is gone XD I wont bother typing it all again but GREAT WORK dude, GREAT WORK !

hustin1 · April 2019

Fun tip: in the small room at the end, except for Neemi all the powries are named after various powrie companions on my alts

warrians · April 2019

hustin1 said:
Fun tip: in the small room at the end, except for Neemi all the powries are named after various powrie companions on my alts

lol cool

you are the one who made me notice that the powries are the female redcaps (at least in your foundry)

im now thinking if its worthy to move my whole project to the NWN2 toolset.

And damn man, that tree house, all done piece by piece, ur crazier than me XD The nearest i got from doing that was when i tried to reproduce Sleeping dragon bridge, the real thing, from scratch. The pieces are there, except the bridge grounding. Also the grounding I had, it had no collision, so i had to lay a whole "L" shaped map of forcefields, and then the texturized pieces over them. I broke the 1700 detail limit for the first time there. So, Sadly, i had to scrap it, load the Storming the Keep map instead, and then coat it with "Plot armor" xD

GREAT JOB!

Harper Chronicles - Blood Magic

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