[UGC] Siegebreaker by @ash4ll

ash4ll · June 2013

Hey

I've just finished this quest and I hope you will like it because I enjoyed a lot making it!

Short-code: NW-DGDPWV2U5
Tags: storytelling, action, optional quests
Duration: between 20-29 minutes (dialogs eat most of the time)

Plot revolves around you - a hero of Neverwinter, that is sent for futher training to become officer of Neverwinter army. However things are not going to go according as planned. Caravan that was transporting to-be-officers is under attack and you're the sole survivor. And things are about to get much worse!

SPOILERS wrote:

Story tells that while being transported all your caravan is slaughtered down and you're the only one alive. To survive, you seek shelter in the nearby village. While seeking for it, you encounter major troops of opposing army. You are knocked down there in the woods and dragged into the camp. You find yourself stranded in one of the tents where you encounter small help - little elf lady that has been torured for days helps you a little and asks you for a little - to help her get out too.
After the escape you see Neverwinter preparing for war. You arrive and tell Lord Neverember the story, which amazes him and offers you a job of defending the keep. You then succesfully defend the keep and save the day.

There are optional paths that are indicated by several items that you may carry (and they will help you with the siege):
- Craghelms greatsword
- Battle plans
- Zakey's ring (romance option)
- Magical Flute

Screenshots!
Hard job of outdoor design:

Teh shrine (non-quest related)

ash4ll · June 2013

And a small image with small description:

Here we can see giant carriage that is supposted to carry soldiers to the training field. What is important, what it's made of:
- 4 bar walls
- 2 wooden logs
- ~20 wooden pieces of hedge for floor
- 1 piece of roof
- 2 water wheels.
- 6 crates (for inside)
- 6 benches (for inside) + 1 outside
- 4 horses

It was quite a job to find the best pieces for the big carriage.

ash4ll · June 2013

Hey!
I've just finished it, although foundry is currently experiencing issues and publishing quests is a bit problematic.

Short-code: NW-DGDPWV2U5

Once it's published I'll bump this thread again.
Now I'm extremely tired, so I assume I have achieved many unforgivable mistakes so if you can, write there what you can find.
Will exchange in reviews of course if someone asks for it.

ash4ll · June 2013

Ok, it's up and running, I'd be more than happy to review trade!

ash4ll · June 2013

Apparently I posted wrong short code

It should be fixed now.

oggbrox · June 2013

ash4ll wrote: »

And a small image with small description:

Here we can see giant carriage that is supposted to carry soldiers to the training field. What is important, what it's made of:
- 4 bar walls
- 2 wooden logs
- ~20 wooden pieces of hedge for floor
- 1 piece of roof
- 2 water wheels.
- 6 crates (for inside)
- 6 benches (for inside) + 1 outside
- 4 horses
It was quite a job to find the best pieces for the big carriage.

This is absolute fantastic.

I made a barbell out of two bags and a stick... but you build a wooden tank. Haha! Looks great!

"There are optional paths that are indicated by several items that you may carry (and they will help you with the siege):
- Craghelms greatsword
- Battle plans
- Zakey's ring (romance option)
- Magical Flute"

This sounds amazing. I feel ashamed that my quest got no interesting options like this.

I will play your piece of art soon! Thank you.

oggbrox · June 2013

I already said to obsidianw0lf that my English is bad and I don't think that I can write good criticism because of that. But I tried my best! Here are some points that I don't liked:

- At the beginning you must examine bags of bandits at the campfire (the campfire is hovering a little bit btw). After this you get teleported away. There is a big text in the middle of the screen who is telling you what happened... but it is just popping up 2 seconds! Not enough time to read what was going on!

- The girl in the tent is flipping around like crazy. Also I didn't find a way to open the wooden box (don't know if this is desired).

- After that you should "leave the camp and inform Neverwinter", but there is an invisible wall, if you want to go outside. The "magical quest-pathfinder" is directing you to the woods. Perhaps you should build a fence or something!? Players must get the horse - right - but this is unclear at the first moment.

- Then you ride with the horse into a wood? And from there you GO another part to the next camp? I don't know why.
Also the girl was lost... where did she go?

- There were very few speak-animations for the NPCs! Why? The dialogues were great!

- If you stand on the way between the soldiers and the recruits at "Face your fate"... at the coordinates: 1220 - 1248... you look on the left... there are hoovering buildings in the distance. Perhaps it just the fault of my laptop...
If you can't finde the place I'm talking about, I can give you a screenie.

- Sadly music and sounds are missing... it's fixed now so you should upgrade it.

- Endboss: I pulled the last group to all the soldiers in front of the siege... it was a pretty easy job to kill em' because of that!

/ and one of the NPCs is still saying "Adventurer! Kill HAMSTER!" - after you killed him!

_____________________________

I pretty liked the beginning with the transporter. Reminded me of Final Fantasy 7 in some ways... the part with Cloud and Sepiroth in the S.O.L.D.A.T.-wagon.

All the recruits and soldiers in the near of Knox / the path to the lord were epic.

The idea with the different ways (battle-plans / sword etc) was brilliant!

Lord Neverembers "WTF"-moment was great!

How do you triggered the appearing NPCS while other NPCs are talking to you!? Hell - that is great!

WOW! YOU CAN POSITION THE TROOPS YOURSELF? WHAT KIND OF MAGIC IS THAT?

Like I already said in my rating: I think, you got great potential to build interesting quests. It was fun! Thank you, dude!
Subscribed - waiting for more adventures!

ash4ll · June 2013

Hey

Thanks for the feedback, I'll definietly consider it in making next version of this quest. But tell me: What do you mean that girls flips like crazy? That she's so scared or that I accidentaly set her "wandering" value?
Besides:
- I'm thinking on expanding the event of being knocked out, since people really get confused about it and the sparkling inside the crate (I simply used a teleporter) but I think I have got into better idea.
- the suggestion with wall is great, will definietly use it. Forgot that it might confuse people.
- About the horse, it's after-effect of my previous idea, that respawn point was at the small bandit camp and after you died at big camp you were teleported to the camp above and you could walk to the exit by foot. Will delete the teleporter and will make simple exit at horse.
- Girl being lost is an effect of not talking with her when mounting horse :P
- Floating buildings in tower district - propably your laptops fault, because I used preset map without any additions from my side. However I'll look into it and perhaps hide something behind walls or something. Screenshot recommended

- Music / sounds - sadly, module was designed before the patch and I had no idea that it'll be included in this one. I'll look into it.
- NPC - well spotted, will fix it. End boss - Hurr... Perhaps I'll have to confine players with invisible walls once encounter is started.
Also, every trick I used while creating the scenario I'll reveal once I finish the final version of this quest. And there's a lot to do :P

ash4ll · June 2013

Changes have been applied, quest should be now in playable state with much more obvious quests, with sounds and music and animations. Also knockout is more obvious.

Short code: NW-DGDPWV2U5

Trading away reviews if anyone is interested!

ash4ll · June 2013

Bump! /10c

technoskald · June 2013

So I just finished playing this. You have some fantastic ideas here, but it needs a lot more polish. First, fix some grammar issues, of course. And I strongly suggest adjusting the text about the oddly named villages before Cryptic/PWE flag it.

More importantly, some story elements are broken when infiltrating the bandit camp: I got a message about a bag which I guess I bypassed, killed some leaders, then a young woman (described as "wearing almost nothing" but clearly very dressed) told me I'd been knocked out and needed to go kill the leaders. Everything was out of order, and while that might be because I managed to bypass something, you could probably separate the scouting through the woods into a separate map and enforce that a little more.

Running down the line of the troops to find Lord Neverember also seemed a little spurious, and while I loved the concept of the troop placement, I was confused at first about how to go about it. Don't remove this element, please! But do try to find a way to make it a little smoother.

You've got some great stuff happening here and the foundations for lots of replayability. Keep at it and this will be a top-notch quest.

ash4ll · June 2013

I thought this thread is going to get forgotten. I have never been so wrong!

You definietly skipped a part

I must constraint the encampment back with invisible walls, so the player actually inspects the bandit bags that are in this small encampment on the hill.

Thanks for the feedback, it's well appreciated!

ash4ll · June 2013

Looking for grammar HAMSTER!

My quest needs some spellchecking and grammar checking. I'm not native to english language, so it's double hard for me. People complain and give me 4 stars because of that. If any of you readers could do that, it would be deeply appreciated and in exchange I can share some help in scripting

oggbrox · June 2013

technoskald wrote: »

So I just finished playing this. You have some fantastic ideas here, but it needs a lot more polish. First, fix some grammar issues, of course. And I strongly suggest adjusting the text about the oddly named villages before Cryptic/PWE flag it.

Sorry... but what names?

ash4ll · June 2013

Still looking for grammar HAMSTER!

oggbrox wrote: »

Sorry... but what names?

Andrew from Crackpants used to live in Assbrat, until evil sorcerers renamed all villages he lived around to definietly less explicit names.

oggbrox · June 2013

ash4ll wrote: »

Andrew from Crackpants used to live in Assbrat, until evil sorcerers renamed all villages he lived around to definietly less explicit names.

lol - yes! I remember this! I loved it!

Why this should be flagged? It's funny and harmless. Gosh... the whole time in this game you kill people... but you can't use a word like ***?

brunomalta · June 2013

I also loved the names.

lrkqella · June 2013

So I finished playing this last night. As others have mentioned you have some amazing ideas in here. It is one of the few adventures I have played with a battle theme that made me feel like I was in a battle, especially in the scenes leading up to the city prep.Seemed to me like thousands of men all waiting for the word to go to war. fantastic ideas here,

As with others as well I had some issues with key areas I just missed. Maybe this is by design and I needed to look more but if a trail is telling me to go one direction I don't usually go the opposite in the hope there are more goodies in that direction. Appearing the camp inside a tent inside a box was confusing, plus it took me considerable jumping around to get unstuck from the box due to positioning issues.

The concept of the troop placement, I was confused about what was a front line and what was a rear - who were the artillery and melee? As others said don't remove this element, but do try to make it idiot proof if possible

Overall I really enjoyed the quest and I can see myself going back for more and trying to find all the side quests.

ash4ll · June 2013

Your kind words are well appreciated

However, where was that you had a trail on the ground that told you to go the opposite way than you should go?

Also, the boxes are unfortunate necessity. I am using teleporters to get from the small camp on the hill to the big camp on the bottom and only by that I could ensure that noone uses it to get back.

In the last build I added an idiot proof element, markers that indicate which troop is which and where will it be placed after clicking certain dialog option. Perhaps I should add more incentive that there is a dialog option that may be activated.

Good point about differing artilery and melee troops in text - I'll include that once publishing works again. And perhaps once I finally get my native speaker to adjust my grammar mistakes.

lrkqella · June 2013

ash4ll wrote: »

Your kind words are well appreciated However, where was that you had a trail on the ground that told you to go the opposite way than you should go?

Sorry I was referring to the fact the main plot has a trail which makes it easy to miss the side items. E.g. I could have easily bypassed the captains in the camp. I only attacked them because I happened to want to try out the combat. I you want people to explore the camp and find the side missions I would remove the trail.

Hope that makes it clearer

ash4ll · June 2013

Well, side quests were meant to be easily found and to have minor impact on actual gameplay. 4 quest items, whereas 1 is romance option, other 1 unlocks dialog option, 2 affect the final battle in minor way.

runis12 · June 2013

Gonna give this a try today. ^^

thalazar1 · June 2013

Gave it a go. Liked the use of foundry mechanics. very cool.
Failed the escort even though i got her safely to the horse and killed the general and matron (or i thought i killed her i fought her in the end though).

[UGC] Siegebreaker by @ash4ll

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