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Seeking Reviews: Visitors From Out Of Town
hawthornberry
Member Posts: 2 Arc User
My first adventure, "Visitors on Safari", chapter 1 of "Visitors From Out Of Town", has just been published. Code NW-DJULOUSVQ.
It's about 25 minutes with a mix of combat, exploration, puzzles, and humor. The premise: a wealthy couple from a civilized but faraway land are visiting Neverwinter and want to hire a local guide so they can see something more exciting and real than another fancy temple or fine dinner. Your first trip is to a wild bit of the woods where it's rumored the rare green-tufted warbler can be found, along with various other interesting bits of flora and fauna. You'll be guiding a naturalist named Suri (named for a friend of mine in real life, who is much like this) who knows far more than anyone could possibly want to know about the ecology and habitat of everything wild, but who knows almost nothing about what kind of danger she's really in. What will be harder -- saving her from the wildlife, or resisting the temptation to kill her yourself?
I sure learned a lot about the Foundry and its quirks while creating this -- and ended up having to wipe most or all of it and start over four times before it was done -- which gave me even more appreciation for the work of all the other eager creators out there. Looking forward to digging into the other Foundry adventures needing review.
It's about 25 minutes with a mix of combat, exploration, puzzles, and humor. The premise: a wealthy couple from a civilized but faraway land are visiting Neverwinter and want to hire a local guide so they can see something more exciting and real than another fancy temple or fine dinner. Your first trip is to a wild bit of the woods where it's rumored the rare green-tufted warbler can be found, along with various other interesting bits of flora and fauna. You'll be guiding a naturalist named Suri (named for a friend of mine in real life, who is much like this) who knows far more than anyone could possibly want to know about the ecology and habitat of everything wild, but who knows almost nothing about what kind of danger she's really in. What will be harder -- saving her from the wildlife, or resisting the temptation to kill her yourself?
I sure learned a lot about the Foundry and its quirks while creating this -- and ended up having to wipe most or all of it and start over four times before it was done -- which gave me even more appreciation for the work of all the other eager creators out there. Looking forward to digging into the other Foundry adventures needing review.
Seeking reviews for The Butler Didn't Do It: NW-DP28IB8OP
Post edited by hawthornberry on
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Any screenshots?
A CURIOUS DISAPPEARANCE by Sphecida: NW-DDLEOFL2Q
A CRY UNANSWERED by obsidianw0lf: NW-DGNBAX3RD
SIEGEBREAKER by ash4all: NW-DGDPWV2U5
Hope I will have time to check it out soon.
Please tell me: Is this inspired by one of the Terry Pratchett Discworld-Novels? It reminds me of the tourist in one of the first books.
A CURIOUS DISAPPEARANCE by Sphecida: NW-DDLEOFL2Q
A CRY UNANSWERED by obsidianw0lf: NW-DGNBAX3RD
SIEGEBREAKER by ash4all: NW-DGDPWV2U5
NW-DKK8NIRO6
I don't think it has any particular source that inspires it. The clueless-tourist trope is pretty widely used, so there's no particular source for the inspiration more than any other -- one good example might be Bertie Wooster from Wodehouse's stories, but he wasn't in my mind while outlining it. I actually had planned a "clueless tourist" adventure for the Blue Planet roleplaying game that never got to happen, so I just recycled that idea.
Plus there's that friend of mine for whom Suri is named who inspired some of it through her being such an avid naturalist and bird-watcher and tending to pontificate about nature whenever given a chance. Though her husband's fascinations don't match Josephus's since those wouldn't work as well in Neverwinter.
It's a little bit offtopic... but here is a picture from the novel-based movie.
On the left is the tourist. Hehe.
Just reminds me of it!
A CURIOUS DISAPPEARANCE by Sphecida: NW-DDLEOFL2Q
A CRY UNANSWERED by obsidianw0lf: NW-DGNBAX3RD
SIEGEBREAKER by ash4all: NW-DGDPWV2U5
Anyway, here are some my comments besides that.
1) The door in Chandler's Hall. It kinda bugged me. Not glitch, I mean, it was a bit off. Have you tried using the door component (like encounter, sound, detail, etc.)? Should be there if you're using a custom map. Else, maybe pick a better looking door? I dunno.
2) The door also said 'go to next map' when going to the forest.
3) Could use some music
4) The area facing the back of the campfire looked empty. Not sure if you can place details outside of the map boundary but, I think you can set a background at one of the map components or something.
5) Was Suri supposed to follow you throughout the whole map? I mean I had the impression that when I was gonna kick some flowers, she was going to stay behind. Also, when she got poisoned, she was still walking behind me and everything?
6) The bear had no attack animation and was a reskinned ogre. They hurt, especially at high lvls. Cant see animation = cant dodge, especially for melee classes. Might wanna look into that.
Hope my review helped
NW-DKK8NIRO6
The idea of the area behind the campfire is that you're on the edge of the forest and just entering, and somewhere off in that valley is the road to Neverwinter. I wasn't able to find anything short of huge ugly rocks I could lay down that would look like a road, though. (That's why the campfire itself, by way of an invisible interactable sphere, is the way back.)
I redid the whole quest three times largely because of the limitations in following. I couldn't find any way to have her stop following at one point and then start again later -- not even by having her be replaced with copies of her, because once a copy is part of an objective, you can't control when she disappears any way other than by limiting it to that specific objective, which makes follow unusable. She also just plain stops following when she hits a slope that she can't climb. The slope up the hill is one she won't climb, so I put in extra rocks to make sure you used that slope, so it would be consistent that she didn't follow that part, so I could try to write the dialogue to make sense. But I think it might be possible to get her up the slope anyway if you take it just right -- though I never could. I also had to make her still follow when poisoned because of the aforementioned problem with not being able to stop and resume following, so I had her talk slurred to reflect the poison. I wasn't entirely happy with this, but after four total rewrites, it's the best I could find that Foundry allowed. I'll certainly make sure to avoid depending on Follow in future adventures!
Is there a way to make a bear that would be a fairly tough opponent without the animation problem? There aren't many single-combatant melee encounters available, even fewer if you want it to be a hard fight (not exactly a "boss" but certainly a climax), and so many of them end up using powers that make even less sense for a bear, so the ogre was the best I could find, but if there's a better option, I'd certainly love to hear about it.
Thanks for the feedback -- I'll make a few tweaks accordingly.
NW-DKK8NIRO6
I haven't tried your quest yet, but based on what you said here... have you tried 'fade to solid color' details behind your door? They help give the appearance of your door going somewhere instead of just into a wall.
Hammerfist Clan. Jump into the Night: NW-DMXWRYTAD
Well if not the troll, how bout a drider with a spider skin? I think theres a single tough drider encounter. Actually im not too sure on that one but its worth a try, a drider is still a spider after all, and it should have its animation?
NW-DKK8NIRO6
I got a little confused about the "Talk to Suri" waypoints, because they appeared on the map somewhere else when she was right behind me. I'm not sure how to fix that, since I haven't done a following NPC yet. I was going to have one in my next quest - maybe I'll reconsider :O
I picked the first flower before I was supposed to talk to her about picking it. I would change that to appear after her dialogue about it to stop impetuous players like me :P
I wanted to enter a cave to pick the brachiolichen. You could do a small cave map with some cool glowing mushrooms and things. Suri could stay behind at the campfire at that point.
I'm not sure if the encounters were set to wander - some of them just kind of stood there. I might spread them out and have them wander a bit (though you can't see wander in the editor, unfortunately).
The exit door in the house did look a little odd - it didn't have a doorframe. But it wasn't a big deal.
So for the good parts: I liked the characters and the dialogues and the sense of humor. I started out feeling annoyed at the husband, and then after getting to know Suri better, I felt a little more empathy with him. I liked the part about kicking the flowers to find the bird.
It was cute, and I like that the story was a little different and more peaceful than the usual stories. Speaking of peaceful, maybe put in some friendly encounters with animals, too.
PS: I didn't mind the bear, but I was using a very low-level character. I know how you feel about using skins that fit the story - they don't give us a whole lot of animals to work with.
I'm not going to add a cave map at this time because the adventure is just about the length I wanted it to be, so a small cave is enough. Besides, Suri's job is to get you out in the fresh air; Josephus is going to have you in caves and sewers and other indoor locations.
Just played this. Really liked it a lot, a refreshing change from Orc/Undead bashing etc.
Did encounter one problem that I PMed you about.
Regarding the:
You could despawn the "walking Suri", put a wounded NPC in and then despawn that and respawn a walking Suri.
Long-winded I know, but it can be done.
All The Best
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And no, I can't keep despawning her after every objective and replacing her with a clone, because then she never follows, since she's always despawning just before she'd follow. Tried it. At one point, I had fourteen clones of her around the map in various places, but it couldn't be made to work.
This entire quest got burned down almost completely and rebuilt four times in total. Because of the stock outdoor map being impossible to make work (passable rocks, lots of places you get stuck, no pathing, etc.); because of the impossibility of having two NPCs follow without them overlapping; because of Suri's reluctance to climb any hill over a certain angle; and because of the above issue. So you're seeing essentially my fifth Foundry.
So perhaps don't use "follow".
Use "one way patrol"? Then you decide where Suri goes.
But I suppose that changes the "guide" dynamic from the the story.
These are just ideas off the top of my head.
Anyway, like I said, I enjoyed it a lot.
All The Best
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But honestly I'm too disheartened by the way the catalog works, making it so the only way to get a quest out of the "too few plays to show up" limbo is by having a lot of in-game friends to upvote it, making it almost entirely a popularity contest. I doubt I'll pour in the work to do another Foundry, or if I do, I won't be really trying to promote it. (I was thinking about making one that's combat-free and entirely a huge murder mystery logic puzzle. Great way to ensure no one will want to play it, eh?
My foundry level is NW-DA7ZWLNXG if you'd like to take a run through mine.
I honestly don't think it would be any more, or less, contrived than the current system though.
To take your existing quest as an example: Suri is "guided" by the player, but the player is guided by your pre-set waypoints. The player, couldn't for example trigger the "flush the warbler" quest component anywhere else than where you set it.
Please note: this is NOT a criticism of you, but of the linear nature of the system.
So given the "contrived" nature of the "guide" relationship between the player and Suri is essentially the same as the equally contrived nature of having Suri be the guide (by having her follow a one-way patrol route that you set) and the player tagging along to be a "guard" is there really a problem?
The only real difference between the two situations is how you'll need to put together the dialogues.
All The Best
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Drop By Scribe's Enclave & Meet Up With Volunteer Reviewers.
The trap I feel that NPC-follow puts me in is a silly one. We all learned, as we went through Valindra's army or first went to the Tower district, that there are some odd behaviors the game has that you just deal with. Odd ways the golden path works, arbitrary orders you have to do things in, NPCs that don't notice you until you're on top of them or notice you from way too far away, doors that show up in strange places, NPCs just disappearing instead of walking away, etc. We get used to them and deal with them. Foundry quests sometimes present similar quirks, or even the same quirks seen in slightly different ways, causing players to complain about things that aren't really in the creator's control -- the most notorious being the lack of treasure and the random nature of the final reward, but there's plenty of others, like the linear nature of the objective flow.
And using NPC-follow does the same thing, triple-strength. You get all the quirks that all Foundry quests suffer, plus a whole host more that are specific to follow. Like how I can't rely on Suri following anywhere there's any kind of slope, but I also can't rely on her not following, except by putting a thousand rocks everywhere and hoping enterprising players won't find a way to get past them anyway. Like the fact that I can't make her disappear. Like the fact that she follows so close she sometimes gets in the way when you try to interact with objects. Like how you can't make someone follow, then stop following, then start again. Like how you can't have two people following without them overlapping. And most annoyingly, like how when you have to get to a waypoint and then talk to her, she won't talk to you until you're in just the right spot -- make the waypoint size too big and you start getting the warning so far away that people wonder what to do next when they reach it since she won't start talking (I've gotten that complaint), but make it too small and you can walk past it (I've also gotten that complaint). So everyone thinks there are bugs in my creation of the quest, when they're really just the same kind of quirks they're used to, they just don't realize they're the same quirks, or quirks of the same type.
Hence, my conclusion noted above: don't use NPC-follow. Shame my whole campaign concept depended on it, eh!
But... Your idea of using patrol is an interesting approach. I wonder, though, how well I could make the progress periodically stop for you to do something like fight. I assume I could have a whole series of Suri-clones replacing one another in that scenario, so a patrolling-Suri would be replaced with a staying-still one while you fetch a mushroom, then replaced with another patrolling-Suri until the next stopping point. I imagine there'll be some quirks with this approach too, but they'll be quirks people are familiar with, and thus ones where Neverwinter will get the blame, not me.
[All academic, though, so long as the catalog-order Catch 22 still exists.]