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[UGC]Story Driven: A Birthday Affair
hercooles130uscg
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
***UPDATE 01-31-14***
Happy 2014 and yes, I did not forget about ACT II. In fact I am on the home stretch of writing the story. In the mean time I did some backstory lore on one of the locations you will play through in Act II. It can be found in the RP section here
Greetings one and all!
I invite you to embark on the first quest of the campaign The Obsidian Enclave, A Birthday Affair.
Acting as a story driven, combat light intro to the Campaign, expect to cheer, cry and douse a fire for a 20-30 minute adventure, depending on how much you approach the story.
To locate the quest in a hurry, search for username @jedensuscg
SNEEK PEEK
Check out a preview of the first map of the second quest in the campaign, An Affair of Magic.
DISCLAIMER: This is a story heavy quest, so do not play expecting mindless combat or crazy long puzzles. There is some open ended exploration style objectives (forcing you to read dialogue or explore the surrounding area for clues), COMPLETELY hand crafted maps, and a story that has been years in the making. That is right, what your going to witness is story that is based off a Novel I have been writing, but changed to fit in well with the D&D setting. Enjoy
Updated 08/01/2013
*Another fix for the disappearing buckets. Due to them being physics based items, using them as an intractable caused them to disappear in live (though worked find in Foundry). I changed it to an invisible clicky that appears over the buckets to simulate clicking the buckets.
*Added a campfire to Galen's house
*Did a rework on how the bucket/water/fire is treated. before, I had multiple buckets and water sources that would not disappear, because the game was occasionally deleting items from the inventory(if if the players inventory was full), preventing them from completing the quest. Multiple buckets and water sources meant they could try again. Well, people were down rating my quest for this...go figure. I worked it so the water will remain hidden if you meet the requirements to move to the next step, and reappear if you happened to need it again. A little magic. The bucket however, just shows a second clicky with the label "A bucket...in case you lose the first one". Hopefully people will realize WHY I did not disappear the items until the task was complete.
*Found a few more instances where I like to misuse your when it should be you're.
*Made some huge advances on the maps of Act II! Stay tuned.
Tips:
There is lots of optional dialogue that is found both in quest NPC's, side NPC's, interactive objects, and even a hidden NPC. There is also a side quest in the first map that if done found (it is not overt, "you must be compassionate" to locate it) that introduces a little exploration and even a more streamlined approach later in the quest as a reward.
A Birthday Affair
Word has been passing around that a prominent businessman by the name of Cadric Cointender is requesting the assistance of a courier for an important delivery. Due to the recent disaster and rebuilding affecting Neverwinter, professional couriers have been hard to find, and Mr. Cointender is willing to use the services of any adventurer that is willing to take the work. You happen to know that Mr. Cointender is a very prosperous, and more importantly, generous money lender. He is one of the few in fact that seems to actually care about the less fortunate he lends money too, providing victims of the recent crisis with an influx gold at reasonable terms.
In other words, he will probably pay very well to anyone that accepts this task.
Happy 2014 and yes, I did not forget about ACT II. In fact I am on the home stretch of writing the story. In the mean time I did some backstory lore on one of the locations you will play through in Act II. It can be found in the RP section here
Greetings one and all!
I invite you to embark on the first quest of the campaign The Obsidian Enclave, A Birthday Affair.
Acting as a story driven, combat light intro to the Campaign, expect to cheer, cry and douse a fire for a 20-30 minute adventure, depending on how much you approach the story.
To locate the quest in a hurry, search for username @jedensuscg
SNEEK PEEK
Check out a preview of the first map of the second quest in the campaign, An Affair of Magic.
DISCLAIMER: This is a story heavy quest, so do not play expecting mindless combat or crazy long puzzles. There is some open ended exploration style objectives (forcing you to read dialogue or explore the surrounding area for clues), COMPLETELY hand crafted maps, and a story that has been years in the making. That is right, what your going to witness is story that is based off a Novel I have been writing, but changed to fit in well with the D&D setting. Enjoy
Updated 08/01/2013
*Another fix for the disappearing buckets. Due to them being physics based items, using them as an intractable caused them to disappear in live (though worked find in Foundry). I changed it to an invisible clicky that appears over the buckets to simulate clicking the buckets.
*Added a campfire to Galen's house
*Did a rework on how the bucket/water/fire is treated. before, I had multiple buckets and water sources that would not disappear, because the game was occasionally deleting items from the inventory(if if the players inventory was full), preventing them from completing the quest. Multiple buckets and water sources meant they could try again. Well, people were down rating my quest for this...go figure. I worked it so the water will remain hidden if you meet the requirements to move to the next step, and reappear if you happened to need it again. A little magic. The bucket however, just shows a second clicky with the label "A bucket...in case you lose the first one". Hopefully people will realize WHY I did not disappear the items until the task was complete.
*Found a few more instances where I like to misuse your when it should be you're.
*Made some huge advances on the maps of Act II! Stay tuned.
Tips:
There is lots of optional dialogue that is found both in quest NPC's, side NPC's, interactive objects, and even a hidden NPC. There is also a side quest in the first map that if done found (it is not overt, "you must be compassionate" to locate it) that introduces a little exploration and even a more streamlined approach later in the quest as a reward.
A Birthday Affair
Word has been passing around that a prominent businessman by the name of Cadric Cointender is requesting the assistance of a courier for an important delivery. Due to the recent disaster and rebuilding affecting Neverwinter, professional couriers have been hard to find, and Mr. Cointender is willing to use the services of any adventurer that is willing to take the work. You happen to know that Mr. Cointender is a very prosperous, and more importantly, generous money lender. He is one of the few in fact that seems to actually care about the less fortunate he lends money too, providing victims of the recent crisis with an influx gold at reasonable terms.
In other words, he will probably pay very well to anyone that accepts this task.
Post edited by hercooles130uscg on
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Comments
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
I just played your quest, and I really enjoyed the Dialog and the conversations. The story is easy to follow and enjoyable. I am not nearly as high a level of reviewer as you are... but I will try and offer what my impressions were here.
Personally I think Bram's speech was a bit long winded. It was well written and had good information, but at times I wanted an option to stop him from talking and move on with my life haha. Also, I love the cointender's costume.
I also see you use quotations sometimes, but not all the time, try maybe either using them or not? Minor minor gripe really, and trust me, you played my spelling error ridden quest, I am not an English Major lol.
I loved that the beggar followed me around. I was like get away from me you cretin!
Unfortunately though, when i left the cointender's house, the game dropped the quest for me, and I was unable to continue. I will circle back and try and finish it another time and give a full review by editing this post.
Ya, I keep meaning to put a backout for that optional dialogue for bran. There is some more of that later on that does allow you to back out, though for that I suggest reading it all, it's better written in my opinion. And for the quotes, ha, I think I changed my mind three times on if I should or should not use them, and am still trying to find all the stragglers.
I had the quest drop on me once too, apparently this is semi-common for quests that have you go back to a public map from a private map. I had to switch to another character to test it.
As for the beggar, well, you will find that when you run it again...it has changed. I added a pretty lengthy side dialogue with the begger, if you select the right response out of four(the other three are short), however, doing the right response will have an impact later on in the quest, possibly allowing you to bypass part of it(and getting some of that time back)...but it is a secret.
EDIT: Removed what I think are the last quotation marks, added some back out options to Bran's dialogue and don't know how to fix the issue with the quest randomly dropping. I wonder how many people have tried to play my quest and could not finish it because of that.
All in all I think I can focus on the second quest now. Have a really nice map made, and have an idea for the dungeon part I am going to put. It is going to be more of a dungeon romp, but with still the focus on the overall story. But more combat in general and some puzzles.
And enjoy the story I did. The death scene in particular was particularly touching - I've been playing games a long time and that's something I can say I've never said before.
In terms of issues, I did notice a few spelling errors here and there. I didn't write them down, but there was one at the initial beggar, and something in the dialogue with Galen you had used "you our" next to each other if i recall. There was also a to that should be a too. Just some small stuff.
All in all very cool, will look forward to future acts.
Bill's Tavern | The 27th Level | Secret Agent 34
Thanks for the feedback!
Seems no matter how many times I copy all my dialogue to MS Word to check the spelling/grammar something slips by. By number one feature on the Foundry. SPELL CHECK PLEASE.
Quest two, entitled An Affair of Magic will take the player into a grand dungeon delve full of interesting mechanics, dangerous encounters and the ever expanding story of Galen and Glenbrook.
The eta for the second half is a ways off, and I would prefer to have Cryptic fix the sound issues before it is released, but here are a few teaser shots of the village of Glenbrook as well as a short walk-through of the town in a more complete fashion.
"Located in an isolated valley deep in the Neverwinter woods, Glenbrook has remained a secret due to the constant effort of the skilled Ranger Galen Stouse. Galen has expertly misguided travelers around the village for years, through various means of false trails, imagined monsters, and other more mundane scare tactics. Though the villagers are peaceful and would never harm any visitor that made it to their secluded hideaway, they just wish to remain apart from society.
If you happen to stop by, visit the water mill and talk to old man Halsey, or get a scenic view of the valley from atop the town windmill, though it has not been functional for some time.
Walk through video
A little bit clunky is conversations between two people but unfortunately no better method exists.
I also had a little bit of a hiccup when I accidentally clicked on that giant well while searching for the footprint (as it was glowy and looked mysterious) and it ported me out to Protector's enclave - perhaps move it further away or put a warning on it.
Finally another suggestion would be to break up the big walls of text a little bit - I presume that those playing for story don't mind clicking through a few more prompts (easier to read also). Looking forward to the next instalment and thanks for making this!
Thanks for the feedback.
Yes I need to remove that well, forgot it was there this whole time. It was in way back in beta when you were required to have an abort exit.
As for the dialogue with the son, that is an excellent idea.
Ya I wanted to break up the dialogue a bit, and have gone in a few times to do something, but the Foundry gets extremely lagging when you have to many dialogue prompts in one tree, and it takes ages just to move stuff around. Maybe if they fix some of the lag issues.
There are some strong points of this quest that I will mention them below.
The dialogue, the atmosphere and the map layout are well made. I don't recall seeing any typos, the quest texts were very clear - blue text and yellow text. The paragraphs were well organized. In some cases there was the wall of text, but I had absolutely no problems with it since it was easy to read.
The atmosphere was great. There are two memorable scenes in my opinion, one of them being the disappearing brush, the other one being the dialogue between Galen and his wife near the end.
I never thought that the search scene in the woods would actually give me chills.
Speaking of the search scene, the "exit" stone misled me into believing that it was the next thing I should click on. It's no big deal, as I've continued the quest 1 minute later.
The "problems" I found were more of a technical nature and had nothing to do with the design itself.
Combat-wise, the combat is sufficient to make the story interesting. There are no encounters for the sake of encounters, so enemies appear only it makes sense in the contents of the quest.
There are parts of the houses that appear to be floating in mid air (perhaps because the terrain is not flat) and I noticed you obstructed them with brushes. Perhaps there is a better method of doing that, with some large rocks underneath the walls. That would also add something to the environment.
I had a bit of trouble searching for the bucket. I don't recall it having a 3d model, so my suggestion is to hide it behind a tree, but also make it visible. But perhaps it has a 3d model, I just hadn't seen it.
All in all I liked the fact that a simple courier job turned into an adventure. And I'm looking forward to the next map.
There is more I have to say, but I will edit this post later...
"The quest for the Book of Ignum"
"I have seen your future. I have seen your end"
Thanks for the feedback. ya i just removed that outdated abort exit, was in there from beta and for testing. The bucket has issues. Sometimes the bucket does not appear. It works in Foundry Preview but has some issues with live. Problem is there is no bucket that is not physics object, meaning the bucket can be kicked and moved. Problem is these items sometimes have issues. I would prefer static bucket if I could find one.
I though I covered all the floating house parts. Ya the terrain is uneven, and if i lower the buildings to much the doors will clip into the terrain. The rocks I dead seems better then bushes though.
The first quest in my Campaign is also now eligible for the Daily Foundry Quest. So now is the best time to check it out!
Nitpicking: Noticed a number of typos that you may wish to fix up, several "your" when it should be "you're". First or second dialogue screen a sentence ends with a period and question mark (.?) In Tallit's dialogue, "remembers" is mis-spelled as "remebers". Also when talking to Cointender at the end, "Just that I am too acompany you" should be "Just that I am to accompany you".
Also, if you're going to include the boy's room, you may want to decorate it more, it's pretty bare as is.
I hope you find a large audience because this is a very cool quest. Looking forward to Part 2.
Hopefully you can review mine (info in sig), I also posted in your larger thread.
Code: NW-DJ5BFT52F
Author: @oortexplorer
Now eligible for Daily Foundry!
Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for the review. Been away for a bit.
Big thanks for pointing out he spelling and grammar. That is my biggest flaw. I keep doing to fix it all, but there is just so much dialogue and the dialogue editor is really buggy and laggy and makes it a headache to manipulate.
Thanks again!
Also feel free to check out my quest now that sound is working. Let me know what you think.
If you want to try a quest with some story & emotion, check this one out.
Code: NW-DJ5BFT52F
Author: @oortexplorer
Now eligible for Daily Foundry!
Hey thanks for the bump. Ya part two is coming. I have been slow to work on it however, but been speeding up. The map design is nearly complete, and that honestly is 80% of the work in Act II as I have some pretty interesting from scratch maps. I am really proud of them myself. The story will take a bit as well, but not so much as the first Act as this part is designed to be a good dungeon romp that progresses the story and leads to Act II but with less DPI (Dialogue Per Square Inch, lol) meaning, there is still a good amount of story, but the balance between combat/dungeon romping and story is more balanced.
It will also be longer to run through due to larger environments. I also think the reason my first Act has so little reviews is I never really sold it the right way, as in I never did review swaps on it. All of the reviews I did early on were voluntary only and never request a review be done for myself.