Kudos for KotB

Discussion in 'The Keep on the Borderlands' started by edmortimer, Jul 4, 2014.

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  1. edmortimer

    edmortimer Occupy Wall Street

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    Bravo! Congratulations to everyone involved in the KotB mod. I have been playing through a first runthrough -- not finished -- and I have to say I am impressed, mightily impressed, and I haven't even scratched the surface yet! My jaw dropped this morning, when
    I turned down the dwarf's offer to travel immediately to the Caves (my party needed rest), and the little bugger went and recruited Two Swords and Brother Fist right under my nose! Bravo! Well done!
    There have been several times I was very pleasantly surprised at the depth of play, and I already see that replayability is going to be very good. I absolutely LOVE the new random encounters -- can we add them to TOEE?

    I realize there's a lot more to be done -- I wandered through the entire emptiness of the Inner Keep wondering what future battles and tactics will be played out in those rooms.

    As far as bugs -- yes, I've run into some of those already mentioned, most notably the Billy Bug. Nothing else, so far, has been serious except that I am experiencing jerkstop every time I enter certain places: the tavern, both shops, and outside the Lizardman cave. The tavern is the worst, and I find myself not wanting to go in there. The shops are a close second, and outside the LizardCave wasn't too bad at all.

    I botched investigating the caravan raids -- I questioned everybody and have a definite idea who's behind it, but my PCs don't have a clue, and they had to report a deadend. I guess their investigative skills were too low to figure it out. Not that that's a bad thing -- I'm just sayin'.

    I needed help finding the adventurers --
    I had stopped to admire the wall painting when I first went in, but never thought of clicking on it until the cursor changed to a hand while I was sitting pondering and twirling the mouse.
    But that was way cool too. The resulting adventure is creative, but I'm not a fan of
    riddled scavanger hunts
    . It's always 4:20 when I'm playing and I just can't keep my train of thought going on the same tired thread that long -- I just wanna
    see who made that Frankengoblin!
    I hope there's another way in . . . Oh, and
    getting Keep archers for reinforcements was brilliant! I mean, I love the tavern mercs, but having Keep troops assigned to the party is very cool, yo!
    This mod, when it's filled out completely, deserves the fanfare reserved for big-corp commercial products.

    Once again, well done! I know there's more I wanted to congratulate you about but there's only so much I can remember at one time. Oh, the wolfsbane I put in the ox bags disapeared -- just a FYI.
     
  2. Shiningted

    Shiningted I want my goat back Administrator

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    Glad you like it Ed :)

    Can anyone confirm if they are getting jerkstop issues in the Tavern / elsewhere? The Provisioner is confirmed (and Sitra has already fixed it, I believe) but the tavern etc is a new one...
     
  3. Stasis

    Stasis Member

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    I agree. It's impressive.


    Spoiler:


    Oh, wanted to add a thing.. you have to do *something* to access the final area. When I did it.. randomly.. it was *good feels*. :D
     
  4. Shiningted

    Shiningted I want my goat back Administrator

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    If you mean what I tihnk you mean, then yes, we need an artistic hint in that region... or an NPC saying something.
     
  5. Stasis

    Stasis Member

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    Nope, I think it's fine without hints. The beauty is that the player has to figure it out himself.
     
  6. edmortimer

    edmortimer Occupy Wall Street

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    I relieved jerkstop (for the moment (crossed-fingers)) by reducing particle fidelity to 0 (zero), using Simple shadows, and UN-checking the three video options -- anti-aliasing, quad-blending & I-forget (edit: gloss-mapping, and also 1 Fog Check per Frame). SO it seems my jerkstop issues are related to my ATI Radeon x300 video card. I had noticed improvement in TOEE when doing this, but in KotB jerkstop goes completely away -- no hint of it (so far this morning, anyway).

    Testing which I can leave on 'cause the resultant graphics are not as nice as I like . . .
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2014
  7. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Just so we don't muddy the lexicon here, I'd like to point out that jerkstop is not specifically what you're seeing here. We finally (after a very long time) identified what jerkstop is and what causes it in the modpack, and this isn't it. You're seeing load delays and maybe some particle effect slowdowns as a result of sector issues and or some mob-related or spawning oddities. It's probably not exactly what we've always called "lag" either (rogue particle effects plugging up the pipeline) ... maybe we need a new name. I guess it was always just "slow downs."

    Anyway I mainly don't want someone to do a forum search six months from now, see this, and declare "zOMG - Co8 has re-introduced jerkstop into their KotB game! The fools!"
     
  8. edmortimer

    edmortimer Occupy Wall Street

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    I hear ya -- all i can say is the effect is the same as experienced in TOEE in the long corridor by the Earth Temple, and in the Fire Temple, and on the elemental nodes. It *feels* the same as those places/issues.
     
  9. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Those are what's traditionally been called "lag" areas. (A bit of a misnomer in that nothing really lags - like say with online gaming not keeping up with its various nodes equally - it just stops outright.)
     
  10. Zombra

    Zombra Member

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    I've been complaining and nitpicking quite a bit in other threads, but just want to say that this is a truly wonderful project ... I'm super impressed and have been having a lot of fun playing this version. Great dialogue and scripting in particular ... my characters with social skills really have a lot to work with.
     
  11. edmortimer

    edmortimer Occupy Wall Street

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    I agree wholeheartedly! I anticipate having lots of fun trying different kinds of parties and different tactics.
     
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